Pro- and Anti-Communist Demagoguery and the Politics of the Obvious

people arguing
From the cover of Wayne Booth’s _Modern Dogma-

Deliberating reasonably and inclusively is difficult under conditions of war. Audiences do not demand reasonable policy argumentation, we tend to rely on in-group sources of information, and we tend to value loyalty more than rationality—so much so that we are prone to treat criticism or calls for deliberation as necessarily coming from bad motives (such as cowardice, disloyalty, or active treason). We are drawn to rhetors who seem to see the situation clearly, and we are averse to nuance or uncertainty. We give moral and rhetorical license to in-group rhetors. Thus, a rhetor who doesn’t want to take on the obligations of deliberation and reasonable argumentation might be tempted to try to evade them by persuading a base that we are already at war. This rhetorical framing is not necessarily done in bad faith—they may sincerely believe that the situation is an undeclared war, as did the anti-communist demagogues, or that the goodness of their intentions gives them moral and rhetorical license to engage in threat inflation (as did Truman). Rhetors who genuinely believe that they know what should be done may see public discourse as purely an opportunity to radicalize their base for the war they believe is going on.

Elsewhere, I’ve argued that anti-communist demagoguery relied on certain recurrent rhetorical strategies: treating all policy questions as really battles in war; invoking the frame of politics as war sometimes literally, sometimes figuratively, and sometimes ambiguously both; the equation of their “side” (Good) with “the people” against a monolithic and Other (Evil); the assertion that, because the Other is determined on our extermination, we have moral, political, and rhetorical license to do whatever will help exterminate Them; a politics of certainty, in which the correct position on any issue is obvious to good people; the perception that diversity is weakness, and that everyone needs to fall in line. Those rhetorical strategies weren’t limited to anti-communists.

In 1969, a group of activists who would later call themselves “the Weathermen” issued a 13 thousand word manifesto, “You Don’t Need a Weatherman To Know Which Way The Wind Blows.” They said that their “goal is the destruction of US imperialism and the achievement of a classless world: world communism” (2). And this struggle, they were clear, is war: “A revolution is a war; when the Movement in this country can defend itself militarily against total repression it will be part of the revolutionary war” (23). That is, these were the kind of people about whom the anti-communist demagogues were worried; what’s interesting is that both they and the anti-communist demagogues engaged in the same rhetorical strategies.

For the Weathermen, our political world isn’t a complicated situation with multiple policy options that might be deliberated because there is legitimate disagreement about major issues. They advocate getting involved in various struggles (racism, sexism, labor) but always with the same end: “There is one system and so all these different problems have the same solution, revolution” (20). The goal isn’t to create better policies that will solve (or ameliorate) the problems that people have because “reform fights, fights for improvement of material conditions, cannot be won under imperialism” (16). The goal is to convert people to revolutionaries: “We must transform people’s everyday problems, and the issues and struggles growing out of them, into revolutionary consciousness, active and conscious opposition to racism and imperialism” (15). As it was for Hargis, the solution to our political problems is converting as many people as possible to the correct identity.

There is a war, and it has only two sides: “the people of the whole world against US imperialism and its lackeys.” They say, “The main struggle going on in the world today is between US imperialism and the national liberation struggle against it.” The US is evil, and evil is the US:
“Every other empire and petty dictator is in the long run dependent on US imperialism, which has unified, allied with, and defended all of the reactionary forces of the whole world. Thus, in considering every other force or phenomenon, from Soviet imperialism or Israeli imperialism to “workers struggle” in France or Czechoslovakia, we determine who are our friends and who are our enemies according to whether they help US imperialism or fight to defeat it.”
Just as anti-communist demagoguery defines the good group narrowly, and treats everything else as a monolithic communism, so the Weathermen have a narrow in-group and capacious out-group—there are different kinds or causes of imperialism, or multiple sources of oppression.

There is no legitimate disagreement with them. People who disagree are “lackeys,” “brainwashed,” misguided about their true interests. What is necessary is “a unified centralized organization” grounded in “a common revolutionary theory” made up of people who “have the correct understanding.” Because their goal is so good, so obviously good, and they are so obviously right, they are justified in advocating policies that hurt others—they have moral license. They celebrate that “the Vietnamese are winning,” and endorse Che Guevara’s call for more Vietnams (that is, the US engaging in more wars as unsuccessful as Vietnam), despite that, as King pointed out, the burden of Vietnam fell disproportionately on Black communities (whom the Weathermen claim to support). They advocate policies and practices that will increase repression to the point that there will be “a phase of all-out military repression.” In other words, like the anti-communist demagogues, they claim moral license.

My point is not the Weathermen are “just as bad” as the anti-communists, or that “both sides do it,” but that this framing of politics as war isn’t tied to any particular spot on the political spectrum. And what this rhetoric does—whether it’s the John Birch Society or the Weathermen—is depoliticize politics. The Weathermen did deliberate; they argued and debated among themselves at great length. In the 1969 document, they admit that they were previously mistaken (about the role of Black Power in their movement). In 1974, they would publish the 188-page Prairie Fire, after much internal debate and disagreement, that admittedly revised earlier manifestoes. Yet, having been wrong, having disagreed with one another, and having come to new conclusions, didn’t change the basic stance that now they had the obviously right answer. Like the anti-communist demagogues, who disagreed with each other, changed their minds, changed their policies, they did so without abandoning their commitment to a politics of the obvious. Even though their own experience proved that it was a lie.

On writing

marked up draft of a book ms


In elementary school, I was taught to write in pen, and we lost points if we made a correction on something we’d written. When I was 11, my family went to London, and we went to the British museum, and I saw a page of a Jane Austen novel. SHE CROSSED THINGS OUT. My first reaction was as though I’d caught her cheating at cards, or pilfering from the collection plate. My second (and much later) reaction was that punishing someone for correcting their own writing was indefensible.

When I was a newbie grad student, I was TA for a rhetoric prof who, in the midst of a lecture about something or other (he was a good prof, so it was a good lecture, but I don’t remember them) related a story about Yeats. Apparently, there was some filmed interview with Yeats, where the interviewer asked about a particular word in one of Yeats’ most famous poems, and Yeats is supposed to have said something like, “Yeah, I don’t like that word,” and crossed it out and tried a few others. According to the prof, the interviewer was horrified. For him, the poem was an autonomous mobile floating in space. For Yeats, it was something he was still trying to get right. The prof’s point was that no writer is satisfied with what they’ve written; poems are not sacred texts transcribed from a muse, but even the best are works in progress.

I happened to mention to a friend/writing buddy that I love the last part of “East Coker,” and she didn’t know it. It’s this: http://www.davidgorman.com/4quartets/2-coker.htm

So here I am, in the middle way, having had twenty years—
Twenty years largely wasted, the years of l’entre deux guerres
Trying to use words, and every attempt
Is a wholly new start, and a different kind of failure
Because one has only learnt to get the better of words
For the thing one no longer has to say, or the way in which
One is no longer disposed to say it. And so each venture
Is a new beginning, a raid on the inarticulate
With shabby equipment always deteriorating
In the general mess of imprecision of feeling,
Undisciplined squads of emotion. And what there is to conquer
By strength and submission, has already been discovered
Once or twice, or several times, by men whom one cannot hope
To emulate—but there is no competition—
There is only the fight to recover what has been lost
And found and lost again and again: and now, under conditions
That seem unpropitious. But perhaps neither gain nor loss.
For us, there is only the trying. The rest is not our business.

I’ll admit that I deliberately misinterpret this poem. He was the kind of modernist who believed in the objective/subjective split, and so he means something by that “imprecision of feeling…squads of emotion” that I think is nonsense. What I think is true is that we bring to writing a lot of feelings—imposter syndrome, fear of failure, anxiety about readers who are fully committed to reenacting generational trauma, perfectionism—that are undisciplined squads of emotion, attacking us every time we try to write.

