Topos One: Democracy as an Inclusive Deliberative Process
Attacking the credibility of a democratic process is one effective rhetorical strategy for discrediting the outcome of that process, and Uptown residents who oppose affordable housing commonly resort to this tactic.
Attacking the credibility of a democratic process is one effective rhetorical strategy for discrediting the outcome of that process, and Uptown residents who oppose affordable housing commonly resort to this tactic.
The Public Work of Rhetoric_nodrm
University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1996.
Schloemann, Johan. "Entertainment and Democratic Distrust: The Audiences's Atti- tudes towards Oral and Written Oratory in Classical Athens. " In Epea and Grammata: Oral and Written Communication in Ancient Greece, edited by I. Worthington and J. M. Foley, 133-46. Leiden: Brill, 2002.
Sprat, Thomas. History of the Royal Society of London, for the Improving of Natural Knowl- edge. London: J. Martyn at the Bell, 1667.
Tannen, Deborah. The Argument Culture: Stopping America's War of Words. New York: Bal- lentine Books, 1998.
Taylor, Archer. "The History of a Proverbial Pattern. " De Proverbio: An Electronic Journal of International Proverb Studies 2, no. 1 (1996). http://www. deproverbio. com/DPjournal //DP,2,1,96/PROVERBIAL_PATTERN. html (accessed September 24, 2006).
Toulmin, Stephen. Cosmopolis: The Hidden Agenda of Modernity. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990.
Zerba, Michelle. "The Frauds of Humanism: Cicero, Machiavelli, and the Rhetoric of Imposture. " Rhetorica 22, no. 3 (2004): 215-40.
? Power, Publics, and the Rhetorical Uses of Democracy
Candice Rai
"The Rhetoric must lead us through the Scramble, the Wrangle of the Market Place, the flurries and flare-ups of the Human Barnyard, the Give and Take, the wavering line of pressure and counter pressure, the Logomachy, the onus of ownership, the Wars of Nerves, the War. "1
In this essay, I argue that rhetorics, specifically rhetorics of democracy, can be turned on their head, picked up and used to support diametrically opposed agendas. I understand democratic rhetorics as comprised of a tangled discur- sive web of commonplace myths, symbols, stock tales, and contradictory blue- prints for the good life that we collectively associate with democracy. This includes the arsenal of topoi that embody democratic ideals, such as freedom, equality, and liberty. The flexible uses of democratic rhetoric is possible be- cause its topoi function as persuasive rhetorical engines that proliferate mean- ing and mobilize action by activating discourse already circulating in the social imagination. Kenneth Burke referred to such topoi as "god-terms" be- cause they are capable of "transcending brute objects" and of doing the work of gods by providing the "ground of all possibility; substance . . . truth . . . ideal, plan, purpose. "2 I contend that the "public sphere," one of democracy's core topoi, crystallizes the hopes and ideals, as well as the limits and contra- dictions, of liberal democracy. The public sphere is predicated on the power- ful faith that rational deliberation among private citizens about matters of public concern will produce a more inclusive, empathetic, and just society. The sheer moral force of these promised public goods is capable of obscuring gaps between democratic ideals and material realities, eliding the inherent contradictions within the democratic project, and legitimizing arguments that make use of democratic rhetorics, regardless of content or social consequence.
Whatever it is we imagine democracy to mean, we can be sure that our neighbors will have a very different understanding. That both conflicting claims, mine and my neighbor's, can be theoretically legitimate within a single
40 Candice Rai
democratic framework means that determining the content of "democracy" might be more a matter of raw power and rhetorical savvy than about whose argument is more rational, just, or better equipped to secure public goods and increase neighborliness. Since democratic ideals can inspire action toward very different ends, it is dangerous to equate democracy with social justice or to presume that democracy alone can mitigate human suffering and violence, and further, it suggests that democratic politics cannot be comprehended strictly from a god's-eye view.
I situate these arguments, therefore, within fieldwork conducted between 2005 and 2008 in Uptown, a gentrifying Chicago neighborhood, to consider how stakeholders use democratic rhetorics to argue about the future of their neighborhood. 3 I begin by discussing the public sphere, as the conceptual model of democracy, arguing that although the transcendent ideals repre- sented in the model are capable of inspiring conviction and action, the sub- stance of these ideals remains elusive until they are put to use in concrete situations. I then examine the uses of democratic rhetoric in debates over affordable housing in Uptown to consider how democratic rhetorics are used to support very different investments.
