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Article published In:
Journal of Argumentation in Context
Vol. 8:3 (2019) ► pp.354–382

Rhetorical imaginings and multimodal arguments at the European Green Belt

Juxtaposing nonhuman nature and technology in our collective memory of the Cold War

| University of Southern California
| University of Nevada, Las Vegas
We analyze the visual, verbal, and material arguments present at the European Green Belt (EGB), a contemporary conservation project built from the former Iron Curtain. The EGB presents itself as a “living memorial” that fuses together former warring countries and thus makes an argument for the unity of Europe. To analyze this incredibly diverse and rhetorically significant project, we put the digital representations of the site and the discourse around the EGB into conversation with situated, rhetorical criticism performed along the EGB site itself. We analyze the EGB’s different argumentative juxtapositions regarding history and memory, nonhuman nature and technology, peace and war, memorial and tourism, and preservation and restoration. Overall, we find that the transformation of the Iron Curtain from divisive border into a European-wide, transboundary biodiversity conservation project uses transcendence as a key argumentative structure, which has implications for how we understand the human relationship with the environment, history, and memory
Keywords: Cold War, environmental memory, European Green Belt, juxtaposition, material rhetoric, transcendence
Article outline
  • Introduction
  • Material argument and the environment
  • Nonhuman nature and technology
  • Conservation and intervention
  • Conclusion
  • Note
  • References
Published online: 24 January 2020
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/jaic.18005.all
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