And, so I find this poem https://allpoetry.com/Love-The-Wild-Swan really helpful in response:

“I hate my verses, every line, every word.
Oh pale and brittle pencils ever to try
One grass-blade’s curve, or the throat of one bird
That clings to twig, ruffled against white sky.
Oh cracked and twilight mirrors ever to catch
One color, one glinting
Hash, of the splendor of things.
Unlucky hunter, Oh bullets of wax,
The lion beauty, the wild-swan wings, the storm of the wings.”
—This wild swan of a world is no hunter’s game.
Better bullets than yours would miss the white breast
Better mirrors than yours would crack in the flame.
Does it matter whether you hate your . . . self?
At least Love your eyes that can see, your mind that can
Hear the music, the thunder of the wings. Love the wild swan.

When I’m editing my work, I frequently have that first line in my head.

I’ve always assumed that he’s writing about his worrying that he’ll never write a poem as good as Yeats’ “Wild Swans at Coole,” and that may be true. But, as a writer, I like the ambiguity that it’s both about the fear of not measuring up to that poem and not measuring up to the reality he was trying to describe—the wildlife of California at that moment. I suspect he’s writing about a Great Blue Heron. I’ve written elsewhere about what a Great Blue Heron meant in my life, so maybe I’m just projecting. California has no shortage of beautiful birds, and Great Blue Herons don’t have a white breast.

And I love the answer—anything we write will never measure up to reality. We can hate our writing, hate our selves, but still continue to write because we love the thing we’re trying to write about.

Good writing has to come from love, I think. In working with graduate students, I’ve often felt that there was a theme—in the musical sense—in the topics that interested them. So much about being a graduate student is demoralizing, probably unnecessarily, but it seems to me that the students who finish (and the junior scholars who publish enough to get tenure) do so because they’ve heard the music. Or someone has helped them hear it.

I know that there are faculty who believe that their job is to “train” graduate students, “toughen them up,” create disciples. I always thought my job was to help them hear the music.

I’m not saying that people should follow their bliss. That’s toxically bad advice. I am saying that finishing a dissertation (or publishing a first book) is less fraught if people can be passionate about something in their project. Passionate enough to want to write about it, without aspiring to turn it into taxidermy.

Love the wild swan.





Thucydides, Aristotle, emotions, deliberation, and the rational/irrational split

Stone platform
The Athenian speakers’ box

When I was in grad school, a fellow grad student remarked that every Rhetoric dissertation was about how the rational/irrational split was wrong. While slightly hyperbolic, it wasn’t entirely wrong. In fact, I think it’s still fairly accurate.

There are two major problems with the rational/irrational split (both pointed out by Wayne Booth in Modern Dogma). The first is that it’s an accurate description of two completely opposed ways of approaching problems: through logic or feeling. Booth pointed out that many people privileged the “rational” approach, which was defined incoherently and largely through negation (a rational argument has certain surface features, such as an unemotional tone or appeal to numbers and data, which is assumed to signify how the rhetor thinks), but other people denigrated the “rational” approach, privileging emotion and passion. His point was that we didn’t solve the many problems created by the binary by flipping the privilege. The binary was wrong.

It seems to me that work in cognitive science did a good job on dismantling the binary—there isn’t a binary between rational and its presumed associations (thinking, objectivity, neutrality, unbiased) and irrational and its presumed associations (feeling, subjectivity, prejudice, biased). After all, cognitive biases are cognitive.

This still leaves the second problem with the split—the narrative that all major Western philosophies relied on the split until the 20th century. I think it’s fair to say that it became hegemonic in Western philosophy at a certain point, but that point was much more recent than many people think. My crank theory is that people who wrote influential histories of philosophies relied on that frame, and so themselves imagined that all philosophies could fit within it (e.g., Russell—Booth’s example–, but also Durant, and various nineteenth century figures). Since it fits neatly with the cognitive bias of naïve realism, it resonates with people, and so it’s the one you’re likely to hear if you stop someone on the street.

While there are major figures who can fit in that frame (e.g., Plato), but others who only sort of do (while Augustine was very a believer in the mind/body split, he didn’t diss feeling). Various figures in the British Enlightenment didn’t accept the binary of emotional or unemotional, let alone denigrate “emotion.” Many argued or assumed that “sentiments” benefitted deliberation, although “passions” inhibited it (but passions weren’t bad, exactly—they had/have their place).

Aristotle is often assumed to be an adherent of the rational/irrational split, and certainly several translations try to make him fit it, but what he meant by alogos and logos doesn’t map neatly onto irrational and rational. The “logos” of a text, for Aristotle, is the “argument” (probably an enthymeme in public discourse—that is, rhetoric as opposed to philosophy or math).

In the book we call Rhetoric (I wish we called it The Craft of Rhetoric, as I think that’s a more accurate and useful translation) Aristotle appears to be all over the place about emotion, but I think it starts to make sense if we keep in mind that the term “pathos” doesn’t mean either “irrational” or “emotion” (as we use those terms), and he didn’t think a text could have only one. Ethos, pathos, and logos are always in play. Aristotle was mostly interested in the taxonomy of deliberative, forensic, and epideictic (and most interested in the first and last of those three). And I can’t help but read him as making an argument similar to the British Enlightenment philosophers—that various “emotions” (however we define them) function differently in the three genres. Aristotle was interested in methods of public deliberation that led to good policies, trials that resulted in the truth, and effective ceremonial orations. (Except when he wasn’t, as in the weird passage about testimony gained through torture.)

I happened to read Aristotle after taking a class in which we read selections from Thucydides. Thucydides has several situations in which rhetors reflect on rhetoric, on how publics should reason about policies, and there are several points that come up (some repeatedly) that influenced my reading of Aristotle. I’ll mention two.

First, several speakers disagree about whether publics should make decisions in anger. The rhetors who argue we should (such as the un-named Corinthian and Stheneslaides in the “Debate at Sparta” and Cleon in the “Mytilenean Debate) are advocating policies of which Thucydides clearly disapproves. The people who argue we should not make decisions in anger (Archidamus, Diodotus, Pericles) are all rhetors whom Thucydides identifies as wise, insightful, and reasonable, ad they are advocating policies of which Thucydides approves. They are not unemotional speakers, and they do appeal to emotions (because, who doesn’t?). They all speak, for instance, of their fears, such as Archidamus saying that he feared that the war with Athens would last generations (it did). They argue for taking time to deliberate, and to consider the issue. Archidamus, speaking after the un-named Corinthian has tried to use the timeless strategy of shaming Sparta into war by saying it’s only procrastination and cowardice that causes them to delay, says:

And the slowness and procrastination, the parts of our character that are most assailed by their criticism, need not make you blush. If we undertake the war without preparation, we should by hastening its commencement only delay its conclusion: further, a free and a famous city has through all time been ours. The quality which they condemn is really nothing but a wise moderation; thanks to its possession, we alone do not become insolent in success and give way less than others in misfortune; we are not carried away by the pleasure of hearing ourselves cheered on to risks which our judgment condemns; nor, if annoyed, are we any the more convinced by attempts to exasperate us by accusation. We are both warlike and wise, and it is our sense of order that makes us so.” (I:84)

The second theme that comes up is not to confuse genres. That’s particularly strong in the “Mytilenean Debate” when Cleon has argued for genocide of Mytileneans, using arguments of guilt and innocence. He says that reopening the debate about what to do is “causing a delay which is all in favour of the guilty, by making the sufferer proceed against the offender with the edge of his anger blunted; although where vengeance follows most closely upon the wrong, it best equals it and most amply requites it.” (3:38). His opponent, Diodotus, points out that this isn’t a trial, but a deliberative assembly, and so the decision should be made in terms of what is often translated as “expediency”: “the question before us as sensible men is not their guilt, but our interests.” We should make policy decisions in light of “the good of the country.” (3:44)

Thucydides doesn’t say we should never engage in questions of guilt and innocence (and he is also not saying he doesn’t care about justice), but that deliberative assemblies are about pragmatic deliberation. Making policy decisions in the midst of anger, arrogance, factionalism, vengeance inhibits deliberation, and leads to bad decision. That isn’t an argument that we should never be angry and so on–it’s about genre.

Thucydides’ ideal rhetor is Pericles, and it’s interesting that we get three different kinds of speeches from him: Aristotle’s taxonomy. The speech about how to respond to Sparta’s demands is deliberative, and it’s about pragmatic considerations. The speech he gives when he’s been attacked by Cleon is an apologia, a defense speech, and it’s about motive and emotions. And the “Funeral Oration” is epideictic, and it’s a flag-waving tearjerker.

