Keywords

The figure of the child holds a particular place in climate change communication and politics. Admittedly, we already live in a climate changed world, but the conditions of human life will continue to worsen, raising serious concerns about how the contemporary young generation will bear the burden of living in an overheated world (Thiery et al., 2021). This intergenerational injustice has led to the representation of the child to become extra charged in climate change discourse. The adultist discourses of climate politics frame the figure of the child as vulnerable (Tanner, 2010), caught in an intrinsic futurity (Lakind & Adsitt-Morris, 2018), and relatively passive (Lee, 2013, pp. 131–141). In this chapter, I am interested in how contemporary children and youth climate activists utilize or challenge such childhood figurations for their own purposes and, in so doing, help restructure how children’s political representation and mobilization might be understood. Through an analysis of images posted on Instagram, the chapter explores how grassroots activists from across the world—both big and small players—use aesthetic representation and visual rhetoric to circumvent some geopolitical obstacles, gain visibility, and contribute to the larger purpose of raising public support for radical climate politics.

In the late summer of 2018, then 15-year-old Greta Thunberg initiated a school strike outside the Swedish parliament in defiance of an adult world that has failed to take climate change seriously. Since then, the Fridays for Future (FFF) movement has grown into the largest climate justice movement ever, with records set in terms of both global spread and number of participants. Notably, the week of 20–27 September 2019 saw an estimated 7.6 million people demonstrating in 185 countries (Martiskainen et al., 2020; de Moor et al., 2020). Imagery of mass-demonstrations holds great potential to attract the attention of the larger public due to the size of the people gathering, the atmosphere of momentum, and the affective outburst of joy and anger in protest. However, this type of visual rhetoric was not equally accessible to all school strikers globally. While traditional media paid most attention to these mass-gatherings in Europe and the United States, the Global South activists struggled against a lack of media representation and restrictions to mobilization. One of the purposes of this chapter is to highlight how Global South activists worked around these obstacles.

Globality, Digital Observation, and Participatory Culture

The FFF is a global movement. Its communicative flows of interaction and mobilization present scholars of youth social movements with important questions about global power hierarchies. As of yet, studies of the demographics of FFF activists have mostly focused on the Global North. They show that the protesters are young, often first-time protesters, girls are more prominent than boys, and they come from well-educated backgrounds (Wahlström et al., 2019; Haunss & Sommer, 2020; Martiskainen et al., 2020; de Moor et al., 2020; Wallis & Loy, 2021). Studies on the mobilization strategies and political implications of the FFF, as well as media responses, have also mostly focused on the Global North (Bergmann & Ossewaarde, 2020; Biswas, 2021; von Zabern & Tulloch, 2021). No quantitative studies on the demographics of the FFF have been conducted in the Global South. However, previous studies on environmental defenders and climate activists in the Global South or in Indigenous communities show that youths are already severely affected by extreme weather events, resource scarcity, and the imperialist politics of extractivism, along with violent repression from governments. Diverse Global South youth therefore work to reduce risk, incite a politics of care, and create spaces for intergenerational learning and solidarity (Tanner, 2010; Trajber et al., 2019; Ritchie, 2021), while struggling under neoliberal paradigms (Muthoni Mwaura, 2018; Hayward, 2020, pp. 39–63). Indeed, environmental concerns in the Global South are often related to direct survival, scarce resources, or communal well-being, making a diverse range of environmental and human rights defenders, indigenous communities, small-scale farmers, and urban poor engage in struggles against environmental degradation, toxic waste, and extractive industries (Anguelovski & Martínez Alier, 2014). The few studies that have focused on the FFF in the Global South or in poor countries show that participants often engage in activism because they face these dangers firsthand (de Moor et al., 2020, pp. 160–165; Kimball, 2021). Many leading Global South activists of the FFF have also reported publicly about experiencing extreme weather events or growing up as climate refugees, as, for example, Indigenous Mexican American leader Xiya Bastida and Ugandan leader Hilda Flavia Nakabuye. The general message of the FFF is focused on Climate Justice, a term that highlights the interconnections between race, class, geopolitics, and exposure to risks associated with climate change. The FFF prefers to use the term Most Affected Peoples and Areas (MAPA) rather than the Global South, to highlight how a changing climate hits differently across the globe, affects the communities least able to act protectively the most, and where societal structures of racism, imperialism, and capitalism make climate change and environmental degradation disproportionately affect poor people and people of color. In the remainder of the chapter, I use the term MAPA for the activist groups that self-identify as such.

