Friend Inclusion

8/12/2019 Friend Inclusion

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Reviews

Inclusion and Democracy, Iris Marion Young (New York: Oxford UP,2001.304 pages).Reviewed by Christy Friend, University of South Carolina the introduction to Inclusion and Democracy, feminist political philosopher Iris Marion Young laments that we live in a paradoxicalhistorical moment when nearly everyone favours democracy, but apparently few believe that democratic governance can do anything. Democratic process seems to paralyse policymaking rather than effectingchange. Young s remark echoes exactly the kinds of frustrations voicedin ameeting ofmy department s service-learning instructors last month.Well versed in approaches to critical pedagogy and excited about teaching courses that connect students with the larger community, most of usnonetheless felt stymied by the difficulties we and our students had facedin trying to enter public processes fraught with bureaucratic obstacles,limited resources, exclusions, and indifference. No one in the group wasready to abandon the ideal of civic participation (although some of ourstudents undoubtedly were), but we wished we had begun the semesterwith abetter idea of what we were getting ourselves and our students into.My colleagues and I are not alone. As the notion that college writingcourses should engage students with community issues becomes widelyaccepted in our field, rhetoric and composition specialists are increasingly seeking scholarship that will help them understand the broad social,institutional, and political structures that shape public discussion.Serendipitously, this trend has developed at the same time that politicaltheorists and philosophers-the group of scholars concerned with describing such structures-are showing renewed interest in communicative processes. Inclusion and Democracy is one of the most recent andmost evocative contributions to this movement in political thought. Thebook contributes to discussions in our field on two levels: for practitioners, it offers valuable descriptions of the broader contexts within which

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450 jaepublic debate operates; at the same time, it works on a theoretical level toexpand the traditional scope of political models to incorporate explicitlyrhetorical concerns. .

Young-along with Benjamin Barber, Jurgen Habermas, NancyFraser, and others-is one of a group of theorists who subscribe to adeliberative view ofdemocracy, which, unlike traditional aggregativemodels focused on competition among individual interests and thecorresponding distribution of goods, holds that democracy is mostfundamentally a set of deliberative practices by which people negotiatein order to solve public problems. In this view, democracy is all aboutpersuasion. Young s contribution to this school of thought has centeredon examining what constitutes ethical democratic practices, drawinginsights from feminist and postmodem social theories of difference.

Inclusion and emocracy she seeks to articulate a democraticideal of inclusion: the principle that in a democracy all those affected bya policy should be included in the decision-making processes andshould have the opportunity to influence the outcomes. The book sseven chapters explore three overlapping dimensions of inclusion: thefirst three consider what norms and conditions should guide inclusivepublic discussion; the next two discuss which processes of representationand association are most inclusive; and the last two consider how thescope of the polity should be defined when decision-making affectsmultiple jurisdictions and communities. All but one of the chapters havebeen previously published in some form, but most are so substantiallyrevised that even faithful readers af Young s work will find plenty of newmaterial. Novices to political theory will also find the book accessible,since Young grounds her discussions in clear definitions ofkey terms andcareful accounts of competing views.The book s first three chapters are the most interesting from theperspective of rhetorical theory because they take up the project ofincorporating traditionally rhetorical considerations into political models of democracy. Chapter 1, Democracy and Justice, lays compellingethical groundwork for this interdisciplinary move. Here, Young drawson Jean-Francois Lyotard s concept of the differend to critique existingtheories of deliberative democracy for their tendency to assume thatpublic deliberation is limited to formal arguments presented in officialstate forums. She points out that foregrounding the role of formalargumentation privileges the contributions of highly educated speakers,falsely assumes the existence of shared premises in public disputes, andemphasizes consensus at the expense of difference. Thus, meeting the


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Reviews 451ethical norm of maximum inclusion requires a broader account of thevarious shapes public discourse can take.

