Starting in June 1999 Kosova became a
protectorate
of the United Nations.
The Public Work of Rhetoric_nodrm
That is, fairness, because it is an innate threat to power, is permitted only up to the point that it jeopardizes the stability of the social system, for if it oversteps this boundary, the system will respond with its even more rightful claim to "fairness.
"13 It is through such means and logics that the mixed system of oligarchic-democracy comes into being.
14
Let me at this juncture speculate about the future by elaborating a point made in the introduction: one of the emerging crises for this new century may be the widening of a disjunction between the limitlessness that democratic subjectivity implies, through rights talk and all other mobilizations of demo- cratic rhetorics, and the limitedness that material life represents (for instance, the sustainability of resources). My guess is that material life will force a severe readjustment of democratic rhetorics that will cause them to lose their origi- nal enthusiasm, become pale and gray, and finally to dissipate into bureau- cratic management whose main function will be to preserve hierarchy in the name of public order that will be translated as synonymous with the public good. It will be, in effect, the exhaustion of democracy, which has been long in the making, and the first signs will be laws, democratically passed, that re- spond to the constriction of resources. This last point is important because social contract models traditionally ignore material resources and instead talk rather simply of liberties as limitless or limited: for instance, individual liber- ties are constricted only by the need to preserve someone else's individual lib- erties. In this sense, liberties have no connection to real material resources and thereby invent an unreal world of limitless progress and optimism. But as the nature of constriction shifts increasingly to material resources, liberty as a founding politics will more than likely be forced to adjust. Of course, such adjustments have always been a part of the history of democracy. That is, power has always tampered with the demos by resisting, via laws and other means, equitable distribution of resources while allowing, as a kind of escape valve, the discourses of liberty to foster its distracting ideology. But that game
is narrowing--particularly if we cannot find new technologies to replace the wastefulness of current technologies. 15
In short, a discussion of democratic rhetorics as profoundly suspect takes us to the threshold of questioning democratic governance itself, its mechani- cal operations--and here we ask the disturbing questions: To what extent are the linchpins of democracy, such as checks and balances, the rule of law, and so on, comparably suspect? Why does the demos as deep artifact never arrive? The answer is simple enough: power protects its accumulated advantages and capital through laws of exclusion and inclusion. And even when one power bloc is replaced by another, it is because that replacement was permissible, posing only a minor threat to the continuity of power, and perhaps even aid- ing the concentration of power by eradicating antagonistic and/or anachronis- tic elements. I do not have the space here to examine what may be a classic case in point: post-World War II American civil rights legislation. Such legis- lation seemed to break up entrenched power blocs based on segregation and Jim Crow laws, which enabled northern capital to more easily invest in the South. The result was an economic boom in the Sun Belt even as the economic crisis in the northern Rust Belt deepened. The point is that just laws, what- ever else they might be, also participate in the consolidation of specific power blocs and the dismantling of others in the infinite game of inclusion/exclusion.
Our Post-Berlin Wall Moment
At the beginning of this essay I suggested that the fall of the Berlin Wall marked a dramatic spread of democratic rhetorics. In my view, these rhetorics have been unable to organize just actions. It is this idea that I hope to now deepen because, if it is true, it helps to further explain the dis-ease that underlies this essay and the consequent emergence of an anthropology-of- democracy perspective focusing simultaneously on democratic rhetorics ver- sus the actual operations of democracies.
It is easy to overstate the point, but it is possible that the entire Cold War period represented a steady hollowing out of whatever "virtuous core" re- mained as democracy, or at least the United States' variety, pragmatically but duplicitously encountered a variety of Latin American, Middle Eastern, and Asian insurgencies. In effect, the Cold War steadily corroded the two compet- ing idealisms, exposing how deeply the need to grab national security, advan- tage, and power had taken precedence over the maintenance of "virtuous" idealisms. During the struggles over Korea, Guatemala, Cuba, Vietnam, Chile, Nicaragua, Iran, and Afghanistan, to name only some of the better known examples, competing visions of what constitutes liberty for all were quickly sacrificed to the pressing needs of national interest. The fall of the Berlin Wall, then, marked the funeral of one idealism and became a shot across the bow for the other. At first, however, only the funeral of Communism seemed clear,
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for the fall of the wall simultaneously rebirthed a particular kind of political enthusiasm regarding democracy and capitalism insofar as all other models for the organization of social, political, and economic life seemed to be effectively defeated--hence Fukuyama. In the United States, both neoconservatism and neoliberalism were distinctive outbreaks of this enthusiasm.
But the triumph was elusive and quickly unraveled. As democracy scat- tered everywhere, it became evident that all sorts of newly emerging move- ments and constitutions merely made use of democracy as a topos. Even as the United States negotiated military bases inside the old Iron Curtain, demo- cratic rhetorics in these newly emerging states became organized around older structures of power because these were the only rhetorics permissible if one wanted to preserve power or aspired to power. In short, democracy as the "only game in town" was, in effect, "democracy without democrats. "16 Democracy was circulating and morphing at such speed that it was no longer identifiable; distortions of some vague original democracy seemed to be accelerating. That is, the enthusiasm that democratic rhetorics always generate could not do much more except skim the surfaces of different body politics because under- neath other sorts of actions were shaping social structures. In a place such as collapsing Yugoslavia, where I have been doing fieldwork for some time, the disjunction between democratic rhetorics and forces of exclusion/inclusion became glaringly apparent. Democratic rhetorics were tethered to very little.
Let me elaborate this last point by turning to my Kosovar fieldwork, par- ticularly to a local political analyst who makes a fascinating claim in one of his books: "I argue that a democratic Serbia will be impossible with a major- ity Albanian population Kosova [sic]. In this context, following their national ideology, the Serbs had only three alternatives: 1. To expel the whole Alban- ian population from Kosova, 2. To expel the Albanian population from part of Kosova (partition Kosova), or 3. To recognize the independence of Kosova. "17
Most interpretations have blamed the Balkan wars of the 1990s on the intensification of Serbian nationalism, which after the death of Tito crystal- lized as a kind of anti-Communist liberation ideology. 18 The strength of this interpretation is that it acknowledges how one strand of Serbian populism framed the problem: it demonized and rebelled against Communism, and as an antidote argued for a return to Serbia's roots as well as the territorial uni- fication of the Serbian people. Other interpretations, however, emphasize less the perversities of Serbian nationalism and more "a ruthless activation of the logic of 'sovereignty' in the name of the 'nation,' both of them central concepts of European modernity. "19 This last interpretation is appropriate, for it empha- sizes how mass sentiment is itself a consequence of a modernist historical logic that effectively countered problems of monarchical order even as it launched another set of problems that would later be realized. And one might note, again, that the topoi of "sovereignty" and the "nation-state" as embodied by the "will of the people" are storehouses of a particular kind of social energy.
But Spahiu argues still another dimension of this modernist fantasy. Ser- bia had begun to cultivate democratic institutions such as elections, and many of the leading political parties attached democracy to their names. Call this, if you wish, another instance of "democracy without democrats" or, as many readers of this essay will claim, a hijacking of democracy by nationalists. But be aware that in these phrasings nationalism corrupts the virtues of democ- racy, and what gets obscured is democracy's dependence on some version of nationalism in order to realize its own project. Democracy needs the coher- ence that nationalism provides, a sense of We the People, though of course this coherence can emerge from milder forms of nationalism. But Spahiu's point is that when democracy is put under stress and strain, the nationalist ingredient that is part of its makeup cannot be stuffed back into its box. Spahiu argues that Serbian democracy as a representation of the will of the people realized that it would be permanently confronted by restless, highly demanding recalcitrants of another faith comprising approximately one-third of its body politic. For the Serbian state to function democratically, that por- tion had to disappear or the democracy would face paralysis from a plethora of rights demands that could not be granted, a funneling of resources that could not be afforded, and waves of massive protest that would have eventu- ally led to civil war.
