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Gordon Mitchell, University
of Pittsburgh 1995 - United States
Foreign Policy: China Cards |
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These
calls put into high relief criticisms leveled against academic debate that it
is an elitist, esoteric, isolated, exclusive, and increasingly rarefied
activity. Given spreading desertification of the public sphere and
evaporation of deliberative tradition in the polity, critics of contemporary
academic debate rightly deride the community's hermetically sealed
orientation as evidence of abdication of its professional responsibility to
funnel some of its considerable resources directly into the ailing body
politic. As time passes and activism remains on the wane, danger grows that
history will judge the debate community as a protected oasis that kept water
for itself while the practice of deliberation around it grew parched and
steadily withered away. Positioned in response to this problematic, this
piece is a call for social movement organization and mobilization by current
and former academic debaters and their friends. With
warning bells sounding that the tradition of public deliberation may be in
terminal jeopardy, one would think that academic groups formed for the
purpose of promoting critical discussion and debate would take keen interest
in this development and work feverishly to reverse desertification of the
public sphere. But strangely, the response of the academic debate community
appears to be a standoffish pursuit of business as usual, i.e. routinized
execution of insular contest debates, with little or no attempt to link the
experiences of these contests directly to those outside the academy. THE
IDEA OF IDEALOGICAL ACTION How
can the debate community break out of this pattern of political lethargy and
right itself to take on the task of rejuvenating public discourse? I propose
that this objective can be accomplished through vigorous pursuit of activist
projects designed to open up spaces for dialogue, thus making conditions ripe
for free, wide-open and inclusive exchanges of ideas on salient public
controversies, not only inside, but outside the academy as well. The
idea-oriented activism I have in mind is distinct in form from narrowly drawn
ideological initiatives launched to secure political special interest
victories. Thus, it is appropriate to term such discussion-promoting activity
ideological (as opposed to ideological) activism. This distinction highlights
the political flexibility of pro-debate initiatives. With a telos derived
from the notions of constructive dissensus (see Willard 1987) and generative controversy
(see Goodnight 1992), such initiatives resist taking on the color of any one
particular political dogma, liberal, conservative, or otherwise. Instead,
ideological activism aims to broaden and deepen important public
controversies by enhancing the claim-making capacity of all parties to the
dialogue, especially including those presently excluded from the realm of
discourse. I have in mind three major modes of public engagement. 1)
Spurring social momentum in the lifeworld and public sphere. Activist
debaters are well-equipped to catalyze and organize public debates on
controversial, pressing issues facing communities. As defenders of wide-open,
inclusive public deliberation, academic debaters can step outside the academy
and urge factions embroiled in contentious public disputes to come together
in a debating forum to share and test ideas. Assistance can then be provided
in the form of logistical support (finding a venue, advertising), mediation
in format and resolution negotiation, and research and preparation support
for all sides. Activist debaters can excel most in this mode of action once
they recognize that their most valuable contribution to public debate may
come not in the role of performer, but organizer. Done
properly, such efforts will spawn moments of social connection, instances
where the public generates knowledge through critical face-to-face
interaction. As the frequency of debates increases, the steady accumulation
of social moments will grind into what might be appropriately termed social
momentum. As social momentum mounts, conditions for the ripening of movement
mobilization will improve as latent, ossified social forces are released (see
Touraine 1984/88, p. 134). In this way, public debates can not only perform
the function of staging areas for social movements, but they can also serve
as sites where already existing social movements can impact upon public
opinion with their argumentative appeals. 2)
Minding the seam between system and public. Debaters can work to render the
seams separating system and public more permeable, thus improving the chances
that citizens' interests will be effectively coordinated with system level
initiatives. This task is clearly conceivable in the case of public opinion
formation and amplification. James Fishkin has advanced a concept of a
"deliberative opinion poll" which can serve as an effective
blueprint for the activist debate project of improving the capacity of
polling to better represent lifeworld opinions to system level actors. Instead
of gathering polling data with the traditional individual query-response
technique, Fishkin's deliberative polling concept introduces the dimension of
