Constituting Democracy in Rhetorical Discourse

CMCL C612, AMST G620, CULS C701

 

Robert Ivie, Professor

 

Monday, 4:00-6:30 p.m.

800 East Seventh Street, Room 272

 

Course Outline

Spring 2010

 

 

 

The Problem Addressed

 

Democracy is a troubled term within the context of U.S. political culture, where it is embedded in a discourse of liberal democracy.  The question before us is:  What does and can this troubled term mean, and why does democracy matter as an expression of national identity? 

 

We will approach this compound question by examining democracy as a rhetorical construction, i.e., as a cultural persuasion with its own history and trajectory and a discursive formation consisting of various commonplaces, tropes, myths, and rituals.  The rhetorical formation of democracy is relatively stable but subject to critical reflection and transformation.

 

As a term of national identity, unfettered democracy signifies danger.  It is represented as both dangerous and endangered and therefore subject to containment, which inclines the political culture toward a democratic deficit.  The standard depiction of democracy as fragile, volatile, and distempered alienates citizens from politics, rationalizes the rule of elites, and contributes to a culture of fear and antagonism under conditions of pluralism exacerbated by globalization and multiculturalism. 

 

To address these tensions and the problem of political alienation, we will focus on the subject of public deliberation and interrelated considerations of citizenship, civil society, the public sphere, and dissent.  We cannot cover all the issues of political culture related to democracy, but we can open the discussion to a continuing investigation of its rhetorical dimensions and implications. 

 

Each of us should begin this course of reading, discussion, and writing by identifying our critical interest in a study of democracy and its rhetorical construction.  My own guiding concern, for purposes of cultural critique, is with confronting the caricature of democracy that haunts U.S. political culture and assumes the face of the enemy.  What is your critical interest in the discourse of democracy? 

 

To address the question of what democracy means as an articulation of national identity, we will discuss a set of common readings, review selected books, and (consistent with class members’ critical interests) write article-length papers on democracy as a rhetorical discourse and cultural resource.  

 

 

Schedule of Readings, Papers, and Presentations

 

Note:  Please complete readings prior to the class meeting for which they are designated.

 

1/11     Key Terms and Tensions:

 

Zakaria, “The Democratic Age,” 13-27.

Barber, “Liberal Democracy and the Cost of Consent,” 3-18.

Gutmann, “Democracy,” 411-421.

Ryan, “Liberalism,” 291-311.

Pennock, Democratic Political Theory, 3-58.

Taylor, “Invoking Civil Society,” 66-77.

Habermas, “The Public Sphere,” 105-108.

Aune, “Democratic Style and Ideological Containment,” 482-490.

Engels, “Democratic Alienation,” 471-481.

 

Discussion leader:  Ivie

 

1/18     Martin Luther King, Jr. Day:  no class

 

1/25    

Hanson, The Democratic Imagination in America, 3-120.

Bentley, “Rhetorical Democracy,” 115-134.

 

Discussion leaders: 

 

2/1      

Ivie, Democracy and America’s War on Terror, 10-91.

Ivie, “Democratic Dissent and the Trick of Rhetorical Critique,” 276-293.

Ivie, “Prologue to Democratic Dissent in America,” 19-35.

Ivie and Giner, “Hunting the Devil:  Democracy’s Rhetorical Impulse to War,” 580-598.

 

Discussion leader:  Ivie

 

Book Review Presentations: 

 

2/8      

Hauser, Vernacular Voices, 1-110.

Hauser, “Civil Society and the Principle of the Public Sphere,” 19-40.

Hauser and Benoit-Barne, “Reflections on Rhetoric, Deliberative Democracy, Civil  Society, and Trust,” 261-275.

 

Discussion leaders: 

 

Book Review Presentations: 

 

2/15    

Barber, Strong Democracy, 3-25, 117-138.

Walton, “Criteria of Rationality for Evaluating Democratic Public Rhetoric,” 295-330.

Mouffe, “For an Agonistic Model of Democracy,” 113-130.

