Direct Action as Conceptual Art?

This short book offers an avenue for understanding the parameters and scope of environmental protest, the meanings of such acts of resistance, and their impacts. Focusing on ecodefense (e.g., direct action in defense of or on behalf of the environment), this book explores the significance of the communiqué (the written explanation of the reasons for an act of ecodefense), by comparing the communiqué to written texts in Conceptual art. To do so, it sets forth and then seeks to evaluate the following analogy: act of ecodefense : communiqué :: work of conceptual art : written declaration/statement. In considering the communiqué in this light, this book will help us better understand the rationales for “radical environmentalism” undertaken for the purposes of reducing environmental harms, natural resource exploitation, and animal abuse. The extent to which ecodefense should serve to educate and generate support for environmental causes is also addressed. This book speaks to criminologists, sociologists, social movement theorists, and sociolegal scholars, as well as to art historians and art critics specializing in art since the 1960s.