So democratization would have legitimized all these actions and made Serbian life miserable. Serbia wanted to keep Kosova, but keeping it meant the potential destruction of its state. Granting Kosova independence was not acceptable, but bending to its needs was also not acceptable. The only real solutions were to partition it or drive the Albanians out. Consider what the American civil rights movement would have become if African Americans would have constituted 40 percent or more of the American population. Minority rights may be permissible only to the extent that the material con- ditions permit, that is, when minority differences or numbers do not signifi- cantly challenge the hegemonic structure. When liberal democrats genuinely feel their hegemony or security threatened, they will no longer advocate demo- cratic toleration. Hence the dubiousness of democracy when its material limi- tations are not acknowledged. I am, of course, not defending a shrinking of minority rights but presenting the material conditions, or root conditions, that allow--or disallow--people to think and act according to "democratic virtues. "
Spahiu's analysis raises some further issues. It seems that democracy can only be understood as some sort of mixed system. In the case of Serbia, the immaturity of its democracy allowed it to mix readily with forms of totalitari- anism. Readers might recognize here Agamben's analyses of the state of exception and the sort of equivalence that it makes between democracy and totalitarianism. 20 This latter point, which may disturb many readers since it opens the door to certain forms of unrestrained power, simply acknowledges
Democracy and Its Limitations 109
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that democracy as a set of conceptual ideals cannot be easily materialized in a real state with real needs facing the push and pull of internal and external forces. That is, no state can wear the ideals of democracy comfortably, for the state is a remarkably different animal. Democracy is a thought system that many have tried to institutionalize but has yet to arrive; the state, in contrast, wields pragmatic power, and if its self-preservation becomes desperate enough, it will break the shackles of restraint, including those imposed by democracy, and it will do so "democratically" with the full permission of the "people. " A people struggling under the raw anxiety of survival will look first for a cure to their material desperation and will modify and even dismiss with easy aban- don the niceties of their ideals. From this perspective, there are no aberrations, distortions, or perversions of democracy; these darker conditions are simply part of the potential of any democratic power, even if only rarely deployed.
And if a state should claim that it observes a set of principles, such as the rule of law or democratic transparency, but acts in wholly opposite ways, it is strange to call such a state hypocritical. The charge is strange because it mis- perceives the nature of the state as wielder of pragmatic power. That is, it mis- perceives the gap between theory and practice. Theory attempts to control practice by giving it meaning, high purpose, a telos in order to curb its poten- tial brutality. Practice will abide by theory and more or less follow its rules as long as conditions permit. It is the breaking point, then, the state of emer- gency, that always proves most interesting, that moment when practice must overthrow whatever theory gives it meaning in order to save the theory itself. In other words, the unseemly practices that at the breaking point suddenly become sanctioned are given full reign because they can be dressed with the last vestige of hope: the salvation of our virtuous theory. But this breaking point simply tells us what has been in place all along, namely, that theory is constantly under assault because it disables and hinders the power of human desire and real needs.
This conundrum is faced by Kant in his essay "On the Common Saying: 'This May Be True in Theory, But It Does Not Apply in Practice. '"21 His goal here is to embody the transcendental principles of moral order, reason, and justice inside republican constitutions. Through such means natural law (the- ory) can become human law (practice) that will tame the all too human pro- clivity for force and cunning. Via a number of brilliant arguments--such as the fact that incessant violence exhausts a people, which brings them back to reason--he makes his case that humans have and will continue to wend their way toward a morally superior state, that is, a public sphere based on reason and empathy, not coercion. This model, in which theory and practice come into reasonable alignment, is picked up by Rawls and Habermas in their own models of a just society but also by their critics who patch up the injustices overlooked by both authors in order to offer an even fuller, more encompass- ing justice. Theory and practice, then, in all these models can be brought
together, and from this perspective the calling out of shortcomings and hypocrisies are legitimate strategies by which the virtues of democracy can be widened and improved and brought back into practice; that is, these theorists and defenders of the public sphere claim that more democracy can repair the damage that democracy has created if we can just point to who or what caused its virtue to slip and fall in the first place.
The reason why I maintain a genuine fondness for Kant, Rawls, and Haber- mas is because these writers know the potential human tragedy that their arguments try to keep at bay. Nevertheless, the approach taken here regard- ing the anthropology of democracy and the analysis of democratic rhetorics foregrounds material conditions. It does not background them, as does the idealist tradition. Perceived need or real need, perceived fear or real fear-- when people feel subject to these lacks, they assume that material conditions are the causes of their woe, and from that base rhetors search for the avail- able arguments that have the power to win what is needed or defeat what is feared. And those topoi that carry a history of virtue have particular power; hence rhetors evoke democratic rhetorics in the hope of locating some irre- futable sense of goodness and justice--Recht, as Kant called it--that will defend their claim. But this irrefutability is often checkmated by arguments and virtues derived from the same democratic rhetorics.
Final Thoughts on the "Public Good"
How, then, do we determine the public good? A related question: how might we improve the quality of the public sphere? These are some of the more common questions raised within liberal democracy. My earlier discussions of Sharon Crowley and James Aune indicated also their deep interest in revi- talizing the public sphere. Similarly, in a talk titled "The Lure of Extreme Rhetoric," political theorist and president of the University of Pennsylvania Amy Gutmann, well known for her work with Habermas, examined the "increasing allure of extremist rhetoric in public discourse and its perils for democracy. " The central peril was the erosion of a sense of compromise and mutual respect that tends to distort and corrupt democracy. The cure? An "economy of moral disagreement" in which advocates stand passionately for what they believe but do not argue down their adversaries or argue for more than what is necessary. 22 But can democracy be distorted, corrupted, or put into peril? And how does one encourage advocates to stand passionately for what they believe but also to restrain themselves from arguing down adver- saries and arguing only for what is necessary? My answers to these questions will hopefully be a fitting conclusion to this essay.
I have been arguing from the beginning that democracy is too large and too abstract to be institutionalized. If anything, democracy is a topos along with a whole host of related topoi that act as storehouses of social energy. They are particularly powerful topoi because they reflect a history that has become
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sacrosanct, and hence they evoke an instant or automatic virtue to be deployed by rhetors in whatever scene or for whatever cause they choose. Of course, one rhetor's deployment may seem utterly unacceptable to another's, but because the topoi themselves are packed with virtue both camps will probably rely on the same topoi.
If this first point is trivial enough, perhaps the second one is less so. For what is even more at stake is not just how democratic rhetorics are available equally to all parties in the public sphere but to the extent to which demo- cratic governance, because it is not realizable except as an energeia, represents a mixed system that I am calling oligarchic democracy. If democracy is, indeed, a mixed system, then it cannot be distorted or corrupted because, in effect, whatever the critic is complaining about is integral to the system itself. Return- ing to Gutmann's example, the boorish voices that want to trample the voices of opponents and to claim much more than is necessary are not examples of a distorted democracy but part of the expectations and desires that have been unleashed by a special subjectivity that is now filled with the topoi of rights, freedoms, and individual will that mark democracy. Democracy, of course, does not in all cases give birth to boorish passions, but it provides an inter- pretive lens that can rationalize and legitimize actions and words that I too find reprehensible. Gutmann idealizes democracy because there is no alterna- tive that can realize the sort of public good and public sphere that she desires. She is right that no other alternative has been theorized, but why should she also ignore the ways in which democracy generates the very world that makes her uncomfortable?
Let me inquire more deeply into the motives for asking questions like "how do we determine the public good? " or "how do we improve the public sphere? " First, I cannot imagine a program that could in any pragmatic way improve public deliberation. Second, I suspect that most calls to improve the public sphere reflect the specific motives of some group that feels shut out of the deliberative process. That is, a call to improve the public sphere, whether from a left-leaning or right-leaning group, is a synonym for "let me in" and not really a call to genuinely improve the public sphere. In most cases, the group in power, whether left or right and very much like the Chicago alder- man described earlier, seeks to stymie the other, while the group out of power calls for improvements to the public sphere. Such calls, then, sound the tones of virtue, but if either group should come to power it may cease to believe its former words if such calls should lead to political suicide. Third, such ques- tions as "how do we determine the public good? " or "how do we improve the quality of the public sphere? " idealize the concept of the public good by sug- gesting that there is some determination or improvement that will somehow escape the paradoxical conditions of exclusion/inclusion. Certainly there are on occasion win-win conclusions to a public dispute, but the public sphere,
particularly when deliberating the most serious of social issues, is mostly a space of limited inclusion and not one that excludes exclusion.