Mouffe, “Democracy, Power, and the ‘Political,’” 245-256.

 

Discussion leaders: 

 

Book Review Presentations: 

 

2/22    

Bessett, The Mild Voice of Reason, 1-66, 212-246.

Young, “Communication and the Other:  Beyond Deliberative Democracy,” 120-135.

Kurtz, “’How is it that ye do not discern this time?’:  Public Faith, Moral Conflict, and the Recovery of Rhetorical Democracy,” 111-134.

 

Discussion leaders: 

 

Book Review Presentations: 

 

3/1       Paper proposals due

 

Habermas, “Three Normative Models of Democracy,” 21-30.

Cohen, “Deliberation and Democratic Legitimacy,” 143-155.

Murphy, “Deliberative Democracy and the Public Sphere:  Answer or Anachronism?” 213-237. 

Hicks, “The Promise(s) of Deliberative Democracy,” 223-260.        

Welsh,” Deliberative Democracy and the Rhetorical Production of Political Culture,” 679-708.

 

Discussion leaders: 

 

Book Review Presentations:  

 

3/8      

Dryzek, Deliberative Democracy and Beyond, 1-56. 

Polletta  & Lee, “Is Telling Stories Good for Democracy:  Rhetoric in Public Deliberation after 9/11,” 699-723.

Keith, “Democratic Revival and the Promise of Cyberspace:  Lessons from the Forum Movement,” 311-326.

 

Discussion leaders: 

 

Book Review Presentations: 

 

3/15     Spring Break:  no class

 

3/22    

McAfee, “Habermas on Citizens and Politics,” 81-101.

Habermas, “Popular Sovereignty as Procedure,” 35-65.

d’Entrèves, “Hannah Arendt and the Idea of Citizenship,” 145-168.

Villa, “Postmodernism and the Public Sphere,” 227-248.

Asen, “A Discourse Theory of Citizenship,” 189-211.

 

Discussion leaders: 

 

Book Review Presentations: 

                       

3/29    

Sinekopova, “Building the Public Sphere:  Bases and Biases,” 505-522.

Asen, “Imagining in the Public Sphere,” 345-367

Loehwing & Motter, “Publics, Counterpublics, and the Promise of Democracy,” 220-241.

Phillips, “The Spaces of Public Dissension:  Reconsidering the Public Sphere,” 231- 248.

Splichal, “In Search of a Strong European Public Sphere,” 695-714.

 

Discussion leaders: 

 

Book Review Presentations: 

 

4/5

            Rawls, “The Domain of the Political and Overlapping Consensus,” 273-287.

            Rawls, “The Idea of Public Reason,” 93-141.

            Simonson, “Dreams of Democratic Togetherness,,” 324-342.

            Murphy, “Romantic Democracy and the Rhetoric of Heroic Citizenship,” 192-208.           

            Walzer, “The Civil Society Argument,” 89-107.

 

            Discussion leaders: 

 

4/12

            Wolin, “Fugitive Democracy,” 31-45.

            Tabako, “Irony as a Pro-Democracy Trope:  Europe’s Last Comic Revolution,” 23-53.

            Murphy, “Deliberative Civic Education and Civil Society,” 74-91.

            Goldzwig, “Demagoguery, Democratic Dissent, and ‘Re-visioning’ Democracy,” 471-478.

            Doxtader, “Characters in the Middle of Public Life:  Consensus, Dissent, and Ethos,” 336-369.

            Crick, “The Rhetorical Singularity,” 370-387.