One can travel to Uptown's central hub from downtown Chicago by taking the redline train due north for five miles to the Wilson stop. Since its annexa- tion to the city in 1889, Uptown has served as a port of entry for African, Latin American, Asian, and European immigrants and refugees; African Ameri- can and white Appalachian migrants from the South; and Native Americans displaced by the Relocation Act of 1956. 4 An economically and ethnically diverse population crosses paths while going about their business on Wilson Avenue. The neighborhood's population ranges from the very affluent to the very poor--with people in the upper quintillion of income sharing blocks with people in the lowest. Visitors would immediately face the material evi- dence of gentrification as they left the train: a new condominium flashes its bronze facade next door to the Wilson Hotel, infamous for housing transient "undesirables. "
In the heart of Uptown, there is a five-acre empty lot known simply as Wil- son Yard, which stands literally at the crossroads of affluence and decay. There is nothing particularly striking about the lot: it lies sandwiched between the El train and a strip of hodgepodge businesses. The lot made its public debut in 1996 when a fire destroyed a repair shop owned by the Chicago Transit Authority (CTA). The controversial public debates over what to build in this lot have been ongoing since 1997 when the CTA sold the land to the city, prompting Uptown's alderman Helen Shiller to initiate a community-driven, "democratic" planning process to collectively design a project at Wilson Yard. 5 The eventual outcome was to represent the will of the people and stand as a material monument to the ability of inclusive dialogue in the public sphere to create the greatest good for all.
Power, Publics, and the Rhetorical Uses of Democracy 41
The hotly contested Wilson Yard plan includes a Target, street-level retail, and two ten-story publicly subsidized affordable apartment buildings. One building includes ninety-nine units for low-income seniors, and the other-- which lies at the center of this controversy--will house eighty-four units for households making no more than 60 percent of the area median income. 6 Beginning in 1998, dozens of organizations and hundreds of Uptown stake- holders have evoked democratic rhetoric in public discourse and at commu- nity meetings to justify and support arguments both for and against affordable housing at Wilson Yard;7 to both slander and support public officials; and to both legitimate and blast the processes of gentrification. I am interested here in how two such different investments--one claiming that creating affordable housing on behalf of those at risk of being displaced by gentrification is demo- cratic, and the other claiming that such a move is undemocratic because it favors the poor, silences the voices of property owners, and unjustly reappro- priates taxes--could both be supported using democratic rhetoric. Many peo- ple are invested in Uptown, just not in the same outcomes. To help elucidate these investments, I turn to a description of the contention at Wilson Yard, and to a consideration of how competing publics in Uptown illustrate the theoretical and practical contradictions within the democratic project.
Democratic Theory, Power, and the Limits of the Public Sphere Trope
By analyzing Uptown's emergent public in action, one bears witness to what Chantal Mouffe calls the "paradox of democracy. " Mouffe articulates this "paradox" as the incompatibility between political liberalism (which fore- grounds a politics of liberty and individual rights) and democracy (which foregrounds a politics of equality). Arguing that this paradox is an inherent and valuable feature of democracy, she advocates "agonistic pluralism," a poli- tics that secures contestation as a permanent and foundational condition of democracy. In rejecting the possibility of "establishing a consensus without exclusion," agonistic pluralism calls for the maintenance of democratic insti- tutions and processes that keep "democratic contestations alive. "8 Compelling in theory, "agonistic pluralism" presents serious limitations in the material world where concrete, timely, and compromised decisions must finally be made. In Uptown, something must be developed at Wilson Yard despite what could be an infinite debate over what should be built. There is much to be learned from the stalemate of competing rhetorics in Uptown, in that even- tually, public policy must act, and often act in ways that some part of the con- stituency may deem "undemocratic. "
Alderman Shiller has publicly referred to Wilson Yard, which still awaits construction in 2009, as a "virtual basket" because its design emerged from ostensibly democratic, community-driven planning processes. Rather than something like a public park, which would certainly be easier to claim as a
42 Candice Rai
universal public good, the development is a pastiche that represents a bit of everyone's interest while simultaneously fulfilling no one's. With a Target, a large parking structure, and two mid-rise affordable apartment buildings jammed into a five-acre lot, one can see how Wilson Yard earned the name "Franken-development" from an Uptown dissenter. In the following ethno- graphic scene, which recounts the public unveiling of Wilson Yard on Sep- tember 8, 2004, Mouffe's "democratic paradox" can be empirically observed not only in the tension between stakeholders but also in the competing inter- ests that are captured in the literal design of space. A six-year "democratic" process preceded this meeting in which multiple spaces where these and other adversarial positions about the future of the neighborhood were vetted.