Finally, a more significant, if controversial, point is that such calls are in some instances false emergencies built on a mistaken conflation of democracy with the interests of the nation-state. Conjecture: When we say that democ- racy is in peril or that our freedom or the constitution or the public sphere is in danger, are we thinking metonymically, that is, substituting the term "democracy" for the state itself? If so, then to call for the preservation of democracy is actually a call to preserve the social order as embodied by the state. I suspect that false emergencies are manufactured out of metonymic magic and that calls to action in the name of saving the constitution or democ- racy or the public sphere mobilize subjects to rise up in defense of the state by using the bullhorn of virtuous democracy. Such calls are meant to stymie the revolutionary, unruly, destabilizing "red" spirit, whether right-leaning or left-leaning, that constitutes much of the history of democratic movements in order to emphasize the more conservative defense of the status quo inter- ests of the state.
Perhaps a keener way to explore this point is to observe that democratic rhetorics, as suggested earlier, overproduce expectations and desires that gen- erate unrealistic claims of equality, freedom, and rights that are difficult for any social order to realize and manage. The questions "how do we determine the public good? " and "how might we improve the public sphere? " are, par- ticularly in Gutmann's case, about the management of that proliferation, the fear that something has gotten out of hand and now must be righted. That is, they apply one kind of brake on the enthusiasms that democracy births; for most "threats" to the constitution or democracy or to the public sphere are the result of someone's claim to excessive freedom and the like. The social order typically manages this proliferation by working double time to produce an economy of material abundance that substitutes for the abstractions and desires that its politics cannot satisfy. As long as this material abundance con- stitutes the norm and dire necessity does not threaten, the human propensity for fairness works.
A Hesitation at the End
Even as this essay deontologizes democracy, it seems to ontologize power by putting it at the center of politics, particularly the mixed system of oligarchic- democracy. All contemporary governance, I suspect, is a ratio of these two terms, these two forces. Curiously enough de Tocqueville saw some of this: "American society has . . . a surface covering of democracy, beneath which the old aristocratic colors sometimes peep out. "23 I do not have the space here to elaborate the proposition of the mixed system. But it should be clear that my argument relies on a strong reading of that proposition as well as a strong
Democracy and Its Limitations 113
114 Ralph Cintron
reading of human anxiety as seen in statements like "fear rules. " Consider: contemporary rhetoricians favor social theorists who shatter the social order via radicalized versions of the topos of democracy--from Marx and Nietzsche to Foucault, Derrida, Habermas, and the most recent work of Rancie`re, Agam- ben, Negri, Badiou, and others. Such work requires an idealized version of democracy, one that rests on a fundamental cleavage between actual existing democracy and democracy itself. My own version of this cleavage has been to call actual existing democracy oligarchic-democracy, a more revealing term, and the other democracy an energeia that functions largely in the symbolic and rhetorical. As an energeia, democracy is not meant to be realized, and that is what provides it with propulsive force. Up to this point, then, my analysis remains within this specific tradition, but then I seem to be raising questions about the "other" democracy as well, for I am wondering about those instances when the energeia of democracy does little to cure perversity but actually insti- gates it (the Serb case mentioned earlier) or raising questions about an era that we may be entering, namely, the exhaustion of democracy strapped to an exhaustion of nature. The end of my essay hesitates, then, because I do not like this reappearance of determinism.
Notes
1. De Tocqueville, Democracy in America, 244.
2. Fukuyama, "End of History? "
3. Linz and Stepan, Problems of Democratic Transition, 5; Trimcev, Democracy; Nodia,
"How Different," 10.
4. Moss, "Commonplaces. " 5. Kennedy, Introduction, 7. 6. Aristotle, On Rhetoric, 249.
7. Hall, Introduction, 21. See also Weber, Economy and Society. 8. Crowley, Toward a Civil Discourse.
9. Aune, Selling the Free Market.
10. Paley, "Toward an Anthropology"; Cruikshank, Will to Empower.
11. Agamben, Homo Sacer; Agamben, State of Exception.
12. Habermas, Between Facts and Norms; Rawls, Theory of Justice.
13. These last four points have been greatly aided by conversations with Candice Rai.
They began as her marginal comments to my paragraph.
14. See Canfora, Democracy in Europe; Cintron, "Democracy as Fetish. "
15. For a more optimistic scenario, see Sachs, Common Wealth.
16. Linz and Stepan, Problems, 5; Trimcev, Democracy; Nodia, "How Different," 10. 17. Spahiu, Serbian Tendencies, 7. As Yugoslavian Communism collapsed, a variety of
internal struggles wracked the region. Internally, the political leadership in Serbia was unable to articulate a replacement ideology for Communism (say, a version of demo- cratic socialism resting on civic identity as opposed to ethnic and/or religious identity) that might keep nationalist forces at bay. Externally, the independent entities that had constituted Yugoslavia began to assert their statehood. Serbia, which saw itself as the natural inheritor of the old federation, struggled against the centripetal forces through a resurgent nationalism strongly inflected by religious (Orthodox) sentiment. In some cases, such as Slovenia, the Serbs did not put up much of a fight, but in other cases, such
as Bosnia and later Kosova, where sizable numbers of Serbs lived, Serbian paramili- taries, aided by the Serbian army, began to claim territory by expelling non-Serbian populations. In Kosova, the majority Albanian population developed parallel and underground political and social institutions as the Serbs clamped down on a province that they considered theirs. The Albanians also adopted a pacifist ideology advocated by their leader, Ibrahim Rugova, in order to avoid the "ethnic cleansing" occurring in Bosnia. The stalemate was ruptured with the emergence of the Kosovar Liberation Army and increasing repression from the Serbs. By 1998-99 the Serbs, in their hunt for the KLA, initiated massacres and forceful expulsion. The KLA retaliated with their own nastiness, and the growing war quickly became unacceptable to the international community. A combined NATO and U. S. force launched an air war that encouraged even more Albanian refugees but defeated and eventually ended the Milosevic regime in Belgrade.
Starting in June 1999 Kosova became a protectorate of the United Nations. In February 2008 Kosova became independent but still under international supervi- sion.
18. Thomas, Serbia under Milosevic.
19. Ananiadis, "Carl Schmitt," 152.
20. Agamben, Homo Sacer; Agamben, State of Exception.
21. Kant, Kant.
22. Gutmann, "Lure of Extreme Rhetoric. "
23. De Tocqueville, Democracy in America, 45.
Works Cited
Agamben, Giorgio. Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life. Translated by Daniel Heller- Roazen. Stanford, Calif. : Stanford University Press, 1998.
------. State of Exception. Translated by Kevin Attell. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005.
Ananiadis, Grigoris. "Carl Schmitt on Kosovo, or, Taking War Seriously. " In Balkan as Metaphor: Between Globalization and Fragmentation, edited by Dusan I. Bjelic and Obrad Savic, 119-61. Cambridge, Mass. : MIT Press, 2002.
Aristotle. On Rhetoric: A Theory of Civic Discourse. Translated by George A. Kennedy. New York: Oxford University Press, 1991.
Aune, James A. Selling the Free Market: The Rhetoric of Economic Correctness. New York: Guilford Press, 2001.
Canfora, Luciano. Democracy in Europe: A History of an Ideology. Translated by Simon Jones. Oxford: Blackwell, 2006.
Cintron, Ralph. "Democracy as Fetish. " Politicum 1, no. 2 (May 2008): 9-12.
Crowley, Sharon. Toward a Civil Discourse: Rhetoric and Fundamentalism. Pittsburgh: Uni-
versity of Pittsburgh Press, 2006.
Cruikshank, Barbara. The Will to Empower: Democratic Citizens and Other Subjects. Ithaca,
N. Y. : Cornell University Press, 1999.
De Tocqueville, Alexis. Democracy in America. Translated by Henry Reeve. Edited by
Phillips Bradley. New York: Everyman's Library, 1994.
Fukuyama, Francis. "The End of History? " National Interest (Summer 1989): www. wesjones
. com/eoh. htm.
Gutmann, Amy. "The Lure of Extreme Rhetoric. " Craig S. Bazzani Lecture in Public
Affairs, University of Illinois at Chicago, November 2006.
Habermas, Ju? rgen. Between Facts and Norms: Contributions to a Discourse Theory of Law
and Democracy. Translated by William Rehg. Cambridge, Mass. : MIT Press, 1998.