 

            Discussion leaders: 

 

 

4/19     Final Presentations (abstracts due 48 hours before class presentation; papers due day of presentation)

 

4/26     Final Presentations (abstracts due 48 hours before class presentation; papers due day of presentation)

 

 

Assignments

 

1.      Weekly discussion and discussion leadership.  Three class members will serve as discussion leaders for each class meeting, each class member serving as a discussion leader twice during the semester (once by March 1 and once March 8 or after).  A signup sheet will be distributed in class.  (25%)

 

2.      Written synopsis (1,000 words) and written assessment (500 words) of a “book for individual review” from course list:  paper and 12-minute presentation.   Each class member will review a different book.  A sign-up sheet will be distributed in class.  Upload the synopsis to Oncourse 48 hours before your presentation.  The assessment is due the day of your presentation.  (25%)

 

3.      Term paper:  proposal (500 words), abstract (200 words), paper (7,000 words), and 12-minute presentation.  This paper, which addresses your critical interest in democracy, should draw thoroughly on the common readings and selectively on the books for individual review.  It may also bring into the discussion additional writings on democracy beyond the course bibliography, but those additional writings do not substitute for the readings from the course bibliography. Upload the abstract to Oncourse 48 hours  before your presentation.  Turn in your paper the day of the presentation.  A signup sheet for presentation dates will be distributed in class. (50%)

 

 

Common Readings on Democracy

 

Robert Asen, “A Discourse Theory of Citizenship,” Quarterly Journal of Speech 90.2 (May 2004):  189-211.

 

Robert Asen, “Imagining in the Public Sphere,” Philosophy and Rhetoric 34.4 (2002):  345-367.

 

James Arnt Aune, “Democratic Style and Ideological Containment,” Rhetoric and Public Affairs 11.3 (Fall 2008): 482-490.

 

Benjamin R. Barber, “Liberal Democracy and the Costs of Consent,” in A Passion for Democracy:  American Essays (Princeton, New Jersey:  Princeton University Press, 1998), 4-18.

 

Benjamin Barber, Strong Democracy:  Participatory Politics for a New Age (Berkeley:  University of California Press, 1984), 3-25, 117-138. 

 

Russell Bentley, “Rhetorical Democracy,” in Talking Democracy: Historical Perspectives on Rhetoric and Democracy, ed. Benedetto Fontana, Cary J. Nederman, and Gary Remer (University Park:  Pennsylvania State University Press, 2004), 115-134.

 

Joseph M. Bessett, The Mild Voice of Reason:  Deliberative Democracy and American National Government (Chicago:  University of Chicago Press, 1994), 1-66, 212-246.

 

Joshua Cohen, “Deliberation and Democratic Legitimacy,” in Contemporary Political Philosophy:  An Anthology, ed. Robert E. Goodin and Philip Pettit (Malden, Massachusetts:  Blackwell, 1997), 143-155.

 

Nathan Crick, “The Rhetorical Singularity,” Rhetoric Review 28.4 (2009):  370-387.

 

Maurizio Passerin d’Entrèves, “Hannah Arendt and the Idea of Citizenship,” in Dimensions of Radical Democracy:  Pluralism, Citizenship, Community, ed. Chantal Mouffe, (London:  Verso, 1992), 145-168.

 

Erik W. Doxtader, “Characters in the Middle of Public Life:  Consensus, Dissent, and Ethos,” Philosophy and Rhetoric 33.4 (2000): 336-369.

 

John S. Dryzek, Deliberative Democracy and Beyond:  Liberals, Critics, Contestations (Oxford:  Oxford University Press, 2000), 1-56. 

 

Jeremy Engels, “Democratic Alienation,” Rhetoric and Public Affairs 11.3 (Fall 2008): 471-481.

 

Steven R. Goldzwig, “”Demagoguery, Democratic Dissent, and ‘Re-visioning’ Democracy,” Rhetoric and Public Affairs 9.3 (Fall 2006): 471-478.

 

Amy Gutmann, “Democracy,” in A Companion to Contemporary Political Philosophy, ed. Robert E. Goodin and Philip Pettit (Oxford:  Blackwell, 1993), 411-421.

 

Jürgen Habermas, “Popular Sovereignty as Procedure,” in Deliberative Democracy:  Essay on Reason and Politics, ed. James Bohman and William Rehg (Cambridge, Massachusetts:  MIT Press, 1997), 35-65.

