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humanitiesArticle
Mediating Climate, Mediating Scale
Anne Pasek
Department of English and Film Studies, University of Alberta, Edmonton, AB T6G 2E5, Canada;
apasek@ualberta.ca
Received: 22 August 2019; Accepted: 8 October 2019; Published: 11 October 2019


Abstract: Climate communication is seemingly stuck in a double bind. The problem of global warming
requires inherently trans-scalar modes of engagement, encompassing times and spaces that exceed
local frames of experience and meaning. Climate media must therefore negotiate representational
extremes that risk overwhelming their audience with the immensity of the problem or rendering it
falsely manageable at a local scale. The task of visualizing climate is thus often torn between scales
germane to the problem and scales germane to individuals. In this paper I examine how this scalar
divide has been negotiated visually, focusing in particular on Ed Hawkins’ 2016 viral climate spiral.
To many, the graphic represents a promising union of political and scientific communication in the
public sphere. However, formal analysis of the gif’s reception suggest that the spiral was also a site of
anxiety and negative emotion for many viewers. I take these conflicting interpretations as cause to
rethink current assumptions about best practices and desirable outcomes for scalar mediations of
climate and their capacities to mobilize a wide range of reactions and interpretations—some more
legibly political and some more complicatedly affective, yet all nevertheless integral to the work of
building a holistic response to the climate crisis.
Keywords: climate change; data visualization; visual culture; media; scale; climate change
communication; affect; aesthetics
1. Introduction
All representations of climate are fundamentally representations of scale (Woods 2017, p. 217). The
physics of global warming, and our difficulty in meaningfully responding to it, lie in negotiating the
cognitive and political differences between one pound of CO2 and several hundred parts per million,
in understanding how small actions accumulate across time and space to create meaningful differences,
as well as when small actions don’t scale, or risk obfuscating much larger forms of inaction. These
leaps between scales demand structures of mediation to represent and convey information beyond the
habitual and phenomenological ways of knowing the world (Edwards 2010, p. 282; Schneider 2012,
p. 186).
The mediation of climate change is therefore always the mediation of its scalar dynamics and so
also an invitation to imagine unconventional forms of causality and collectivity. This dynamic surfaces
in visualizations of climate data, even when they are crafted and presented without any particular
conscious political aim (O’Neill and Smith 2014). Images of climatic scales can be surprisingly
charismatic, traveling across heterogeneous publics that seek to cultivate modes of sensing and
understanding climate across scalar divides (Knox 2015; Pine and Liboiron 2015).
The study of the reception and circulation of the visual culture of climate data is therefore a means
to study climate communication in action, in ways that elude careful control on the part of practiced
climate communicators and their developing orthodoxies of best practices. Scale remains a necessary
challenge and paradox for effective and affecting climate communication, and these dimensions of the
problem are often expressed through aesthetics rather than an emphasis on context or solutions.
Humanities 2019, 8, 159; doi:10.3390/h8040159
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In this paper I provide a brief overview of the role of scale and data visualization in climate
In this paper I provide a brief overview of the role of scale and data visualization in climate change
change communications, as well as evolving norms and contradictions that have emerged therein. I
communications, as well as evolving norms and contradictions that have emerged therein. I do so
do so through a brief history of charismatic climate data graphics, anchored in case studies selected
through a brief history of charismatic climate data graphics, anchored in case studies selected for their
for their significant and unanticipated public reach. I begin with the early movement of global climate
significant
and unanticipated
public through
reach. I begin
with theuses
earlyofmovement
of global
climate
data stick
into
data into popular
media, narrated
the multiple
Michael Mann
et al.’s
hockey
popular media, narrated through the multiple uses of Michael Mann et al.’s hockey stick graph during
graph during the 1990s and 2000s. I then turn to consider how this model of scale has been contested
the
and 2000s.by
I then
turnlocalized
to considerand
how often
this model
of scale has been contested
and supplanted
and1990s
supplanted
more
affectively-curtailed
approaches
to climate
by
more
localized
and
often
affectively-curtailed
approaches
to
climate
communication
andI conclude
action in
communication and action in recent years, with both positive and negative affordances.
recent
with
both positive
negative
affordances.
I conclude
with
a detailed
formal
analysis
with ayears,
detailed
formal
analysis and
of Ed
Hawkins’
widely circulated
2016
climate
spiral
visualization,
of
Ed
Hawkins’
widely
circulated
2016
climate
spiral
visualization,
which
represents
a
turn
backand
to
which represents a turn back to planetary scaled data and a wider range of affective responses
planetary
scaled
data
and
a
wider
range
of
affective
responses
and
networked
structures
of
feeling.
networked structures of feeling. I argue that this example is cause to rethink current assumptions
Iabout
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this example
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rethink current
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of climate
and theirand
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to
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for
scalar
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climate
and
their
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to
mobilize
a
wide
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and
mobilize a wide range of reactions and interpretations—some more legibly political and some more
interpretations—some
more legibly
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andall
some
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complicatedly introspective
and affective,
nevertheless
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yet
all nevertheless
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work of mustering a holistic response to the climate crisis.
holistic
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2. Charismatic Data
2. Charismatic Data
Scientific graphs of global temperatures or atmospheric CO2 have over the past few decades
Scientific graphs of global temperatures or atmospheric CO2 have over the past few decades
become increasingly charismatic and mediated through diverse platforms and formal strategies. More
become increasingly charismatic and mediated through diverse platforms and formal strategies.
and more, climate data visualizations are called upon not just to condense datasets and coordinate the
More and more, climate data visualizations are called upon not just to condense datasets and
interpretation of scientific readers, but to move outside of scientific circles, to stand in for community
coordinate the interpretation of scientific readers, but to move outside of scientific circles, to stand in
consensus, and to index the cumulative output of not just laboratory findings, but the physical
for community consensus, and to index the cumulative output of not just laboratory findings, but the
outcome of entire historical periods at planetary scales. Such images have considerable impact, both in
physical outcome of entire historical periods at planetary scales. Such images have considerable
coordinating social and political action, and in constructing new global imaginaries.
impact, both in coordinating social and political action, and in constructing new global imaginaries.
Take, for example, Michael Mann, Raymond S. Bradley, and Malcolm K. Hughes’ “Hockey Stick”
Take, for example, Michael Mann, Raymond S. Bradley, and Malcolm K. Hughes’ “Hockey
graph (Figure 1)—one of the most storied cases of climate visualization (Mann et al. 1999). It takes its
Stick” graph (Figure 1)—one of the most storied cases of climate visualization (Mann et al. 1999). It
name from a simple, linear representation of scalar contrast: Like a hockey stick lying prone, its line
takes its name from a simple, linear representation of scalar contrast: Like a hockey stick lying prone,
runs flat for most of the graph’s representation of time, until a sharp and sudden curve at its end. It has
its line runs flat for most of the graph’s representation of time, until a sharp and sudden curve at its
long been an iconic image, emblematic of climate science and advocacy during the late 1990s and 2000s.
end. It has long been an iconic image, emblematic of climate science and advocacy during the late
It visually signified an abrupt and sudden change in climatic norms, framing the problem of climate
1990s and 2000s. It visually signified an abrupt and sudden change in climatic norms, framing the
change as a pronounced difference in degree, but also, more qualitatively, of kind. It communicates a
problem of climate change as a pronounced difference in degree, but also, more qualitatively, of kind.
scalar shift.
It communicates a scalar shift.
Figure 1. The ‘hockey stick graph’: a millennial reconstruction of average temperatures in the northern
Figure 1. The ‘hockey stick graph’: a millennial reconstruction of average temperatures in the northern
hemisphere from Mann et al. (1999).
hemisphere from Mann et al. (1999).
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In the context of a scientific paper, the image succeeds in communicating a complicated statistical
analysis of temperature proxies, averages, and degrees of uncertainty that are the central finding of the
study. However, as an image in wider circulation, mediated and remediated, it reached new audiences
and was used to enact new strategies of emphasis. It attracted a great deal of press when it was first
published in Nature in 1998 (serendipitously for newsmakers, arriving both during an unusually warm
year and on Earth Day), providing a condensed visual that could effectively communicate the scale
and speed of climate change to non-scientific audiences. It went on to become a key visual in the
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s Third Assessment Report, as well as in the summary of
this report for policy makers (Watson et al. 2001). The image was further displayed prominently behind
speakers during the press conference organized by the IPCC at its release, providing a conceptual and
literal backdrop against which messages of certainty and urgency were framed (BBC News 2001).