It seems to me that Aristotle is imagine rhetoric in similar ways. He doesn’t have a binary of emotional/unemotional, but he has a sense about place and genre, and sees those different genres as doing different work.

The final point I’ll make is that both Thucydides and Aristotle seem to assume not a binary, but a different emphasis, in deliberative rhetoric v. both judicial and ceremonial. The goal of a deliberative speech is not to persuade but to participate in deliberation. Of course, there’s a sense in which one wants to persuade people to one’s point of view, but advocates of deliberation in deliberative setting emphasize the goal of “considering” the situation. Judicial and ceremonial are much more about persuasion, about making a one-sided case. It isn’t a binary, as I said, but a question of emphasis.

And it has nothing to do with how we now think about rational/irrational people or arguments.

[DRAFT] Part of the introduction for Deliberating War

Men standing in front of a WWII plane

There are five ways of imagining policy conflicts that make it likely we will see ourselves as having no option but some degree of aggression—that is, to see a policy disagreement as discursively insoluble. The first is believing that one is a voice crying in the wilderness, a prophet sent by God speaking an unpopular and yet immediately recognized Truth. Claiming that no one is listening, that one is all alone, is a lively glimpse of being fourteen, and, as in the case of Muir, it isn’t necessarily entangled with victimization or persecution. By claiming that God is on one’s side, one does seem to be implying that opponents are un-Godly, a characterization that fosters motivism (discussed later). It also seems to imply that negotiation, bargaining, and even inclusive deliberation are problematic—prophets aren’t known for sitting down at a table with opponents and working out a yes-yes solution. But (again, as in the case of Muir), it’s often nothing more than rhetorical flourish, venting, or a bit of hyperbole. It doesn’t inevitably or necessarily prohibit using deliberation to find a political solution far short of violence against the Other.

The second is shifting from policy disagreements to questions of identity. If, for instance, there is a minister with a different interpretation of the faith/grace/works conundrum from us, we may feel threatened by his rhetorical success. If we confuse our feeling threatened with his being a threat, then we’ve made him the problem—not his rhetorical effectiveness, nor our ineffectiveness, nor the conundrum, but his presence in our community. A policy issue has become a conflict of identities.

The third is to frame that conflict of identities in terms of essential, almost ontological, strife between good and evil—those who disagree with us do so, not out of principle, but out of their identity as bad people, and their loathing for good. John Winthrop, for instance, categorized all the conflicts as parts of Satan’s plot to destroy the Puritan project. Cotton Mather, when more or less forced to admit that the witch trials had been badly managed, still deflected responsibility, maintaining that the events were Satan’s fault.

Once such a plot is posited, then it cannot be falsified. Disconfirming evidence (for instance, that the witchcraft convictions depended on violating evidentiary norms, that there is a long history of disagreement about Scripture) is deflected and dismissed. Hutchinson’s death at the hands of Siwonoy is proof that she was wrong; he doesn’t draw that conclusion about others killed in wars on indigenous peoples. It’s only evidence when it confirms the already existing beliefs.

Because we are threatened with extermination by an Other plotting against us, we have moral license. “Moral license” is the fifth way of imagining policy conflict, and it follows from the others. We don’t condemn victims who violate ethical norms in order to save themselves or their group; moral license means that individuals or groups are free to violate those norms while still claiming the moral highground. One of the crucial tenets of reasonable deliberation is that discourse rules (e.g., is it okay to lie?) are reciprocal—all parties are held to them. But, if it is a question of extermination, we’re likely to allow the victim to lie, but condemn lying in the aggressor. If we believe ourselves to be already or imminently victimized, we are likely to believe ourselves and our in-group rhetors and leads to be justified in lying—to be unbound by any discourse rules, especially reciprocity. Thus, if we are rhetorically successful in persuading ourselves or others that we face an existential threat, we are less bound to find non-violent ways of resolving the conflict, and will be seen as more justified in violating norms. Sometimes that violating of moral and rhetorical norms is hypothetical, as when slavers justified mass killings of African Americans on the grounds that the slaves would do it if they could (what’s called “the wolf by the ears” argument).

What I hope this list suggests is what will be pursued in this book: there is a complicated relationship between rhetoric and war. The more that we believe that our disagreements can be solved discursively—that is, the more faith we have in the power of pluralistic approaches to persuasion and deliberation–, the less likely we are to believe that our only choice is war. The more that we are persuaded that there is an evil Other already at war with us, and determined on our extermination, the less likely we are to value or demand inclusive, pluralist, and reasonable rhetorical approaches to our disagreements. The more we are persuaded that this war is total war, signified and engaged in major and minor ways, the less likely we are to believe that there are neutral actions or actors, and the more likely we are to find ourselves treating normal policy disagreements as themselves a kind of war. When politics becomes a kind of war, I will argue, we have to think carefully about what kind it is.

This isn’t a book about military strategy, or military history; it’s about rhetoric. We’re primed to reason badly when it comes to questions about war because the prospect of being the victim of violence activates so many cognitive biases, especially binary thinking. Under those circumstances, deliberation can easily be framed as opting for cowardly flight instead of courageous fight, as unnecessary at best and treasonous at worst. It’s precisely because disagreements about war are so triggering, so to speak, that we need to be deliberately deliberative. To say that we should deliberate reasonably before going to war is banal in the abstract, but oddly fraught in the moment, and this book uses several cases to explore why it is that we often evade deliberation even (or especially?) when the stakes are so high.

But, if war and deliberation are incompatible, then war and democracy are incompatible, because democracy thrives on deliberation. This isn’t to say that every decision about a conflict should be thoroughly deliberated—that would be impossible and unwise—but that deliberation doesn’t weaken the will for war if there is a strong case to be made for that war. If advocates of war can’t make their case through reasonable policy argumentation, then they probably have a bad case, and it’s likely an unnecessary war. War triggers cognitive biases, and so deliberation is necessary to counter the effects of those biases—contrary to popular belief, we can’t simply will ourselves not to rely on biases; deliberating with people who disagree can, however, do some work in reducing the power of the biases. But, not all rhetors want us to reduce the power of cognitive biases. Because we are averse to deliberating about or during war, rhetors engaged in normal political disagreements who are unable or unwilling to advocate a policy rationally are tempted to claim that this isn’t normal politics; it’s war. If they can persuade their base that this situation is war, then they won’t be expected to deliberate. The cognitive biases triggered by war will motivate the audience to believe beyond and without reason, and some political leaders and media pundits want exactly that. We shouldn’t.

Trump supporters’ bad faith appeal to “the law”

(Jose Luis Magana / Associated Press) https://www.latimes.com/politics/story/2021-01-07/capitol-violence-dc-riots-how-to-explain-to-kids

Many years ago, I was in a conversation with someone who was defending the police violence against Rodney King. He said, “After all, King had broken the law, so he was guilty.” I pointed out that, in the first place, by US conceptions of law he was innocent until he’d been through a trial, and second, that, even were he guilty, the punishment for what he’d done was not being physically beaten. He wasn’t bothered by the first one at all, and only a little bothered by the second.

He was a self-identified Libertarian. A “Libertarian” who believed that a police officer could not only determine guilt or innocence on the stop, but enact whatever levels of punishment felt right. That is very much not what a “Libertarian” should not believe. It’s authoritarianism. It’s believing that judgment should be giving to authorities.

That conversation was another datapoint that led to my belief that it’s really, really important that we stop thinking our political world in terms of a binary or continuum of “left v. right.” The data for the left/right continuum is from polls about self-identification, or a circular argument about support for X policy meaning that you have Y identity.

What matters for a thriving democracy isn’t who people are, nor where people are on some fantastical binary or continuum. Among the thing that do matter is that we believe that “the law”—whatever it is—applies equally to in- and out-group. The Libertarian didn’t believe that; he wanted complete liberty for his in-group, but didn’t mind if the police violated the supposed principle of Libertarianism, since it was against an out-group member.

