Okjökull, a glacier in the western half of Iceland, was the first Icelandic glacier to disappear ... more Okjökull, a glacier in the western half of Iceland, was the first Icelandic glacier to disappear in 2014 due to climate change. Unlike many deaths, there were no poetic last words, nor was there anyone to sit vigil. Few even knew of Ok’s death until Ok was finally given a funeral five years after later. In 2018, a set of anthropologists hosted a funeral for Ok attended by political leaders in Iceland and international activists from across the globe. International circulation quickly followed, sparking widespread discussion on the global precarity of glaciers. This paper takes up Cymene Howe’s claim “Memorials are not for the dead; they are for the living” to argue the rhetorical contours of this memorial provide an important addition to ecological discourse by politicizing the temporal dimensions of climate disavowal through an understanding of solastalgic rhetoric. Juxtaposing this memorial alongside ethnographic work by Dr. M Jackson in The Secret Life of Glaciers presents a prime example for understanding the intersections between constitutive rhetoric and rhetorical theories of mourning.
Okjökull, a glacier in the western half of Iceland, was the first Icelandic glacier to disappear ... more Okjökull, a glacier in the western half of Iceland, was the first Icelandic glacier to disappear in 2014 due to climate change. Unlike many deaths, there were no poetic last words, nor was there anyone to sit vigil. Few even knew of Ok’s death until Ok was finally given a funeral five years after later. In 2018, a set of anthropologists hosted a funeral for Ok attended by political leaders in Iceland and international activists from across the globe. International circulation quickly followed, sparking widespread discussion on the global precarity of glaciers. This paper takes up Cymene Howe’s claim “Memorials are not for the dead; they are for the living” to argue the rhetorical contours of this memorial provide an important addition to ecological discourse by politicizing the temporal dimensions of climate disavowal through an understanding of solastalgic rhetoric. Juxtaposing this memorial alongside ethnographic work by Dr. M Jackson in The Secret Life of Glaciers presents a prime example for understanding the intersections between constitutive rhetoric and rhetorical theories of mourning.
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Drafts by Jacob Smith