Through digital participant observation, I am present as a (digital) person on Instagram, where I follow all the national FFF accounts, but do not engage in the dynamism of digital striking. The material analyzed are the Instagram groups claiming to represent a national iteration of FFF. Instagram has been chosen because it is the most common platform of FFF—followed by Facebook and Twitter—especially in MAPA countries. Of these three mega platforms, Instagram has a younger user profile and interface design, and it also offers the most pronounced focus on visual rhetoric.Footnote 1 I have located 124 pages that assume the role of representing a national group of FFF on Instagram. As Instagram does not allow any scraping of data,Footnote 2 I have had to limit my material through a selection of 25 groups.Footnote 3 For some countries, multiple pages claim to represent the national FFF page, in which cases I have chosen the group with the most followers. The principles for selecting countries have been (in hierarchal order): (1) Regional spread; (2) Mix of large and small countries; (3) Activity; (4) Followers; and (5) Mix of types of pictures posted.Footnote 4 The national groups have been chosen because they are what FFF lists on their website as the “contact” of the movement. Given that this chapter explores material from Instagram, digital access or proxy to someone with digital access is a determinant of the material. Even if these national groups cannot be said to overcome class, racial, or geographic divides in their national context, the material features a high prevalence of small-scale or rural strikes alongside urban strikes, participants of various ages and racial backgrounds, with various religious or non-religious markers. Studies that map and explore these dynamics in the local contexts are much needed.

I am interested in the rhetorical potential that lies in assuming the role of representing the national group of the FFF. This chapter follows Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak in thinking of representation as both proxy and portrait. The youth activists take on the role of speaking on behalf of a larger constituency through what Spivak calls the proxy of representation—they are part of this constituency and close to their peers. However, their visual rhetoric are also performative speech acts that function as representative portraits that create that same constituency (Spivak, 1990, p. 108). As such, the material both gives voice to youths of diverse backgrounds in the national setting engaged in the struggle for climate justice (proxy), and obscures the divides within that community by visually representing a national cohort (portrait).

In analyzing this body of materials, I recognize the cultural and linguistic difficulties that this global sample of FFF accounts create. Who am I to interpret a Korean or Iraqi FFF account where I cannot understand most of the discursive content (text and speech) of the posts? These are valid concerns, but FFF is also a participatory culture (Jenkins, 2009, p. xi) of children and youth from across linguistic and geopolitical boundaries, sustained through politically engaged communicative interaction and the interface design of social media platforms. Given that the activists themselves post in multiple languages and that messages travel across a range of different accounts, a more limited selection criterion would give a skewed image of how the movement operates as a global participatory culture. Finally, this study focuses on the visual imagery, rather than the discursive, which means that the material is more accessible, even if not all cultural details can be considered or read with the care and situated knowledge that a more limited sample would have allowed. Furthermore, the social sciences are heavily skewed to a North Atlantic bias (Cuervo & Miranda, 2019, pp. 2–4), and this includes child studies (de Castro, 2020). As already indicated, the North Atlantic or English bias is also highly tenable in scholarship on FFF countries. A continued and increased attention to the representation of children and youth from the Global South thus seems paramount.

Children’s Political Representation and Climate Activism: Literature Review

Childhood scholars have worked hard to challenge reductive notions of children’s political lives and rights, and especially how hegemonic discourses portray children and youth as a future potentiality rather than an actuality (Castañeda, 2002; Lee, 2013). Scholars have increasingly argued that young people’s political engagement comes through the social networks young people construct online (Kang, 2016; Boulianne & Theocharis, 2020), in what teen scholar Danah Boyd calls networked publics (Boyd, 2014, p. 8). However, access to technology and digital skills is a differentiating determinant that affects youth digital participation, especially in the Global South (Lombana-Bermudez, 2015; Cuervo & Miranda, 2019; Boulianne & Theocharis, 2020). Largely, these findings are applicable to FFF, which is composed of politically motivated children and youth, engaged in networked publics that use do-it-yourself digital methods.