Over 600 Uptown stakeholders crowded into Truman College's cafeteria to hear about the Wilson Yard plan. The room was electric with tension. The sound of buzzing chatter and metal chair legs scraping on waxed linoleum punctuated the palpable anticipation of the homeowners, renters, community organizers, urban planners, city officials, business owners, religious leaders, and journalists who gathered. It was apparent on which side of the affordable housing controversy people stood. Those who opposed it were primarily mem- bers of the Uptown Neighborhood Council, which was formed explicitly to oppose low-income housing at Wilson Yard. These activists wore bright orange T-shirts that read "Unite Uptown" on the front, and "Build a Better Commu- nity through the Arts" on the back. The "Orange Shirts," as they are known, argued that if affordable housing must be built, and they would prefer that it was not, that it should be reserved as an artists' residence. Those who favored affordable housing at Wilson Yard wore green stickers that read "Uptown Sup- ports Affordable Housing. " This contingency represented a variety of political agendas that converged around the support of affordable housing as a means of counteracting gentrification, and included longtime Uptown residents and members of a diverse array of neighborhood organizations such as Jesus People, Queer to the Left, Organization of the North East, and Coalition of Uptown Residents for Affordability and Justice (COURAJ). Shouts and counter- shouts were blurted throughout the meeting in an effort to discredit speakers. Those in orange shouted things like: "This development will concentrate poverty. We have enough subsidized housing in Uptown! " "We don't want our tax money to be spent on this. " "This isn't democracy. I didn't want this. " Those in green shouted: "This represents all of our interests. We need afford- able housing. Uptown needs to take care of all of its citizens! " After the for- mal presentation, things became so raucous that, at one point, the president of Truman College came to the microphone with great exasperation to tell the crowd to calm down or she would have to end the meeting.
The rather unruly "public" that emerged on this evening is a far cry from idealized images of citizens engaged in empathetic, rational deliberation about the common welfare. This public appears nothing like John Rawls's ideal
Power, Publics, and the Rhetorical Uses of Democracy 43
liberal model where stakeholders bracket their private interests behind a "veil of ignorance" in order to derive universal principles of justice that ensure the greatest good for the greatest number. On the contrary, Uptown stakeholders nakedly display their investments with visual flair--agendas literally embla- zoned on brightly colored stickers and T-shirts. Splintered by competing in- vestments, this is a public incapable of deriving consensus.
And further, the trump card in the Wilson Yard debates is often "democ- racy" itself. Below, affordable housing advocates and members of Queer to the Left discuss the tactical uses of democratic discourse in Uptown. Marie reflects on the Wilson Yard planning charrettes that took place between 1998 and 2000, and the others on statements made at the public unveiling de- scribed above:
Marie: Everyone was invited [to the charrettes]. They were held at Truman College. I mean what is not democratic . . .
Gene: One of the people who spoke at the last Wilson Yard meeting [in 2004] said that this process is not legitimate because this process has taken so long. They said, "You are basing the project on principles that were laid out in 1999-2000, but we are all different now, and we were left out and we should have a say in what gets built. Now, we want a voice. We're new and we were left out. "
Diane: You know there are problems with democracy because I can imagine us on that side. This example makes that clear. I can image us organizing around this argument. "Well . . . but . . . now we are here and we want to be consulted. " . . . There is something about the whole thing that is fraught with indeterminacy.
