of 7
8/2/2019 03637759709376420
1/7
This article was downloaded by: [North Carolina State University]On: 10 April 2012, At: 14:08Publisher: RoutledgeInforma Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954Registered office: Mortimer House, 37-41 Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH, UK
Communicat ion MonographsPublication details, including instructions for authors andsubscription information:ht tp:/ / www.t andfonline.com/ loi/ rcmm20
Opening up the spaces of publicdissensionG. Thomas Goodnight
a
a
Professor of Communication Studies, Nort hwesternUniversity,
Available online: 02 Jun 2009
To cite this article: G. Thomas Goodnight (1997): Opening up the spaces of publicdissension , Communicat ion Monographs, 64:3, 270-275
To link to this ar t icle: http:/ / dx.doi.org/ 10.1080/ 03637759709376420
PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLE
Full terms and conditions of use: http://www.tandfonline.com/page/terms-and-conditions
This article may be used for research, teaching, and private study purposes. Anysubstantial or systematic reproduction, redistribution, reselling, loan, sub-licensing,
systematic supply, or distribution in any form to anyone is expressly forbidden.
The publisher does not give any warranty express or implied or make anyrepresentation that the contents will be complete or accurate or up to date. Theaccuracy of any instructions, formulae, and drug doses should be independentlyverified with primary sources. The publisher shall not be liable for any loss, actions,claims, proceedings, demand, or costs or damages whatsoever or howsoevercaused arising directly or indirectly in connection with or arising out of the use ofthis material.
http://www.tandfonline.com/page/terms-and-conditionshttp://www.tandfonline.com/page/terms-and-conditionshttp://www.tandfonline.com/page/terms-and-conditionshttp://dx.doi.org/10.1080/03637759709376420http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rcmm208/2/2019 03637759709376420
2/7
Responses to Phillips: A ForumThe September 1996 issue of Communication Monographs carried an article byKendall Phillips, in which he cited work by Gerard A. Hauser and G. ThomasGoodnight. Upon reading the article, both felt that Professor Phillips representedm any of their ideas differently from how they them selves view the m . As a result, theeditor invited each to re spond to the Phillips piece , in par t, to set the record straightand also to continue the dialogue on some of the larger issues raised. G. ThomasGoodnight is Professor of Communication Studies at Northwestern University.Gerard A. Hauser is Professor and Chair in the Department of Communication atthe University of Colorado at Boulder.
Opening Up "The Spaces of Public Dissension"G. Thomas Goodnight
This essay takes up Ken dall Phillips's invitation to consider dissent seriously. Tobe clear, I do no t intend to claim dissent has not been unde rvalued or that newmo dels of publics should not be inn ovated. N evertheless, there are good reasons toresist any effort to conceptualize studies in the public sphere in binary categories.First among these is the recognition that gestures of consent and dissent arecontingent inventions spun from human conditions of uncertainty. Differences thatm ake a difference sometimes em erge from rhetorical engagem ents because, and inspite, of attributed consensus. So, too, one cannot be certain that any conversation,or even a few words, is not blooming into something entirely differentas peoplewho find themselves as poets, mystics, artists, revolutionaries and others discoverfrom time to time. Rhetorical theories and public practices emerge, I am persuad ed,from many such inter-contesting and inter-connecting gestures articulated amongvaried perspectives across alternative relationships in changing temporal contexts.To read publics, not in the mix, match, and multiplicity of symbolic activities, butthrough the frame-frozen binaries of con(dis)sensus is likely to diminish learningfrom rhetorical models by overdetermining presumption and by masking risksencountered in enactments of public discourses, discussions, and performances.These points will be illustrated by exam ining ho w Ph illips' own polemical reading isconstructed and by assessing the risks of demon izing wh at he represents as consen-sus models of the public sp here."Public Spaces" can be read, justifiably, as a polemic, that is, as a rhetoricalperformance that simplifies differences, exaggerates claims, and hardens divisions inthe interests of effect. N o one in the speech field has actually written that rhetoric orpub lic argum ent is regulated by "openn ess, com mon issues, impartiality, intersubjec-tivity, and rationality" (p. 233)-certainly not Kenneth Burke, whose contextualcommitments valued novelty, change, and "perspective by incongruity." Whatevertheir technical or aesthetic affiliations, twentieth-century rhetorics hav e be en devel-oped dialectically, near to experiences of upheaval and shot through with spaces forCOM MUN ICATION MONO GRAPH S, Volume 64, September 1997