The dramatic turn of the hockey stick and its affective message of scalar shifts have been further
mediated by a range of contemplative techniques. Most spectacularly, a similar chart was recreated
during a key moment in Al Gore’s film An Inconvenient Truth (Guggenheim 2006), this time visualizing
millennial spikes in CO2 concentrations. Rather than statically presented for inspection like other
figures in the film’s lecture, the graph was dramatized by Gore physically scaling the blade of the
hockey stick in a mechanical lift, theatrically emphasizing the irregularity of the spike and its departure
from shared norms and conventions—in this case metaphorically writ as the floor on which a sober
speaker might stand. More privately, the scientist and environmentalist James Lovelock reportedly
keeps a copy of this graph pinned to his wall as a kind of icon of secular concern. Keeping it in the
view of his desk at all times apparently serves him as a constant reminder of the stakes and speeds of
climate action (Lovelock 2007, p. 52).
Because of its prominence, the hockey stick’s scalar message also became a lightning rod for
political disputes, including those levied in good faith and those with a more partisan or ideological
motive. Proving or disproving the hockey stick was and, in some very stubborn circles, still continues
to be a chief arena in which climate change skeptics and deniers go to war. It took an outsized role
in several congressional hearings convened by climate denialist politicians, para-scientific reports
issued by fossil fuel and libertarian think tanks, and the skeptic blogosphere and publishing circuits.1
Like Lovelock and Gore, denialists have singled out the hockey stick as more than just a scientific
summary, but a message about the character of climate change, posed with considerable urgency.
These meditations, mediations, and contestations of the image compose a range of interpretive
strategies for negotiating scale’s affective demands: a shift in norms that demands, but does not clarify,
defensive reaction.
In Mann’s own account, the graph—not his data, but his data visualization—attracted so much
attention, positive and negative, because as an image it is both visually engaging and psychologically
alarming (Mann 2012, pp. xiii–xvi). Its public relevance outpaced its useful but by no means pivotal
contribution to the scientific consensus around global warming that solidified in the late 1990s (Mann
2012, p. 127). Its legacy is and remains one of scalar pedagogy and affect.
A key reason why Mann et al.’s graph circulated so heavily was that it could effectively
communicate the abstraction of “the climate” as a new category of planetary knowledge distinct from
that of regional weather patterns, no matter how historicized. Scale, in other words, is definitional to
the concept of climate that was framed and argued through the mediated history of the hockey stick.
Its millennial-long temporal reach, and sharp vector of discontinuity in recent decades, express climate
as a phenomenon analytically and perceptually dissimilar from scales germane to human experience.
It hails viewers to contemplate time and phenomena beyond their reach. It requires forms of scalar
thinking and action that weigh quantitative and qualitative differences carefully.
1
For a summary of these efforts and an excellent primary source that speaks to the worldview of climate denialism,
see (McIntyre 2010).
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Transcalar engagements are hard to think and enact and the graph itself is silent on this subject.
Indeed, one of the reasons why Mann et al.’s graph is so alarming and enduringly unimpeachable
is that it is a decidedly global abstraction. It records average temperatures across nearly planetary
scales,2 which is a convenient optic and a good short hand for the performance of geophysics, but in
doing so it constructs a temperature that is never actually experienced—a massively aggregate signal
that must be meticulously produced and imagined through the medium of the cartesian grid and the
techniques of statistical analysis. It mediates scale; it does not index it.
This framing of climate is, of course, not without ongoing social complications. The scalar leaps
implied by framing climate above and beyond human experience place the role and responsibilities of
political units of analysis under perceptual strain. This contributes to a framework in which climate
is understood as both the provenance of anthropogenic action, yet not scalarly continuous with the
corporeal or agential capacities of individuals or publics. This suggests, as the following section
argues, that there are emergent models of power implied by all representations of scale and their
configuration of more than human forces and different models of human collectivity. There are a range
of contradictory ways to address this problem and no clear, universal strategy to overcome it.
3. Scale’s Double Bind
In the 1990s and early 2000s, during which the hockey stick graph was elevated and contested,
there was also a shared assumption—and an understandable one at the time—in both environmentalist
and scientific circles that the problem of climate inaction was fundamentally a matter of a public
knowledge deficit. The way to motivate change, broadly conceived, was thus to simply communicate
the science more—to educate, to provide knowledge, in easily understandable terms like iconic data
visualizations, that could recruit the public into the scientific consensus.3 An informed public, it
was further hoped, would be automatically or at least more easily mobilized to elect and pressure
political representatives that would then take the necessary national and international actions to avoid
catastrophic global warming. There was, in short, a model of power implied by this kind of science
communication: correct errors in judgement at the base so that power can be more effectively mustered
at the top. This was the foundational assumption of An Inconvenient Truth and much of the media
coverage about the hockey stick’s proof, demands, and possible illegitimacy.
This presumption has largely failed in practice, at least in the American context. Despite continued
efforts to disseminate and communicate scientific findings, the number of Americans who believe in
climate change today is not dramatically different from the numbers in 2001 (Brenan and Saad 2018).
Currently only 3% of Americans rate environmental issues among the essential concerns facing the
country (Gallup Inc. 2019). More broadly, international political elites and elected governments have
almost universally failed to uphold the treaty obligations and emissions targets that have emerged
from the decadal march of international climate diplomacy. Energy demand and carbon emissions
continue to rise.
In response to this failure of the deficit model of communication, and in response to a range of
culturally and class-specific efforts to articulate climate impacts and concerns, barriers to effectively
raising public belief and understanding about climate change are now widely understood to be more
than informational. As scholars of science communication stress, these figures represent less an absence
of information than a lack of context and social infrastructure through which the data of climate
change can be made meaningful—not merely received and deposited by route (Callison 2014; Doyle
2011a). Structural and gendered commitments to the fossil economy further complicate the reception
2
3
Although the graph has been used as shorthand for global warming, the dataset is specific to the Northern Hemisphere
because of the disparity in datapoints available between the North and South. Its findings hold true of the South, but this
dynamic is surely an interesting topic for further study.
For a useful survey and formative critique of the knowledge deficit model in science communication, see, respectfully,
(Moser and Dilling 2011), (Nisbet and Scheufele 2009).
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of scientific information and contribute to the polarization of climate science and policy approaches in
subcultures and in government (Dunlap et al. 2016; Daggett 2018). As this research emphasizes, the
crisis of climate inaction was and is less about uncertainty than about power and social conflict.
Yet scale and its aesthetics tacitly coinhabit questions of identity and political economy. This is
because climate communication remains in something of a double bind: Global warming requires
inherently trans-scalar modes of engagement, encompassing spatial breadths and time frames that
are not easily accommodated in familiar forms of social life. Climate change media must negotiate
representational extremes that risk either overwhelming their audience with the immensity of the
problem or stripping data of ontological weight and local meaning. As feminist and anticolonial
scholars remind, aesthetic and receptive strategies that linger in these scalar disconnections—the
sublime, the hyperobject, romanticism, or horror—commonly fail to cultivate a sense of responsibility
or engaged, collectivist strategies to “stay with the trouble” of climate (Haraway 2016; Heise 2014;
Shotwell 2016).
The task of visualizing climate is thus seemingly torn between scales germane to the problem
and scales more appropriate to mobilizing political action. Communicating vast geophysical time and
trends—and making them meaningful within the space of daily life—remains an ongoing challenge,
especially when local experiences of climate depart from the narrative of global warming or when
living fully with the knowledge of climate change proves politically and psychologically trying
(Norgaard 2011). It may be hard to reconcile local experiences of weather with the severity of the
hockey stick graph, no matter how sincerely one might believe that they represent an accurate account
of a scalar thing or a concept called climate. One’s answer would likely differ if considering this
question in the Arctic or the Maldives Islands, but this would be no less local a response to this image.
Today, an emphatically global, data-centered view of climate change is increasingly being
abandoned within work coming out of and drawing from the sociological study of climate politics
and knowledge production. A wave of science and technology studies scholars have called these
visualizations to task for the many ways in which abstract, planetary data risks producing an apolitical
flattening of global responsibility, overwhelming and rendering powerless its viewers, or otherwise
ignoring the many different ways in which climate change comes to matter culturally. Notably, there is
a recurring call to attend to the emplacement of climate change within socially-valued local geographies
that are uniquely threatened but could also uniquely motivate local actions which might, in aggregate,
scale up to the level of the climate (Jasanoff 2010; Callison 2014; Doyle 2011a). For these critics and
experts, best practices in climate communication do not consist of the intensified education of a generic
public with more and seemingly neutral global scientific data, but the recognition and elevation of
situated publics that negotiate warming through place-based calls to action.