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116 Ralph Cintron
Hall, John R. "Introduction: The Reworking of Class Analysis. " In Reworking Class, edited by John R. Hall, 1-40. Ithaca, N. Y. : Cornell University Press, 1997.
Kant, Immanuel. Kant: Political Writings. Edited by H. S. Reiss. Translated by H. B. Nisbet. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991.
Kennedy, George A. Introduction. In Aristotle on Rhetoric, A Theory of Civic Discourse, 3-22. Translated by George A. Kennedy. New York: Oxford University Press, 1991. Linz, Jaun J. , and Alfred Stepan. Problems of Democratic Transition and Consolidation:
Southern Europe, South America, and Post-Communist Europe. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins
University Press, 1996.
Moss, Ann. "Commonplaces and Commonplace Books. " In Encyclopedia of Rhetoric,
119-124. Edited by Thomas O. Sloane. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001. Nodia, Ghia. "How Different Are Postcommunist Transitions? " In Democracy after Com- munism, edited by Larry Diamond and Marc F. Plattner, 3-17. Baltimore: Johns Hop-
kins University Press, 2002.
Paley, Julia. "Toward an Anthropology of Democracy. " Annual Review of Anthropology 31
(2002): 469-96.
Rawls, John. A Theory of Justice, rev. ed. Cambridge, Mass. : Belknap Press of Harvard
University Press, 1999.
Sachs, Jeffrey D. Common Wealth: Economics for a Crowded Planet. New York: Penguin
Press, 2008.
Spahiu, Nexmedin. Serbian Tendencies for Partitioning of Kosova. Budapest: Central Euro-
pean University, 1999.
Thomas, Robert. Serbia under Milosevic: Politics in the 1990s. London: Hurst, 1999. Trimcev, Eno. Democracy, Intellectuals and the State: The Case of Albania. Tirana: Alban-
ian Institute for International Studies, 2005.
Weber, Max. Economy and Society: An Outline of Interpretive Sociology. Edited by Guenther
Roth and Claus Wittich. New York: Bedminster Press, 1968.
[ part2 ]
Rhetorical Interventions
? Rhetorical Engagements in the Scientist's Process of Remaking Race as Genetic
Celeste M. Condit
On July 30, 2002, a New York Times headline read, "Race Is Seen as Real Guide to Track the Roots of Disease. "1 The credibility of this article rested squarely on the research of a biologist. Neil Risch, of Stanford University, is cited as the source of the claim that "genetic differences have arisen among people living on different continents and that race, referring to geographically based ances- try, is a valid way of categorizing these differences. "2 This article is part of a substantial trend in current genetic research, which links differences in human social groups to differences in genetics.
Here we go again. Every other generation or so, a group of scientists masks flawed methodology and self-aggrandizing assumptions with the latest scien- tific trend in order to produce "data" showing that other races are inferior3: phrenology bolstered slavery in the nineteenth century;4 the poorly conceived and biased data of Charles Davenport bolstered eugenics in the Progressive Era;5 Cyril Burt's manufactured intelligence test of twins backed up segrega- tionism in the mid-twentieth century. 6 All of these, of course, pale in compari- son to the Nazi physicians' brutal "experiments" and their broad-reaching claims to superiority in the blood of their Volk. 7 Most rhetoricians readily con- demn this recurrent tendency, but is there anything that rhetoricians can do to preclude scientists from constructing these racist statements in the guise of scientific truth?
Rhetorical theorists have, no doubt, long been entangled in efforts for so- cial change. Cicero was both the foremost rhetorical theorist of his era and an active Roman politician, elected Consul in 63 B. C. Like Cicero's activism, most efforts by rhetoricians to participate in social change processes have been directed at the public sphere. Humans, however, have become a thoroughly technologized species, and recent research in science and technology studies have highlighted the powerful influences exerted by the technical sphere upon paths of social change. 8 An enormous variety of scholars have shown that the
120 Celeste M. Condit
technical sphere, like the public sphere, is at least partially shaped by rhetori- cal factors. 9 It might similarly, therefore, be susceptible to intervention through discursive efforts guided by rhetorical theory.
Even when addressing topics raised by science and technology, however, most rhetoricians have directed their discourse at other rhetoricians or at a presumed reading public inhabiting the public sphere. With regard to the topic of race and genetics, there are, for example, numerous analyses that show the problematic metaphors and categorizations of genetics,10 or reveal the rhe- torical strategies by which the linkage between "race" and "genetics" is con- structed in scientific discourses or reportage on science. 11 While there are some exceptions to the tendency to focus on technical communication as it plays out in the public sphere, the heavy publication slant suggests that it is likely that more activist interventions are also directed at the public sphere rather than involving engagement within the technical (or scientific) sphere. 12 To try to enter the scientists' own conversations, to argue with them within the ven- ues and rubrics of science, is a somewhat different enterprise. To broach the feasibility of the practice and some of the challenges, I recount four different episodes in which I engaged geneticists in scientific venues on the subject of the relationships between "race" and "genetics. " I describe some of the major reasons for the varying levels of success I had in each different situation. I conclude that, if my own experience is at all representative, then the funda- mental variables influencing persuasiveness in the scientific venue are remark- ably similar to those in the public sphere: you persuade people if you talk their language, but it is more difficult to persuade someone the more his or her highly interested worldviews are at stake.
My Coming to Terms with Race and Genetics:
The Human Genetic Variation Consortium
Until I moved to New Orleans, I reacted to race in most of the ways the aver- age white professional American today reacts to race. I wanted to be "liberal" and "tolerant," not a "racist," but these were mere platitudes with no depth or breadth of meaning. When I moved to New Orleans, however, I moved to an area called "the black triangle" because I did not want to commute an hour each day to teach at Tulane University, because I was a teacher who could not afford to live in a "white" area, and because my liberal platitudes told me that there was no reason to be prejudiced and avoid a "black" area of town. Liv- ing there gave me experiential lessons about the meanings of racialization in America, and it also led me to modify my research agenda to focus on race. Periodically I have become overwhelmed and despondent and "stopped work- ing on race. " But race in contemporary America is not something you can ever really walk away from.
Consequently, though I had "stopped working on race" half a dozen years earlier and turned to studying genetics, in 1998 I found myself submitting a
The Process of Remaking Race as Genetic 121
proposal to the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to study how laypeople, especially African Americans and Whites, understood the relationship between race and genetics. When that proposal was eventually funded, I was included in a group called the Human Genetic Variation Consortium. This was a group of researchers working in various ways on social, ethical, or legal issues re- lated to race and genetics. Most notably, the group discussed the "Haplotype Map" project (described below) and advised some of that project's advisers. At the close of the term of my cohort of members, a group of its members published a position paper in the Journal of the American Medical Association on the lack of relevance of genetic research to the amelioration of health dis- parities. 13
The consortium meetings during the first year were devoted to familiariz- ing ourselves with the new trend in genetics toward taking account of race in genetics and health studies. We were told that there were two major forces generating this trend. The first was a need for geneticists to account for popu- lation substructure in their work. Through several expensive and embarrass- ingly errant studies, geneticists had discovered that differences among the geographic ancestry of control and experimental populations could produce spurious findings that "a gene" was related to a particular health condition. 14 The simplest way of correcting that problem appeared to be to provide rela- tively rigorous controls on the boundaries among the "racial" groups that com- posed research populations.
The second concern was more compelling to the humanists and social sci- entists in the consortium. It was the issue of health disparities. There can be no denial that there are clear health disparities between groups that are under- stood as "racial" groups in the United States. Compared to people who self- identify as "White," people who self-identify as Black or African American, American Indian, or Hispanic American die younger and suffer more and worse disease across many common diseases, including cardiovascular dis- eases, diabetes, and several kinds of cancer (the situation is more complex for Asian Americans due to different historical and economic positionings of dif- ferent nationalized subpopulations. )15 Many doctors and researchers, includ- ing minority physicians, have come to believe that a part of these disparities is due to differences in biology, specifically in genes.