 

Jürgen Habermas, “The Public Sphere,” in Contemporary Political Philosophy:  An Anthology, ed. Robert E. Goodin and Philip Pettit (Malden, Massachusetts:  Blackwell, 1997), 105-108.

 

Jürgen Habermas, “Three Normative Models of Democracy,” in Democracy and Difference:  Contesting the Boundaries of the Political, ed. Seyla Benhabib, (Princeton, New Jersey:  Princeton University Press, 1996), 21-30.

 

Russell L. Hanson, The Democratic Imagination in America (Princeton, NJ:  Princeton University Press, 1985), 3-120.

 

Gerard Hauser, “Civil Society and the Principle of the Public Sphere,” Philosophy and Rhetoric 31.1 (1998):  19-40.

 

Gerard A. Hauser, Vernacular Voices:  The Rhetoric of Publics and Public Spheres (Columbia:  University of South Carolina Press, 1999), 1-110.

 

Gerard Hauser and Chantal Benoit-Barne, “Reflections on Rhetoric, Deliberative Democracy, Civil Society, and Trust,” Rhetoric and Public Affairs 5.2 (Summer 2002):  261-275.

 

Darrin Hicks, “The Promise(s) of Deliberative Democracy,” Rhetoric and Public Affairs 5.2 (Summer 2002): 223-260.

 

Robert L. Ivie, Democracy and America’s War on Terror (Tuscaloosa:  University of Alabama Press, 2005), 10-91.

 

Robert L. Ivie, “Democratic Dissent and the Trick of Rhetorical Critique,” Cultural Studies/Critical Methodologies 5.3 (August 2005): 276-293.

 

Robert L. Ivie, “Prologue to Democratic Dissent in America,” JavnostThe Public 11.2 (2004):  19-35.

 

Robert L. Ivie and Oscar Giner, “Hunting the Devil:  Democracy’s Rhetorical Impulse to War,” Presidential Studies Quarterly 37.4 (December 2007):  580-598.

 

William Keith, “Democratic Revival and the Promise of Cyberspace:  Lessons from the Forum Movement,” Rhetoric and Public Affairs 5.2 (Summer 2002):  311-326.

 

Jeffrey B. Kurtz, “’How is it that ye do not discern this time?’:  Public Faith, Moral Conflict, and the Recovery of Rhetorical Democracy,” Journal of Communication and Religion 32.1 (March 2009):  111-134.

 

Melanie Loehwing and Jeff Motter, “Publics, Counterpublics, and the Promise of Democracy,” Philosophy and Rhetoric 42.3 (2009): 220-241.

 

Noёlle McAfee, “Habermas on Citizens and Politics,” Habermas, Kristeva, and Citizenship (Ithaca, New York:  Cornell University Press, 2000), 81-101.

 

Chantal Mouffe, “For an Agonistic Model of Democracy,” in Political Theory in Transition, ed. Noёl O’Sullivan (London:  Routledge, 2000), 113-130.

 

Chantal Mouffe, “Democracy, Power, and the ‘Political,’” in Democracy and Difference:  Contesting the Boundaries of the Political , ed. Seyla Benhabib (Princeton, NJ:  Princeton University Press, 1996), 245-256.

 

Thomas Murphy, “Deliberative Democracy and the Public Sphere:  Answer or Anachronism?” in Talking Democracy: Historical Perspectives on Rhetoric and Democracy, ed. Benedetto Fontana, Cary J. Nederman, and Gary Remer (University Park:  Pennsylvania State University Press, 2004), 213-237. 

 

Troy A. Murphy, “Deliberative Civic Education and Civil Society:  A Consideration of Ideals and Actualities in Democracy and Communication Education,” Communication Education 53.1 (January 2004): 74-91.

 

Troy A. Murphy, “Romantic Democracy and the Rhetoric of Heroic Citizenship,” Communication Quarterly 51.2 (Spring 2003): 192-208.