Science communication as a field of study and practice within STEM, both in response and in
parallel, has begun to make an allied departure from the information deficit model. Recent studies on
the psychology of climate change suggest that quickly pivoting from a focus on global-level crises to
a focus on individual-level solutions is key to conveying the problem of climate change and getting
it to stick (Wolf and Moser 2011). In order to push past psychological defenses and to convince the
unmotivated, science communication experts argue that effective communication must reject gloomy
projections for the future and contain positive accounts of individual agency within its narrative (Shome
and Marx 2009; Mooney et al. 2015; Van der Linden et al. 2015). In practice, this can be condensed to a
formula: “persuasive communications = shared values + a problem or opportunity + a solution or
call to action” (Banse 2013, p. 6). Threats, in other words, must be consistently matched with locally
actionable solutions. Regardless of where the conversation about climate begins or develops, it should
be narrowed at the end to match the scale and concerns of one’s audience.
This local turn in the debate around best practices in climate communication forwards, tacitly and
overtly, contrasting models of power through a downshifting in scale. Strong, positive examples of this
strategy have emerged in recent social movement mobilizations and community self-defense strategies
such as The People’s Climate March and the #NoDAPL resistance at Standing Rock. Mobilizing
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coalitionally towards wider climate action, framed through locally determined, intersectional demands,
has proven to be a successful strategy in cultivating both new kinds of media attention and grassroots
political power (Young 2015; Cohen 2016; Estes 2019). The emergence of these movements further
reflects the fact that climate change is now no longer effectively framed as an anticipated threat but
can better be understood as a series of disruptions that are currently and differently experienced by
frontline communities. Accompanying these protest camps, mass mobilizations, and media campaigns
are also turns to reopen questions about definition of the good life, both in terms of individuals and as
supported within larger societal structures.
However, these calls to act locally on climate are not always collective in nature. At its worst, and
perhaps more frequently, the rejection of the global and a stubborn emphasis on solutions can take the
form of sustainability talk run amok, overly emphasizing individual agency and market-palatable but
globally insignificant or unaccountable forms of performative action (Alaimo 2012, p. 559; Steinberg
2010; Lovell and MacKenzie 2011). The visualization of carbon footprints, for example, is a popular way
in which data comes back into this localized picture. Calls to reduce one’s footprint, often in the context
of individual consumer decisions, presume that responsibility for the climate crisis can be quantified
and satisfied as a matter of individual accounts. Tellingly, the concept was popularized by British
Petroleum during its ill-begotten rebranding phase as an attempt to render individual households and
the oil company equivalent in scale and ethical responsibility (Pasek 2019; Doyle 2011b).
The risk, as its been subsequently argued by Timothy Clark, is that this form of climate
communication can produce and rely upon “derangements of scale” whereby minute individualizing
actions are made falsely equivalent to planetary problems, ignoring the larger economic and
infrastructural forces that are much harder to change but that are certainly more causal (Clark
2012, pp. 150–51). This misconstrued sense of scale can risk becoming a form of “soft denial”
whereby the phenomena of global warming is acknowledged, but rendered falsely distant or too easily
manageable (Hoexter 2016). We might say that scale here becomes an act of aspirational mimesis,
where the shape of the macrocosm is imagined in relation to a highly symbolic microcosm, but without
a legible analysis of how these two scales do or do not respond to the other. As with any analysis that
seems to deliberately elide structural questions, this too implies a model of power: one where the
personal governance of presumably homogeneous individual lives is the first and last avenue for the
production of politics.
The soundness of this theory of change notwithstanding, in this context it might seem like the time
of charismatic planetary data visualizations is coming to an end—that there will be no great hockey
stick graphs in the future, and that in the turn to local action the problem of global scales has been to
a large degree evacuated from climate politics, for good or for ill. However, there is some evidence
that this is not the case. The remainder of this paper turns to focus on a particular recent example of
climate data visualization—one that is in many ways a response to these currents and debates and
which might illuminate areas of concern that still elude wide notice and discussion.
4. Scalar Affects and Data Visualization
On 9 May 2016 climate scientist Ed Hawkins posted his first spiral climate gif to Twitter. The figure
takes data from the University of East Anglia’s CRUTEM4 dataset and runs it through a circular
calendar, translating the sharp rise of a hockey stick-styled graph into a widening and quickening
gyre of global average temperatures (Figure 2). As the pace and span of temperature changes increase
towards the turn of the century, and as the Paris Agreement’s 1.5- and 2-degrees Celsius targets are
quickly approached, Hawkins’ spiral dramatizes familiar, and too easily forgotten, scientific findings.
There is nothing new to this information; Hawkins is rather taking old knowledge and knowledge
forms and remediating them in his spare time, bringing together political targets and global data points
into a differently staged image: one that represents scale through change in intensity and speed, and in
the abbreviated real time of the gif’s 11 second loop.
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Figure 2.
Ed Hawkins’
Hawkins’ original
original climate
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under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
The responses to the spiral were unanticipated and voluminous. Hawkins’ gif rapidly went viral,
The responses to the spiral were unanticipated and voluminous. Hawkins’ gif rapidly went viral,
circulating beyond “climate Twitter” to reach hundreds of thousands of viewers in the social space
circulating beyond “climate Twitter” to reach hundreds of thousands of viewers in the social space
of newsfeeds or the public space of conventional news coverage about the spiral in subsequent days.
of newsfeeds or the public space of conventional news coverage about the spiral in subsequent days.
The Washington Post called it “the most compelling global warming visualization ever made” (Mooney
The Washington Post called it “the most compelling global warming visualization ever made”
2016). Several other gifs followed, authored by Hawkins and other colleagues engaged by the concept,
(Mooney 2016). Several other gifs followed, authored by Hawkins and other colleagues
engaged by
covering sea ice volume, CO2 concentrations, and forecasted future temperatures.4 Hawkins’ original4
the concept, covering sea ice
volume, CO2 concentrations, and forecasted future temperatures.
spiral, meanwhile, began to circulate as a new and urgent index of climate change timescales. The 2016
Hawkins’ original spiral, meanwhile, began to circulate as a new and urgent index of climate change
Rio de Janeiro Olympic Games featured a version of the spiral prominently in its opening ceremonies,
timescales. The 2016 Rio de Janeiro Olympic Games featured a version of the spiral prominently in
further propagating the image to 1 billion-some viewers. Hoesung Lee, then the head of the IPCC,
its opening ceremonies, further propagating the image to 1 billion-some viewers. Hoesung Lee, then
reportedly reevaluated the organization’s media strategies in light of this success (King 2016).
the head of the IPCC, reportedly reevaluated the organization’s media strategies in light of this
Responses to the animation were wide and intensely felt, though not for reasons that are commonly
success (King 2016).
known or understood. In many ways, the spiral visualizations seem to respond to some of the concerns
Responses to the animation were wide and intensely felt, though not for reasons that are
of earlier climate communication experts and critics; they colorfully bring together political targets
commonly known or understood. In many ways, the spiral visualizations seem to respond to some
and geophysical data, thwarting the inclination of most scientific visualizations to just report the
of the concerns of earlier climate communication experts and critics; they colorfully bring together
physical phenomena. The gifs are also optimized to circulate in social spaces, reaching everyday
political targets and geophysical data, thwarting the inclination of most scientific visualizations to
people, perhaps caught unaware between memes and passing thoughts, thereby rendering climate
just report the physical phenomena. The gifs are also optimized to circulate in social spaces, reaching
change communication a little more ubiquitous and vernacular.
everyday people, perhaps caught unaware between memes and passing thoughts, thereby rendering
Yet, like the hockey stick graph, the scale of the visualization is determinedly global. The data
climate change communication a little more ubiquitous and vernacular.
is a smoothed, semi-empirical mediation of observations (Edwards 2010, p. 188), diffusely modeled
Yet, like the hockey stick graph, the scale of the visualization is determinedly global. The data is
out over the whole of the northern hemisphere. It represents numbers that have never been directly
a smoothed, semi-empirical mediation of observations (Edwards 2010, p. 188), diffusely modeled out
felt by any given body, it erases differences between the hemisphere’s poles and middle latitudes,
over the whole of the northern hemisphere. It represents numbers that have never been directly felt
where climate change is progressing with drastically different speeds and socio-cultural impacts
by any given body, it erases differences between the hemisphere’s poles and middle latitudes, where
(Watt-Cloutier 2018), and, like so many scientific visualizations of climate data, it is silent on questions
climate change is progressing with drastically different speeds and socio-cultural impacts (WattCloutier 2018), and, like so many scientific visualizations of climate data, it is silent on questions of
historical responsibility, borders, or environmental justice at large (Doyle 2011a, p. 37). Moreover,
4
Thesescience
visualizations,
along with updated
versions
the global
average agnostic
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at https:
against
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theofimage
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the subject
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//www.climate-lab-book.ac.uk/spirals/.
4
These visualizations, along with updated versions of the global average temperature spiral, are collected at
https://www.climate-lab-book.ac.uk/spirals/.