This rationale for attending to the possibility that "race" is "genetic" was compelling to many members of the consortium, because it meant that dis- missing biological accounts of race was not a move with positive, or even merely neutral effects, but might be positively harmful to minority groups. For example, ignoring race results in the recruitment of predominantly white pop- ulations to research studies, and it produces medicine that is tailored to white bodies and therefore may be less helpful to the bodies of members of other groups. If there is substantial biological variation among the bodies of ethnic or racial groups, then to ignore that variation is to promote "the invisibility
122 Celeste M. Condit
of whiteness," which is simply the contemporary route to privileging white people. 16 It is to mistake whiteness as the universal version of humanity.
The members of the Human Genetic Variation Consortium exhibited a range of reactions to these presentations. My own reaction was to be deeply troubled and indecisive. On the one hand, I was profoundly skeptical of the idea that race was biological. As a rhetorician, I understood that words made categories, and that the structure of material reality in the world did not sim- ply and neutrally require a particular set of labels. I wrote, and continue to write, rhetorical analyses designed to show the constructedness of race with regard to human genetic variation. 17 On the other hand, I had come to take seriously the fact that race could not be simply ignored, denied, or swept under the carpet. Health disparities were undeniable, and minority researchers and physicians I respected insisted that they saw important differences between average members of different groups. While it was clearly true that the "aver- age" member of a group was an imprecise construct, it might also be true that denying such average differences would merely reinforce a medical system that served white people well and other people not so well. Moreover, I had something of a consistency problem, as my own research required me to explicitly invite people to participate based on something like their "race. " If I were to be able to provide a sufficiently robust input from people other than white southerners, then I had to explicitly invite people into my research proj- ect based on their identity as "African Americans. " If this was a good, even essential, practice for the research I thought I should pursue, then how could I insist that it was not a good thing for people doing other types of research?
I took this profound uncertainty as an initial question for my research process. I decided to trust the community of people who would be most affected by a race-based medical research endeavor, African Americans. So, in conjunction with a fabulous group of graduate students and coresearchers, I designed and conducted focus groups to find out what ordinary people thought of these possibilities. 18 The answer African American participants in this research gave was overwhelmingly opposed to race-based medical ap- proaches.
Let me at this juncture speculate about the future by elaborating a point made in the introduction: one of the emerging crises for this new century may be the widening of a disjunction between the limitlessness that democratic subjectivity implies, through rights talk and all other mobilizations of demo- cratic rhetorics, and the limitedness that material life represents (for instance, the sustainability of resources). My guess is that material life will force a severe readjustment of democratic rhetorics that will cause them to lose their origi- nal enthusiasm, become pale and gray, and finally to dissipate into bureau- cratic management whose main function will be to preserve hierarchy in the name of public order that will be translated as synonymous with the public good. It will be, in effect, the exhaustion of democracy, which has been long in the making, and the first signs will be laws, democratically passed, that re- spond to the constriction of resources. This last point is important because social contract models traditionally ignore material resources and instead talk rather simply of liberties as limitless or limited: for instance, individual liber- ties are constricted only by the need to preserve someone else's individual lib- erties. In this sense, liberties have no connection to real material resources and thereby invent an unreal world of limitless progress and optimism. But as the nature of constriction shifts increasingly to material resources, liberty as a founding politics will more than likely be forced to adjust. Of course, such adjustments have always been a part of the history of democracy. That is, power has always tampered with the demos by resisting, via laws and other means, equitable distribution of resources while allowing, as a kind of escape valve, the discourses of liberty to foster its distracting ideology. But that game
is narrowing--particularly if we cannot find new technologies to replace the wastefulness of current technologies. 15
In short, a discussion of democratic rhetorics as profoundly suspect takes us to the threshold of questioning democratic governance itself, its mechani- cal operations--and here we ask the disturbing questions: To what extent are the linchpins of democracy, such as checks and balances, the rule of law, and so on, comparably suspect? Why does the demos as deep artifact never arrive? The answer is simple enough: power protects its accumulated advantages and capital through laws of exclusion and inclusion. And even when one power bloc is replaced by another, it is because that replacement was permissible, posing only a minor threat to the continuity of power, and perhaps even aid- ing the concentration of power by eradicating antagonistic and/or anachronis- tic elements. I do not have the space here to examine what may be a classic case in point: post-World War II American civil rights legislation. Such legis- lation seemed to break up entrenched power blocs based on segregation and Jim Crow laws, which enabled northern capital to more easily invest in the South. The result was an economic boom in the Sun Belt even as the economic crisis in the northern Rust Belt deepened. The point is that just laws, what- ever else they might be, also participate in the consolidation of specific power blocs and the dismantling of others in the infinite game of inclusion/exclusion.
Our Post-Berlin Wall Moment
At the beginning of this essay I suggested that the fall of the Berlin Wall marked a dramatic spread of democratic rhetorics. In my view, these rhetorics have been unable to organize just actions. It is this idea that I hope to now deepen because, if it is true, it helps to further explain the dis-ease that underlies this essay and the consequent emergence of an anthropology-of- democracy perspective focusing simultaneously on democratic rhetorics ver- sus the actual operations of democracies.
It is easy to overstate the point, but it is possible that the entire Cold War period represented a steady hollowing out of whatever "virtuous core" re- mained as democracy, or at least the United States' variety, pragmatically but duplicitously encountered a variety of Latin American, Middle Eastern, and Asian insurgencies. In effect, the Cold War steadily corroded the two compet- ing idealisms, exposing how deeply the need to grab national security, advan- tage, and power had taken precedence over the maintenance of "virtuous" idealisms. During the struggles over Korea, Guatemala, Cuba, Vietnam, Chile, Nicaragua, Iran, and Afghanistan, to name only some of the better known examples, competing visions of what constitutes liberty for all were quickly sacrificed to the pressing needs of national interest. The fall of the Berlin Wall, then, marked the funeral of one idealism and became a shot across the bow for the other. At first, however, only the funeral of Communism seemed clear,
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for the fall of the wall simultaneously rebirthed a particular kind of political enthusiasm regarding democracy and capitalism insofar as all other models for the organization of social, political, and economic life seemed to be effectively defeated--hence Fukuyama. In the United States, both neoconservatism and neoliberalism were distinctive outbreaks of this enthusiasm.
But the triumph was elusive and quickly unraveled. As democracy scat- tered everywhere, it became evident that all sorts of newly emerging move- ments and constitutions merely made use of democracy as a topos. Even as the United States negotiated military bases inside the old Iron Curtain, demo- cratic rhetorics in these newly emerging states became organized around older structures of power because these were the only rhetorics permissible if one wanted to preserve power or aspired to power. In short, democracy as the "only game in town" was, in effect, "democracy without democrats. "16 Democracy was circulating and morphing at such speed that it was no longer identifiable; distortions of some vague original democracy seemed to be accelerating. That is, the enthusiasm that democratic rhetorics always generate could not do much more except skim the surfaces of different body politics because under- neath other sorts of actions were shaping social structures. In a place such as collapsing Yugoslavia, where I have been doing fieldwork for some time, the disjunction between democratic rhetorics and forces of exclusion/inclusion became glaringly apparent. Democratic rhetorics were tethered to very little.
Let me elaborate this last point by turning to my Kosovar fieldwork, par- ticularly to a local political analyst who makes a fascinating claim in one of his books: "I argue that a democratic Serbia will be impossible with a major- ity Albanian population Kosova [sic]. In this context, following their national ideology, the Serbs had only three alternatives: 1. To expel the whole Alban- ian population from Kosova, 2. To expel the Albanian population from part of Kosova (partition Kosova), or 3. To recognize the independence of Kosova. "17
Most interpretations have blamed the Balkan wars of the 1990s on the intensification of Serbian nationalism, which after the death of Tito crystal- lized as a kind of anti-Communist liberation ideology. 18 The strength of this interpretation is that it acknowledges how one strand of Serbian populism framed the problem: it demonized and rebelled against Communism, and as an antidote argued for a return to Serbia's roots as well as the territorial uni- fication of the Serbian people. Other interpretations, however, emphasize less the perversities of Serbian nationalism and more "a ruthless activation of the logic of 'sovereignty' in the name of the 'nation,' both of them central concepts of European modernity. "19 This last interpretation is appropriate, for it empha- sizes how mass sentiment is itself a consequence of a modernist historical logic that effectively countered problems of monarchical order even as it launched another set of problems that would later be realized. And one might note, again, that the topoi of "sovereignty" and the "nation-state" as embodied by the "will of the people" are storehouses of a particular kind of social energy.