Chapter 2, Inclusive Political Communication, constructsjust suchan account. In addition to formal argument, Young identifies three modesof communication as especially important to promoting inclusion: greet-ing which she defines as communicative gestures in which peopleacknowledge one another in their particularity and which serve inpublicforums to recognize and promote respect for all those who should beincluded in the debate ; rhetoric characterized as the way content isconveyed as distinct from the assertive value of the content, includingtone, figurative language, and the use of nonverbal media. (Becauserhetoric involves attention to audience and occasion, its use can help getissues on the agenda for deliberation and help to motivate politicalaction.); narratives on the other hand, are important devices for givingvoice to the kinds of experience which often go unheard in legaldiscussions and courtroom settings.

Chapter 3, Social Difference asPolitical Resource, further justifiesthe importance of these alternate modes of expression by elaborating howparticular social structures and positions influence public debate. In anargument that extends the stance she takes in her earlier book Justice andthe Politics of ifference (Princeton UP, 1990), Young refutes scholarswho fear that public discussions that foreground difference will becomemired in divisive identity politics rather than work toward the commongood. She maintains that the recognition of social differences-especially structural differences that affect people s opportunities for selfdevelopment and self-determination-actually serves positive politicalpurposes. Citing a range of relevant examples, Young argues convincingly that, to the degree that democratic justice involves coordinatingdiverse goods and interests across a shifting terrain of group identifications and needs, recognition of difference is a necessary condition ofinclusive decision-making.

Yet, precisely because they venture into familiar theoretical anddisciplinary terrain, I find Young s formulations in these first threechapters not only provocative and valuable, but also problematic. WhileI m excited to see a political theorist embrace rhetoric as a key dimensionof democratic process, Young s sense of what rhetoric involves seemsat times too limited and at times amorphous. Rhetoric fits awkwardly intoYoung s categories of communication modes, the other three of whichare genres (argument, narrative, greeting). Recognizing that rhetoric isnot exactly a genre, Young explains it as the emotional and stylistic


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452 jflourishes that can be added to statements in any genre-a definition thatsuggests a Platonic separation of rhetoric and truth that seems a bit of ananachronism in a book that s otherwise so thoroughly grounded inpostmodem suspicion of these sorts of binaries. At several points, Youngdoes suggest a wider purview for rhetoric, admitting that her categoriesoverlap, that no statement is entirely arhetorical, and even consigningseveral kinds of activity-including the use of visual imagery and massprotest-entirely to rhetoric. Yet, these broader connections are neverexplored. For readers in our field who are steeped in a theoreticallandscape that sees rhetoric as the rich and diverse persuasive influences at work in all discourse, Young s account of rhetoric may seemthin and uneven.As Young pursues this important line of thought, I hope that she willcontinue to think through the nature and scope of her categories and theinterrelations among them, particularly in relation to rhetoric s place inthe schema. Such rethinking might involve drawing on a wider spectrumof resources from our field. Kenneth Burke, for example, has much to sayabout the rhetorical functions served by greetings and other epideicticrituals, andWalter Fisher convincingly documents the fact that narrativeswield persuasive force. Such sources could supplement and enrich therelatively few sources from our field that Young cites inher book. Indeed,the small number of citations from rhetorical studies (five) in a book sointerested in rhetorical concerns surprised me and lends credence to theconcern voiced by many in our field that few outside our discipline readour work. This complaint does not negate the importance of Young sproject; rather, it underscores the necessity of continuing and deepeningour interdisciplinary conversations. And it opens opportunities for researchers in our field who wish to contribute to the conversation thatYoung has started.