Briefly, what I’ve come to understand—by spending a lot of time arguing with people all over the political spectrum—is that there are several ways of thinking about what “the law” is supposed to do.

In this post, I want to mention two that have a shared premise: that “the law” is supposed to enable communities to get along in a reasonably ordered way.

One way that people imagine the law doing that is to see law as a series of compromises and conventions that are, at best, striving to help everyone get along while holding everyone to the same standards. Some of them are purely arbitrary, and yet necessary–we all have to agree as to whether we’ll drive on the left or right side of the road (and the fact that right side is more common probably should figure into our deliberations), but there’s nothing inherently better about one or the other. If most of the world drove on the left side, after all, then that should figure in our deliberations.

And the law can change. For instance, there was in the 19th century a general sense that the law shouldn’t interfere in private contracts. But, after a while, people started to think that child labor was appalling, but passing laws about it would violate that principle about contracts, so they decided they had to reconsider that principle. So, “the law” works as a series of decisions and arguments in which we’re trying to get a community of diverse people to function effectively within the constraints of principles about rights.

The second way of thinking about the law, an authoritarian one, assumes that the law should maintain order by holding in- and out-group to different standards—it should maintain order by letting good people (the in-group) do pretty much whatever they want, and controlling bad people (the out-group) through punishment.[1] Ann Coulter, ends her book Treason with this argument:

“Liberals promote the rights of Islamic fanatics for the same reason they promote the rights of adulterers, pornographers, abortionists, criminals, and communists. They instinctively root for anarchy and against civilization. The inevitable logic of the liberal position to to be for treason.” (202)

It’s an astonishing argument, even for Coulter. That rights are human rights–that is, granted to all people simply by virtue of their being human–is a principle of American law. So, yes, pornographers have rights; that isn’t treason–that’s how the law is supposed to work. But, for Coulter, bad people shouldn’t have rights.

In my experience, people who imagine the law functioning this way are also prone to claiming that their condemnation of out-group figures is grounded in principle, but it isn’t.

I recently had an argument with someone who claimed that he was opposed to Biden because Biden lies. He supports Trump. That Biden lies is, unfortunately, a fact, and I will be angry af if he’s the Dem candidate for President in 2024. But Trump also lies, and he lies even more than Biden, yet that Trump lies was not a reason for that person to oppose Trump. That person was engaged in strategic appeals to principle. His opposition to Biden wasn’t grounded in some principle about lying—his support of Trump showed that he doesn’t care about lying on principle. He was engaged in cultish levels of support for Trump, while pretending to himself that his opposition to Biden was principled.

Trump supporters are authoritarian to the extent that they refuse to hold him (or themselves) to the standards they hold others.

For instance, Trump supporters frequently condemn BLM protests, many of which got violent. If those protests should be condemned, then so should January 6. That is, a person who was, on principle, opposed to violent protests would condemn both. Like the Trump cultist member who only objected to Biden’s lies but justified or refused to consider Trump’s lies, Trump supporters who defend January 6 and condemn BLM protests are not, actually, reasoning from a principle they value. They’re just people who hold their in-group to lower standards (or no standards at all).

And yet they do believe in “the law.”

MLK argued that there is a higher law than the laws supporting segregation, and he appealed to the higher law of people being treated equally regardless of in- or out-group. He advocated that everyone be held to the same standards. I’ll say he had Jesus on his side.

Trump appeals to a different understanding of a “higher law.” His supporters don’t hold in- and out-groups to the same standards. They believe that order is about domination and submission.

They believe that they are justified in violence if they don’t get their way. That is, if they can’t dominate. And Trump believes the same. And that is not democracy. And it isn’t Christian.

[1] There’s a quote going around describing this principle as being the central tenet of “conservativism,” and, while I think it’s true that a lot of people who self-identify as conservative do believe this, I’ve also heard the same principle expressed by self-identified leftists. I think authoritarianism is more usefully seen as another axis in a political map rather than a point on a single-axis continuum of political affiliation.



“Changing” Dahl’s books

books

As often happens with big controversies, the version that gets tossed around is a stark binary with absurdly un-subtle positions, and that’s what’s happened with the new versions of many of Roald Dahl’s books. No one is talking about burning every copy of the “original” version (which, keep in mind, went through a process of editing—that is, an editor telling Dahl to make changes, some of them having to do with racism).

People (some of whom are authors, and really should know better) are saying that you can’t change an author’s words, or that you never should. That’s what editors get paid to do. Sometimes editors suggest changes to make a book more appropriate to an audience (cite more, cite less, make the language less/more formal); sometimes the changes come about because a person is using language that will probably get a reaction the author doesn’t intend (for instance, when I was told by an editor not to use the word “taint” in a book that college students would read).

When an author is alive, they can object to the changes, and say they’d rather not have the piece published at all, or get a different publisher, or say they’re fine with any controversy or misreadings that might happen. It’s a different situation when the author is dead, and can’t authorize a new edition, and that’s the situation here. So, just to be clear: it isn’t as though we’re suddenly in a new world in which <clutch pearls> authors are, for the first time ever, having work edited.

And it’s the job of publishers to make money; if they believe that out-dated language is hurting sales, you can bet they’ll update it. There are and have been for years more accessible versions of Shakespeare (wth do people think West Side Story is?)—in the 19th century, it was de rigueur to have what was called “the water scene” in Hamlet (where Hamlet jumped into the water—sometimes on a horse—in order to keep Ophelia from drowning). I don’t think there’s been a single movie version of any Shakespeare that has the entire “unchanged” script from the original play (including the Macbeth of Coen or Welles ).

I mention Coen and Welles because I think both of them tried particularly hard to stay with Shakespeare’s intention, and believed—correctly, I think—that the changes they made were necessary for the play to have the impact for a current audience that Shakespeare originally intended. That’s one way of updating–through editing (or “changing”) a text–try to keep the author’s intention and change the text.

Some ways involve ignoring intention. There are plenty of versions of Merchant of Venice that make Shylock sympathetic—was that Shakespeare’s intention? Maybe, but quite possibly not, and directors don’t spend a lot of time worrying about the issue. Taming of a Shrew, similarly, is often performed with an interpretation that may or may not have been what Shakespeare intended. And, if, for instance, we found some document that made absolutely clear that Shakespeare intended for Shylock to be a greedy, Christian-hating villain, and intended him to represent all Jews, people would either stop performing the play, or they’d ignore his intention.

The publisher of Dahl’s books—who has announced they have the old and new versions available (and, by the way, used books are always an option)—made several kinds of changes. You can see them here. They’ve made an effort to remove language that is ableist, racist, sexist, fat-shaming (which, apparently, particularly has some readers clutching their pearls), in order to make the books more accessible. From the article:

“Scott Evans has been a primary school teacher for eight years and works at a school in South Wales, near Cardiff, where Dahl grew up. He runs a website, The Reader Teacher, and has worked as a sensitivity reader. “I understand the arguments some say about censorship and diminishing the author’s voice,” he says. “However, after recently re-reading some children’s books by Dahl, some language stood out as offensive while other terms have become outdated over time. Here, sensitivity readers can make suggested adaptations to make them more accessible to children.”

Personally, I don’t think the editors did a great job of the project, and I think it’s completely worth arguing about the specific changes, what they do, don’t do, and what changes would be better. That’s an argument worth having.

But, the fact is that Dahl was writing at a point when no one cared about shaming kids who were different, stigmatizing mental illness, and so on. I doubt it was Dahl’s intention to be hurtful—I suspect he just didn’t think about it–but the books are hurtful. To assume that removing some of the hurt necessarily violates his intention is saying he intended to promote racism, ableism, and so on, that he intended to hurt children. That doesn’t seem like much of a defense to me.


The “Debate at Sparta” and Identity Politics, Pt. II: Archidamus

Greek sarcophagus showing a battle

In a previous post about Thucydides’ description of the “Debate at Sparta,” I pointed out that the Corinthian speaker is in a vexed rhetorical situation. Corinth was at war with its former colony Corcyra, and they were fairly evenly matched. If Corinth could get Sparta to take its side, it could win. But there’s no real reason for Sparta to take Corinth’s side—Corcyra isn’t a threat, and it’s all about yet a third city-state (Potidea) in which Sparta has no compelling economic or political interest.