But Spahiu argues still another dimension of this modernist fantasy. Ser- bia had begun to cultivate democratic institutions such as elections, and many of the leading political parties attached democracy to their names. Call this, if you wish, another instance of "democracy without democrats" or, as many readers of this essay will claim, a hijacking of democracy by nationalists. But be aware that in these phrasings nationalism corrupts the virtues of democ- racy, and what gets obscured is democracy's dependence on some version of nationalism in order to realize its own project. Democracy needs the coher- ence that nationalism provides, a sense of We the People, though of course this coherence can emerge from milder forms of nationalism. But Spahiu's point is that when democracy is put under stress and strain, the nationalist ingredient that is part of its makeup cannot be stuffed back into its box. Spahiu argues that Serbian democracy as a representation of the will of the people realized that it would be permanently confronted by restless, highly demanding recalcitrants of another faith comprising approximately one-third of its body politic. For the Serbian state to function democratically, that por- tion had to disappear or the democracy would face paralysis from a plethora of rights demands that could not be granted, a funneling of resources that could not be afforded, and waves of massive protest that would have eventu- ally led to civil war.
So democratization would have legitimized all these actions and made Serbian life miserable. Serbia wanted to keep Kosova, but keeping it meant the potential destruction of its state. Granting Kosova independence was not acceptable, but bending to its needs was also not acceptable. The only real solutions were to partition it or drive the Albanians out. Consider what the American civil rights movement would have become if African Americans would have constituted 40 percent or more of the American population. Minority rights may be permissible only to the extent that the material con- ditions permit, that is, when minority differences or numbers do not signifi- cantly challenge the hegemonic structure. When liberal democrats genuinely feel their hegemony or security threatened, they will no longer advocate demo- cratic toleration. Hence the dubiousness of democracy when its material limi- tations are not acknowledged. I am, of course, not defending a shrinking of minority rights but presenting the material conditions, or root conditions, that allow--or disallow--people to think and act according to "democratic virtues. "
Spahiu's analysis raises some further issues. It seems that democracy can only be understood as some sort of mixed system. In the case of Serbia, the immaturity of its democracy allowed it to mix readily with forms of totalitari- anism. Readers might recognize here Agamben's analyses of the state of exception and the sort of equivalence that it makes between democracy and totalitarianism. 20 This latter point, which may disturb many readers since it opens the door to certain forms of unrestrained power, simply acknowledges
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that democracy as a set of conceptual ideals cannot be easily materialized in a real state with real needs facing the push and pull of internal and external forces. That is, no state can wear the ideals of democracy comfortably, for the state is a remarkably different animal. Democracy is a thought system that many have tried to institutionalize but has yet to arrive; the state, in contrast, wields pragmatic power, and if its self-preservation becomes desperate enough, it will break the shackles of restraint, including those imposed by democracy, and it will do so "democratically" with the full permission of the "people. " A people struggling under the raw anxiety of survival will look first for a cure to their material desperation and will modify and even dismiss with easy aban- don the niceties of their ideals. From this perspective, there are no aberrations, distortions, or perversions of democracy; these darker conditions are simply part of the potential of any democratic power, even if only rarely deployed.
And if a state should claim that it observes a set of principles, such as the rule of law or democratic transparency, but acts in wholly opposite ways, it is strange to call such a state hypocritical. The charge is strange because it mis- perceives the nature of the state as wielder of pragmatic power. That is, it mis- perceives the gap between theory and practice. Theory attempts to control practice by giving it meaning, high purpose, a telos in order to curb its poten- tial brutality. Practice will abide by theory and more or less follow its rules as long as conditions permit. It is the breaking point, then, the state of emer- gency, that always proves most interesting, that moment when practice must overthrow whatever theory gives it meaning in order to save the theory itself. In other words, the unseemly practices that at the breaking point suddenly become sanctioned are given full reign because they can be dressed with the last vestige of hope: the salvation of our virtuous theory. But this breaking point simply tells us what has been in place all along, namely, that theory is constantly under assault because it disables and hinders the power of human desire and real needs.
This conundrum is faced by Kant in his essay "On the Common Saying: 'This May Be True in Theory, But It Does Not Apply in Practice. '"21 His goal here is to embody the transcendental principles of moral order, reason, and justice inside republican constitutions. Through such means natural law (the- ory) can become human law (practice) that will tame the all too human pro- clivity for force and cunning. Via a number of brilliant arguments--such as the fact that incessant violence exhausts a people, which brings them back to reason--he makes his case that humans have and will continue to wend their way toward a morally superior state, that is, a public sphere based on reason and empathy, not coercion. This model, in which theory and practice come into reasonable alignment, is picked up by Rawls and Habermas in their own models of a just society but also by their critics who patch up the injustices overlooked by both authors in order to offer an even fuller, more encompass- ing justice. Theory and practice, then, in all these models can be brought
together, and from this perspective the calling out of shortcomings and hypocrisies are legitimate strategies by which the virtues of democracy can be widened and improved and brought back into practice; that is, these theorists and defenders of the public sphere claim that more democracy can repair the damage that democracy has created if we can just point to who or what caused its virtue to slip and fall in the first place.
The reason why I maintain a genuine fondness for Kant, Rawls, and Haber- mas is because these writers know the potential human tragedy that their arguments try to keep at bay. Nevertheless, the approach taken here regard- ing the anthropology of democracy and the analysis of democratic rhetorics foregrounds material conditions. It does not background them, as does the idealist tradition. Perceived need or real need, perceived fear or real fear-- when people feel subject to these lacks, they assume that material conditions are the causes of their woe, and from that base rhetors search for the avail- able arguments that have the power to win what is needed or defeat what is feared. And those topoi that carry a history of virtue have particular power; hence rhetors evoke democratic rhetorics in the hope of locating some irre- futable sense of goodness and justice--Recht, as Kant called it--that will defend their claim. But this irrefutability is often checkmated by arguments and virtues derived from the same democratic rhetorics.
Final Thoughts on the "Public Good"
How, then, do we determine the public good? A related question: how might we improve the quality of the public sphere? These are some of the more common questions raised within liberal democracy. My earlier discussions of Sharon Crowley and James Aune indicated also their deep interest in revi- talizing the public sphere. Similarly, in a talk titled "The Lure of Extreme Rhetoric," political theorist and president of the University of Pennsylvania Amy Gutmann, well known for her work with Habermas, examined the "increasing allure of extremist rhetoric in public discourse and its perils for democracy. " The central peril was the erosion of a sense of compromise and mutual respect that tends to distort and corrupt democracy. The cure? An "economy of moral disagreement" in which advocates stand passionately for what they believe but do not argue down their adversaries or argue for more than what is necessary. 22 But can democracy be distorted, corrupted, or put into peril? And how does one encourage advocates to stand passionately for what they believe but also to restrain themselves from arguing down adver- saries and arguing only for what is necessary? My answers to these questions will hopefully be a fitting conclusion to this essay.
I have been arguing from the beginning that democracy is too large and too abstract to be institutionalized. If anything, democracy is a topos along with a whole host of related topoi that act as storehouses of social energy. They are particularly powerful topoi because they reflect a history that has become
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sacrosanct, and hence they evoke an instant or automatic virtue to be deployed by rhetors in whatever scene or for whatever cause they choose. Of course, one rhetor's deployment may seem utterly unacceptable to another's, but because the topoi themselves are packed with virtue both camps will probably rely on the same topoi.
If this first point is trivial enough, perhaps the second one is less so. For what is even more at stake is not just how democratic rhetorics are available equally to all parties in the public sphere but to the extent to which demo- cratic governance, because it is not realizable except as an energeia, represents a mixed system that I am calling oligarchic democracy. If democracy is, indeed, a mixed system, then it cannot be distorted or corrupted because, in effect, whatever the critic is complaining about is integral to the system itself. Return- ing to Gutmann's example, the boorish voices that want to trample the voices of opponents and to claim much more than is necessary are not examples of a distorted democracy but part of the expectations and desires that have been unleashed by a special subjectivity that is now filled with the topoi of rights, freedoms, and individual will that mark democracy. Democracy, of course, does not in all cases give birth to boorish passions, but it provides an inter- pretive lens that can rationalize and legitimize actions and words that I too find reprehensible. Gutmann idealizes democracy because there is no alterna- tive that can realize the sort of public good and public sphere that she desires. She is right that no other alternative has been theorized, but why should she also ignore the ways in which democracy generates the very world that makes her uncomfortable?