The final sections of the book move outward from theorizing particular communicative interactions to delineating the larger structures withinwhich public deliberation takes place. And, as I suggest above, they holdthe most interest for rhetoric and composition specialists looking tobetterunderstand the political and civic structures that influence their work asteachers and public intellectuals. Chapter 5, Civil Society and ItsLimits, is my favorite essay in this section and the one I found mostuseful in thinking about my own teaching. A significant contribution tothe ongoing debate overwhat consti tutes the public sphere, this chaptercarefully distinguishes among the functions served by the state, theeconomy, and civil society (which include voluntary forms of association


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vi ws 453and deliberation) in democratic governance. For example, while civilsociety provides rich opportunities for people topromote self-determination, state institutions have unique capacities to coordinate and regulatepolicymaking in ways that promote inclusion. For this reason, Youngrejects the popular idea that civic society is apreferred alternative to statesponsored channels for promoting justice and social change. Rather,these sectors of democracy support and balance each other: Citizens ina deep democracy must be aware of these ever present tensions andliabilities, be vigilant in monitoring the actions and effects of state,economy, and civil society, and actively promote the limitation andbalance of each by the others. Young s clear discussion of these factorsis both instructive and comforting to those who, like the service-learninginstructors in my department, have grappled with the complexity andslow pace of public participation.

The remaining four essays are perhaps less directly relevant to thepractical concerns of composition teachers and scholars, but they arenevertheless valuable, since they round out Young s discussion ofdeliberative inclusion. Chapter 4, Representation and Social Perspective, takes up the question of how models of political representation canensure maximum inclusion of disenfranchised perspectives. Emphasizing that representatives must be both authorized by and accountable totheir constituents, she illuminates the different ethical factors involved inguiding the representation of group interests and opinions. Chapter 6,Residential Segregation, Regional Democracy, examines the relatedproblem of determining theproper scope of the policy. Here, Young findsthat the existence ofgeographical segregation thwarts inclusive decisionmaking by marginalizing non-mainstream groups, promoting misunderstandings among differently positioned groups, and discouraging publictalk and public spaces. Because a mathematical notion of integrationcan perpetuate the same problems, Young instead endorses regionalgovernance that encourages mutual ties (or differentiated solidarity )across small communities while enforcing policies against coercedsegregation. In Chapter 7, she applies the principle of differentiatedsolidarity on a global scale. While efforts to ensure justice for oppressedpeoples worldwide have often been articulated as claims for the right toan independent, sovereign state, Young believes that justice for suchgroups is more appropriately conceived of in terms of non-dominationrather than noninterference. A global model of differentiated solidaritywould create akey role for global governance institutions like the UnitedNation to enable these conditions of inclusion.


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454 jacAmbitious and provocative, carefully and informatively argued, and

ethically charged, Young s book has much to offer both practitioners andtheorists in rhetoric and composition. Because her discussions are positioned within ongoing conversations in political theory, Democracy andInclusion serves as a primer on current thinking about the public andpolitical spheres, even as it proposes critiques of and additions to thatthinking. At the same time, Young s reach to combine political andrhetorical models ofpublic discourse opens possibilities for new connections between political and rhetorical theory. Like most scholarship thatcrosses disciplinary boundaries, the book combines and juxtaposes thetwo traditions in ways that are not always completely satisfying. Nonetheless, asbooks like this remind us, these differences in our disciplinaryperspectives are less important than what we share-an ethical commitment to taking our work public and an optimism about the power oflanguage to enact social justice.

Truth and Consequences Intentions Conventions and the NewThematics Reed Way Dasenbrock (University Park: Pennsylvania StateUP, 2001.330 pages).Kevin J. Porter, University of Texas at ArlingtonReed Way Dasenbrock s Truth and Consequences is a complex andprophetic book, simultaneously an indictment of the incoherence ofwhathe calls the New Thematics paradigm governing English studies and itsunderlying conventionalist or anti-foundationalist approaches to meaning, truth, and aesthetic value; an argument that the decline of Englishstudies is attributable to its taking the wrong positions about conventionalism; awarning of the dire consequences that will likely follow fromthe continuation of such a program; and a proposal-though perhapsoffered with little hope of its implementation-intended to revitalize thefield and restore public confidence in it.According to Dasenbrock, the New Thematics is a kind of literarycriticism that is overwhelmingly oriented toward discussing themes inliterary works, themes that overwhelmingly have to do with groups andcommunities. For theorists of the New Thematics, group ideology [is]

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