Crowley Carnival, Post #1

I've never participated in a blog carnival, but, picking up on Jeff, Jenny, and Debbie, here goes...

Let me say that I find Sharon Crowley's Toward a Civil Discourse: Rhetoric and Fundamentalism to be a smart analysis of political discourse at the current cultural moment. Let me raise some questions that aren't meant to be dismissive of Crowley's argument or the value therein. Rather, I just want to bounce my experiences and ideas up against hers.

1. Does Crowley set up a false binary between liberalism and fundamentalism? Both groups rely a great deal on emotional appeal to advance agendas. I walked away from the early chapters of Crowley not really buying the rationality she seems to ascribe to liberals. The value system of a "liberal"--equality, individuality, personal freedom, free market, etc, etc--consists of tropes and ideologies that rely on an affective mythology to maintain their hegemony. I'm thinking especially about individuality and personal freedom--think of the visual images, the pop culture artifacts, the narratives that western culture has drawn on to keep the viability of those notions afloat. There's lip service paid to the rational in particular venues (news media's claims of "objectivity", empirical research, the justice system), but, honestly, is there much more than lip service? If not, then the gulf between liberals and fundamentalists is about something other than types of appeals.

In some ways, fundamentalism relies upon a LESS AFFECTIVE mode of circulation of values/ideas/narratives. Crowley acknowledges that fundamentalists attempt to conform to "a set of beliefs derived from a fundamentalist reading of the Judeao-Christian religious tradition" (3). Okay, but liberals proceed from a fundamentalist reading of hegemonic documents of western political economy, no? Fundamentalists rely much, much more on "logos" ("I am the word...").

2. Couldn't one make the argument that polarization is quite healthy for the practice of democracy? Certainly I share Crowley's concern over how issues are handled reductively, how folks are arguing at cross purposes, how much of the culture lacks a rhetorical vocabulary. But I'm not always comfortable with the "crisis tone" that Crowley utilizes. The blogosphere. DIY news media. Podcasting. There's also evidence that the democracy is thriving.

Sometimes Crowley seems to waiver between claims that there's a lack of debate and claims that there's a lack of particular kinds of debate. There's a kind-of liberal fear in the book about agonistic discourse. Crowley worries about "acrimonious" exchanges, for instance, and I have to ask: why exactly? Like I said, there are significant limits to models of civic discourse that reduce issues to sound bites, to black/white arguments. But I'm not sure the acrimony is a bad thing. Acrimony feeds the affective. Polarization can be productive.

3. Where is Lazere's "Rules for Polemicists" and Graff's "Teaching the Conflicts"? At times, I get the sense Crowley is *grasping* for a response (pedagogical, discursive, etc) to the current political climate. It seems like an ommission not to take up Don Lazere's and Gerald Graff's schemas for responding to many of the same symptoms that Crowley diagnoses (the reductivity, the polarization, the absense of rhetorical paradigms of analysis/argument). I wanted Crowley to situate her conclusion within some of these other models. Not necessarily pedagogical ones (though, again, I think Lazere's in particular is extremely useful), but within other attempts to rhetorically engage with troubling political moments.

4. What does it mean to define "beliefs" as necessarily being "useful to the believer" (69)? Crowley discusses this brand of conjecture as serving the person who makes the conjecture...really? Aren't "beliefs"--especially those put forth by fundamentalists--often in service to SOMEBODY ELSE? These beliefs serve larger, structural systems more than individuals. The tv evangelist getting rich off checks from senior citizens. The fiscal conservatives whose economic interests are advanced by "values voters. The beliefs aren't useful (materially at least) for the "believer" in these instances.

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Ok, those are just some starting points for me. More later. Now, I can go read others' posts in more detail...