Aug 17, 2016
Saving Persausion
Welcome to Mere Rhetoric, the podcast for beginners and insiders about the ideas, people and movements who have shaped rhetorical history. Today we continue our month-long festival of all things deliberative rhetoric with a discussion of Saving Persuasion by Bryan Garston.
One thing exciting about his book is that it isn’t written by a rhetorician. Nope, not really. It’s written by a political scientist, which makes rhetoricians excited for two reasons. First, we always get excited when someone outside of our field thinks of us, much less praises us. Second, this guy is in political science! Political science, the people who are always saying things like “empty rhetoric” and “let’s cut through the rhetoric”! And here’s Bryan Garsten saying that persuasion has value, that it is worth saving. We could, as a discipline, collectively kiss him.
But that would take a while.
Also, it would be weird.
Garsten argues that the political theorists of the Enlightenment
got it all wrong; instead of appealing to some sort of universal
common standard for political deliberation, we need to be more
comfortable with how people actually think. Their feelings,
attitudes and even biases.
Because, in our age "efforts to avoid rhetorical controversy tend
to produce new and potentially more dogmatic forms of rhetoric" we
need to realize that "public reason was ingested by philosophers to
quell religious controversy by subjecting debate to authoritative
standard"-in Hobbes' case, representation, in Rousseau's "prophetic
nationalism" and in Kant's "public reason." In each other these
there’s an attempt to keep debate from happening—to push people out
of the debate Garsten suggests that all three of these standards
result in what he calls "liberal alienation"--the way that "from
implied unanimity [...] dissenters feel alienated"--if you feel
like you can't participate in "general deliberation," your concerns
are unaddressed. The result is a polarization where those not
invited to the deliberative party strike out against those who
exclude them.
And yes, Garsten invokes Hitler and how German concerns were
polarized instead of addressed. You can see how it happens. Post
world war I, the Germans were excluded from the table of
negotiating the peace. German concerns were left out of the
deliberations, or were underplayed and Germany hurt bad
after the war. By not being considered part of deliberations, many
Germans become polarized and aggressive about groups they feel
wronged them. And the exclusion begins again. Hitler says, “We all
are hurt from WWI” and the people all murmur “yes, yes” and Hitler
says, “German should be great again” and the people all murmur
“yes, yes” and then Hitler says, “So we should eliminate Jews and
other undesirables” and some people suddenly are out of the
discussion again..
Instead, Garsten recommends that we make more space for alternative
arguments, including those that are based in partiality, passion
and privacy. He defends these elements against the common
Habermasian critiques against them and says that what should count
as deliberative argument is simply "when we make decisions
deliberately [...] when we purposefully consider [...] the factors
relevant to the our decision." We need to, instead of excluding our
adversaries because of their "bad reasoning," see each other and
respect each other for how the actual existing individual thinks
and feels.
The example Garsten gives is Pres. Johnson, who was able to meet
the small-town, white Texans where they were and position something
like civil rights for black people in a way that would be palatable
to them as well
In all of this there is still the threat of demagoguery. As a
potential solution, Garsten invokes Madison, whose theories about
small, localized governments within a extended territory can be
extended to deliberation: break issues down into smaller,
localized, even interested issues, and make sure that there is
plenty of space for things to be re-evaluated in the future, and
that even if one issue is decided, it doesn't by extension mean
that all of the other issues are. Small, piecemeal disputes are
best. These institutional strictures structure the individual
though and directions deliberation--there can' be any thought of
"If I were king," because there aren't any kings to be had.
Ultimately, Garsten promotes a defense of persuasion where we look
at each other, and speak to each other--not that we're BFFs or
brothers, but that we "pay attention to fellow citizens and to
their opinions," not as their opinions should be constructed, or we
think they should be, but as they are. The best purpose of
persuasion is that it forces us to think beyond ourselves, to
encounter others as they are, instead of trying to make them in our
own image.
If you’re a political scientist with thoughts about rhetoric or a rhetorician with thoughts about politics, feel free to contact us either via email at mererhetoricpodcast@gmail.com or our Twitter account @mererhetoric-k-e-d or put out a negative TV spot showing us in unflattering, slow-motion footage. Keep on persuading, my fellow rhetoricians!