Down
loa
de
dby[
Nort
hCaro
lina
StateUn
ive
rsity
]a
t14:0
810Apri
l2012
8/2/2019 03637759709376420
3/7
RESPONSES TO PHILLIPS 271contingency. It takes much w ork to m ake rheto rical theory and criticism o ver to looklike neo-Kantian regulative principles. Nor do I take it that the differences amonggenerations of rhetorical theories and critical practices can be represented fairly bythe views of Huse r and m e. Similarly, reduction of differences am ong public sp herescholars, among interest specific disciplinary audiences, and among diverse prac-tices of public institutions and social movements suggests that the essay is more apersuasive exp eriment in academic reconfiguration than a balanced reconstruction.Th e expe riment unfolds a C old War-like hard division between good/difference/philosophy (other than Habermas) and evil/the public sphere/speech communica-tion (other than Phillips). While such an equation models one way to configure thepublic sphe re, I will dissent seriously from this totalizing structure b y op ening up toappraisal the tactics necessary to invent the scenario. Resistance begins by showinghow the claim to reveal "the limitations intrinsic to cu rrent conceptions of the publicsphere" (p. 237) actually reads the "diverse concerns and viewpoints" (p. 232) of along-standing philosophical deba te so as to split apart key facets of discussion. Theessay proceeds to identify further tactics of reading-disqualification, erasure, andcompression-that attempt to cross-apply the modified philosophical models torhetorical constructions of the public. In the end, it argued that while Phillips'spolemic does present one way of configuring the public sphere, it also poses somesignificant, undisclosed risks."S pac es" represents philosophical discussions of the public sphe re as if the viewsof J rge n H aberm as h ave reigned long unop posed . Yet Arthur Strum (1994) inassembling a lengthy bibliography on the ffentlichkeit controversy notes that thediscussion has included "work employing radically different theoretical languages,and [has been] constituted by som etimes sharply divergent structuring propos itions"(p. 162). In fact, while influential, Habermas's immanent critique was opposed byOskar Negt and Alexander Kluge, scholars who as early as 1972 developed thenotion of a "counterpublic" as a site filled with struggle, protest, fantasy, andopposition against bourgeois public spheres of production and communicationpractice. Their work helped spark European movements, such as "nonacademicresearch projects on everyday life in the History Workshops, the revival of the gayand lesbian movement, or environmentalist and antinuclear campaigns (leading tothe formation of the Green party)" (Hansen, 1993, p. xix). Since Negt and Kluge,philosophers have discussed ways to extend counterpublics outside of proletarianprojects. When Calhoun's seminarians met in 1989, they were working with analready contested argument and, for the most part, took up the task of movingbeyond the polarities of idealization and negation. "Spaces" nouses half the discus-sion.Thom as M cCarthy (1992) is captioned as observing that since nee ds are relative tocultural values, there is no impartial or neutral standpoint in the public sphere.Phillips treats this as a prob lem of "com m ensu ration" and assures the reade r that thepublic sphere must be a place that "subjugate[s] the interests and values of partici-pants to some other system of interests and values" (p. 241). What McCarthyactually was saying is that one can acknowledge differences in interpretation ofneeds and the common good among "consociates" and still pursue commoninterests in avoiding violence, coercion, and manipulation through "compromise,consent, accomm odation, and the like" (p. 67).Similarly, Phillips says that Seyla Benhab ib (1992) believes the "b ou nd ary ignores
Down
loa
de
dby
[N
ort
hCaro
lina
StateUn
ivers
ity
]a
t14:0
810Apri
l201
2
8/2/2019 03637759709376420
4/7