Scholarship on children and youth’s climate activism is growing. Although still a small field, the role of youth activism for international climate politics and governance has gained increased attention (Foran et al., 2017; Thew et al., 2020). By foregrounding children and youth as political agents, this scholarship questions the narrative of children as simply climate change victims or future inheritors of a warmer world (Tanner, 2010; Trajber et al., 2019). Other scholars emphasize the importance of youth activism for sharpening ambitions in climate politics (Trott, 2021), and the importance of the activism for the youth themselves (Fisher, 2016). Scholars also stress the multiple factors—such as education, friends, and local belonging—that motivate children and youth to engage in climate activism (Buttigieg & Pace, 2013; Börner et al., 2020). Again, this picture is applicable to the FFF that moves between the public spheres of international climate governance to local social or educational activities—all with the aim of sharpening climate politics.

Uneven Possibilities of Image Events: The Child Speaking Truth to Power

This chapter explores the visual representation of childhood figurations in FFF Instagram posts, through what rhetorician and environmental humanities scholar Kevin M. DeLuca calls image events (2012). Image events are a type of rhetorical strategy used by climate activists, not to solve an immediate problem (close a specific mine, save an individual whale, plant that specific tree, etc.), but to create attention for a larger issue and thus stir public awareness. If we assume that environmental and climate activists attempt to attract attention, it becomes necessary to ask under what conditions the activists of FFF can create dramatic images. With what aesthetic and rhetorical compositions do the global FFF activists seek to create stunning images or videos and how do they use creative aesthetic play to circumvent eventual restrictions to their right to strike?

The most iconic image event of the FFF is arguably the first image of Greta Thunberg in front of the Swedish parliament, posted on Instagram and Twitter by herself on August 20, 2018. The method of school striking was inspired by students in Parkland, Florida, who used it to protest US gun laws after a school shooting (Watts, 2019). Almost instantly, Thunberg’s strikes were covered by Swedish mass media and her Twitter post was retweeted by prominent Swedish individuals. The news of her strike spread throughout the fall of 2018.

A photograph of Greta Thunberg sitting on the floor with a protest banner beside her.

Photo: Greta Thunberg

In the image, Thunberg is dressed in a blue hoodie, cheetah pants, and her hair is parted in two braids. She is sitting with her back against the stone wall of the Swedish parliament, with a hand-made sign that reads “Skolstrejk för klimatet” (“School Strike for Climate”) and a stack of printed papers next to her, held to the ground by a stone. All in all, the image presents a physically small, white girl who looks like an older child or young teen, sitting alone in front of a building that represents the sedimentation of political power in Sweden. The image was explosive. Not only does Thunberg look vulnerable and determined at the same time, but the parliament—with its classical architecture that echoes Roman stateliness—represents imposing and grandiose power. The Swedish viewer of this image also knows that the parliament is situated next to the Royal Castle, thus signaling centuries of centralized political power. The contrast between the body of Thunberg and this public space very much reads as a David versus Goliath image event. The fact that this image gained so much traction in both mass and social media reinforces what digital network theorist Manuel Castells calls “the symbolic power” of state or financial buildings. These iconic places are condensed sites of meaning, memories, and political expectations, and protesters gather there to create a sense of togetherness in opposition to institutional power and to recover the rights of representation from the dominant elites (Castells, 2015).