Humanities 2019, 8, 159
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of historical responsibility, borders, or environmental justice at large (Doyle 2011a, p. 37). Moreover,
against science communications orthodoxy, the image is wholly agnostic on the subject of solutions
or shared values. It does not specify a ‘we’ to which or from which the data is oriented, nor does it
suggest what a proper response to the data might be, besides aesthetic contemplation and affective
reaction to the animation of scale and speed.
In short, the success of the gif is a puzzle that current scholarship on the mediation of climate
change does not fully explain. A closer examination of the audience reception of these gifs suggests
that questions of scale—or the vexed gap between global representations and local capacities for
action—are still very much at play. Rather than the straightforward communication of scientific fact,
many who engaged with these images sought to share and communicate not just global warming
data, but also the affects and scalar dynamics of this data when newly registered by Hawkins’ visual
technique. This requires an analysis of scalar representations as an aesthetic project, rather than purely
informational or contextual communications.
Climate data visualization, to this end, should be read for its formal structures. In developing
this avenue of analysis, firstly, it should be observed that the principle innovation of the spiral gifs
was not their optimized shareability or circular orientation—these had been done before—but rather
the fact that they move. Hawkins himself acknowledges this (Van Renssen 2017). There is something
dynamic, perhaps even visceral, to data rendered as a moving image rather than a static one. Gore’s
physical animation of the CO2 hockey stick hints at this fact. Removed from conventional x- and y-axes
and their explanatory registers, the viewer of a climate spiral is freed from interpretative work to a
significant degree, able simply to watch and respond to the pace and expansions or contractions of
data in motion.
This allows for a newly kinetic understanding of climate-scaled phenomena. The viewer is able
to register shifts in temperature not only as a crystalized, visual fact, but also and perhaps more
profoundly as a durational, qualitative shift in temporal and spatial pattern. Initially one sees only
the relatively minute changes of the turn of the 20th century and this makes the accelerated tempo
of the subsequent century’s arrival and derivations all the more contrasting. In this way, alarm is
generated experientially and repeatedly as the gif loops, emphasizing the traces of past norms and
differentiating movements in an ever-widening spiral of color and line. To stop abruptly in the present
is to momentarily arrest the image’s momentum, as if in a cinematic freeze frame, hovering ominously
before its anticipated collision with the 1.5- and 2-degree targets. This gives a very different perspective
on the fragility of these targets than the IPCC’s graphing efforts of mitigation pathways have sought to
render legible and feasible beyond, perhaps, what a more realistic assessment of historical and political
trends might suggest (Anderson 2015). The moving image provides a subtle, but powerful, corporeal
solicitation: to think through data not just via visual summary and synthesis, but as an imagined index
of a physical thing, with a palpable acceleration that implies, in turn, the frightening inertia of an object
in motion.
The result, for some, is a visualization of the worsening intractability of climate change rather
than its political call to order. In responses to the graph there is a pronounced tendency to see the
spiraling data first as fact, then as symbol—to move from scientific understanding to metaphor. The
graph’s circular shape, to this end, seems to be often taken as an echo of the shape of the planet itself, its
enclosing atmosphere, or the growing fracture of geophysical and political norms. The Washington Post,
for example, notes that, “the circles are part of one unwinding spiral, which serves as a fitting metaphor
for the long-term course of the Earth’s temperature” (Mooney 2016). This resonance is evident in
several responses to the original Twitter post (Hawkins 2016) which, in addition to the usual climate
denialist contrarianism, include comments such as “It’s a Death Spiral,” “Watch #globalwarming spiral
out of control,” and “WE ARE ALL GOING TO DIE.” (In my own viewing of the gif I keep returning
to William Butler Yeats’s poem “The Second Coming”: “Turning and turning in the widening gyre/
The falcon cannot hear the falconer/ Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold”). This is all to say that
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I am not sure that we can extrapolate a clear model of power here, except for the power that lies in
soberly assessing its lack.
Rather than dismissing these responses as unproductive nihilism, I am interested in examining this
kind of affective phenomena as itself a way of thinking through the dynamics of scale in which climate
change is fundamentally embroiled. Rather than paralyzing or off-putting, for the large public that
circulated the climate spiral, the image was affecting and demanded to be shared. It was a networked
affect—a piece of viral media, but also feeling.
In the context of incredibly inadequate industrial and government responses to climate change,
it seems entirely appropriate that people should seek out and respond to representations of climate that
feel bad—that express a sense of alarm and impending crisis, and that otherwise subtly communicate
the visceral feeling of impending disaster rather than celebrate its potential solutions. The virality of
these images—their impactfulness and social success—can in many ways be read as a response to and
a refusal of the strained positivity of climate communication today. Data visualization, rendered in
motion, represents in kinetic terms the ways in which carbon emissions and global economies move
with historical momentum; that it is an urgent, and exceedingly difficult task to slow the progress
of geophysically scaled processes; and that the goal of climate action today will be to slow and
mitigate—but not avoid, erase, ‘solve’, or wholly undo—global warming as an existential threat to
so many species, communities, and lifeways. In this light, Hawkins’ spirals have perhaps succeeded
in communicating the scalar realities of climate science more than any footprint analysis or policy
document could.
Significantly, I think that Hawkins’ climate visualizations and the story of their reception suggest
a new direction in the debate about how to best communicate and organize towards publics in this
fight. In the corporeal mode of address that moving data elicits, there is a sense not of local specificity
or global abstraction, but of an evocative sense of the planet and the climate as physical entities—of
aggregate global temperatures not as a temporal phenomena, but as a weighty thing whose path
cannot be trivially shifted. This reading of the gif takes up Ursula (Heise 2008, p. 55) invective to
reject an absolutist mandate for local-specificity within environmental politics and to instead seek to
cultivate a “sense of the planet,” which might be sought within the globe-spanning affordances of
contemporary networks of communication (p. 63). Climate is bigger than individuals and localities;
acknowledging this is crucial. It further speaks to what Hannah Knox has described as “thinking like a
climate”: a receptive form of engagement observed between several climate scientists and their data in
which divides between the observer and the observed collapse into relational urgency (Knox 2015).
Reactions of alarm, shared anxieties, and pronouncements of doom show that viewers see themselves
in the system encircled by climate data and are moved by its aesthetics into forms of public feeling.
Above all, the climate spiral example stands as a testament that aesthetics and affect matter, that
formal design elements and the social life of scientific images are tightly bound within questions of
scale, and that these factors should ideally be acknowledged and mobilized rather than preempted
and strong-armed in an effort to emphasize solutions. ‘Bad emotional responses,’ a visual attraction
to the global, and public faith in data’s capacities for storytelling persist in the mediation of climate
change today. Past critiques of the racial, gendered, and social gaps of this framing of the issue remain
essential, but such engagements need not necessarily be in conflict with the contextual and situated.
The challenge, as every good organizer knows, is to provoke emotion first and put it to work second. In
removing scale from climate communication, and by emphasizing only our positive abilities for action,
we risk losing a powerful affective tool as well as a sober assessment of what we are facing as a planet.
5. Conclusions
The role of aesthetics in climate communication has been largely confined to the field of ecocriticism
and related studies of global warming in art, literature, and film—in short, objects of study that are
understood to be interpretive representations of climate within a predominantly humanist tradition
(Siperstein et al. 2016; Svoboda 2016; Davis and Turpin 2015). There are few attempts to apply humanist
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analyses of aesthetics and visual culture to scientific representations of climate and climate data.5 Yet,
as evidenced by the climate spirals and, to a degree, the hockey stick graphs that precede it, data
visualization is a rich site of aesthetic and affective responses—responses that can best be evaluated
through tools of formal analysis and reception germane to the arts.
These examples of charismatic data images suggest that climate change communication continues
to be a complicated, unpredictable task, resistant to easy summary in formulas for best practices or
optimized psychological reach. This is in large part because of the paradox of scale that endures
within the political, scientific, and aesthetic problems of climate: Global warming requires inherently
trans-scalar modes of engagement, calling our attention simultaneously towards each other and far
beyond the scope of individual or everyday experiences. We must forget neither side of this equation.
I conclude not with an answer that resolves this tension, but instead a call for pluralism
in approaches to negotiating scalar contradictions. I find encouraging signs to this end in the
continuing experiments with form and visual narrative emerging from communication practitioners,
both professional and informal. Animation is fast becoming a more commonly utilized technique,
now formally recommended to climate researchers looking to share datasets and summaries with
a wider public (Harold et al. 2017). Recent efforts by Antti Lipponen, Kevin Pluck, Robert Rohde,
Neil Kaye, and John Nelson are examples of this trend, including gif, video, and scrolling animations
that dramatize the speed and size of global temperature anomalies, sea level rise, and fossil fuel
consumption on sites including Twitter, Reddit, Flickr, and YouTube. More broadly, during the recent
Global Climate Strike Week, millions of youths and their allies marched with signs that mixed climate
data and collective demands, as well as humour and despair, local grievances and global imperatives,
the personal and the political. Online and offline, in professional contexts and in memes, data and
people are on the move, circulating affects.