272 COMMUN ICATION MONOGRAPHSdifference in the experiences of males and females" (p. 239), and so distinctionsbetween private and public make for nought but subjugation. What Benhabibactually conclud es is this: "T he discourse mod el [of the public sphere] is the on ly on ethat is compatible both with the general social trends of our societies and with theemancipatory aspirations of new social movements, like the woman's movement"(p. 95). To her, Habermas provides the principles of "egalitarian reciprocity"requisite to critique existing social customs. Her recommendation is to develop acritical model suitable to feminist needs to deal with bureaucracy, not scrap thepublic sp here (p. 94).Nancy Fraser (1992) is quoted on the issue of the inability to bracket statusdifferentials in deliberation, b ut the following is no t referenced: "this irony does notfatally com promise the discourse of publicity; that discourse can be , indeed has be endifferently dep loyed in different circum stances and con texts." Fraser's recom m end a-tion is to recognize nonliberal, nonbourgeois, competing public spheres as acorrective to idealizing bourgeo is practices, and for this she acknowledges Ha ber-mas's thesis as an "ind ispensable reso urce" in "theorizing the limits of demo cracy inlate-capitalist societies" (p. 109). Th us, Fraser's own conclusion is a light year fromPhillips's stingy reference ("It may be possible to rehabilitate some notion of thepublic sp her e" [p. 245] diroug h multiple publics).Finally, Peter Uwe Hohendahl (1992) is read as warning against what is called"bou nda ry m aintenan ce." W hile Ho hen dah l did say he favors m ore "fluid" connec-tions, what he was actually arguing was that moral theory alone is insufficient tounderstand publics because such spaces include local customs and cultural perfor-mances "where problems of identity and difference have been articulated" andreshape politics. Thus, Hohendahl finds in the public sphere space for innovationwhich "Spaces" claims to be highly unlikely, if not impossible, due to decorumrequirements.Of course, not all philosophers work to repair the public sphere. However, it isabundantly clear that Phillips's scenario denies conceptual access to a philosophicaldebate that has matured to the point of asking how common cause is negotiated,social customs changed, multiple publics brought into being, and identities trans-formed in politically productive ways across alternative constructions of the publicsphere. These questions have not been unaddressed in speech com m unication-ev enin advance of the post-Cold War discussion in philosophy-though "Spaces" wouldm ake it seem so.At this juncture, I exchange examining breadth of views in contemporaryphilosophical debate for exploring in detail how work I joined in the early 1980sbecom es read. P hillips's treatm ent of my own work is a category error that confusesthe more limited project featured at the opening of the 1982 essay, recoveringdeliberative argument as requisite for citizen participation in democratic publicinstitutions, with the wider construction of discourse spheres, which was developedfrom tensions among alternative rhetorics of identification (1982, pp. 216-217), andlater on featured as contexts bro ugh t into being and transformed throug h "rhetoricalargu m ent" (1987, p . 430). In b oth essays, it was noted that sph eres were contexts ofcontestable and contested choices and risks alterable over time. The recovery ofdeliberation was based on norms that I offered as "my own" assessment of adiscourse art and on a recovery project I argued to be needed "at this time" inrelation to burgeoning technologies. None of this is acknowledged. Rather much
Down
loa
de
dby
[N
ort
hCaro
lina
StateUn
ivers
ity
]a
t14:0
810Apri
l201
2
8/2/2019 03637759709376420
5/7
RESPONSES TO PHILLIPS 273labor is expended to fit my work to Phillips's thesis through reading tactics ofdisqualification, erasure, and compression."Spaces" disqualifies all statements at odds with its aims. The 1982 essay saysexplicitly that "all arguments arise in uncertainty" and that even the most securecultural premises can be disestablished or rendered suspect by altered materialconditions or discursive con text (p. 215). Against this bac kdr op , no argum ent couldbe located in a permanent standing of majority or minority opinion; rather, allargument is identified as partaking both "in the creative resolution and the resolutecreation of uncertainty" (p. 215). Of course, this means that neither consensual ordissensual norms are privileged since arguments emerge "in concert with or inopposition to ongoing activity in the personal, technical, and public spheres" (p.215). Again: "an arguer can accept the sanctioned, widely used bundle of rules,claims procedures and evidence to wage a dispute. Or, the arguer can inveighagainst any or all of these 'customs' in order to bring forth a new variety ofunderstanding" (p. 217). A new variety may be found by the one or among them any , but the result is to bring forth "different kinds . . . of disagreem ent" (1982, p.221), not unanimity of opinion. Unsurprisingly, then, one finds that the publicsphere essays critique dominant views of rationality, not support them; specifyclaims to openness to be a site of controversy, not a safe presupposition; identify"partisanship," not neutrality, as the signature of public discourse; acknowledgebou nda ries to be sites of contest, not places for mindless ma intenan ce w ork, and soon.