social learning into the sampling process. In a deliberative poll, citizens
are asked to form opinions only after participating in "intensive,
face-to-face debate" (Fishkin 1991, p. 2). Afforded time to interact
directly with institutional actors, citizens are thus said to be given the
capability to buck the manipulative effects of the mass media. 3)
Direct legal action. Debaters should join together to aggressively oppose
institutional policies which unnecessarily impede the free flow of
information or interfere directly with the efforts of public citizens to
enhance their decision-making competence. Measures can be proposed and
supported which increase transparency of system decision-making by reducing
secrecy and classification, while increasing the openness of bureaucratic
operations by pressuring for greater accountability from institutional actors
ducking public scrutiny. PROSPECTS
FOR MOVEMENT MOBILIZATION As
a group, the debate community is structurally and psychologically constructed
in a manner favorable for movement mobilization. There is a latent solidarity
built into the activity of debate preparation itself. Teams log long hours of
group research, planning, and brief writing prior to each contest. These
grueling work sessions have already sown the seeds of potential social
movement cohesiveness, a sense of collective mettle which if cultivated could
contribute significantly to the mobilization potential of the community. Many
members have access to state of the art communication technology, and well
maintained contacts permit the debate community to stay connected and tightly
coordinate activities. Taken together, these factors combine to demonstrate
that the American debate community, with political will, could politic. Such
a project enjoys normative backing on realistically make substantial strides
toward repoliticization of the public sphere in this nation. One
of the most promising aspects of activist debate mobilization is that such
efforts might effectively skirt a key problem which has hampered traditional
social movements in, their efforts to spur social change. This problem, the
so-called "Michelsian dilemma," derived from sociologist Roberto
Michels' "Iron Law of Oligarchy," is simply that success breeds
failure. When social movements achieve their demands, they have a tendency to
lose steam or break apart. As Cohen and Arato describe it, "any move
toward formal organization, inclusion, and institutionalization will
undermine movement goals and threaten the continued existence of the movement
form of collective action ..."success" in institutional terms of
inclusion signals the end of the movement and the dilution of its aims (the
famous iron law of oligarchy)" (1992, p. 557). Debate
activism can neutralize this dilemma because ideologically motivated efforts
aim to achieve, instead of an ideologically derived wish list (a la
traditional labor movements), enactment of a form of social interaction:
wide-open, inclusive public debate and discussion. Success, far from
defusing, demobilizing, or co-opting the movement, generates social momentum
which restokes the energy of activists committed to the project of
refurbishing the public sphere. This
restoking dynamic can be grasped by appreciating the fact that the activity
of debate itself contains seeds of its own reproduction, since there is an
emancipatory potential woven into the structural fabric of communication
itself (see Habermas 1981/85, 1994b). The social airing of arguments and
viewpoints invites, and indeed impels subsequent discourse; thus success in
the project of enacting social moments does not have the same Pyrrhic quality
that might attach to a collective bargaining victory in securing slightly
higher union wages. CONCLUSION The continual withering of the public
sphere is a phenomenon which cries out for activist response by the academic
debate community. We are well-positioned to make such a response, in the form
of a torrent of ideological initiatives organized and executed by networks of
current and former debaters and their friends. By embarking on such a path,
the community would take great strides toward transcending its increasingly
flat collective identity as a fan-n system for technocratic policy analysis
and public opinion manipulation. Embracing the concept of social movement
mobilization, the community could simultaneously thicken its collective
identity and funnel some of its considerable resources into an ailing body
politic. Such a project enjoys normative backing on several levels.
Theoretically, it takes up and extends the prescriptions growing out of the
burgeoning corpus of literature that decries the bankrupting of argumentative
praxis in America. Pragmatically, such a project works to materially assist
mobilization efforts undertaken by collective actors dubbed "new social
movements." Empirically, the vision of the project is validated by
actual previous successes of student actors in spurring social change in a
wide variety of contexts in contemporary international society. The time is
ripe for an outward activist turn in academic debate. WORKS CITED ---------- A
longer version of this paper was originally presented at the Seventh Wake
Forest University Argumentation Conference, March 18, 1995. Hearty thanks for
the participants of that conference for their insightful questions and
comments. |