Ed Hawkins, meanwhile, has sparked another viral success: “warming stripes” that graphically
mark the global drift in average temperatures through shifting bands of blue and red colours.
The formula has been localized by individuals and groups and transported off the Internet and onto
cars, clothes, murals, and mugs, traveling through everyday spaces and sparking new conversations.
I was astonished to discover one such visualization in a city council meeting in August. Among the
activists and advocates delivering testimony in support of a declaration of climate emergency was a
small group holding aloft a scarf, knitted to display stripes of rising temperatures across scales greater
than a human lifetime. The declaration passed, not by virtue of the scarf, but through the mixed
emotions and collective demands that brought it and so many others into the chamber.
Funding: This research was funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, grant
number 767-2014-1557.
Acknowledgments: The author is grateful to the organizers and participants of the 2016 Mediating Climate
Change conference in Leeds for all their constructive feedback and comments as well as those offered by her
anonymous reviewers.
Conflicts of Interest: The author declares no conflict of interest.
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How to Write a Historiography
Contents
• What is a Historiography?
• Why Write a Historiography?
• How to Write a Historiography
• Example 1
• Example 2
What is a Historiography?
A historiography is a summary of the historical writings on a particular topic – the history of the slave trade, or the history of
the French Revolution, for example. It sets out in broad terms the range of debate and approaches to the topic. It identifies
the major thinkers and arguments, and establishes connections between them. If there have been major changes in the
way a particular topic has been approached over time, the historiography identifies them.
Contents
Why Write a Historiography?
In writing on a topic, historians essentially enter into a dialogue with those who have written on the topic before. A
historiography sets out the main points of that discussion, and serves to situate the author’s work within this larger context.
This adds authority and legitimacy to a history essay as it confirms the author’s familiarity with his or her topic, and forces
the author to acknowledge and explain disagreements with others. It also serves to bring the reader up-to-date on the most
important works and debates on the topic.
Contents
How to Write a Historiography?
The most important step in writing a historiography is to become familiar with the history of your topic in broad terms. A
good historiography is written from a position of authority on a topic.
A historiography is best situated early on in an essay, preferably in the introduction in order to familiarize the reader with
the topic and to set out the scope of previous work in broad terms.
Your historiography should establish:
o
o
the major thinkers on the topic, and
their main arguments (or theses).
Your historiography may also explain:
o
the perspective from which the authors are writing (e.g. Marxist, feminist, etc.)
o
the type of history they have written (e.g. political, social, cultural, economic, etc.)
A good historiography will present this information in a way that shows the connections between these major works. For
example, does one work respond to an argument set out in another? Does it expand on that argument or disagree with
it? A good historiography will also situate the author’s work within the dialogue, explaining whether his or her thesis builds
on or rejects the work that has come before.
Contents
Example 1
The following example is from “Women on the Third Crusade,” by Helen Nicholson:
With the modern interest in “putting women back into medieval history”, the role of women in crusading has received some
attention. [This sentence identifies the scope of her inquiry and the perspective – she is situating her essay within a dialogue
about the role of women in medieval history.] Yet historians disagree profoundly over the extent and nature of women’s
involvement. For example, Ronald Finucane, noting the various accounts of women taking part in crusades, observed that
“there are clear indications that women sometimes took a more active part in the fighting.” [Here she identifies a major
argument in the role of women in crusades, clearly identifying the author’s thesis.] However, Maureen Purcell, while
admitting that women took part in crusades, denied emphatically that they were true crusaders, crucesignata, except for a
brief period in the second half of the thirteenth century. When they accompanied a crusade, they did so as pilgrims rather
than as crusaders, and they certainly did not fight. [Here Nicholson identifies an important counter-argument, explaining
where the two authors agree and disagree.] James Brundage commented on the various roles women played in the armies
of the First Crusade, supporting the fighting men with food and water, encouragement and prayer. He noted that some
women were killed in action, but not that they actually took an active role in the fighting. [This author does not address the
debate directly, but adds additional information to the discussion.] James Powell studied the role of women in the Fifth
Crusade, and argues that women certainly did take the cross and went in person “to fulfill their vows by carrying on
important functions,” such as serving as guards in the camp, killing fugitives, and perhaps tending the sick and wounded.
However, he was not sure whether they took part in the general fighting. [This author’s work suggests the question that
Nicholson attempts to answer in her essay.]
So did women take part in the Third Crusade, and did they fight? … Overall, it seems likely that women sometimes fought
on crusade… [The author presents her thesis.]
Nicholson, Helen. “Women on the Third Crusade.” In Journal of Medieval History 23, no. 4 (1997): 335-349.
Contents
Example 2
The following example contains excerpts from the introduction to a chapter on slave life in Peter Kolchin’s work entitled
American Slavery, 1619 – 1877.
Until fairly recently, most historians of slavery paid far more attention to the behavior of the masters than to that of the
slave; slaves, the vast majority of whom were illiterate and therefore left no written records, appeared in their works
primarily as objects of white action. Scholars differed in many of their evaluations of slavery – some portrayed it as benign,
whereas others depicted it as harshly exploitative – but with the partial exception of a tiny number of black and Marxist
scholars, they focused far more on what slavery did to the slaves than what the slaves did themselves. [Kolchin sets out in
broad terms the perspective from which most historians have written about slavery until recently.]
During the first half of the twentieth century, a major component of this approach was often simple racism, manifest in the
belief that blacks were, at best, imitative of whites. Thus Ulrich B. Phillips, the era’s most celebrated and influential expert
on slavery, combined a sophisticated portrait of the white planters’ life and behavior with crude passing generalizations
about the life and behavior of their black slaves. Noting that “the planters had a saying… that a negro was what a white
man made him,” Phillips portrayed the plantation as a “school constantly training and controlling pupils who were in a
backward state of civilization”; through this educational process the slaves “became largely standardized into the
predominant plantation type.” … [Kolchin identifies a major writer on the topic and sets out his perspective and main
arguments.]
Kenneth M. Stampp’s “neo-abolitionist” book The Peculiar Institution (1956) differed sharply from Ulrich B. Phillips’s
American Negro Slavery (1918) in its overall evaluation of slavery, its main subject remained the treatment – now the
mistreatment – of slaves. Stampp took the slaves far more seriously than did Phillips, but the sources that Stampp relied
upon – plantation records, letters and diaries of slave owners, travel accounts written by Northern and European visitors
who almost invariably stayed with white hosts – revealed more about the behavior and thought of the masters than of the
slave, whom he portrayed as “culturally rootless people.” [Kolchin introduces another historian’s approach to the material
and compares it to the previous historian’s work.]
The depiction of antebellum slaves as victims reached its peak in Stanley M. Elkins’s 1959 volume, Slavery: A Problem in
American Institutional and Intellectual Life, one of those rare historical works that not only arouse intense controversy but
also promote sharp reversals of historical interpretation. …Elkins argued that the unusually harsh conditions faced by
Southern slaves produced a “closed” environment that stripped them of their native African culture, prevented the
emergence among them of any meaningful social relations, and turned them into childlike “Sambos” who almost completely
internalized the values of their masters. …
Despite its ingenuity, the Elkins thesis soon came under withering attack from critics who blasted it as contrived, illogical,
and unsupported by empirical evidence. … Research by scholars seeking to test the Elkins thesis provided increasing
evidence that antebellum slaves lived not in a totally losed environment but rather in one that permitted the emergence of
enormous variety and allowed slsaves to pursue important relationships with persons other than their masters, including
those to be found in their families, churches, and communities. [Kolchin identifies this work as pivotal. He sets out Elkin’s
thesis and the response to Elkins’ work.]
Ironically, however, that thesis – and the controversy it provoked – played a major role in redirecting historical scholarship
on slavery. As historians sought to rebut Elkins’s assertion of slave docility, they found it necessary to focus far more than
they previously had on the slaves as subjects in their own right rather than as objects of white treatment. … As the focus of
historical attention shifted increasingly to the slaves, historians found themselves forced to exploit “new” kinds of historical
sources, which had previously been little used, to shed light on the slaves’ world. Scholars probed archaeological remains,
analyzed black folklore, and toiled over statistical data culled from census reports and plantation records, but in their efforts
to explore slave thought and behavior they found two kinds of sources especially useful: autobiographies of former slaves…
and interviews with former slaves… [Kolchin explains how Elkins’ thesis impacted the study of slavery, namely in a shift of
focus and the use of previously unexamined sources.]