Not all opposing statements are merely disqualified. Two passages are actuallycited. In the first, a line is quoted where I identify discourse context as "differ-ences'^!] among how people are "invited to channel doubts" (1982, p. 216).Undaunted, Phillips claims here that I develop the spheres notion to explain howcontexts contain discourse that define subjects discussed and decision makingcriteria-this in spite of the fact that the 1982 essay says explicitly that the theory isN O T "the foundation of a taxonom ical schem e" because any argumen t artifact "canbe taken to be grou nded in any one of the spheres or a com binatory relation ship" an dthe attributed grou nds or imp uted relationships revised through argum ent (p. 220)!In the seco nd cited passage, tactics of read ing are expand ed from disqualificationto erasure. Mainly to prove that all public sphere theories must be built on an"intersubjective" m odel of comm unication, a passage is quoted. M y sentence reads:"Public discourse seeks out and fashions common temporal experience and struc-tures that enable public action and sustain public forbearance" (1987, p. 431).Phillips concocts three versions of this passage. Not one is accurate. Two leave outthe term "temporal" as a qualifier of the kind of experience that publics evoke, acommon time although persons have different relationships to the moment. Thesame two depluralize "structures" and make the claim appear to be a compounduniversal with experience [i.e., "Goodnight (1987) wishes to see the 'fashioning ofcommon experience and structure'" (Phillips, p. 241; see also, p. 236)]. What"stru ctu res" was referring to we re collaboratively seq uenced ev ents, like elections orwars. The last reference leaves out "experience" and "forbearance" altogether anddecks my version of the public out as simply interested in "common structures"(Phillips, p. 243). Had Phillips actually been concerned with intersubjectivity, hemight h ave tu rned to the first page of the 1987 article w here a direct request is m adeto suspend the search for a unified field theory of communication in order to
Down
loa
de
dby
[N
ort
hCaro
lina
StateUn
ive
rsity
]a
t14:0
810Apri
l2012
8/2/2019 03637759709376420
6/7
274 COMM UNICATION MONO GRAPHS"appro ach h um an comm unication as the problem of one w ho must say something tosom e othe r" (Goodnigh t, 1987, p . 428). But this is a statemen t that also opposes thepreferred reading; so it, too, gets dro ppe d.O ne reason that it so difficult to find support for a binary reading is that "S paces" istrying to compress a three-term rhetorical relationship among personal, technical,and p ub lic contexts to fit po pu lar philoso phical critiques of the two-term, d eontologi-cal concepts public/private. The cross-application does not work very well. The1982/87 essays argue explicitly that the pub lic is a conventional construction, no t anessential category-an "ambivalent" site (specifically with gender issues), not aprivileged one. Contexts are said to layer linguistically, not divide off by socialstructure. Public discourse is characterized most fundamentally by controversy, notconsensus, and so is shown to give rise to on-going struggles over practice withconstitutive stakes. Th ese essays acknowledge that any characterization of a sphere is"necessarily inc om plete ," not determ ined by "essential characteristics" (as is claimedwithout warrant). Of course, my own sketches are but part of a productive line ofcritical work by scholars in speech communication who have pursued and debatedthe transformative risks of rhetorical theory and practicewell in advance of thepost-Cold War aca dem y's rethinking the public sphere.In sum, "Spaces" achieves its polemical ends through a binaried reading thatoverstates contemp orary philosophical doubts abo ut rehabilitating the public sphereand understates the innovative qualities of rhetorical criticism developed in speechcommunication. However, this is not to say that the work is without genuineresonan ce. Phillips does assemble an explosive version of how speech comm unica-tion will be dealt with by those w ho see Berlin walls everyw here still standing or bythose who wish to ride the still-surging tides of skepticism and egalitarian virtueemblematic of late 1980s popular movements. Perhaps it is the case that postwarpublics will always benefit more from celebrating moments of determined skepti-cism than from facing n ew deliberative tasks. Perhap s no t. T he poin t is that "Spa ces"chokes off choice by requiring presu m ption be p ut on the side of a theory or practicesimply because it is fronted as anti-majoritarian while requiring that all democraticpublics be indifferently effaced.
