Rhetorical Citizenship and Public Deliberation

Introduction: Citizenship as a Rhetorical Practice

introduction: citizenship as a rhetorical practice Christian Kock and Lisa S. Villadsen The assemblies . . . will deliberate better when all are deliberating jointly, the common people when with the notables and these when with the masses. —Aristotle, Politics There is a relationship between attentiveness and care, and to care about democracy is to care whether and how citizens speak. —Robert Hariman, “Amateur Hour: Knowing What to Love in Ordinary Democracy” Citizenship has long been a keyword among educators, philosophers, and political theorists. Using the phrase “rhetorical citizenship” as a unifying perspective, this book aims to develop an understanding of citizenship as a discursive phenomenon in the sense that important civic functions take place in deliberation among citizens, and that discourse is not prefatory to real action but is in many ways constitutive of civic engagement. The book pursues this aim by bringing together, in a cross-disciplinary effort, contributions by scholars in fields that rarely intersect. Liberal vs. Republican Notions of Citizenship For the most part, discussions as well as implementations of citizenship have focused on those aspects of it that are central to the “liberal” tradition of social thought—that is, questions of the freedoms and rights of citizens and groups. The essays in this volume give voice to a “republican” conception in the thinking about citizenship. Seeing participation and debate as central to being a citizen, this tradition looks back to the Greek city-states and republican Rome. Citizenship, in this sense of the word, is basically, we argue, rhetorical citizenship . Rhetoric, in this view, is at the core of being a citizen. “Deliberative Democracy” Our concern to see citizenship as rhetorical parallels the trend in modern political theory that sees the essence of democracy in the idea of deliberation. If we are to connect these two ideas, citizenship and deliberation, and reflect constructively on their meaning in present-day democracy, then we should talk not only about rights and freedoms but also about rhetoric. Aristotle was the first major thinker to connect these notions; deliberation (boulē, bouleusis) is central to his political, ethical, and rhetorical thought. To deliberate, he says, is to reflect on the pros and cons of “things that are in our control and are attainable by action” (Nicomachean Ethics, 1112b). His ethics focuses on deliberation followed by choice (proairesis) in the individual. Rhetoric is deliberation in public about communal choice: its function “is to deal with things about which we deliberate, but for which we have no systematic rules” (Rhetoric, 1357a). This also makes clear why Aristotle saw rhetoric “as an offshoot of Dialectic and of the science of Ethics, which may be reasonably called Politics” (Rhetoric, 1356a). Politics is the highest art, since its goal is to strive for the good life for all citizens; but this can only be achieved by wise choices, and these depend on public deliberation, that is, on rhetoric. A similar rationale informed the conference “Rhetorical Citizenship and Public Deliberation,” held in Copenhagen in October 2008, where the chapters in this book were originally presented. Reflection on citizenship in a democracy must concern itself with public deliberation, and hence with rhetoric. Is Deliberation Possible? It is sometimes assumed that in modern states “direct” democracy, as known from ancient city-states, is unworkable, so citizens cannot really be deliberators . If citizenship, as in the liberal tradition, is understood mainly as the rights and freedoms accorded to citizens, then individuals tend to be seen as participants in the political process only insofar as they elect representatives who govern the land. Also, the “liberal” view of democracy tends to see 2 rhetorical citizenship citizens as constituencies (or “segments”) with given and stable preferences. Democracy, in such a view, is like a marketplace, and citizens are like consumers whose needs, interests, and preferences follow from socioeconomic parameters. Elected representatives, in turn, are like channels relaying the preferences of their constituencies into legislation and governance, rather than deliberators arguing about what is best for the polity. One corollary of this is that the assumed function of deliberation shrinks. A minor role is assigned to persuasion, which moves individuals from supporting a policy to opposing it, or vice versa. Citizens vote; representatives bargain and negotiate. A further, and stronger, corollary is that people are primarily concerned about maximal preference fulfillment. Widespread views posit that people’s preferences may be exhaustively expressed in terms of their perceived personal (or even personal economic) utility, regardless...