This scene crystallizes some of the logomachy that underscores the uses of democracy in Uptown and exemplifies Julia Paley's argument that the "use of the word 'democracy' occurs neither alone, nor steadily, nor completely; it is, rather, ethnographically emergent. Therefore we must ask: Whose term is it? What does its usage in any particular case signify? Where does the term arise and where not? "9 Democracy is "ethnographically emergent" because the indeterminate meanings of democratic topoi can only be understood within the concrete contexts within which they are evoked.
By insisting that the solution to the problems of democracy does not reside in a more participatory or better-executed democracy, Barbara Cruikshank calls into question the large body of public sphere theory dedicated to con- ceptualizing an ever-more robust, inclusive, and just civil society. Rather than accepting democracy as an a priori virtuous good, she understands demo- cratic government, like all government, as "relations of power" that are "con- tinually recreated. "10 It is not that we need a more accurate model of the public sphere, therefore, but a way to theorize how democratic politics pro- duce subjectivities and sentiments that are reinforced and activated through
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"relations of power" in particular circumstances that make certain beliefs and actions seem more reasonable (and more "democratic").
In the unveiling of Wilson Yard, the core tensions within democratic sub- jectivity manifest through two pulls. In the first, democracy is framed as indi- vidual liberty, which appears in the Orange Shirts' claim that the plan is undemocratic because their private interests are not being served (This isn't democracy. I didn't want this. ), and that taxpayers should have control over how their money is spent (We don't want our tax money to be spent on this. ). The sec- ond pull frames democracy in terms of social equality, which appears in the mobilization of affordable housing as a "public good" (We need affordable housing. Uptown needs to take care of all of its citizens! ). My concern here is not to determine which sentiment is morally superior to the other, but to high- light that both pulls are always legitimately at play in liberal democracies. Rather than representing two distinct conceptions of democracy, these pulls signal contradictory tensions within a single theoretical framework. The demo- cratic subject circumscribes the desire for both liberty and equality, for both individual and social rights, and thus encompasses the paradoxical stale- mates to which these competing transcendent ideals point.
Before returning to a discussion on the uses of democratic rhetoric in Up- town, I turn to a consideration of how we might regard the "public sphere" in light of these stalemates. Ju? rgen Habermas's model of the public sphere catalyzed a body of criticism on the possibilities and limitations of democ- racy as a deliberative, nonviolent means of deriving principles to guide a demos that is both inclusive and radically diverse. Theorists--including Nancy Fraser, David Fleming, and Gerard Hauser--have critiqued the Habermasian model as idealized, each driven by a similar impetus to conceive a public that better accounts for the political complexities that confound democratic delib- eration.
Hauser rightly moves away from Habermas's idealism, offering what he calls the reticulate public sphere, which he defines as "a discursive space in which individuals and groups associate to discuss matters of mutual interest and, where possible, to reach a common judgment about them. "11 Hauser's insistence that "publics do not exist as entities but as processes" is predicated on the idea that "collective reasoning is not defined by abstract reflection but by practical judgment," and therefore, a public's "awareness of issues is not philosophical but eventful. "12 To say that a public is "eventful" is to say that it manifests, kairotically, in response to exigencies in concrete material space. While Hauser notes that "rhetorically salient meanings are unstable," he also hopes that the physical proximity of agents in local publics might make contestation less volatile and more prone to the "formation of shared judg- ments. "13 Similarly, Fleming pursues a public sphere--rooted in embodied experiences, vernacular tactics, and local exigencies--that remains "open to hybridity, pluralism, and mobility. " He seeks a "commonplace" that is both
Power, Publics, and the Rhetorical Uses of Democracy 45
material and conceptual "where we can disclose our differences to one another but also solve our shared problems, where we can encounter conflict and opposition but still feel that we belong and matter. "14 He considers urban neighborhoods as ideal sites where such publics might emerge as a "space between community and society" that offers a "setting which is true to human diversity but still allows for 'commonality' and 'solidarity. '"15 While Fleming and Hauser have contributed much to our understanding of the rhetoricality of actually existing publics, I understand their projects--given their desire to accommodate social plurality without exclusion or violence--as reinvesting Habermas's idealism into miniaturized, competing, vernacular public spheres that may be more qualitatively grounded, but no less idealistic.