In addition to unnecessary, intervening would be risky. It would be a clear violation of a treaty with the other major power in the Hellenic region—Athens—and it would start war. The outcome of that war was far from obvious, and potentially disastrous. As Archidamus—the Spartan King, and an experienced general—says, it could be a war they would hand on to their children. (They did.)

What makes this debate interesting for us now is that the Corinthian, who has a specific kind of weak case, uses four rhetorical strategies that speakers in that situation often use—a set of strategies that’s usefully called a “politics of identity.” And, while those strategies are often effective, they really shouldn’t be. If the Corinthian actually had a reasonable case, he could have made it in a reasonable way. He couldn’t because he didn’t. Instead, he deflected away from the weakness of his case in the four ways that others with weak cases do—recognizing those strategies can help us make better decisions. Instead of finding a politics of identity compelling, we should recognize it as someone with a weak case.

First, he presented Athens as an existential and inevitable threat. He framed the conflict between them as outside of the realm of pragmatic, contextual, and negotiable policy issues, instead claiming the specific conflicts came from the essentially aggressive and expansionist nature of Athens, and, therefore, it was just a question of time till Athens took over all of Hellas, including Sparta. (That outcome was improbable, at best.)

Since war was inevitable, according to the Corinthian, it was a question of Sparta choosing the most opportune moment to start that war (or allow Athens to start it). He claimed urgency, with no evidence at all. That is, his second move was to make the argument that is now called the “closing window of opportunity” frame for going to war immediately. If we go to war right now, we win; if we let them get stronger we lose.

Third, he tried to shut down all deliberation about the war by saying that the situation was obvious, and there was only one possible solution—his. That is, he argued as though acknowledging the need (Athens’ expansionist nature) necessarily meant agreeing with his plan (joining the Corinth/Corcyra conflict right now on the side of Corinth).

Fourth, he tried to shut down all deliberation through what’s now often called “motivism”—a kind of ad hominem that is surprisingly effective. Motivism follows from the claim that there is only one possible solution. If there is no choice other than the plan he is adopting, why are there people who disagree? And the answer is: because they’re bad people. When rhetors make this move—prohibiting reasonable deliberation by dismissing (rather than engaging) every dissenting voice—they generally do so either through motivism or asserting out-group membership (they’re only disagreeing because they’re cowards, or they’re only disagreeing because they aren’t really in-group). [1]

If each of those moves were effective, then Sparta would go to war immediately, goaded by the Corinthian’s calling them ditherers and cowards.

And I want to emphasize: part of what makes the Corinthian case likely to be simultaneously rhetorically effective and completely unreasonable is that he’s muddled the need and plan. Even were Athens an existential threat, that doesn’t mean that intervening in this conflict right now is a good plan. And, really, how do you show that Athens is essentially and implacably committed to exterminating Sparta? Even assuming that Athens has done everything he says it has (it hadn’t), that doesn’t mean it’s going to be marching on the gates of Sparta (especially since it was a naval power).

But, to the extent that he’s been successful, anyone who stands up and disagrees with him about any point he makes is framed, even before speaking, as a dithering coward blind to the obvious facts.

How does someone get an assembly back on the deliberative track? How can someone redirect from a politics of identity?

One of those ways is through what’s sometimes called identity politics. Archidamus, who was dubious about the Corinthian’s plan, began his speech by refuting the foundational part of the argument—that doing anything other than intervening in Corinth’s squabble was motivated by dilatory slow-footed stupidity if not cowardice. And he does so by pointing out that he’s an experienced general, and that others who share that lived experience probably agree with him.[2] He says it’s important to take your time to deliberate carefully before you get into war, or you might find yourself in one it’s hard to get out of. He says that acting without thinking now means you’ll be able to repent at your leisure (I.84). The Penguin translation puts it: “If you take something on before you are ready for it, hurry at the beginning will mean delay at the end.” He reframes the behavior that the Corinthian tries to frame as dithering (that is, not getting easily provoked) as sophrosyne; that is, temperance, reasonableness, and self-control.

He goes on to propose a counterplan—Sparta should object to Athenian violations of the treaty, build up a war chest, make allies, and prepare for war while trying to make war unnecessary.

One of many serious problems that comes from our tendency to turn every disagreement into “two sides” is that arguments like Archidamus’ are easily dismissed, especially if we talk about disagreements regarding war policies as “pro-“ or “anti-“ war. Archidamus’ position is not “anti-war,” nor was he. His lived experience is a logical refutation of one of the claims the Corinthian was making—that everyone who disagreed with him was a dithering procrastinating coward.

Archidamus’ appealing to his lived experience—his appealing to his own identity—doesn’t end the argument. It’s an attempt to open the argument back up, to bring the community back to deliberation. Appeals to lived experience are datapoints.

It wouldn’t have been a reasonable argument had Archidamus said, “I’m a general, and anyone who disagrees with me knows nothing about war and should be ignored.” Arguments from identity reasonably add to deliberation, and they can refute “all” or “no” statements, but a single lived experience doesn’t reasonably support an “all” or “no” statement. That Archidamus is an experienced military leader doesn’t prove that all experienced military leaders have one position.

The Corinthian speaker tried to hide the extent to which it was a war of choice by deflecting from the pragmatic policy issues (could compromises be reached with Athens, or Corcyra, what would a war with Athens be like) by pretending that this war of choice was a war of self-defense.

That’s a common move. And it’s common to do it the way that the Corinthian speaker did—claim that issue is not a pragmatic issue open to compromise, negotiation, deliberation because there is an Other (in this case Athens) always already at war with Sparta. Pro-slavery rhetors, the Weather Underground, John Muir in the Hetch Hetchy debate, Hitler, Earl Warren about Japanese Americans, Planned Parenthood, and all current GOP rhetors engage(d) in that rhetoric to some degree. In other words, no matter what your policy affiliation or your hall of heroes, you admire someone who deflected from pragmatic policy deliberation by claiming that an enemy determined on our extermination has already declared war, and so we need to stop deliberating. There isn’t an Other who argues badly; there is an Us who reasons badly.

And, even were the Corinthian’s need argument true—even were Athens determined on exterminating Sparta—that doesn’t mean that intervening in the Corinthian/Corcyra conflict at that moment was the only possible response. I’m perfectly willing to grant that both Stalinism and Maoism were disastrously bad, but—even if that’s true—that doesn’t mean that our Vietnam policy was correct. That there is a legitimate, and even urgent, need doesn’t mean that we can’t usefully disagree about the plan.

Identity politics is an approach to policy deliberation that says that who we are—what our identity has meant we’ve experienced—has given us a perspective important for reasonable and ethical deliberation. A politics of identity—what the Corinthian advocated—is profoundly authoritarian. Identity politics—what Archidamus enacted—is profoundly democratic.

Whether he was successful or not is a complicated question, and not really relevant to my point. My point is that a politics of identity says that we are never facing pragmatic questions about how to assess our various policy options in a world of uncertainty. It says that politics is really a zero-sum conflict between identities, and that policy argumentation, let alone the normal practices of democratic policy determination (compromise, mediation, bargaining) are cowardly and/or corrupt submissions to evil. It’s always authoritarian, regardless of where it is on the political spectrum. Identity politics says that who we are matters, and the experiences related to our various identities must be taken into consideration if we are going to come to good decisions. Identity politics is an approach to deliberation that insists on inclusion. It is profoundly democratic.

Who we are, and what we have experienced, and how we see things—what our identity means in terms of our perspective—all of that is crucial to reasonable democratic deliberation. Policy deliberation can’t be either reasonable or democratic if it isn’t informed by the perspectives of the people—perspectives that are different.

Policy deliberation can’t be either reasonable or democratic if we assume that it’s all just a zero-sum battle between two groups.

[1] English is weird. When I say that motivism means we dismiss every single person who disagrees us without engaging their argument, I’m often heard as saying that we have to engage the argument of every single person who disagrees with us. And I’m not saying that. I’m saying that it’s extremely unlikely that there really is only one possible course of action, and so there are almost certainly some good arguments out there that we would do well, as a community, to consider.