 

J. Roland Pennock, Democratic Political Theory (Princeton, NJ:  Princeton University Press, 1979), 3-120.

 

Kendall R. Phillips, “The Spaces of Public Dissension:  Reconsidering the Public Sphere,” Communication Monographs 63.3 (September 1996):  231-248.

 

Francesca Polletta and John Lee, “Is Telling Stories Good for Democracy:  Rhetoric in Public Deliberation after 9/11,” American Sociological Review 71.5 (October 2006):  699-723.

 

John Rawls, “The Domain of the Political and Overlapping Consensus,” in Contemporary Political Philosophy:  An Anthology, ed. Robert E. Goodin and Philip Pettit (Malden, Massachusetts:  Blackwell, 1997), 273-287.

 

John Rawls, “The Idea of Public Reason,” in Deliberative Democracy:  Essay on Reason and Politics, ed. James Bohman and William Rehg (Cambridge, Massachusetts:  MIT Press, 1997), 93-141.

 

Alan Ryan, “Liberalism,” in A Companion to Contemporary Political Philosophy, ed. Robert E. Goodin and Philip Pettit (Oxford:  Blackwell, 1993), 291-311.

 

Peter Simonson, “Dreams of Democratic Togetherness:  Communication Hope from Cooley to Katz,” Critical Studies in Mass Communication 13.4 (1996): 324-342.

 

Galina V. Sinekopova, “Building the Public Sphere:  Bases and Biases,” Journal of Communication 56.1 (September 2006): 505-522.

 

Slavko Splichal, “In Search of a Strong European Public Sphere:  Some Critical Observations on Conceptualizations of Publicness and the (European) Public Sphere,” Media, Culture and Society 25.5 (2006):  695-714.

 

Charles Taylor, “Invoking Civil Society,” in Contemporary Political Philosophy:  An Anthology, ed. Robert E. Goodin and Philip Pettit (Malden, Massachusetts:  Blackwell, 1997), 66-77.

 

Tomasz Tabako, “Irony as a Pro-Democracy Trope:  Europe’s Last Comic Revolution,” Controversia 5.2 (Summer 2007): 23-53.

 

Dana R. Villa, “Postmodernism and the Public Sphere,” in Rhetorical Republic:  Governing Representations in American Polities, ed. Frederick M. Dolan and Thomas L. Dumm (Amherst:  University of Massachusetts Press, 1993), 227-248.

 

Douglas Walton, “Criteria of Rationality for Evaluating Democratic Public Rhetoric,” in Talking Democracy: Historical Perspectives on Rhetoric and Democracy, ed. Benedetto Fontana, Cary J. Nederman, and Gary Remer (University Park:  Pennsylvania State University Press, 2004), 295-330.

 

Michael Walzer, “The Civil Society Argument,” in Dimensions of Radical Democracy:  Pluralism, Citizenship, Community, ed. Chantal Mouffe (London:  Verso, 1992), 89-107.

 

Scott Welsh,” Deliberative Democracy and the Rhetorical Production of Political Culture,” Rhetoric and Public Affairs 5.4 (Winter 2002): 679-708.

 

Sheldon Wolin, “Fugitive Democracy,” in Democracy and Difference:  Contesting the Boundaries of the Political , ed. Seyla Benhabib (Princeton, NJ:  Princeton University Press, 1996), 31-45.

 

Iris Marion Young, “Communication and the Other:  Beyond Deliberative Democracy,” in Democracy and Difference:  Contesting the Boundaries of the Political , ed. Seyla Benhabib (Princeton, NJ:  Princeton University Press, 1996), 120-135.

 

Fareed Zakaria, “The Democratic Age,” The Future of Freedom:  Illiberal Democracy at Home and Abroad (2003:  New York:  W.W. Norton, 2007), 13-27.

 

 

Books for Individual Review

 

Danielle S. Allen, Talking to Strangers:  Anxieties of Citizenship since Brown v. Board of Education (Chicago:  University of Chicago Press, 2004).