Let me inquire more deeply into the motives for asking questions like "how do we determine the public good? " or "how do we improve the public sphere? " First, I cannot imagine a program that could in any pragmatic way improve public deliberation. Second, I suspect that most calls to improve the public sphere reflect the specific motives of some group that feels shut out of the deliberative process. That is, a call to improve the public sphere, whether from a left-leaning or right-leaning group, is a synonym for "let me in" and not really a call to genuinely improve the public sphere. In most cases, the group in power, whether left or right and very much like the Chicago alder- man described earlier, seeks to stymie the other, while the group out of power calls for improvements to the public sphere. Such calls, then, sound the tones of virtue, but if either group should come to power it may cease to believe its former words if such calls should lead to political suicide. Third, such ques- tions as "how do we determine the public good? " or "how do we improve the quality of the public sphere? " idealize the concept of the public good by sug- gesting that there is some determination or improvement that will somehow escape the paradoxical conditions of exclusion/inclusion. Certainly there are on occasion win-win conclusions to a public dispute, but the public sphere,
particularly when deliberating the most serious of social issues, is mostly a space of limited inclusion and not one that excludes exclusion.
Finally, a more significant, if controversial, point is that such calls are in some instances false emergencies built on a mistaken conflation of democracy with the interests of the nation-state. Conjecture: When we say that democ- racy is in peril or that our freedom or the constitution or the public sphere is in danger, are we thinking metonymically, that is, substituting the term "democracy" for the state itself? If so, then to call for the preservation of democracy is actually a call to preserve the social order as embodied by the state. I suspect that false emergencies are manufactured out of metonymic magic and that calls to action in the name of saving the constitution or democ- racy or the public sphere mobilize subjects to rise up in defense of the state by using the bullhorn of virtuous democracy. Such calls are meant to stymie the revolutionary, unruly, destabilizing "red" spirit, whether right-leaning or left-leaning, that constitutes much of the history of democratic movements in order to emphasize the more conservative defense of the status quo inter- ests of the state.
Perhaps a keener way to explore this point is to observe that democratic rhetorics, as suggested earlier, overproduce expectations and desires that gen- erate unrealistic claims of equality, freedom, and rights that are difficult for any social order to realize and manage. The questions "how do we determine the public good? " and "how might we improve the public sphere? " are, par- ticularly in Gutmann's case, about the management of that proliferation, the fear that something has gotten out of hand and now must be righted. That is, they apply one kind of brake on the enthusiasms that democracy births; for most "threats" to the constitution or democracy or to the public sphere are the result of someone's claim to excessive freedom and the like. The social order typically manages this proliferation by working double time to produce an economy of material abundance that substitutes for the abstractions and desires that its politics cannot satisfy. As long as this material abundance con- stitutes the norm and dire necessity does not threaten, the human propensity for fairness works.
A Hesitation at the End
Even as this essay deontologizes democracy, it seems to ontologize power by putting it at the center of politics, particularly the mixed system of oligarchic- democracy. All contemporary governance, I suspect, is a ratio of these two terms, these two forces. Curiously enough de Tocqueville saw some of this: "American society has . . . a surface covering of democracy, beneath which the old aristocratic colors sometimes peep out. "23 I do not have the space here to elaborate the proposition of the mixed system. But it should be clear that my argument relies on a strong reading of that proposition as well as a strong
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reading of human anxiety as seen in statements like "fear rules. " Consider: contemporary rhetoricians favor social theorists who shatter the social order via radicalized versions of the topos of democracy--from Marx and Nietzsche to Foucault, Derrida, Habermas, and the most recent work of Rancie`re, Agam- ben, Negri, Badiou, and others. Such work requires an idealized version of democracy, one that rests on a fundamental cleavage between actual existing democracy and democracy itself. My own version of this cleavage has been to call actual existing democracy oligarchic-democracy, a more revealing term, and the other democracy an energeia that functions largely in the symbolic and rhetorical. As an energeia, democracy is not meant to be realized, and that is what provides it with propulsive force. Up to this point, then, my analysis remains within this specific tradition, but then I seem to be raising questions about the "other" democracy as well, for I am wondering about those instances when the energeia of democracy does little to cure perversity but actually insti- gates it (the Serb case mentioned earlier) or raising questions about an era that we may be entering, namely, the exhaustion of democracy strapped to an exhaustion of nature. The end of my essay hesitates, then, because I do not like this reappearance of determinism.
Notes
1. De Tocqueville, Democracy in America, 244.
2. Fukuyama, "End of History? "
3. Linz and Stepan, Problems of Democratic Transition, 5; Trimcev, Democracy; Nodia,
"How Different," 10.
4. Moss, "Commonplaces. " 5. Kennedy, Introduction, 7. 6. Aristotle, On Rhetoric, 249.
7. Hall, Introduction, 21. See also Weber, Economy and Society. 8. Crowley, Toward a Civil Discourse.
9. Aune, Selling the Free Market.
10. Paley, "Toward an Anthropology"; Cruikshank, Will to Empower.
11. Agamben, Homo Sacer; Agamben, State of Exception.
12. Habermas, Between Facts and Norms; Rawls, Theory of Justice.
13. These last four points have been greatly aided by conversations with Candice Rai.
They began as her marginal comments to my paragraph.
14. See Canfora, Democracy in Europe; Cintron, "Democracy as Fetish. "
15. For a more optimistic scenario, see Sachs, Common Wealth.
16. Linz and Stepan, Problems, 5; Trimcev, Democracy; Nodia, "How Different," 10. 17. Spahiu, Serbian Tendencies, 7. As Yugoslavian Communism collapsed, a variety of
internal struggles wracked the region. Internally, the political leadership in Serbia was unable to articulate a replacement ideology for Communism (say, a version of demo- cratic socialism resting on civic identity as opposed to ethnic and/or religious identity) that might keep nationalist forces at bay. Externally, the independent entities that had constituted Yugoslavia began to assert their statehood. Serbia, which saw itself as the natural inheritor of the old federation, struggled against the centripetal forces through a resurgent nationalism strongly inflected by religious (Orthodox) sentiment. In some cases, such as Slovenia, the Serbs did not put up much of a fight, but in other cases, such
as Bosnia and later Kosova, where sizable numbers of Serbs lived, Serbian paramili- taries, aided by the Serbian army, began to claim territory by expelling non-Serbian populations. In Kosova, the majority Albanian population developed parallel and underground political and social institutions as the Serbs clamped down on a province that they considered theirs. The Albanians also adopted a pacifist ideology advocated by their leader, Ibrahim Rugova, in order to avoid the "ethnic cleansing" occurring in Bosnia. The stalemate was ruptured with the emergence of the Kosovar Liberation Army and increasing repression from the Serbs. By 1998-99 the Serbs, in their hunt for the KLA, initiated massacres and forceful expulsion. The KLA retaliated with their own nastiness, and the growing war quickly became unacceptable to the international community. A combined NATO and U. S. force launched an air war that encouraged even more Albanian refugees but defeated and eventually ended the Milosevic regime in Belgrade.
Starting in June 1999 Kosova became a protectorate of the United Nations. In February 2008 Kosova became independent but still under international supervi- sion.
18. Thomas, Serbia under Milosevic.
19. Ananiadis, "Carl Schmitt," 152.
20. Agamben, Homo Sacer; Agamben, State of Exception.
21. Kant, Kant.
22. Gutmann, "Lure of Extreme Rhetoric. "
23. De Tocqueville, Democracy in America, 45.
Works Cited
Agamben, Giorgio. Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life. Translated by Daniel Heller- Roazen. Stanford, Calif. : Stanford University Press, 1998.
------. State of Exception. Translated by Kevin Attell. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005.
Ananiadis, Grigoris. "Carl Schmitt on Kosovo, or, Taking War Seriously. " In Balkan as Metaphor: Between Globalization and Fragmentation, edited by Dusan I. Bjelic and Obrad Savic, 119-61. Cambridge, Mass. : MIT Press, 2002.
Aristotle. On Rhetoric: A Theory of Civic Discourse. Translated by George A. Kennedy. New York: Oxford University Press, 1991.