For this image to “work” as an image event—that is, do the rhetorical work of spurring the public to take notice—it is of importance that Thunberg is read as a child. As mentioned in the beginning of this chapter, children represent a certain position in climate change discourse closely linked to hegemonic notions of children as more vulnerable to climate impacts (Tanner, 2010), as representing futurity rather than a present actuality (Lakind & Adsitt-Morris, 2018), and as passive in relation to climate politics (Lee, 2013, pp. 131–141). Childhood scholar Claudia Castañeda uses the concept of childhood figurations to consider “why the child as a figure has been made a resource for wider cultural projects” (Castañeda, 2002, p. 2). The childhood figuration of Thunberg holds together an array of contradicting values and affects connected to adult values and political governance: Thunberg represents both the brave child speaking truth to (overwhelming) adult power, and the vulnerable child worthy of adult protection. As noted by a number of childhood scholars (Higonnet, 1998; Castañeda, 2002; Wall, 2012; Dyer, 2019), such images of children are often represented in a sentimental frame: the child embodies a higher moral value that needs protection by adults, while also figuring as the embodiment or potentiality of a better society—the promise of a better future adult. Thinking with Spivak, we can say the adult audience can look at the image of Thunberg and see a portrait that “stands in” for an entire young generation and the political hopes attached to it. For the young audience, the image clearly functioned differently as Thunberg came to represent by proxy: by being part of that generation and working as an extension of its anger and disappointment in the face of the public eye. Ryalls and Mazzarella argue that Thunberg represents a combination of fierceness and childhood, creating an alternative form of girlhood political agency (Ryalls & Mazzarella, 2021). Indeed, her anger and agonistic rhetorical style can be understood as what Wendy Hesford calls children’s rhetorical agency, or a claim to political subjectivity (Hesford, 2011, p. 153). Thunberg’s representation of herself turns into a childhood figuration of anger, bravery, competence, and intergenerational injustice in the present rather than future moment, not easily coopted for adult values and projects, even if there have been plenty of attempts. The imagery of Thunberg and the FFF movement in its entirety must be understood in this dynamic space of representation at the intersection of (adult imaginaries of) childhood figurations and the activists’ representation of their own political agenda, childhood subjectivity, and aesthetic choices.

Childhood Figurations of the Global Mass-movement

Not all activists of the FFF movement have the same possibilities of striking that Thunberg has, which prompts the need to explore what aesthetic strategies the global activists of the FFF use to stage image events. Here, I wish to propose that one strategy is of representing something bigger than the individual children and youth participating: of shouldering the representative position of speaking on behalf of a generation in its global entirety. FFF can be critiqued for such representative claims: even if children and youth tend to be somewhat more concerned about climate change than the older cohort (Corner et al., 2015; Lee et al., 2020), such claims neglect the complicated social ecology around children and youth’s perception of climate politics (Stevenson et al., 2019). Nonetheless, the combination of hegemonic notions of children as society’s future potentiality and the global and intergenerational injustices of climate change enables a position for these climate activists to represent both the future and the young generation of the world. For that representative position to hold legitimacy, I suggest, the FFF movement needs to construct a visual rhetoric of mass-demonstrations across the globe.

Many of the strikes begin as lone-strikes and then grow and unfold into large mass-demonstrations. For example, the first strike in the United States was staged by then 13-year-old Latina Alexandria Villaseñor, who sat down outside the Headquarters of the United Nations in New York. Similarly, the Indian FFF begins with a lone strike but moves into the aesthetics of mass quickly. The caption of the second image, posted on March 15, 2019, is indicative of the mood: “Way to go Delhi and Mumbai!! We will arise again, all over India and the world.” Here, the dimension of an escalation of the movement is emphasized. The Indian FFF also forefronts the contrast by returning to the importance of the lone-striker in later posts: “Here’s to everyone who went on climate strike all alone! Y’all are brave climate strikers!! Hope to see you lead the upcoming strikes. ”Footnote 5 This post contains a series of images of lone strikers from across different places in India, thus signaling a sense of inclusion of rural strikers or strikers who are not part of a larger movement. For all such posts on initial lone strikes, the childhood figuration is like that of Thunberg’s initial strike: the brave and politically engaged child or youth who speaks truth to institutional power. Of course, none of them have attracted the same type of media attention as Thunberg, and as noted by Hannah Dyer, certain childhood figurations are “not assigned to all children in equal amounts” but instead, such “rhetorical maneuvers are permeated by the elisions and attempted disavowals along the lines of race, class, gender, and sexuality” (Dyer, 2019, p. 1). Childhood figurations—even if similar on the surface—are unevenly distributed, circulated, and the adultist affective response is different or absent depending on the child’s race, gender, age, and nationality.

