The Virunga Gorilla Murders: Identification, Image Events, and Eco-Rhetoric

• In Event: Scholar to Scholar V

Abstract

On July 22, 2007, a group of unknown assailants carried out an attack on a group of silverback gorillas in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. This paper addresses these acts through varied rhetorical frames to analyze the process of integrating shocking imagery, sociopolitical movements, identification, and ecological rhetoric. I argue that re-conceptualizing argument, persuasion, and rhetoric is an important process for environmental scholars that must be fundamentally approached in new and diverse ways.

Author

• Carlos Tarin, University of Colorado, Boulder