Representing the “invisible crime” of climate change in an age of post-truth
| Published date | 01 August 2018 |
| Date | 01 August 2018 |
| DOI | 10.1177/1362480618787168 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
https://doi.org/10.1177/1362480618787168
Theoretical Criminology
2018, Vol. 22(3) 468 –491
© The Author(s) 2018
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DOI: 10.1177/1362480618787168
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Representing the “invisible
crime” of climate change
in an age of post-truth
Avi Brisman
Eastern Kentucky University, USA
Abstract
This article builds on prior writing on the ophthalmological aspects of climate change to
argue that in an age of climate change denial and “post-truth”—which Oxford Dictionaries
defines as “relating to or denoting circumstances in which objective facts are less
influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief”—
developing a visual language of climate change becomes of paramount importance. This
article suggests that while media representations of climate change may serve to reduce
climate change to a stock set of visual clichés certain art may improve our visual acuity
of climate change. Accordingly, this article looks at select examples of artwork on the
causes and consequences of climate change and considers the capacity of such work to
inspire personal and political action.
Keywords
Alternative facts, climate change, fake news, green cultural criminology, invisible crime,
post-truth, visual criminology
Introduction
A crime usually involves a distinguishable actor or guilty party, an identifiable victim or
specific set of victims, and a recognizable injury to that victim or group thereof (see
Michalowski, 1985). While some ecological harms have “identifiable actors” with
Corresponding author:
Avi Brisman, School of Justice Studies, Eastern Kentucky University, 521 Lancaster Avenue, 467 Stratton,
Richmond, Kentucky 40475, USA.
Email: avi.brisman@eku.edu
787168TCR0010.1177/1362480618787168Theoretical CriminologyBrisman
research-article2018
Article
Brisman 469
visible damage, such as the Exxon Valdez oil spill in March 1987, the Deepwater Horizon
oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico in April 2010, or the Ajka alumina sludge spill in western
Hungary in October 2010 (for a discussion, see, for example, Dybing, 2012; White,
2011), many harms to the environment, its ecosystems, its biodiversity, and to human
and non-human animal health lack such an identifiable actor—lack either a discrete indi-
vidual or group (e.g., corporate) perpetrator or a discernable victim or injured party (cf.
Caron, 2017). Since the 1990s, green criminology—a perspective within criminology—
has endeavored to identify environmental crimes and non-statutorily proscribed environ-
mental harms—to investigate their causes and consequences, as well as the possible
responses thereto (see, for example, Brisman, 2014a; Brisman and South, 2017c; Lynch,
1990; South, 1998; South and Brisman, 2013; White and Heckenberg, 2014).
In the last five years, green cultural criminology—what might be called a “perspec-
tive within a perspective”—has been concerned, in part, with the way(s) in which envi-
ronmental crime, harm and disaster are constructed and represented by the news media
and in popular cultural forms (Brisman, 2014a, 2015a, 2017a, 2017b, 2017c, In press;
Brisman and South, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015a, 2017a, 2017b, 2017d, 2018; Brisman
et al., 2014; Mazurek, 2017; McClanahan, 2014; McClanahan et al., 2017; Redmon,
2018; Schally, 2014, 2018). This has included, inter alia, examinations of: (a) mediated
constructions, depictions and representations of environmental crimes, disasters, harms,
and risks in the news; (b) “documentary-reality” television series that recreate or reenact
“man-against-nature” epics; (c) fictional/science-fictional accounts of environmental
harm and conflict over natural resources; and (d) contemporary visions of the demise of
planet Earth and its ability to support its biotic and abiotic components—specifically, the
cinematic and literary depictions and meaning of different endtime scenarios of environ-
mental catastrophe. With few exceptions (see generally Natali, 2016; Natali and
McClanahan, 2017), green cultural criminology has not yet contemplated such construc-
tions and depictions in the visual arts. While visual criminology—which has emerged as
part of a broader “visual turn” or “pictorial turn” in the social sciences (see, for example,
Solaroli, 2015: 1, 8, 9)—has explored the ethical questions posed by and the moral impli-
cations of mediated representations of harm, suffering, violence, and punishment (see,
for example, Brown, 2014, 2017; Brown and Carrabine, 2017; Carrabine, 2010, 2011a,
2011b, 2012a, 2012b, 2017, 2018a, 2018b; Valier and Lippens, 2004; see also Schept,
2016)—and has “contest[ed] visuality” by “creat[ing] countervisual projects that inter-
rogate dominant logics and present alternative visions of how the world could be”
(Rumpf, 2017: 20)—it has not considered the meanings and significance of images of
various crimes and harms to the environment and its ecosystems (cf. McClanahan and
Linnemann, 2018). This article is an effort to foster the cross-fertilization of green cul-
tural criminology and visual criminology. It attempts to do so through the particular
challenges of representing climate change.
This article begins with a description of the contemporary political landscape—one
characterized by climate change denial despite overwhelming scientific consensus that
humans are contributing to climate change (see, for example, Brisman, 2012, 2013,
2014b,2015b; Brisman and South, 2015b; McClanahan and Brisman, 2013, 2015; Wyatt
and Brisman, 2017). With this backdrop—and given that some US governmental offi-
cials have begun to replace “climate change” with “the double C-word” (Editorial,
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