[2] Aristotle would probably have characterized it as an appeal to ethos. Since he also said that one of the ways we can argue is appeal to logos, many people—including argument textbooks and teachers of argument—assume that an appeal to ethos is not a logical argument, but that isn’t what Aristotle meant at all. It certainly isn’t how any scholars of argumentation think about the issue. Ethos is a datapoint, and there are more and less reasonable ways of appealing to ethos.



Writing Centers at the Center of Writing. And Democracy.

New Writing Center with bright windows, open spaces
The University Writing Center in the main library at the University of Texas

[This is a slightly longer version of the talk I gave for the 30th Anniversary of the University Writing Center]

Thank you for this celebration, and thank UT for supporting such an extraordinary place as this Writing Center for thirty years—this is it, at the center of the campus, in the midst of one of the best university libraries in the nation, and part of the prestigious Department of Rhetoric and Writing. There are several reasons that this place exists, and that it’s as vibrant and successful as it is.

In no particular order:

The determination on the part of some Writing Center and some University Library staff to make it exist—they worked for at least sixteen years to have a Writing Center in a Learning Commons in the Library, just pushing and pushing, just a continuous force.

Peg Syverson, who hired well, retained well, trained well, created a community of caring and professionalism, who also went around campus generating goodwill, respect, and enthusiasm for what the Writing Center was doing.

The staff she retained and hired, who are kind, collaborative, creative, problem solvers, who nourished everyone they worked with.

lorraine haricombe, who (like me) had the advantage of taking over a position from an effective and respected predecessor, whose very position as a Vice-Provost shows that UT sees the Library as central to the mission of the University. Her support for the Writing Center has been invaluable, but in line with how effective she is.

The DRW has supported the Writing Center in pragmatic and important ways, having the position of Director a tenured faculty member, providing releases for the Director, including it as crucial for long-term planning, but also in day-to-day assistance in crises and brain-storming.

The College of Liberal Arts also supported in pragmatic ways—such as over half a million dollars—and, when I was Director, I knew that, when problems or questions arose, I could get good advice and support from both COLA and the DRW. What makes this Writing Center so special is the way it is pragmatically, institutionally, financially, and genuinely supported.

Here’s a contrast.

Old Army-style bungalow with chalk marks outside the windows


In 1977, when I was a sophomore in college, I applied for a job to work at the Berkeley Writing Center. It was here, in what were called “Temporary Buildings.” They had been built in World War II. A few years after I left, in the late 1980s, Berkeley built a really lovely Writing Center in a central part of campus.

The first UT Writing Center was called a “Writing Lab,” and it was in the basement of Parlin. It went away. When the Division of Rhetoric and Composition was formed, Lester Faigley created the Undergraduate Writing Center, which moved to the Undergraduate Library, and then in 2014 it became the University Writing Center, and moved to spectacular digs in the center of campus and the main floor of the library. That shared narrative of changes in architecture and geography is kind of a metaphor for how people thought about Writing Centers (or Writing Labs as they were also called)—something that was supposed to be a quick fix for a temporary problem came to be seen as central to the mission of the university.

Some of that shift is the consequence of new ways of understanding how universities function, who should attend them, and the relative importance of assessing v. teaching (to put it in simple, if not simplistic, terms, whether we should approach teaching with a fixed or growth mindset). But, I want to suggest something in this talk—that shift also has to do with how we have changed in our thinking about writing, changes that, I’ll suggest, are provocatively similar to changes in how some people argue we should think about democratic deliberation and democracy itself. And both those sets of changes are epitomized in practices in this Writing Centers.

The Berkeley Writing Center, as I was told, originated to serve students who were designated “affirmative action”—that is, students who had been admitted although they did not meet what were supposed to be the minimum GPA or standardized test score critera. When I was there, athletes and affirmative action students (often the same group, for not very good reasons) had priority, but other students could also sign up for tutoring.

Just to hit the point home, the foundational assumption was that there was at that moment a new kind of student who was lacking in something most college students had (or had had up to this point); this was the same time that a new course was created that in credits, name, numbering, staffing, and even department, was very explicitly marked as not really a college course (called Subject A—all other courses had numbers).

The UT Writing Lab, if I understand things correctly, had its origin in a similarly deficiency-based model. The idea was that some students lacked basic “grammar” skills, and so should be drilled in them. The foundational assumption was that methods commonly used to teach English to foreign language speakers would be equally useful for native speakers of English, whose understanding of “grammar” was presumed to be deficient, and that’s why they were “bad” writers.

In other words, there are people who are “Good Writers” and they produce “Good Writing” which uses “Good English,” so, we can transform “Bad” Writers into “Good” ones by drilling them in “the rules of grammar.” But what does that mean?

excessively complicated way of describing what each part in a sentence does


Look, for instance, at this half-page from a nineteenth century handbook on grammar, when they had that same (false) narrative about “grammar” and “good writing” and college. The dominant pedagogy presumed that people couldn’t produce good writing unless they knew the rules of good grammar, and so students were taught to memorize the rules, through drilling and punishment. Interestingly enough, there wasn’t (and isn’t) perfect agreement about what those rules were or are.

There was agreement, however, that people who had “bad” grammar should be shunned and shamed and bemoaned. Doug Hesse directed me to these quotes:

“Everyone who has had much to do with the graduating classes of our best colleges has known men who could not write a letter describing their own commencements without making blunders which would disgrace a boy twelve years old. –Adams S. Hill, Harvard 1878

“It is obviously absurd that the college—the institution of higher education—should be called upon to turn aside from its proper functions and devote its means and the time of its instructors to the task of importing elementary instruction. —Report of the Committee on Composition and Rhetoric, to the Harvard College Board of Overseers, 1892

I also like this passage, from a 19th century book on correct speaking:

Two people being snobs about grammar and accent


Here’s one more example from another 19th century grammar book.



What you may notice is that most of these sentences seem fine. To the extent that there are errors, they are very minor, and don’t interfere with our ability to understand the sentence—except for the “or” rather than “nor” in the first one, it seems to me that most are about what preposition one should use in an idiomatic expression.

So why did this book make such a big deal about idiomatic expressions? One of the important functions of grammar books in the nineteenth century was to reify and justify the stigmatizing of certain dialects, thereby strengthening and rationalizing various existing hierarchies, especially class, ethnicity, region, and race. That approach to teaching grammar and composition enabled a caste system to pretend it was a meritocracy. Insistence on “grammatical correctness” can be profoundly unethical.

When I was in Kansas, there was a controversy over a notification sent out by a water company, informing its users that there were harmful chemicals in the water. The notice was grammatically correct, but deliberately incomprehensible, so that water users wouldn’t panic and demand changes. Grammatical correctness doesn’t guarantee clear communication.

It often, however, signals in-group membership, as in grammatically correct but meaningless mission statements about leveraging synergy.

Trump’s 2020 January 6th speech is grammatically pretty good—I was surprised by that—but only makes sense to people who already agreed with him. It signalled–and inflamed—in-group membership. Grammatical correctness doesn’t prevent demagoguery.

Here’s my point: there is far more disagreement about the conventions of “correct” English than many people realize, and using “correct” English doesn’t necessarily guarantee that the writing is clear or ethical.

When people in my and related fields make this argument, we’re often heard as arguing that we should abandon all conventions, but that isn’t possible. What we’re advocating is that we not assume that there is a thing—“good English”–, let alone that using that “good” English has necessary and necessarily good consequences. What we’re saying is that it has to be up for argument. A lot of people don’t like that attitude because it means that uncertainty is inevitable when it comes to writing, and teaching writing, even about very specific sentence-level choices.

Take, for instance, citation conventions. In some fields, the convention is to list authors in order of prestige rather than degree of contribution; that convention means that the “First Author et al.” convention obscures the contributions of junior scholars, who are often already underrepresented in academia. That convention makes them invisible, which is not necessarily the intention of the individual who writes “et al.”—they’re just trying to stay within a word limit, or finish the damn bibliography. The convention itself has consequences.

So it’s interesting that the rules of citation in many fields have changed—some journals and citation methods require that all authors be listed by name. That’s a rule that changed for ethical reasons. There is debate right now about the convention of citing authors by first initial and last name, and what it does for people with common last names. That’s a good argument to have. We need citation conventions, and we need to argue about them.