Many of the accounts of FFF on Instagram showcase the narrative arc from small-scale to the aesthetics of mass, and often on symbolic sites. The Argentinian FFF begins by posting infographics on climate change and small-scale strikes, and it is only when they have gathered a mass of demonstrators that they post pictures outside the Palace of the Argentine National Congress. The below image is one such example, where large masses of school strikers have gathered outside the symbolically important building, and where the organizers are standing on a stage, facing opposite the Congress, and are lit up by headlamps. The visual aesthetics invites the viewer to both see the mass and the building from the perspective of these leading activists, while it also forefronts their determination and literal and metaphoric “facing up” to power.

A photograph of a huge crowd of people holding banners and protesting at the entrance of the building.

Photo: Tobías Skarlovnik

Similarly, in the Mexican Instagram account, the first strike images do not center any particular site, but as the strikers begin to amass large numbers, they march to the Angel of Independence on May 24, 2019, which is a landmark monument in Mexico City and a site of previous protests. Both the German and the Australian accounts also begin by posting pictures of small-scale strikes, leading up to larger strikes. It is difficult to speak of trends as there are so many and large regional varieties, but European and North and South American FFF accounts use this visual rhetoric extensively. These images of mass-demonstrations provide for the exciting and joyful narrative arc of being part of something at the forefront of the movement; something that is unfolding and snowballing right now in the eruption of ever-larger protest. They also tend to be the images that attract the most likes. Entering the public in this way—in a large mass, in front of symbolically charged buildings—makes a claim on a political activist subjectivity, usually not granted children. The visual rhetoric of these images clearly challenge adult power and inaction on climate change by questioning passive figurations of children and youths simply being affected by politics, instead claiming to be doing politics. These strikers are making a bodily demand to be seen and heard, thus restructuring what counts not only as a political voice but also as a political body with rhetorical agency.

I would suggest that the aesthetics of mass is dependent on the contrast: only if the movement is grounded in local and small-scale strikes, do the big strikes come forth as a culmination. Such assemblages of mass are clearly read as exciting, joyful, and unstoppable. To a large extent, the FFF is characterized by its lack of “hopeful” climate change communication, but if there is a “positive” message from the FFF, it is this one: that activism, large masses, and the ability to speak as one angry generation hold great power and joy. One might call it a childhood figuration of the performative joy of activism. In a similar fashion as Thunberg’s anger, these images present a childhood figuration that does not easily lend itself to adult values. As noted by Nick Lee, the stereotypical positions given to children in climate discourse—such as the child who needs climate change education or the child who will become a future leader or innovator in the fight against climate change—tend to figure the child as relatively passive (Lee, 2013, pp. 131–141). Or, in other words, such figurations retain agency and power in the hands of the adult cohort. I suggest that such divisions of power between adults and children are challenged through these images of children and youth that march in masses in front of seats of power and do so with defiant joy.