… Although these scholars do not agree with one another in all particulars, the great majority of them have abandoned the
victimization model in favor of an emphasis on the slaves’ resiliency and autonomy. As I suggest below, I believe that some
of these arguments for slave autonomy have been overstated and eventually will be modified on the basis of future
evidence. [Kolchin identifies the prevailing contemporary approach to the study of slavery and his position on the issue.]
Kolchin, Peter. “Antebellum Slavery: Slave Life.” In American Slavery, 1619 – 1877, 133-138. New York: Hill and Wang,
1993.
Contents
If Medium Is the Message, the Message Is the Web: If the Medium Is …
By JOHN MARKOFF
New York Times (1923-Current file); Nov 20, 1995; ProQuest Historical Newspapers: The New York Times
pg. A1
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
17
At the Boundaries of Abolitionism, Feminism,
and Black Nationalism: The Activism of
Mary Ann Shadd Cary
jane rhodes
The nineteenth-century African American journalist, lawyer, educator,
and reformer Mary Ann Shadd Cary offers a complex model of female radicalism that constantly transgressed the boundaries between race, gender, class,
and national identity. She played an active role in the intersecting movements
to abolish slavery, elevate the status of women, and build an incipient black
nationalism. But her social and political labors did not follow a simple trajectory. It is impossible to know precisely what structured Shadd Cary’s engagement with these political projects, as she left few records that offer insight into
her interior life. But it is not difficult to surmise that the quest for black
liberation—freedom from slavery and its debilitating legacy—dominated
every fabric of her political and personal being. She was powerfully ambitious,
extremely capable, and driven by a vision of a world in which persons of
African descent could live and prosper. As a bright, strong-willed individual
who made enormous personal sacrifices for this cause, she also felt confident
that she should be a direct, active, and visible participant in these movements.
It was this aspiration that placed Shadd Cary at odds with the people she most
loved. Instead of finding support and endorsement of her efforts, at times she
was criticized and sanctioned for her selfless devotion to social change. For
Mary Ann Shadd Cary’s antislavery activism laid bare the delicate fractures in
free African American communities: the tensions over patriarchy, class posi-
346
Mary Ann Shadd Cary
347
tion, color, and status. At the height of her activism in Canada West, she was
demonized by black and white male abolitionists who were both threatened
and angered by her unwillingness to conform to gendered expectations. The
more political influence she attained, the more she was constructed as deviant
and wicked. As she gained experience and maturity, Shadd Cary became more
strategic, allowing her male counterparts to believe she had no desire to usurp
their fragile power. This training in the heart of black abolitionism provided a
fertile ground for her emergence as a feminist. Unlike Charlotte Forten, for
example, Shadd Cary would wait until after the Civil War to directly channel
her energies into the struggle for women’s rights.
Activism was Mary Ann Shadd Cary’s birthright. She was born in 1823 in
Wilmington, Delaware, to a family of freeborn African Americans. Her father,
Abraham Shadd, was the descendant of a free black woman and a German
soldier who started a family of entrepreneurs on the eve of the American
Revolution. He benefited from having a skilled trade and modest property, as
well as fair skin, in a slave state that severely restricted the lives of free blacks.
In 1837, one black abolitionist described whites in Delaware as harboring ‘‘an
extensive and moral fear of the free colored people,’’ which translated into
harsh black codes and other sanctions. Mary Ann’s father was deeply involved
in the black convention movement of the 1830s and 1840s and was a leader in
the opposition to the American Colonization Society and their agenda to
repatriate free blacks back to Africa. When Mary Ann was ten, the family
moved across the Mason-Dixon line to West Chester, Pennsylvania, where
there were better educational opportunities for black children and some modest relief from racial repression and discrimination.∞
Pennsylvania was a center of antislavery activism, and Abraham Shadd
frequently represented West Chester at abolitionist meetings and conventions.
The Shadd home harbored escaped slaves as a stop on the Underground Railroad, and black and white abolitionists met there frequently. Mary Ann, the
eldest of twelve children, was educated by Quakers and socialized in a household that placed public service and the abolition of slavery in the forefront of
family life. The Shadds’ proximity to Philadelphia also gave Mary Ann access
to the institutions of that city’s black elite, including churches, benevolent
associations, and learned societies. We know little about Mary Ann’s mother,
Harriet Parnell Shadd, or about the day-to-day activities of the Shadd household. But Mary Ann’s early fervent commitment to better the conditions of
black people suggests she was profoundly influenced and inspired by her father’s political work.≤
At the same time, Mary Ann was exposed to the contradictory assumptions
and ideals about gender roles. Free black women of the antebellum era were
348
Transcultural Activism
encouraged to serve the antislavery movement, and to devote their energies to
racial improvement. But they were also expected to conform to Victorian
ideals of womanhood and the notion that women’s most important job was
to establish high morals and virtue through domestic activities, particularly
childrearing. As one scholar notes, ‘‘Rather than achieving fulfillment in public life African American women, like their white counterparts, were expected
to find compensation in the important familial tasks entrusted to them.’’ Black
women entered the public sphere for paid employment as well as community
service, but an underlying presumption was that they not usurp black male
authority and privilege. Black leaders like David Walker and Henry Highland
Garnet linked black liberation to an assertion of black masculinity. Promoting
the notion of black women as the ‘‘weaker sex’’ and limiting their sphere of
opportunity were common strategies for men who endured the daily assaults
of racial discrimination while living in a patriarchal society. These tenets
proved to be intractable for a young African American woman who had aspirations of serving—and leading—her people.≥
In her late teens, Mary Ann embarked on a career as an educator—one of the
only acceptable professional activities for antebellum women. She was seventeen or eighteen years old when she returned to Wilmington, Delaware, to open
a school for black children, undoubtedly motivated by her family’s struggle to
educate their children in a state where such opportunities were scant, particularly for girls. The decision to become a traveling teacher also relieved her
from the responsibilities of caring for her eleven younger siblings. Throughout
the 1840s, she taught black children in often impoverished circumstances, in
Wilmington; Norristown, Pennsylvania; Trenton, New Jersey; and later in
New York City. Free blacks in the North relied on churches, self-help groups,
and white philanthropists to sustain the small network of segregated schools.
Teachers were in short supply, their salaries meager, and the facilities in which
they worked primitive. Many communities resorted to nearly heroic efforts to
establish schools that offered at least a rudimentary education; for many free
blacks, schooling occurred at home or in infrequent gatherings. Thus, Mary
Ann Shadd was part of the ranks of intrepid educators who made a crucial
difference in the life chances of African American children. We know little
about her activities during these years, but by the end of the decade she had
developed into a seasoned teacher with considerable experience in free black
communities along the northeastern corridor. During this time, she established
clear opinions about the best strategies for racial progress and she was poised to
make these public.∂
In January 1849 Mary Ann Shadd inserted her voice into the wide-ranging
conversation on the best ways to address black subjugation and to promote
Mary Ann Shadd Cary
349
self-improvement. Her views appeared in a letter to Frederick Douglass’s
newspaper the North Star, in which she outlined solutions to the ‘‘wretched
conditions’’ of the free blacks among whom she worked. Her ideas blended
black nationalist and abolitionist ideologies that sought to define a political
framework. On the one hand, she argued, black Americans needed to lessen
their economic dependency on whites and to forge independent businesses and
farms. On the other hand, she privileged Western education and knowledge as
essential to racial progress: ‘‘What intellectually we most need, and the absence of which we most feel, is the knowledge of the white man,’’ she maintained. In this early treatise, Shadd articulated a classic racial uplift argument,
which placed the burden of African Americans’ improvement on their own
shoulders. African Americans would never gain the rights of citizenship until
they possessed the knowledge and skills of the dominant culture and behaved
according to Victorian mores, she believed.∑
The most controversial aspect of this letter came in her powerful critique
of black religious leaders, whom she considered to be the main obstacle to
such progress. They were ‘‘a corrupt clergy among us, sapping our every
means, inculcating ignorance as duty, superstition as true religion.’’ Shadd was
equally critical of African Americans’ intense involvement in denominations
that encouraged a doctrine of submission, and that focused on the trappings of
organized religion. In her view, such churches obscured clear thinking and
diminished blacks’ aspirations. Shadd embraced Christian spirituality, but opposed churches that also functioned as educational institutions, particularly
those run by uneducated folk ministers. She was, perhaps unwittingly, launching a class-based critique in which she argued that the masses of poor and uneducated blacks needed to look to the educated black elite as examples. These
positions, while not uncommon among black writers, nevertheless placed her
in opposition to an established black leadership that was deeply entrenched in
the church.∏
Mary Ann Shadd was not satisfied with sending a letter to the North Star,
however. A month or so later, she expanded her theories in a twelve-page
pamphlet titled Hints to the Colored People of the North. With this first
venture into publishing, she joined in the practice of using print culture to
disseminate political ideologies and to build an imagined community of black
intellectuals and activists. David Walker’s pamphlet Walker’s Appeal in Four
Articles (1829) is often recognized as a paradigmatic black nationalist tract
that called for people of color to rise up and destroy their oppressors. Similarly, the nation’s first black-owned newspaper, Freedom’s Journal (1827–
1830), was founded as a platform against slavery and as a crucial institution
for the sustenance of black communities. In the newspaper’s inaugural issue,
350
Transcultural Activism
editors Samuel Cornish and John Russworm declared, ‘‘Too long have others
spoken for us,’’ as they asserted the importance of print communication for
black American autonomy and self-sufficiency. An independent pamphlet
meant that Shadd could issue her ideas freely without the interference of a
newspaper editor or other gatekeeper, if anyone cared to read it.