However, tensions within democratic society are not a matter of scale, but rather cut down to the very core, to the most local, to the most finite detail of social interaction and knowledge production: down to the production of the democratic subject itself. The irresolvable conflicts in Uptown emerge not from a lack of rhetorical competency, a dearth of material spaces for debate, or a disconnect from official channels of power. Democratic publics do not fail simply because of misunderstanding, procedural distortion, or failure to achieve rhetorical stasis. In Uptown, we see a radically diverse public actively engaged in deliberation, but completely unable to agree on a collective vision of their neighborhood's future. Democratic participation abounds around the Wilson Yard development--in city hall, in neighborhood meeting rooms, in community organizations, on the streets, in public discourse, and in public oratorical performances. The impasse reached by this public has not resulted from procedural malfunction. The commitment to solving the problems of democracy by practicing "better" democracy requires one to hold on to a transcendent conception of democracy that does not exist. There is no avail- able Platonic truth that Uptown stakeholders might discover through more refined dialectical practice.
Rather than understanding democratic politics as occurring "out there, in the public sphere," Cruikshank insists that we are better served by understand- ing how democracy works at the "very soul of subjectivity. "16 Cruikshank is particularly interested in how what Foucault called "biopower" "operates to invest the citizen with a set of goals and self-understandings. "17 Biopower complicates the image of the democratic subject defined as free and autono- mous. As Cruikshank argues, the "citizen and subjects are not opposites," rather "citizens are made and therefore subject to power even as they become citizens," and "although democratic citizens are formally free, their freedom is a condition of the operationalization of power. "18 In light of Cruikshank's rendering of democratic subjectivity, the question of how to better facilitate solidarity among autonomous, free citizens in the public sphere shifts to a concern with how "democracy" (its practices and rhetorics) leverages power unevenly through the active participation of citizens who are collectively
46 Candice Rai
engaged in defining contested urban space. The preoccupation in public sphere theories with how to produce more effective persuasion is undermined by the limit written into the impossibility of rational deliberation to produce con- sensus, a shared sense of justice, or material force. Moreover, the tendency in public sphere theory to cast rhetoric in the role of superhero is sorely chal- lenged by this case study, which reveals the shakiness of democracy's moral foundation, in lieu of which sheer power typically bowls over rhetorical com- petency.
In the Field: Uptown's "Public" and the Rhetorical Uses of Democracy
In a gentrifying neighborhood, housing is a good lens through which to see the core tensions in democratic society because its accessibility literally deter- mines who can afford to remain part of the "demos. " The frenzied Chicago real estate market that began gathering momentum in the mid-1990s started showing signs of distress in 2006. 19 Beneath this boom loomed an affordable housing crisis characterized by gentrifying inner-city neighborhoods, an aging housing stock overconcentrated in poverty-stricken areas, a net loss of 11,000 public housing units under Chicago's Plan for Transformation, and dwin- dling federal and state dollars for housing. In 2006 approximately 30 percent of Chicago's households were rent-burdened (paying more than 30 percent of their income on rent), and of those households, 72 percent were classified as "extremely low-income" (earning $20,350 or less for a family of four). 20
Uptown was particularly affected by this housing boom, given its access to Lake Michigan and downtown, abundance of public transportation, and ample stock of historic brownstones. Between 1990 and 2000, Uptown's median rent increased 38 percent, and the median home value nearly dou- bled, increasing 94 percent from $139,000 to $270,000. 21 Although Uptown became less "affordable," it is critical to note that at the end of the 1990s, 18. 2 percent of Uptown's housing stock was publicly subsidized through various city, state, and federal agencies,22 and in 2000, 25 percent of Uptown's popu- lation lived at or below the poverty line. 23 Although Wilson Yard is not public housing, the images of "stockpiling" the poor (which evoke the hor- rific conditions of Chicago's public housing complexes built during urban renewal) are commonplace. The fear that the housing will become gang- and drug-invested "towers of desperation" that breed poverty and social dysfunc- tion runs rampant in public discourse. 24 The general concern over the further concentration of poverty is not without cause, as Uptown has a large home- less population and visible street drug culture. Further, the Wilson Yard Tax Increment Financing (TIF) district encompasses two census tracts where 44. 2 percent and 35. 1 of the respective population is already living at or below the poverty line. 25 The concentration of poverty and subsidized affordable hous- ing in Uptown has been the basis for some to reasonably argue that the neigh- borhood is already saturated beyond the tipping point.