Alternative Childhood Figurations: Mass-by-Proxy and Globality-by-Proxy

The aesthetics of mass is not equally accessible in countries that suppress the freedom of assembly. For example, in Singapore, protest is made near-impossible due to strict laws regulating permits for protest, arrestment of activists, and confiscation of their belongings, as well as strong pressure from police to close down social media accounts and websites (Han, 2020). In India, protest is often allowed, but not in front of symbolically important places like the parliament (350.org, 2020). In Afghanistan, protests have taken place before the Taliban seize of power in 2021 but with armed troops protecting the protesters (Glinski, 2019). The strikers in Russia are mostly staging lone or very small-scale strikes because single-person strikes do not need permission in a country that otherwise regularly rejects permission to large strikes and demonstrations. Arguably, the Russian activists’ childhood vulnerability is accentuated even further given the authoritarian responses from the political regime: the lead organizer in Russia, Arshak Makichyan, then 24-year-old and of Armenian descent, has been arrested for his school strikes. Even if the images of Makichyan being arrested by Russian police are dramatic, he has not received the same media attention as other activists, pointing to the aspect of age (he is too old), gender (he is a young man), nationality (he is Russian and Armenian and thus outside the media bias toward Western activists), in the inscription of childhood innocence. Similar arrests have taken place against FFF activists in India, Colombia, and Kenya, to just mention a few. The lack of general outrage from the global adult public against the violence and repression that some climate activists face further supports Dyer’s claim that childhood innocence is inscribed in asymmetrical ways according to race, age, gender, and geopolitical position. Following Dyer, adultist discourses of childhood innocence also “constitute material conditions of possibility and violence for children” (Dyer, 2019). In other words, the lack of emotional, political, and ethical outrage against such violence in global media indicates that the hegemony of certain childhood figurations is part of a circulation of discourses that allow violence against some children and youth to take place.

For some FFF groups, a combination of restrictions makes image events of large masses hard or impossible: it might be dangerous to strike both for immediate security risks and for repression by authoritarian governments, the climate movement might not be that large, or the protest culture might take other forms than street protest. In the FFF, many non-Western activist groups had only just begun their organization at the time of the biggest marches globally on March 15 and September 20–27, 2019. Therefore, many of these groups “missed” the opportunity to participate in these events of global mass-demonstrations. For example, the FFF in the Philippines started their account in December 2019, which meant that they were too late to participate in the biggest demonstrations and that they only had a few months before the Covid-19 pandemic restricted physical demonstrations. The visual rhetoric of mass and momentum—communicated through the dramatic narrative of the lone child whose rightful cause attracts a mass of people— is thus unequally available.

One common strategy in such cases is to repost pictures of large masses of demonstrations elsewhere. This might come across as strange but is a form of image activism that gestures to the transposability of youth climate activism. As such, it flattens out differences between youth across the world, masking differences but reinforcing the category of “youth” and “climate activism” as the common denomination. Through the sheer number of such posts, the mass of pictures also grows, and the aesthetics of mass is redistributed into online spaces and for activist groups that might otherwise not have access to them: it becomes an aesthetics of mass-by-proxy. Similarly, North-based groups regularly post pictures of small-scale strikes from the Global South, with the clear signal that FFF is a global movement and with youth protesting in every part of the world.

Such images create an aesthetics of globality-by-proxy. It is a visual rhetoric that de-emphasizes the racial dynamics on the on-site strikes (which are usually more homogenous) and creates a sense of racial diversity within the Instagram networked public. The map on FFF’s website with pins for each strike also communicates this aesthetics of globality. I would suggest that the aesthetics of mass-by-proxy and globality-by-proxy become part of the remix participatory culture of FFF, in which the transposability of global activists is visually emphasized.

Childhood Figurations of Competence and Assuming Responsibility

Other visual strategies consist of challenging perceptions of, on the one hand, children as lacking agency and, on the other, of adults assuming appropriate political responsibility. One example of such visual rhetoric is that activists from the FFF use imagery responding to climate and environmental degradation directly, such as tree-planting activities, emergency relief during extreme weather events, or plastic clean-ups. For example, the FFF in the Philippines have engaged in food and water emergency relief after a typhoon in 2020 and Brazil engages in a continuous campaign to support environmental defenders in the Amazons, mostly indigenous and highly vulnerable communities. According to childhood political theorist Sana M. Nakata, the question is not whether children are mature and competent enough to make political decisions or act, but the point is that they do (Nakata, 2008, p. 23). However, it is clear that the FFF activists attempt to challenge adultist perceptions of children as less competent or less responsible than adults.

Many of the African FFF groups participate in direct campaigns, often targeting plastic or toxic waste, for example through the campaign #Africaisnotadumpster, highlighting how Northern and Western countries dump waste in various parts of the African continent. These images create a different form of place-making than mass-protest: one that is situated in smaller groups of activists, in a place near home or school, and where the visual narrative is that of being directly affected by climate change or environmental harms.