Unfortunately, no extant copy of the pamphlet exists, so we must rely on
excerpts published in the North Star with the knowledge that its overall texture may not have been adequately represented. The sections reproduced
in the newspaper revealed a strong-willed—what some considered brash—
overview of the status of northern blacks. This was Shadd’s first public proclamation of her identity as an activist: ‘‘My destiny is that of my people, it is a
duty to myself, setting aside the much-ridiculed maxim that ‘charity begins at
home,’ to expose every weakness, to exclaim against every custom that helps
prolong our day of depression,’’ she wrote. This austere manifesto picked up
where her letter to the editor left off—criticizing the leisure activities and
cultural expressions in which many blacks found relief from grinding oppression. ‘‘Negroes and Indians set more value on the outside of their heads than
on what the inside needs,’’ she preached, denouncing the ‘‘processions, expensive entertainments, excursions, public dinners and suppers, a display of costly
apparel, and churches on churches, to minister to our vanity.’’ This was a
classic racial uplift position; that ostentatious behavior played into the hands
of those looking for reasons to ridicule blacks and denigrate their character. In
this text, she began to develop a self-help ideology that would become refined
over the years. For all of her strong language, Mary Ann Shadd was no militant separatist; rather she believed that African Americans’ assimilation into
white American society was the only solution to the crisis of race.π
In each of these texts, Shadd presented herself as an authority on the black
condition based on her ten years of observation and public service. She also
included herself in the community of activists who failed to materially improve the lives of African Americans despite years of conventions and discussion. ‘‘We should do more and talk less,’’ she suggested. However, her unsympathetic appraisal and continued criticism of black clergy were not likely to
attract a supportive following. Indeed, the pamphlet was ignored by its intended audience, the black elite. A friend of Shadd’s, writing to the North Star,
noted that only a handful of the pamphlets had been sold, guessing that it
contained ‘‘too much truth.’’ Although the document had been widely circulated in Philadelphia and environs, the city’s ‘‘able and distinguished writers’’
had not taken notice. Three years later, Martin Delany wrote that he had read
Hints to the Colored People of the North, calling it ‘‘an excellent introduction
to a great subject, fraught with so much interest.’’ Mary Ann may have re-
Mary Ann Shadd Cary
351
ceived individual praise and criticism from this effort, but her pamphlet failed
to bring her notice in the black public sphere. It is also likely that few deemed it
important to pay attention to an unknown woman’s opinions. Indeed, the act
of publishing one’s writing was both a physical and symbolic act—one that
asserted a woman’s desire to leave the private sphere and to ‘‘meddle in the
public affairs of men.’’ To publish a political pamphlet rather than sentimental
fiction or poetry was a particularly bold step.∫
Other nineteenth-century black women writers had to negotiate such gender conventions as well. In the 1830s, Maria Stewart, who was mentored by
David Walker, began speaking to black audiences, presenting a militant argument against slavery and white supremacy. She urged black men to exert their
manhood as a strategy for black liberation, and, like Mary Ann Shadd, she
was not afraid to identify black Americans’ faults. ‘‘But where is the man that
distinguished himself in these modern days by acting wholly in the defense of
African rights and liberty?’’ she asked. Although Stewart tacitly supported
Victorian gender ideals, she also advocated for the right of women to take on a
leadership role in reform movements. In another speech she declared, ‘‘Ye
Daughters of Africa, awake! Arise! Distinguish yourselves. Show forth to the
world that ye are endowed with noble and exalted faculties.’’ The fact that she
articulated a public challenge to black men attracted considerable scorn; eventually she was forced to leave her home in Boston under a cloud of controversy
and outrage.Ω
In the antebellum era, few black women were willing to take such risks.
Perhaps the best-known author and antislavery lecturer was Frances Ellen
Watkins Harper, who began her lecturing career in the early 1850s. Harper
wrote poetry and essays that presented a powerful critique of slavery within
the confines of a genteel, womanly exterior. Most important, Harper took
pains not to step on the toes of male contemporaries at the same time that she
labored to have a public voice. Others, like Nancy Prince, who published her
autobiography in 1850, expressed her political engagement through her domestic identities as wife and widow rather than through calls to action. Thus,
Shadd was singular in her quest to engage in African American politics
through a discourse that both asserted her authority and demanded change in
the established leadership.∞≠
By the 1850s Shadd was teaching in New York City and making the rounds
of abolitionist meetings. She decided to attend a meeting billed as a ‘‘Great
North American Anti-Slavery Convention’’ in Toronto to be held in 1851,
where the organizers, Henry Bibb and James Theodore Holly, hoped to promote the idea of black emigration to Canada as a legitimate strategy for black
survival. This decision changed the course of her political and personal life for
352
Transcultural Activism
the next decade. African Americans had debated the merits of relocation in
Canada since the early black conventions. At the first of these gatherings in
Philadelphia in 1830, black leaders discussed the plight of two thousand
blacks who fled rampant racism in Cincinnati to resettle in Canada West, now
Ontario Province. The group concluded that the formation of black settlements in the British province was a reasonable alternative for free blacks
facing violence and discrimination. The passage of the Fugitive Slave Law in
September 1850, however, was the catalyst for a revitalized movement that
advocated emigration as an abolitionist strategy and pragmatic solution for
free black Americans.∞∞
The Fugitive Slave Law placed both escaped slaves and free blacks at risk of
arrest and enslavement, with the full power of the government behind it. For
many black Americans, the measure, part of the Compromise of 1850, signaled the extent to which proslavery forces influenced public policy and the
national economy. A growing legion of blacks living in the North argued that
life in the United States had grown intolerable, and that emigration to Canada,
Africa, or the Caribbean was a logical step toward ameliorating their condition. Fugitive slaves had fled to Canada throughout the early nineteenth century, but now they were being joined by groups from Boston, Buffalo, Pittsburgh, and other northern locales as a northward exodus intensified. There is
considerable debate over the exact numbers of blacks in Canada prior to the
Civil War. Estimates suggest there were somewhere between five and ten thousand black American expatriates in Canada by 1850, and that number would
swell to twenty thousand or more by the end of the decade.∞≤
It is likely that Mary Ann Shadd heard accounts of this migration at abolitionist meetings, from personal interactions, and through the pages of the
abolitionist press. Abolitionists used the fugitive settlements in Canada as an
example of the capacity of blacks to live as independent, productive citizens.
For example, a representative of the American Missionary Association wrote
a series of letters to abolitionist newspapers celebrating the success of the
scattered black communities: ‘‘They are destined, in the country to which they
have fled, to become . . . a wealthy, learned, influential, and highly civilized
community,’’ he proclaimed. Such dispatches from Canada were effective propaganda to use against proslavery forces who argued that black Americans
lacked the moral, intellectual, and spiritual character to function autonomously. Abolitionists presented life in these black enclaves as a material and
symbolic act of resistance and encouraged black and white ministers, philanthropists, and educators to assist in this project. Such appeals proved irresistible to Shadd, whose own writing linked education and moral improvement to racial progress.∞≥
Mary Ann Shadd Cary
353
Mary Ann and her father, Abraham, crossed the border to attend the convention on September 11, 1851, in St. Lawrence Hall in Toronto. Among the
fifty-three delegates were blacks already settled in Canada, and others like
Martin Delany, who was exploring radical ideas in the search for a black
nationality. The president of the Convention, Henry Bibb, was a former slave
and itinerate minister who fled with his wife to Canada, where they worked
among the fugitive population. The meeting proclamations encouraged slaves
and free blacks to emigrate to Canada, where there was available land and a
government anxious to attract settlers in a nation where slavery was outlawed.
