Rhetorical Citizenship and Public Deliberation

Chapter 12: I Agree, But . . .: Finding Alternatives to Controversial Projects Through Public Deliberation

12 i agree, but . . .: finding alternatives to controversial projects through public deliberation James McDonald Whoever values free speech cannot avoid discussing the merits of public deliberation. Through public deliberation, citizens who have opposing views on issues can explain the foundations of their beliefs. In Asen’s discourse theory of citizenship, public deliberation is even seen as constituting citizenship (2004, 189); individuals become citizens by discursively—and thus rhetorically—engaging one another in the public sphere. Public deliberation occasionally receives bad press: for example, because it is often impossible to bring together all the views expressed in a process of deliberation, political authorities can dismiss the concerns of the participants in a deliberation forum and make decisions without taking their views into consideration. Furthermore, deliberation, especially about controversial issues, is often seen as an interminable process, leading to little or no consensus . Regardless of these criticisms, few rhetorical and political communication scholars contest that public deliberation must be encouraged in a variety of venues, including public consultations, the media, and legislative assemblies. Many scholars, notably Robert D. Putnam, critique the lack of public participation in contemporary Western democracies, calling for a true rhetorical democracy where “all citizens are equal, everyone has a say, everyone has a vote, and decisions are based on the most compelling arguments” (Hauser 2004, 1). In this chapter I discuss the effects of deliberation at public consultations on a projected natural gas plant in the Canadian province of Quebec. In particular, I examine how one important rhetorical practice, namely, the acceptance of key opinions of the opposing party, contributed to the development of acceptable solutions on this divisive issue, and how the deliberation venue enabled individuals to enact their citizenship rhetorically. Public Deliberation over Controversial Issues Controversies are more complex than simple disagreements between two parties. According to Govier, controversies have the following characteristics: the individuals who discuss issues are in disagreement with other individuals or groups that discuss the same issues; there is a minimum of two opposing views on the issues; and the parties do not simply express their opposing points of view but argue about the issues in a process of deliberation (1999, 247). Thus public deliberation is a sine qua non of any controversy. Bohman’s definition of deliberation, which emphasizes “resolving problematic situations” through deliberation processes (1996, 27), is contested by a paradigm, supported by Brante (1993, 188–89) and Callon, Lascoumes, and Barthe (2001, 16), suggesting that controversies may be closed but not resolved. The aim of public deliberation therefore need not be to consolidate different points of view but rather to learn, understand, and test a party ’s beliefs about an issue by juxtaposing them with those of an opposing party (Govier 1999, 65). Thus deliberation has the potential to generate new ways of interpreting a controversy, even when the parties do not arrive at an agreement. Those who emphasize the constitutive perspective of controversies (see Callon, Lascoumes, and Barthe 2001; Scott 1991; Govier 1999) consider these events essential for a society where individuals continually assess and reevaluate their opinions—one of the bases of a strong rhetorical democracy (Hauser 2004, 1). Critical assessment and reevaluation are considered positive because, as Goodnight states, the new ways of interpreting issues may not have emerged without public deliberation (2005, 27). Public deliberation brings new and potentially consensual ways of interpreting controversial issues to the forefront. When feminist models of communication and exchange that strive for mutual inquiry, collaboration, mutual understanding, transformation, and dialogue are put into practice, these new ways of interpreting controversies have even more potential to emerge (Putnam and Kolb 2000, 83). In a constitutive perspective, public deliberation is a practice by which each party is exposed to the knowledge and interpretations of its adversaries . All parties involved can therefore discover, even create, new knowledge that changes their initial position. Solutions that were unthinkable at the beginning of a controversy may eventually be considered and privileged by all parties. For example, describing a controversy on the burial of nuclear waste in France, Callon, Lascoumes, and Barthe note that “in the heart of the 200 public deliberation as rhetorical practice controversy, the residents realized that a number of uncertainties remained and that the burial of the nuclear waste was only one researched solution among others” (2001, 31, my translation). They suggest that, for a rhetorical democracy to flourish, controversies should be welcomed, encouraged, stimulated, and even organized in order...