T he risks of this politics of readin g are no t negligible. Because such a strategy m ustanswer everyw here and always to a dem and ing skepticism, it can scarcely imagineaffirmative public activities, learn from episodes of productive change, engagedem ocratic practices, com pare relative merits amo ng d iscourse practices, or exp andpossibilities of hopeeven am on g dissenting pub lics. Because it defers com m itmen tsto alternate models and paradigms, such a politics forces binaried readings ofrhetoric and the public sphere-either modern (consensus) or postmodern (dissent).Its promise of recognition for innovation (or a third way) must remain either anempty category or a self-aborting claim. As a result, "Space's" strategy risksgratuitous negation in particular cases and fails to even disclose, much less warrant,its criteria for exchan ging so me exclusions with oth ers. On ly Ph illips's ow n tactics ofreadin g, imp art a clear notion of his compass of an accep table practice.If studies in the public sphere in the early 1980s can be said to have exhibitedconcerns with the threats of technical reason and affirmed routes of citizen action,then studies since 1989 can be said to be m ore critical and emphasize struggles withplurality, difference, and identity. "Spaces" contributes to public sphere studies bym odeling the reading tactics necessary to put these projects at odd s and in com pet-
Down
loa
de
dby
[N
ort
hCaro
lina
StateUn
ive
rsity
]a
t14:0
810Apri
l2012
8/2/2019 03637759709376420
7/7
R E S P O N S E S T O P H IL L IP S 2 7 5tion. Ironically, publics of the year 2000 are likely to be challenged by questions ofboth technology and identity. As the last of Cold War culture thaws and freshcontroversies grow, thinking in dichotomies and deferrals should gradually relax itshold on the critical imaginary. To open up spaces for dissension, it is not necessaryfor speech com m unication to em brace, in ord er to dissolve, the logic of a cold timeby going back to the future. Th e paths of innovation lead elsewh ere.
Refe rencesBenhabib, S. (1992). Models of the public sphere: H anna h Arendt, the l iberal tradit ion, and Jr gen Ha berm as.In C. Calhoun (Ed.), Habermas and thepublic sphere (pp. 73-98). Cam bridge, M A: MI T Press.Fraser, N. (1992). Reth inking the pu blic spher e: A contribution to the critique of actually existing dem ocra cy.In C. Calhoun (Ed.), Habermas an d thepublic sphere (pp. 109-142). Cam bridge, M A: MI T Press.Goodnight, G.T. (1982). The personal, technical, and public spheres of argument: A speculative inquiry intothe art of public delibe ration. Journal of theAmerican Forensics Association, 18, 214-227 .Goo dnigh t, G.T . (1987). Public discourse. Critical Studies in Mass Com munication, 4, 428-431 .Hansen , M . (1993). Foreword. In O . Negt & A. Kluge. Publicsphere an d experience, (P. Labany i, J. Dan iel, & A.
Oksiloff, Trans.) Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.Ho hend ahl, P.U. (1992). Th e public sphere: Models and bounda ries. In C. Calhou n (Ed.), Habermas and thepublic sphere (pp. 99-108). Cambrid ge, MA : M IT Press.M cCa rthy, T . (1992). Practical discourse: O n th e relation of morality to politics. In C . Calho un (Ed.), Habermasan d thepublic sphere (pp. 51-72 ). Cam bridge, M A: MI T Press.Phillips, K.R. (1996). The spaces of public dissension: Reconsidering the public sphere. CommunicationMonographs, 63, 2 3 2 -2 4 8 .Strum , A. (1994). A bibliograph y of the con cept of ffentlichkeit. New German Critique, 64, 161-202.
On Publics and Public Spheres:A Response to PhillipsGerard A. Hauser
K endall Phillips (1996) recently has argued that theories of the public sphereconceptualize discourse on public problems in ways that, in some form, holdconsensus as a normative value. He objects that, as such, the concept of the publicsphere at least devalues, if not demonizes, the role of dissensus and dissenters. Hethen develops a critique of specific presuppositions he alleges are basic to publicsph ere theo ry. Insofar as Phillips has identified cond itions that, were they to ob tain,would foreclose the possibility of dissent as a valued part of the dialogue on publicprob lem s, his defense of dissensus has value. Ho wev er, I do no t believe those w hohave been writing about the public sphere make the specific presuppositions healleges, or at least not in the form he has cast them , nor has h e accurately ren de redthe underlying assum ptions in my ow n thinking, as I hope to ma ke evident.Specifically, Phillips charges me w ith advancing a theory of the public sphere thatpositions consensus as its ruling no rm . I am uncertain of the precise mean ing Phillipsattaches to consensus. However, if, as I suspect, he means narrowly to suggest thatachieving ag reem ent am on g the active mem bers of society is the central criterion forunderstanding and critiquing a public sphere, then he has erred in attributing thatview to me. Both by implication and direct argument, I have contended just theopposite (Hauser, 1985,1987,1988,1989,1992a, 1992b, 1994a, 1994b, 1995). Moregenerally with respect to my own position and the current discussion, Phillips's
Down
loa
de
dby
[N
ort
hCaro
lina
StateUn
ive
rsity
]a
t14:0
810Apri
l2012