The history of any language, including English, is a history of people disagreeing about what the conventions are and should be—and that’s fine. I don’t think we can abandon prescriptivism; calling for banning all forms of prescriptivism is itself a kind of prescriptivism—prescribing and proscribing certain language. But we can argue about what we want to prescribe and proscribe, and stop talking in terms of proper and good. Conventions have consequences, and so they have to be up for argument.

We can, and really should, argue about these questions at conferences, in journals, at Faculty Council meetings, at workshops on teaching writing, but it’s a question a writing consultant faces every time they see a paper that uses a double negative.

In other words: what this Writing Center teaches is that while there are conventions, they are far more variable than people think—by discipline, genre, region, context, era—they have consequences, they must be up for argument, and we should argue about them in terms of whether their consequences are ethical. And authors can make choices about those conventions.

There are two other points I want to make about what happens in a writing center.

I think the most common thing I hear a writing center consultant say is something along the lines of, “I’m not sure what you’re saying here. What do you mean?” At that point, typically, the consultee says something pretty clear, and the consultant says, “Write that down.”

I think that’s interesting.

A friend and colleague refers to “the narcissistic pleasures of the first draft,” and sometimes that’s what happens. But not always. Here’s an early version of a Robert Caro manuscript.

Page from an early version of a Robert Caro book, heavily marked up

I don’t think he felt a lot of narcissistic pleasure. Sometimes writing the first draft feels like pulling one’s own teeth with rusty pliers. I’ve often heard writers say that first draft is just trying to get our ideas outside of our own brain; the second is when we try to make it say what we mean; the third is when we think about it from the perspective of a reader. Note that that isn’t the “outline, draft, polish” chain that is often taught as “the writing process.” And I think, for most writers, it isn’t necessarily a linear process, or only involving one draft at each stage. I tend to have a draft, critique, redraft, critique, revise process that loops back on itself.

For instance, here’s a page from a book that was eventually published, and what you can see is that I spent a lot of time fiddling around at the sentence level before realizing my problem was the argument was wrong. The solution to the sentence-level problems was to go back to “higher order concerns” and rethink my argument.

marked up draft of a book ms


In other words, just as the “rules” for “grammar” are much more context-dependent than many people seem to think, or “grammar” books say, and in many cases there really aren’t rules, but preferences, guidelines, hacks, and canards, it’s the same with writing processes. There aren’t rules, but practices, and we write better when we’re faced with difference.

An idea for a piece of writing can seem so clear while in the shower, or walking a dog, and then we try to put it into words, and it starts to get mucky. Our ideas, when we look at them in writing, often don’t seem quite as brilliant as they sounded in our head, often depending on whether we’re writing for ourselves or imagining an audience. What we say to someone else is often different from what we say to ourselves.

But, sometimes we do fall in love with our own writing, or at least think it’s clear, and then someone says, “I’m not sure what you mean here.” In a way, what Writing Centers provide is what every writer needs—a well-meaning reader who isn’t us, someone who doesn’t already agree with us, but who also isn’t particularly invested in what we’re writing. A well-meaning, but not invested, other person won’t necessarily make the logical jumps or associative slides that we don’t even notice in our beliefs, and so they draw attention to those jumps and slides.

At its best, difference makes us think better because it makes us think about what we take for granted.

This is going on a bit, so I’ll just mention one more aspect of Writing Center practice that’s important. People often want a Writing Center to be a proofreading service, and the good Lord knows I’d love if there were a place I could drop a piece of writing and have someone correct it for me, but that isn’t an educational practice. And, as I said at the beginning, UT is committed in institutional, financial, and geographic ways to a Writing Center that serves the educational mission of the University.

What consultants do is ask questions—that is, instead of telling a consultee about their paper, they’re curious. When asked a question, they’d google the information, show students how to use the library chat function to get help from a reference librarian, get up and check a resource, ask another consultant, get me or Alice—they didn’t present themselves as knowers, but as seekers. They model curiosity.

So, how have Writing Centers changed? They started in geographically marginalized spaces, and at their worst, were seen as temporary fixes oriented toward assimilating deficient people into the good practices of the in-group by teaching and enforcing strict and timeless rules. And they are, and this one is, now central to the University mission, geographically, bureaucratically, institutionally, and financially.

What they teach is that there are conventions, and those conventions have consequences, and they change over time, and we have to think, and argue, about what they do; the uncertainty is inevitable, that difference is not a necessary evil, but an active good—that, as one former director of this writing center likes to say, we think better when we think together–, especially if we think differently. And they teach that curiosity is a virtue, and a skill, that should be nurtured.

My area of specialization is train wrecks in deliberation; what is more formally called “pathologies of deliberation.” And sometimes people have expressed surprise that I would direct a Writing Center, since that seems unrelated to my scholarly interests. But what I believe, and have tried to suggest in this talk, is that the culture and practices of a writing center are the ones that enhance democratic deliberation. Scholars of democracy, and I’m thinking here especially of Jan-Werner Muller, emphasize that “Democratic Rules” as he calls them in his latest book are cultural—they’re practices rather than timeless legal dicta. And crucial for democratic hope are several that I’ve said are part of Writing Center culture: comfort with uncertainty, diversity and pluralism as valued and nurtured qualities, open-ness to new practices and conventions. He favorably quotes Claude LeFort who said that democracy is “founded upon the legitimacy of a debate as to what is legitimate and what is illegitimate—a debate which is necessarily without any guarantee and without any end” (184). And I’m saying that’s what Writing Centers do. Muller says that “democracy dwells in possibility.”

So does this Writing Center. Because of y’all.







What the 431 BCE “Debate at Sparta” can show us about “identity politics” v. “politics of identity”

According to the Greek historian Thucydides, during the “Debate at Sparta” (431 BCE), an un-named Corinthian tried to persuade the city-state of Sparta to get involved in a fight Corinth was having with another city-state, Corcyra.

Why?

Corinth was fighting with Corcyra about yet another city-state, Potidea. Athens and Sparta were the dominant city-states in the Hellenic region. So, both Corinth and Corcyra were trying to get one of the big players to intervene, and the “Debate at Sparta” includes a speech by a Corinthian speaker trying to get Sparta to takes its side. But, if either Sparta or Athens got involved, it would not remain a proxy war–they’d go to war with each other. That war was unnecessary and would be unpredictable–while Sparta was far superior in land troops, the troops couldn’t be gone too long (they feared a slave rebellion), and they were far inferior in terms of naval strength.

The Corinthian speech is important for people now because it exemplifies how a rhetor can use demagoguery to persuade a community to opt for an unnecessary and highly destructive war.

We are in a culture of demagoguery, when normal policy disagreements are treated as battles in an existential war, and we’re in that situation because it’s profitable for media to give rhetors like the Corinthian air time. And ambitious rhetors can get air time by using that kind of demagoguery.

But, back to the debate.

Presumably, here’s the plan: If the Corinthian could get Sparta and Athens to go to war, then Athens would be too busy to take Corcyra’s side (which Athens was seriously considering) if Corinth and Corcyra went to war. It’s as though I wanted to get in a fight with Chester, but I’m afraid that you’ll take Chester’s side and the two of you will kick my ass. If I could get Hubert to start a fight with you, then you won’t be able to get involved in my fight with Chester.

But, here’s the Corinthian’s rhetorical problem. He has a really weak case, so weak that the standard moves of policy argument (what Aristotle would later call “deliberative” rhetoric) wouldn’t work. Thucydides’ History of the Peloponnesian War is largely a book about rhetoric and decision-making. And the admirable leaders, generals, and rhetors in the book all make a similar argument about argument: when we are arguing about policy, we shouldn’t make the issue about the character of our opponent (what Aristotle calls “epideictic”), or the justice or injustice of the situation (appropriate for a courtroom).[1] Deliberation should be about expediency—what are our goals, and what policy(ies) are most likely to enable success?

Here I’m going to get into the weeds a bit, but the important point is that the Corinthian can’t make a reasonable argument claiming that Sparta is faced with an imminent threat from Corcyra, Athens, or Corinth losing its conflict with Corcyra.