 

Ronald Blieker, Popular Dissent, Human Agency and Global Politics (Cambridge:  Cambridge University Press, 2000).

 

James Bohman, Public Deliberation:  Pluralism, Complexity, and Democracy (Cambridge, Massachusetts:  MIT Press, 1996).

 

William R. Caspary, Dewey on Democracy (Ithaca, New York:  Cornell University Press, 2000).

 

Jean L. Cohen and Andrew Arato, Civil Society and Political Theory (Cambridge, Massachusetts:  MIT Press, 1992).

 

William E. Connolly, Pluralism (Durham, NC:  Duke University Press, 2005).

 

Peter Dahlgren, Media and Political Engagement:  Citizens, Communication, and Democracy (New York:  Cambridge University Press, 2009).

 

Robert Danisch, Pragmatism, Democracy, and the Necessity of Rhetoric (Columbia:  University of South Carolina Press, 2007).

 

John Dewey, The Public and Its Problems (1927; Athens, Ohio:  Swallow Press/Ohio Univesity Press, 1991).

 

John Ehrenberg, Civil Society:  The Critical History of an Idea (New York:  New York University Press, 1999). 

 

Eric Foner, The Story of American Freedom (New York:  W.W. Norton and Co., 1998).

 

Bryan Garsten, Saving Persuasion:  A Defense of Rhetoric and Judgment (Cambridge, Massachusetts:  Harvard University Press, 2009).

 

Jürgen Habermas, Between Facts and Norms:  Contributions to a Discourse Theory of Law and Democracy, trans. William Rehg (Cambridge, Massachusetts:  The MIT Press, 1996).

 

Bonnie Honig, Democracy and the Foreigner (Princeton, NJ:  Princeton University Press, 2001).

 

John Keane, The Life and Death of Democracy (New York:  W.W. Norton and Co., 2009).

 

William M. Keith, Democracy as Discussion:  Civic Education and the American Forum Movement (Lanham, Maryland: Rowman and Littlefield, 2007).

 

Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe, Hegemony and Socialist Strategy:  Towards a Radical Democratic Politics, 2nd ed. (London:  Verso, 2001). 

 

Kevin Mattson, Creating a Democratic Public:  The Struggle for Urban Participatory Democracy During the Progressive Era (University Park:  Pennsylvania State University Press, 1998).

 

Joshua L. Miller, Democratic Temperament:  The Legacy of William James (Lawrence:  University Press of Kansas, 1997).

 

Chantal Mouffe, On the Political (London:  Routledge, 2005).

 

Josiah Ober, Mass and Elite in Democratic Athens:  Rhetoric, Ideology, and the Power of the People (Princeton, New Jersey:  Princeton University Press, 1989).

 

Anne Phillips, Democracy and Difference  (University Park:  Pennsylvania State University, 1993).

 

John Rawls, Political Liberalism (New York:  Columbia University Press, 1993).

 

Michael J. Sandel, Democracy's Discontent: America in Search of a Public Philosophy (Cambridge, Massachusetts: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1996).

 

Michael Schudson, The Good Citizen:  A History of American Civic Life (Cambridge, Massachusetts:  Harvard University Press, 1998).

 

Steven Shiffrin, The First Amendment, Democracy, and Romance (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1990).

 

Alain Touraine, What is Democracy? Trans. David Macey (Boulder, Colorado:  Westview Press, 1998).

 

Cornel West, Democracy Matters:  Winning the Fight against Imperialism (New York:  Penguin Press, 2004).

 

Robert H. Wiebe, Self-Rule:  A Cultural History of American Democracy (Chicago:  University of Chicago Press, 1995).

 

Sean Wilentz, The Rise of American Democracy:  Jefferson to Lincoln (New York:  W.W. Norton and Co., 2005).

 

Charles Arthur Willard, Liberalism and the Problem of Knowledge: A New Rhetoric for Modern Democracy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996).

 

Iris Marion Young, Inclusion and Democracy (Oxford:  Oxford University Press, 2000).

 

 

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