Democracy and Rhetoric: John Dewey on the Arts of Becoming

Acknowledgments

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS This book is a product of the environment of which I am but a part. Its origins are not found in scholarly debates about the meanings of concepts; it grows out of the soil of experience in which the seeds of ideas were fortunate to take root. A few people who formed that environment are thus worth recognizing. I would like to thank my father for his love of inquiry and my mother for her love of culture, my sister for the gift of humility and my brother for proving that life is an adventure, Joe Gabriel for showing me that much that is worthwhile is kept hidden, Ernest DeNapoli for giving music to life, John “May I call you John?” Miller for the challenge of literature, Elizabeth Cohen for applying dialectical method to the imagination, Nathan Swanson for the joy of emancipation , Norman Sims for the art of the pointed question, David DuBois for opening up more than one world, Thom Randall for welcoming me to the wilderness and John Manson for visiting me there, Matthew Arnold for the experience of an artistic community, Sandra Baril and Richard Jarvis for the opportunity to engage with science and Greg Dardis for showing me how it is done, Pam for joining me on the adventure of life, and William, Dean, Sofia, and Leo for continuing to make it one. The trajectory of this book also would not have been possible without the fortune to be at the University of Pittsburgh during a time of great energy and ideas. And this is, indeed, a “fortune,” for I am in debt to John Lyne for stealing my application from the History and Philosophy of Science Department and introducing me to rhetoric. Perhaps I may regret this path on the day that rhetoric breathes its last, but I hope that I will contribute to its health and not its decline. I would like to thank Gordon Mitchell for his unabashed commitment to democratic action, Peter Simonson for introducing me to the pragmatic tradition , Ted McGuire for asking, “What about ‘time’?,” and my dear friend John Poulakos for always striving to make the modern university a Greek symposium . If I learned anything from John, it is that one finds the greatest gleams of gold in a darkening office as the sun is going down and the conversation is too intense to get up and turn on the light. I am forever grateful to have crossed paths with a true philosopher—a lover of the wisdom found in the act of dialogue . Lastly, my presence at Pitt coincided with a “class” of students of exceptional character and talent—Eli Brennan, Alessandra Beasley, Zachary Furness, Jessica Mudry, Marcus Paroske, and David Cram-Helwich. Not untypical of xii acknowledgments graduate student life, I much of my education occurred with my peers at the bar or over the pool table than in the formal seminars. The final draft of this manuscript, however, was produced in my Louisiana State University office, which looks out on the beautiful quad lined by live oaks that were planted here in 1928, the year the Communication Department was founded. It is an honor to be a part of a long tradition of rhetoric at LSU, a tradition represented at its best by the same Andy King who still “walks the land” here in Baton Rouge and on campus. In large part through his example and leadership, a sense of community that remains rare in the modern university exists here. Finally, then, I would like to recognize my colleagues and Andy King for their incredible support of my research since I arrived here in 2006. As any professional scholar quickly realizes, the myth of the heroic scholar is wholly a fantasy; the only people who still believe that are those who work in a lonely world. Genuine scholarship arises out of an interaction between a scholar and his or her professional, cultural, and natural environment. Thus I am fortunate to have landed once again on fertile soil. ...