“The cycle of the year unfolds before your eyes and is felt within your chest”
The Use of “You” in The Green Youth Movement’s Manifesto Levedygtigt Landbrug
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.52610/rhs.v30i92.467Keywords:
Manifesto, Second-Person Narrative, Constitutive Rhetoric, Interpellation, Utopia, The Green Youth MovementAbstract
With the manifesto Levedygtigt Landbrug (2024), The Green Youth Movement presents a utopian vision for the future of sustainable agriculture. Among the manifesto’s most striking features is its recurring use of the personal pronoun “you”, through which the reader is directly inscribed into the envisioned future. Thus, Levedygtigt Landbrug is both a manifesto and a second-person narrative, and it is this intersection that forms the focal point of the article. Drawing on Maurice Charland’s theory of constitutive rhetoric and Louis Althusser’s concept of interpellation, I argue that the interpellation typically associated with the manifesto’s “we” is intensified and redirected when combined with the “you” of a second-person narrative; second-person narration possesses a particular interpellative potential, as the reader is positioned as the you-protagonist and ascribed a specific opinion. The article thus contributes new insights into the relationship between a manifesto’s use of pronouns and its attempt to reach its reader.
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