A photograph of a group of young people collecting plastic garbage from a river bank.

Photo: Fridays for Future Uganda

On the surface, these images look similar to victimizing images of vulnerable Global South children circulated by NGOs (Wells, 2008), and they represent childhood figurations that might be co-opted for adult purposes as they can be read to figure the child as passive and in need of adult protection. It is perhaps also the reason why the responses from the activist communities are mixed: some of these images create a comparatively high number of likes whereas others tend to be on the lower side. However, these images can also be read as a visual representation of asserting agency and leveling a political critique. The children and youth depicted in these images are active and by their own initiative, thus asserting agency rather than passivity. They are also performing tasks that ought to have been handled otherwise, and by someone else: either by a government responsible for cleaning up waste, or by global capital not dumping on Africa. Some of these images also show elderly people, signaling a sense of intergenerational solidarity and communal action, but most only show children and youth. These images can thus be read as a critique of an adult world that does not accurately address economic, social, or environmental wrongs and thus displaces that burden unto young activists. It is hard to generalize, but pictures that forefront either joy in such direct action or a high-level of competence tend to receive more likes than the ones that mostly signal emergency relief. As the above picture from Uganda shows, these images are part of creating a different type of image event, less about the small child speaking truth to power or the aesthetics of mass, and more about the child assuming the role and responsibilities of government. But crucially, the activists are also smiling and posing happily for the camera. As such, these images become part of the visual rhetoric that shows the performative joy of activism.

This visual rhetoric indicates a childhood figuration of a high level of political competence and sense of responsibility. It can also be seen in the extensive posting of educational material (mostly on climate change and climate politics, but also on intersectionality, gender, racism, indigenous rights, and other justice-oriented themes, along with mental health information and resources) that clearly signals a competent child figuration that can take on the role of teaching and learning. A sense of political competence and responsibility is also shown in instructions on how to strike including information about safety for strikers in the face of repressive states, and in educational posts on geopolitical questions, such as FFF Croatia posting about the Yemen crises. It can also be seen in the ways that almost all groups closed down physical strikes during the Covid-19 pandemic and posted extensively on protective measures and particularly vulnerable communities, signaling a responsible child figuration that puts people’s health before the movement’s own political momentum. As the pandemic was most seriously affecting the elderly cohort, the FFF’s protective stance also posits the question of intergenerational responsibility and such images reversed adultist understandings that it is the role of grown-ups to take care of children. John Wall discusses children’s representation and the democratic move in many countries to secure arenas where children can voice their concerns. However, Wall concludes that “In no case are children democratically represented to the same extent as adults” (Wall, 2012, p. 89). Children and youth worldwide do not enjoy political suffrage, and these images prompt us to consider the legitimacy of this democratic limitation circumventing children: If children are not granted political power and representation based on the assumption that they lack competence, as well as on the assumption that adults take care of children’s best interest, what happens when children use visual aesthetics that clearly state that they are competent? And when the adult world clearly does not measure up to that assumed responsibility?

Childhood Figurations of the Creative Play of Activism

The last visual strategy that I wish to explore is that of creative uses of beautiful or dramatic imagery. It is a strategy that might be used when mass-demonstrations outside symbolically charged buildings are not possible, and it is a strategy that grew under the Covid-19 pandemic. It can be to stage small-scale strikes with dramatic costumes, alternative strike formats such as shoe-strikes or die-ins, or it can be to post visually salient illustrations.

One rhetorical strategy is to use beautiful or funny costumes. The strikers of the Afghan FFF were mostly focusing on greening Kabul to ease human health harms caused by air pollution. Even if they seem to have been a sizable number of strikers, the activists used a rhetorical tactic of humor, beautiful costumes, large sculptors, or theater performances.

Two photographs of people marching through the streets while carrying banners and wearing green plants around their necks.

