Democracy, Rhetoric and Performance: December 2004 Archives

I have to give credit to Scott and David (which you may feel free to interpellate as blame). :-)

Scott, for telling me a month or so ago that Bickford's book is amazing. It is. :-)

And David, for asking me just over a week (!) ago if I was going to write about the blog for my paper. Duh! Truth is, it hadn't even crossed my mind. Was trying to do something uncharacteristic ("very different than your previous work", so said Stephen back in the day), but which was gonna faciltate another project.

and we won't mention how hard Stephen's been riding my butt about making groups relevant to democracy.... ;-)

So, I've been pondering these distinctions:

group
community
group-that-becomes-community
"natural" group
organization (coalition, alliance, network, thinktank)
public
counterpublic

Here's my question, isn't a public just a very large group? A public is constituted how? by virtue of being an audience? because they engage in the same behavior (such as voting)? because they have a shared/common goal (elect a certain person)? what makes a public so special?

not quite the last supper, but then again....there were...how many of us in the class?

Bryan started us with his dream, starring himself as American Speechwriter: the Notetaking, The Nuances, The NOUNS!

He was accused of having an hyperactive imagination. But Stephen was reminded of a book on dreaming by some linguistic anthropologists, surveying anthropological approaches to dreaming. Intriguing! What I found:

The New Anthropology of Dreaming
Dreaming and the Impossible Art of Translation
a blogpost: questioning dreaming which led me to the book that I think (?) might be the one Stephen meant? Although it's not "new" - recently republished though:

Dreaming: Anthropological and Psychological Interpretations

Donna observes: these sorts of attacks from Fox and the right-wing media are far more common this year than last...how do moderates and believers in separation of church and state compete with this onslaught of hate speech?

The Grinch who saved Christmas
Battling the homosexuals, liberals and Jews, Bill O'Reilly and friends are making America safe for Christmas.

ìíinterpublic discursive interactioní. Craig Calhoun (1995, 242) has suggested that we therefore think in terms of ëspheres of publics,í conceptualizing these as ëmultiple intersections among heterogeneous publics, not only as the privileging of a single overarching publicíî (37). Except the blog is currently only one siteÖsuppose, a blog per class plus A Place in Space as the central heterogenous point? Experiment! ìConflictî independent study with Leda, Joanna, +? Raz? He could run an ìinternationalî blog while I run a domestic one? We could hide the URLs, keep the names private, not have the two groups read each otherís stuffÖ.until later, a point in time to be determinedÖ = ìpublic life in late-capitalist democracies involve a plurality of discourses competing for position in national spaceî (37).

~ so asks Donna:

On Dec 12, 2004, at 8:59 PM, Donna Halper wrote:

According to Adam Werbach, former president of the Sierra Club, yes it is. "[He] argues that the moral and intellectual framework underpinning Democratic politics has become irrelevant. It's time to craft a new progressive vision of fulfillment..." I'd be interested in your thoughts on his vision of what Democrats, liberals, and progressives ought to do next: http://www.alternet.org/election04/20689/

Camille, thanks so much for taking on the "grand narrative" bit and reminding us that's passe! The term that came to mind as an alternative is scaffolding. We need some kind of networked structure of tropes and metaphors that complement each other but can be deployed variously and flexibly in myriad situations.

In Class Cultures, we're reading Lisa Duggan's Twilight of Equality and it fills a gap that's been missing from the democracy class - redistribution as the unifying theme of all left politics.

Here's the text of the poem that Shannon created from our emails. :-)

I'm thinking I might tinker with it to show how it was actually read (I took notes). Whaddaya think?

Finally! Stephen asks, "how interesting do you think your personal turmoil is?" Answer: Not Very! But it is "what I'm left with" (group relations perspective) when other engagement isn't forthcoming. Not an accusation, just an observation. Not having done any in-depth study into the tragic/comic frames (I've been missing Li in this discussion, and the class overall this semester), it strikes me that the tragic frame is more individualistically (narcissistically?) based, and the comic frame requires (?) participation of others...or is that just where I go with it? :-) Maybe I can't find a comic basis on my own, or, at least, I can't generate a comic frame without some visceral sense of relational connectedness. Can't say I enjoy that aspect of my subjectivity, and wouldn't it be nice to change it! But, Stephen, you're the one who told me I can't interpellate myself, so who, I ask is interpellating me, in which ways?! Where's the "audience" for the comedy I also try to perform here? Do I suck so badly at it? ;-)

Last night's democracy class was a rollercoaster, to say the least! We started on the floor in the hall, got sucked into Iris' latest crisis and her protests of not wanting to disturb us. "They're all disturbed," said Stephen. "Some of us more than others," said I. "You've gone over the edge," said someone to somebody.

I guess I shouldn't be surprised, Stephen, that you read my tortured story on human nature as about the aftermath of the election and not as a reflection of my current whole life situation. 'Cuz in academia, that's what we do, and you're fulfilling your "function" in the DRP course as our instructor. Or, perhaps you elided that part "on purpose" out of some ethic of propriety - a boundary that shouldn't be crossed in polite company (i.e., publicly)?

I'm struck by the incredible energy on the DRP email list right now - getting religion back in schools, campaigning for school boards, all the great things we can read, and other "debates to be had" (Scott). No Doubt there is tremendous Education occurring at this very moment! And I don't mean to impugn it, although for some reason I keep getting pissed off when I start to write about this. Apologies for any misdirected stray rage.