Here’s the weeds. It isn’t expedient for Sparta to take Corinth’s side. There’s no particular gain for Sparta, and neither Corcyra nor Athens present an imminent threat to Sparta. Corcyra could win the conflict with Corinth, and it would make no difference for Spartan security. Athens is quite some distance away, not threatening to invade Sparta (which would be improbable). The two were useful allies during the most recent Persian invasion, and they’re oddly balanced—Sparta has a better infantry, and Athens has a better navy. Most important, the Hellenes (what we call the Greeks) only repelled Persia because Athens and Sparta allied against them. Were Athens and Sparta to go to war, Persia would benefit, as it would improve the likelihood that Persia would succeed with its next invasion.

So, since the Corinthian can’t make the argument in reasonable policy terms, he shifts the stasis[2]—that is, he tries to reframe the issue in a way that might enable him to persuade Sparta to make a decision both unnecessary and very risky. What the Corinthian does is make it an issue of implacably opposed identities, an existential battle, rather than a pragmatic question about savvy policy.

He says that the real conflict is not Corinth’s entirely self-serving goal of getting Sparta and Athens to go to war so Corinth can beat Corcyra, but a grand, existential, and inevitable battle between Sparta and Athens. He doesn’t argue that Athens’ actions present an imminent threat (he couldn’t, since they didn’t), but that its identity does. He doesn’t argue that Athens’ policy of expanding threatens Sparta (since it didn’t), but that Athens’ identity as an expansionist city-state did. So, in both cases, he shifts the stasis from actions to identity.

This shift from actions (expanding) to identity (expansionist) is a relatively common rhetorical strategy. It’s a particularly common move when rhetors would have trouble persuading an audience of their case through deliberation. We can deliberate about actions, since we can have evidence about what someone did or didn’t do, and we can use those actions as evidence about what they might do in the future. We can talk usefully about goals (especially if a person or party has said what they are), since stated goals are evidence about what someone will do.

But neither previous actions nor stated goals are proof of what someone or some group will do. People and groups don’t always behave in the same way, and so we often have to figure out which of the past actions and statements are relevant to what they will do now. There are a lot of ways that people try to make that determination, and I’ll mention two.

One is what my father (an expert on arteriosclerosis) called “hardening of the categories.” By that, he meant people who believed that every aspect of the world can be put into a Linneaus-like (or Ramistic, if you know your rhetoric) tree of discrete and binary categories. A person (or group, or nation) is either pacific or aggressive, rational or irrational. If you think of individuals or groups this way, then you look at what they’ve done and try to put them into the pacific or aggressive box, and then make your policy decisions. You’ve decided that they’re really aggressive or passive or whatever, and all the disconfirming data can be dismissed. This strategy of prediction doesn’t make the situation any less uncertain, but it can give people the feeling of certainty because it makes the situation more stark. It deflects or hides the inherent uncertainty to any political act.

The other method I want to mention says that people have tendencies, but context matters. They tend to be aggressive under these circumstances, not under those. This way of predicting behavior is more complicated than the first, and it includes rather than deflects uncertainty–that the relationship between Athens and Sparta is a conflict of essential identity.

The Corinthian makes the first kind of argument. The Athenians are, he says, aggressive, brave, risk-takers. Like many demagogues, he includes a little shaming. Spartans have declined to get involved in Hellenic issues (probably because of the problem their version of slavery brought them), and he says they procrastinate. It’s a politics of identity, in which city-states make decisions not because of advantages, disadvantages, policy options, contextual constraints, compromises, but because behavior is determined by identity.

If you know anything about policy argumentation, then you know that rational policy argumentation first means identifying the “ill.” What is the problem we’re trying to solve? So, what is the problem for the Corinthian?

It’s the war with Corcyra. That isn’t a compelling problem for Sparta, so the shift to identity enables the Corinthian to redefine the problem. It also redefines the solution. If the problem is the identity of the Athenians, and it’s their essential identity, then the Corinthian is advocating a war of extermination.

This is a politics of identity. This is always a politics of extermination.


[1] This point is a major part of the speech Diodotus gives in a debate about genocide. Diodotus is almost certainly a fabrication of Thucydides.

[2] “Stasis” means place or hinge. What some people now call “stasis theory” is a modification of something Cicero said, and it’s one way to categorize stases. It’s much less useful and accurate than it might appear. It isn’t what I mean.

Sapphira the blue-eyed dragon

siamese cat looking at camera

I often say that dogs are a lesson in unconditional love, and cats are a lesson in very conditional love.

Having pets in your household can mean a lot of things, and it does not necessarily mean having pets in your family. It can mean having beings who make you feel good about who you are because they love you so much.

Then there are Siamese cats.

My first and second cats were Siamese, and I loved them. They were just cats. One of them was very talkative, and had a particular way of telling me that he wanted a glass of water. (There was lots of water available, but he liked me pouring him a glass of water. That seemed reasonable to me. When I went off to college, my mother was not happy about his expectations.)

When we moved into this house we’d lost a couple of cats because of asshole neighbors in Cedar Park who let their dogs run free—those dogs killed cats and small dogs. Those dogs killed two of our cats. If St. Peter really is a gatekeeper to heaven, and really does ask that we explain why we deserve to go to heaven, I will point out that I did not take a baseball bat to the owner of those dogs.

We moved to a house on a busy street, and one of our cats was one-eyed, so we wanted to keep them inside. Jim built a catio (we didn’t know that was a thing)—a way for the cats to go outside and yet be in an enclosed space. (If memory serves, he initially used a structure he built so that I could try to grow kale and keep it from squirrels.)

After we moved here, our munchkin and I wanted a third cat. Around this time of the year in 2006 (or 2007?), we went to various cat rescue places to get a cat. Turns out that this is not a time of year when there are a lot of kittens up for adoption, but there was a Siamese of indeterminate age. (Definitely not more than a year, but how far under that was unclear.) She was affectionate, and just absolutely beautiful. I was puzzled as to why anyone would give her up. Our munchkin had been reading the Eregon series, and so she was named after a blue-eyed dragon.

And she was a Siamese, the kind I’d never had. She hated being picked up. She liked being around people, while in her own space. She would, at her will, come over to someone and get petted, perhaps even climbing onto a lap. Then, she was incredibly affectionate, as long there was no move made to hold her. When she wanted affection, she asked for it. Otherwise, she was not to be touched. As the catio got more elaborate (it now has three stages), she was clear about what part of it was hers.

When we moved to this house, we decided our cats would be purely indoor. We live on a busy street, a short distance from a creek that is a coyote highway—it’s just too dangerous. Every once in a while—because our house is built on clay that’s on limestone—the house shifts in such a way that doors don’t really close. That happened after we got back after seeing a play one evening, so it was late (for us). We realized she’d gotten outside. We caught glimpses of her behind the ac unit, and then in some bushes, and spent over 45 minutes crawling in bushes, trying to chivvy her to an open door. At some point, while crawling around, one of us looked up and saw her sitting in a window watching us, mildly interested. She was on the inside of the window. She’d long since taken advantage of one of the open doors.

Her space was the porch. A friend gave us a beautiful Morris chair, and we put it on the porch. She claimed it. When we went onto the porch (which we do a lot), she’d come and get scritches, and then go back to her chair, once she’d gotten what she wanted. She went blind about two years ago, and she stopped joining us for morning cuddles, but otherwise behaved no differently. She still went into her catio, made her way to the litterbox, checked in with us (as though she was granting us the pleasure of petting her) when we were on the porch, chivvied dogs off of any space she wanted, and was just the cat she wanted to be.

Shortly after we got her, I felt bad, and thought maybe we were the wrong family for her. I imagined that maybe her ideal home was a little old lady who had her as their only cat, and that we were failing her because there were other animals. I eventually came to think we were the perfect family for her. No one fucked with her. She got affection when she wanted it, hung out on the catio watching birds and squirrels when she wanted, claimed the most comfortable chair in the house.

I came to admire her clear sense of boundaries, her ability to ask for what she wanted, her clear sense of dignity, and her treating blindness as a minor issue. She really was a blue-eyed dragon.