Power, Publics, and the Rhetorical Uses of Democracy 47
Advocates of affordable housing tend to rest their arguments on the ideal of social equality, arguing that all citizens should have a right to decent, affordable housing. Chicago's Housing Affordability Research Consortium, a coalition of housing advocates, asserts that "one of the main obstacles to increasing public support for development of affordable housing is the per- ception that the free market will ultimately provide sufficient housing if left to do so. "26 The belief that affordable housing needs will be met through mar- ket demand, however, is untenable, in part because the very idea of afford- able housing necessitates selling or renting below the market rate, which runs counter to market logic and requires government intervention to achieve.
The Chicago Rehab Network, a coalition of community organizations that advocates balanced development, frames affordable housing as a basic human right: "We believe we are better off with all people being better off--and having basic rights of food, clothing, and shelter. We believe it is in valuing affordability that we return to a core principle of democratic practice for our neighborhoods and city. "27 Here the "core principle of democratic practice" is construed as guaranteed equal rights to basic public goods for all citizens. By positing "housing" as one of these guaranteed rights, the argument carries a weighty, moral force. Counterarguments waged against affordable housing are most forceful when they respond with universal appeals for public goods that carry equal moral heft, such as public safety. The jockeying for moral high ground, abetted through inventive deployments of democratic rhetoric, underscores the arguments for and against housing at Wilson Yard that I dis- cuss below.
In the following sections I analyze how democratic topoi are used flexibly in Uptown affordable housing debates to structure responses, mobilize action, establish ethos, and both support and blast competing understandings of what it means to live and act within democratic society. The two interconnected topoi I examine (democracy as an inclusive, deliberative process and democ- racy as justice) are by no means exhaustive.
Topos One: Democracy as an Inclusive Deliberative Process
Attacking the credibility of a democratic process is one effective rhetorical strategy for discrediting the outcome of that process, and Uptown residents who oppose affordable housing commonly resort to this tactic. When asked to comment on the legitimacy of the Wilson Yard planning process, one dis- senter said, "Ha! And, how good was that study . . . if we can even call it a survey? Number one, I believe the charrettes were done in the middle of the day, and most people . . . have full time jobs and couldn't attend. Number two, it was far and away not a scientific survey. . . . I mean how many peo- ple actually did the survey, 400? " That this is factually incorrect (1,762 com- pleted the survey, and charrettes were held on Saturday mornings) is beside the point. The "truth" of the matter is less important than the way this
48 Candice Rai
speaker discredits the ethos of the democratic process itself, thereby discred- iting the resulting plan. 28 It is important to note that Chicago aldermen, as democratically elected representatives, are generally under no obligation to gather extensive community input on development projects. 29
In contrast, proponents of affordable housing stress the inclusiveness of the community process as evidence that the outcome of Wilson Yard is demo- cratic. The following Uptown renter since 1998, who organized for affordable housing, describes such a take: "The TIF did open a process for involvement. Our alderman opened the process for us. It helped to have a progressive alder- man. I think in the Wilson Yard project, we all felt that there was a possibil- ity of having a voice in the process. " This resident establishes a moral ethos for both the process and its outcome by framing them as a consideration of people who "belonged here" and "who had the right to be here. " This senti- ment can easily be turned on its head, however. As mentioned earlier, the Wilson Yard process is sometimes discredited by claiming that because the demographics of the neighborhood have changed in the ten years that have elapsed since the process began, the plan no longer can be said to represent the demos. The perceived fairness and transparency of the democratic process continue to be debated; kairotic discursive jabs around the virtue or corrup- tion of the process have been endemic in public discourse.