After the convention, father and daughter attended a meeting across Lake Erie
at Buffalo’s African Methodist Church, where the topic of Canadian emigration was again promoted. Mary Ann was elected secretary of the meeting, and
her minutes were published in several antislavery newspapers. It is impossible
to know of Shadd’s thoughts during this transformation—how long she had
thought about such transnational politics, or how she entertained the possibility of relocating. Somehow, even though her father would return to Pennsylvania, she threw her lot in with the Canadian emigrationists, believing this
was a viable solution to the seeming intractability of slavery in the United
States.∞∂
This was a drastic and dramatic choice for an unmarried black women; at
the age of twenty-eight she would be traveling far from home and living in an
unknown community without the support or protection of her family. It was
also a political risk. The emigrationists were on the fringe of the mainstream
abolitionist movement. Many African American leaders denounced the idea
of relocation—they considered it an abandonment of the cause. To willfully
leave the United States capitulated to pro-slavery interests by giving up black
Americans’ rightful claim of citizenship. In the forefront of this position was
Frederick Douglass, who argued against emigration in the pages of his newspaper. ‘‘It is idle—worse than idle, ever to think of our expatriation, or removal. We are here, and here we are likely to be . . . this is our country,’’ he
declared. Nevertheless, Mary Ann rationalized that she was working in the
service of abolitionism by aiding the fugitive escaping slavery. It is also clear
that she was enthusiastic about her personal prospects in this new venture.∞∑
Just a few days after the Toronto Convention, she enthusiastically wrote her
younger brother Isaac, encouraging him to join her. ‘‘I have been here more
than a week, and like Canada,’’ she said. ‘‘Do not feel prejudice and repeat if
you were to come here or go west of this where shoemaking pays well and
work at it and buy lands as fast as you made any money, you would do well.’’
A significant influence in her decision was Henry Bibb, who told her there was
a desperate need for teachers to instruct the growing population of blacks.
354
Transcultural Activism
Although she had been offered a teaching position in Toronto, she chose
instead to travel to the western edge of Canada West on the shores of the
Detroit River, where there were several settlements of black expatriates. By
late September she arrived in the town of Windsor, where the local residents
beseeched her to open a school.∞∏
Windsor, just a stone’s throw across the border of the United States, was a
popular stopping point for fugitive slaves. There were several hundred blacks
living in crude conditions in this frontier community, with many existing in
decaying barracks built during the War of 1812. Shadd likely arrived with
great ambitions but meager resources and thus needed to find a way to support
herself as quickly as possible. She announced that she was opening a school for
black and white children if parents could pay one shilling a week. Although
she discovered that most could not afford her fee, the Windsor school opened
in one of the drafty barracks, and she began the search for funding while she
lived on charitable contributions and money sent from home. She eventually
won cautious support from the American Missionary Association (A.M.A),
the largest organization ministering to the needs of fugitive slaves in Canada.
She told the A.M.A.’s corresponding secretary, George Whipple, that Windsor
was ‘‘the most destitute community of colored people’’ in Canada West, and
suggested this was a locale where their support was badly needed. Shadd put
to use her numerous antislavery contacts in the states, as well as the support of
a local Wesleyan minister, and after months of negotiation the A.M.A. agreed
to pay her $125 a year to maintain the school in Windsor, making her the
Association’s only black missionary in Canada. This was a significant victory
for Mary Ann, but her success in this regard generated considerable jealousies
in this small, close-knit world.∞π
Her correspondence with the American Missionary Association during this
period offers rich insight into Shadd’s school and life in Canada’s black expatriate communities. Her school was ‘‘a very cold, open apartment, unfurnished and objectionable in every way,’’ she reported. But her students, ranging in age from four to thirty-three years old, were bright and anxious to learn.
She clearly derived great satisfaction from instructing her students in reading,
geography, and arithmetic, fulfilling her goal of preparing blacks to be fully
functioning members of society. But her letters also revealed her sense of
distress that some in the community begrudged Shadd her success.∞∫
In addition to running the Windsor school, Shadd became an active participant in local politics, taking increasingly controversial positions. In particular,
she emerged as a vocal critic of the Refugee Home Society, an antislavery
group that planned to build another black settlement on land near Windsor.
The society launched an extensive fund-raising campaign to fund the settle-
Mary Ann Shadd Cary
355
ment and various services to assist fugitive slaves, but its tactics came under
scrutiny. In particular, some, including Shadd, disliked the manner in which
whites in the United States were urged to contribute clothing, supplies, and
money based on images of impoverished, desperate refugees unable to help
themselves. This technique, derisively called a ‘‘begging system,’’ was effective
but cast the black settlers in Canada as dependent on white help. Shadd, on the
other hand, sought to encourage blacks to develop the skills for self-sufficiency
and autonomy, rather than being clients of a welfare economy. She felt these
representations of blacks in Canada were not only inaccurate, but also contradicted the efforts to make black life in Canada appear progressive and prosperous. These distinctions were discussed at meetings across Canada West and
in the pages of the abolitionist press. Shadd’s position put her on the opposing
side of her former mentor, Henry Bibb, who was a local representative of the
Refugee Home Society.
The discord between Shadd and Bibb was not only the result of the debate
over begging; Shadd also believed that the Refugee Home Society endorsed
racial separatism by establishing isolated settlements rather than encouraging
newly arrived blacks to integrate themselves in the local fabric. Henry Bibb
argued that ‘‘strangers in a foreign land, no matter of what country or color
they may be, experience a greater degree of happiness in being associated with
those who have come from the same region as themselves.’’ Bibb’s associate,
James Theodore Holly, agreed, noting that while the goal of racial integration
was desirable, ‘‘this will be done by the colored man himself, when in a state of
freedom, after he becomes thoroughly educated,’’ and has lost all connections
to slavery. This position ran counter to Shadd’s beliefs that blacks must participate in and benefit from the dominant culture if they were to become respected
parts of society. And she made her opinions known publicly.∞Ω
Shadd also suspected that Bibb and his wife were envious of her appointment by the A.M.A. since they, too, were struggling to maintain a school in
nearby Sandwich with meager resources. By the spring of 1852, Henry Bibb
and other abolitionist figures were clearly disturbed by Shadd’s independence
and her refusal to yield to the more established male leadership. But she faced
a formidable opponent because Bibb was also the publisher of the Voice of the
Fugitive, Canada’s only black-controlled newspaper. The Voice, started in
January 1851, was the only print medium for blacks in Canada, and it was
read widely on both sides of the border. Articles and meeting reports from the
Voice were regularly reprinted in The Liberator, North Star, and other influential abolitionist newspapers in the States. As the primary forum for discussion of antislavery politics, emigration, and black community life from a
Canadian perspective, the publication easily controlled how people and issues
356
Transcultural Activism
would be framed. When Shadd first arrived in Windsor, the newspaper fashioned her in complimentary terms, referring to her on varying occasions as ‘‘a
lady of high literary attainments,’’ an ‘‘accomplished and talented authoress,’’
and ‘‘a worthy colored lady.’’ But, this trend shifted as the enmity toward her
accelerated.≤≠
Undaunted, she once again took on the challenge of creating her own vehicle for public expression. Lacking access to the Voice of the Fugitive, she
committed yet another act of defiance by writing and publishing a pamphlet
on black emigration. The forty-four-page tract, published in June 1852, bore
an ambitious title: A Plea for Emigration Or Notes of Canada West, in Its
Moral, Social and Political Aspect, with Suggestions Respecting Mexico, W.
Indies and Vancouver’s Island, for the Information of Colored Emigrants. It
was a comprehensive overview of the economic, political, and social dimensions about life in Canada West, with the goal of recruiting African Americans
to the emigration project. Notes of Canada West functioned as both propaganda and guidebook, political treatise and journalism. Shadd combined an
exhaustive inventory of data about climate, agriculture, land distribution, and
other facts with her positions on race relations in Canada and the preferred
strategies for black community building.≤∞
Notes of Canada West was, foremost, a recruitment tool designed to appeal
to black Americans contemplating an escape from the exigencies of their lives
in the United States. For example, Shadd reported that ‘‘land is cheap, business
increasing, with the steady increase of population, no lack of employment at
fair prices, and no complexional or other qualifications in existence.’’ She
maintained that Canada’s climate was hospitable and healthy and that being a
subject of Britain was preferable to American disfranchisement, and that African Americans could build an autonomous and prosperous community unimaginable in the States. Shadd was also intent on arguing that racism was rare
or nonexistent in her adopted homeland. This was a clear exaggeration based
largely on her observations of integrated institutions in Toronto and other
urban areas, as well as on her own experiences interacting with benevolent
whites. In fact, in the less-developed western region of Canada, blacks and
whites often existed in segregated enclaves and attended separate schools and
churches, with integrated contact limited to commerce and politics. But, in her
view, this environment was far superior to the legally sanctioned racism endured by blacks in the northern United States, and this contrast underscored
Shadd’s message. Through this text, she positioned herself as an interpreter of
the black experience in Canada; …

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