Aune, James A. Selling the Free Market: The Rhetoric of Economic Correctness. New York: Guilford Press, 2001.
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[ part2 ]
Rhetorical Interventions
? Rhetorical Engagements in the Scientist's Process of Remaking Race as Genetic
Celeste M. Condit
On July 30, 2002, a New York Times headline read, "Race Is Seen as Real Guide to Track the Roots of Disease. "1 The credibility of this article rested squarely on the research of a biologist. Neil Risch, of Stanford University, is cited as the source of the claim that "genetic differences have arisen among people living on different continents and that race, referring to geographically based ances- try, is a valid way of categorizing these differences. "2 This article is part of a substantial trend in current genetic research, which links differences in human social groups to differences in genetics.
Here we go again. Every other generation or so, a group of scientists masks flawed methodology and self-aggrandizing assumptions with the latest scien- tific trend in order to produce "data" showing that other races are inferior3: phrenology bolstered slavery in the nineteenth century;4 the poorly conceived and biased data of Charles Davenport bolstered eugenics in the Progressive Era;5 Cyril Burt's manufactured intelligence test of twins backed up segrega- tionism in the mid-twentieth century. 6 All of these, of course, pale in compari- son to the Nazi physicians' brutal "experiments" and their broad-reaching claims to superiority in the blood of their Volk. 7 Most rhetoricians readily con- demn this recurrent tendency, but is there anything that rhetoricians can do to preclude scientists from constructing these racist statements in the guise of scientific truth?
Rhetorical theorists have, no doubt, long been entangled in efforts for so- cial change. Cicero was both the foremost rhetorical theorist of his era and an active Roman politician, elected Consul in 63 B. C. Like Cicero's activism, most efforts by rhetoricians to participate in social change processes have been directed at the public sphere. Humans, however, have become a thoroughly technologized species, and recent research in science and technology studies have highlighted the powerful influences exerted by the technical sphere upon paths of social change. 8 An enormous variety of scholars have shown that the
120 Celeste M. Condit
technical sphere, like the public sphere, is at least partially shaped by rhetori- cal factors. 9 It might similarly, therefore, be susceptible to intervention through discursive efforts guided by rhetorical theory.
Even when addressing topics raised by science and technology, however, most rhetoricians have directed their discourse at other rhetoricians or at a presumed reading public inhabiting the public sphere. With regard to the topic of race and genetics, there are, for example, numerous analyses that show the problematic metaphors and categorizations of genetics,10 or reveal the rhe- torical strategies by which the linkage between "race" and "genetics" is con- structed in scientific discourses or reportage on science. 11 While there are some exceptions to the tendency to focus on technical communication as it plays out in the public sphere, the heavy publication slant suggests that it is likely that more activist interventions are also directed at the public sphere rather than involving engagement within the technical (or scientific) sphere. 12 To try to enter the scientists' own conversations, to argue with them within the ven- ues and rubrics of science, is a somewhat different enterprise. To broach the feasibility of the practice and some of the challenges, I recount four different episodes in which I engaged geneticists in scientific venues on the subject of the relationships between "race" and "genetics. " I describe some of the major reasons for the varying levels of success I had in each different situation. I conclude that, if my own experience is at all representative, then the funda- mental variables influencing persuasiveness in the scientific venue are remark- ably similar to those in the public sphere: you persuade people if you talk their language, but it is more difficult to persuade someone the more his or her highly interested worldviews are at stake.
My Coming to Terms with Race and Genetics:
The Human Genetic Variation Consortium
Until I moved to New Orleans, I reacted to race in most of the ways the aver- age white professional American today reacts to race. I wanted to be "liberal" and "tolerant," not a "racist," but these were mere platitudes with no depth or breadth of meaning. When I moved to New Orleans, however, I moved to an area called "the black triangle" because I did not want to commute an hour each day to teach at Tulane University, because I was a teacher who could not afford to live in a "white" area, and because my liberal platitudes told me that there was no reason to be prejudiced and avoid a "black" area of town. Liv- ing there gave me experiential lessons about the meanings of racialization in America, and it also led me to modify my research agenda to focus on race. Periodically I have become overwhelmed and despondent and "stopped work- ing on race. " But race in contemporary America is not something you can ever really walk away from.
Consequently, though I had "stopped working on race" half a dozen years earlier and turned to studying genetics, in 1998 I found myself submitting a
The Process of Remaking Race as Genetic 121
proposal to the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to study how laypeople, especially African Americans and Whites, understood the relationship between race and genetics. When that proposal was eventually funded, I was included in a group called the Human Genetic Variation Consortium. This was a group of researchers working in various ways on social, ethical, or legal issues re- lated to race and genetics. Most notably, the group discussed the "Haplotype Map" project (described below) and advised some of that project's advisers. At the close of the term of my cohort of members, a group of its members published a position paper in the Journal of the American Medical Association on the lack of relevance of genetic research to the amelioration of health dis- parities. 13
The consortium meetings during the first year were devoted to familiariz- ing ourselves with the new trend in genetics toward taking account of race in genetics and health studies. We were told that there were two major forces generating this trend. The first was a need for geneticists to account for popu- lation substructure in their work. Through several expensive and embarrass- ingly errant studies, geneticists had discovered that differences among the geographic ancestry of control and experimental populations could produce spurious findings that "a gene" was related to a particular health condition. 14 The simplest way of correcting that problem appeared to be to provide rela- tively rigorous controls on the boundaries among the "racial" groups that com- posed research populations.
The second concern was more compelling to the humanists and social sci- entists in the consortium. It was the issue of health disparities. There can be no denial that there are clear health disparities between groups that are under- stood as "racial" groups in the United States. Compared to people who self- identify as "White," people who self-identify as Black or African American, American Indian, or Hispanic American die younger and suffer more and worse disease across many common diseases, including cardiovascular dis- eases, diabetes, and several kinds of cancer (the situation is more complex for Asian Americans due to different historical and economic positionings of dif- ferent nationalized subpopulations. )15 Many doctors and researchers, includ- ing minority physicians, have come to believe that a part of these disparities is due to differences in biology, specifically in genes.
This rationale for attending to the possibility that "race" is "genetic" was compelling to many members of the consortium, because it meant that dis- missing biological accounts of race was not a move with positive, or even merely neutral effects, but might be positively harmful to minority groups. For example, ignoring race results in the recruitment of predominantly white pop- ulations to research studies, and it produces medicine that is tailored to white bodies and therefore may be less helpful to the bodies of members of other groups. If there is substantial biological variation among the bodies of ethnic or racial groups, then to ignore that variation is to promote "the invisibility
122 Celeste M. Condit
of whiteness," which is simply the contemporary route to privileging white people. 16 It is to mistake whiteness as the universal version of humanity.
The members of the Human Genetic Variation Consortium exhibited a range of reactions to these presentations. My own reaction was to be deeply troubled and indecisive. On the one hand, I was profoundly skeptical of the idea that race was biological. As a rhetorician, I understood that words made categories, and that the structure of material reality in the world did not sim- ply and neutrally require a particular set of labels. I wrote, and continue to write, rhetorical analyses designed to show the constructedness of race with regard to human genetic variation. 17 On the other hand, I had come to take seriously the fact that race could not be simply ignored, denied, or swept under the carpet. Health disparities were undeniable, and minority researchers and physicians I respected insisted that they saw important differences between average members of different groups. While it was clearly true that the "aver- age" member of a group was an imprecise construct, it might also be true that denying such average differences would merely reinforce a medical system that served white people well and other people not so well. Moreover, I had something of a consistency problem, as my own research required me to explicitly invite people to participate based on something like their "race. " If I were to be able to provide a sufficiently robust input from people other than white southerners, then I had to explicitly invite people into my research proj- ect based on their identity as "African Americans. " If this was a good, even essential, practice for the research I thought I should pursue, then how could I insist that it was not a good thing for people doing other types of research?
I took this profound uncertainty as an initial question for my research process. I decided to trust the community of people who would be most affected by a race-based medical research endeavor, African Americans. So, in conjunction with a fabulous group of graduate students and coresearchers, I designed and conducted focus groups to find out what ordinary people thought of these possibilities. 18 The answer African American participants in this research gave was overwhelmingly opposed to race-based medical ap- proaches.