Photo: Fridays for Future Afghanistan

In this strike, the costumes are not only humorous but also quite beautiful: the activists dressed as trees lead the march, followed by activists carrying green signs and green foliage, together creating a visually coherent design of a green movement. The visual aesthetics of this strike is using a different affective register than the angry child speaking truth to power, the mass-demonstrating child challenging political representatives, or the responsible child having to assume the tasks of government. This visual rhetorical strategy is more hopeful in the sense that it represents a generation that uses creative play to showcase what the alternative to air pollution might look like. It can be argued that such tactics are unrealistic: planting trees will not solve air pollution in Kabul, nor climate impacts in Afghanistan, but I do not think that these strategies were meant to be realistic solutions in that sense. Instead, the activists were using humor, hope, and beautiful costumes to assert a critique of the present and invite alternative futures. This type of childhood figuration has similarities with the performative joy of activism, discussed above, because the sheer creative play of the activism itself is a “hopeful” or “optimistic” message, even if it does not provide any concrete solution to the climate crises. These images are, I suggest, a form of political action in which the child does not simply figure as the victim of climate change, but as the rhetorical agent who might represent an alternative world-making.

During the Covid-19 pandemic, many school strikers posted images of themselves striking online, and often the FFF national account inserts these into one large frame to make use of the aesthetics of mass in digital form. However, such images—although very common—lack a sense of place-making and of the strikes dimension of happening right now, in the rise of the momentum. To counter these weaknesses of digital striking, the South Korean FFF staged an online strike that was digital, but still simultaneously on-site outside the National Assembly in Seoul and synchronous in the moment. With a banner of water signaling ocean rise, the activists put a large screen on a platform with videos of school strikers.

Two photographs. The first one depicts a painting of the ocean placed outside the parliamentary building, and the second one depicts a projector screen displaying the faces of people with the parliamentary building in the background.

Photo: Youth 4 Climate Action in Korea

I would suggest that this is a childhood figuration that makes use of many of the above discussed figurations: they strike outside the symbolically important parliamentary building, they signal a sense of here-and-now through the synchronous videos, and they make use of the aesthetics of mass through the number of people in the video. The images also clearly state that these activists are organized and competent in their mobilization. In many ways, it is also using humor and the performative joy of protest through its display of a sense of creativity and play. It is in all seriousness a strike, but it is also humorous that they use such innovative means of creating image events. Together, these examples show that the activists of the FFF use creativity to challenge the restrictions on physical, large-scale strikes, and where the visual aesthetics represents a young generation that is angry and disappointed with the adult world, but that can mobilize though high-competence, humor, and beautiful aesthetics.

Conclusion: Climate Action When There Is No Time to Grow Up

This chapter analyzes the visual rhetoric of the FFF movement and how it makes use or challenges dominant childhood figurations for the movement’s own purposes. The political activism of the young climate protesters radically challenges two childhood figurations: the child as political only in the sense of its future potentiality rather than its present actuality, and the child as lacking in political agency. The discussion indicates a few aspects about the uneven possibilities of staging certain childhood figurations and spectacular imagery: (1) The right to public assembly and public protest. (2) Urbanity: Proximity to the symbolic sites of power indicates the uneven possibilities for rural children and youth to stage spectacular images. (3) Nationality: kids from various countries are charged with the burdens of geopolitical power play. (4) Race and gender: the availability for hegemonic childhood figuration of innocence and a child worthy of protection is not distributed to boys, non-binary children, or children of color in the same way as to white girls. Building on Dyer, we can say that “despite the familiar rhetorical insistence that children are the future,” not all children are equal in their possibilities of representing the future. I am not pointing out these inequalities to criticize individual strikers of the FFF, but to suggest that FFF is a global movement unfolding in transnational flows of interactions, where the possibilities of staging image events are uneven. As my analysis show, the activists use various rhetorical strategies to counter these inequalities and to create visually dramatic image events, ranging from humor to competence, from anger to joy, and from mass-demonstrations to small-scale strikes. The FFF movement invites a rethinking of established concepts of political representation and agency, as well what a just division of power between young and old would mean in the face of dangerous climate change.