Topos Two: Democracy as Justice
One might argue that the substance of "justice" within a liberal-democratic framework becomes clearer as one moves closer to concrete interaction on the ground, but this is not the case in Uptown. In some instances, justice is predicated on the fairness of the "democratic" process, and in other cases, jus- tice is defined as development that represents all interests. Sometimes justice is perceived as the satisfaction of individual preference, and at others times, as social and economic equality for all. For some, "consensus" signals justice, and for others, it is a form of violence that evacuates politics from public debate, which, in Mouffe's words, becomes the "very condition" for the "elimi- nation of pluralism from the public sphere. "30
The simplest, but most consistent, reason used to argue against the afford- able buildings at Wilson Yard is straightforwardly because "I don't want them. " As an argument for public policy, this statement stands on a percep- tion of democracy as a system that protects private interests and that legiti- mates planning decisions as "just" only if they appear to represent everyone's interests and seem to favor no one's. Alderman Shiller supports affordable housing at Wilson Yard as a project that self-consciously intervenes in the housing market to correct a material inequality, an arguably democratic impetus; however, she is often accused of being undemocratic in her favor- ing the poor and for supporting a project that divides the community. For
Power, Publics, and the Rhetorical Uses of Democracy 49
example, one Uptown resident expressed this latter perception: "I think that [Shiller] is a divisive figure. . . . A good leader would be someone who could bring people together. I would suggest that if you wanted to have no trash on the streets and a more functional El station, then you [should not be seen as being] against the poor, hating them and wanting to kick them out. . . . That is inflammatory and divisive language. That's not the kind of language that fosters common ground. "
Another argument, which attacks the claim that low-income individuals should have formally protected rights to remain in a gentrifying neighbor- hood, is offered by an Uptown homeowner since 2003: "There are no indige- nous people in a neighborhood. It is a complete fallacy. Neighborhoods change and if they don't, they die. By that standard . . . Uptown used to be a playground for the wealthy and socialite in the 20s. Are those the indigenous people? ! ? . . . I don't agree with this idea that you have the right to live in any neighborhood that you want to live in. I don't have that right. You don't have that right. If I want to live in the Gold Coast [an affluent Chicago neigh- borhood], do I have that right? Does the government or someone have the obligation to subsidize my desire to live in the Gold Coast? "
This Uptowner aims to undercut the "rights"-based social-justice argu- ments in favor of affordable housing by suggesting that no one has the right to demand that the government fund his or her preference to stay in a par- ticular neighborhood, and discredits housing at Wilson Yard by attacking the moral foundation that subsidized housing rests upon: namely, that people have a right to not be displaced by uneven market forces, that everyone has a right to decent housing, and that the government has an obligation to pro- vide universal public goods. Further underscoring this argument is a percep- tion of neighborhood change as natural, inevitable, and "good. "
Although many Uptown Neighborhood Council members (that is, the Orange Shirts) were not living in Uptown during the Wilson Yard planning process, they nevertheless feel shut out of the process, arguing that the process was not democratic because it excluded them. One member says: "We were not part of the process. So, what this comes down to is that the community has been disrespected by those who are using our tax dollars to fund their development. "
This comment implies, furthermore, that because property owners invest in a neighborhood by paying taxes, they should have a say in what is built. This argument is strengthened by the fact that the affordable housing is funded through TIF. Property owners who live within the Wilson Yard TIF district and oppose affordable housing will nevertheless pay over 30 percent of the project's projected cost of $151 million through property taxes. The construction of the housing is commonly framed by dissenters as an unjust means of reappropri- ating private money to fund public goods that are unwanted by taxpayers. 31
50 Candice Rai
An affordable housing activist responds to the argument that taxpayers should have more say than others in Wilson Yard's outcome: "You know its interesting this thing about hearing people saying they don't want their tax dollars spent on this project. . . . I mean we all sort of bemoan the fact that our tax dollars go to Iraq or whatever. It is more of a consumer ideal of citi- zenship; that I want to be able to direct my money wherever I think it will benefit me the most. "
Here, the "consumer ideal of citizenship" is defined through a conflation of individual preference with the right to demand of the social contract exactly what one wants. Within this model, anything that is funded with my tax dollars that I do not want is perceived as unjust. Some homeowners believe they are paying for something that is not only harmful to their invest- ment and the general public, but is celebrated as a democratically derived decision, for which they had no opportunity to intervene. Unlike other com- modities, housing is not mobile--it is a socially relational investment. Hous- ing creates a social and economic bond between neighbors because the return on investment is intertwined in the "success" and "quality" of one's neigh- bors and neighborhood. Such economic bounds between neighbors certainly come to head in gentrifying neighborhoods.
Discussing the rights of property owners in the neighborhood, one resi- dent who moved to Uptown in 2001 adds: "I don't think that my rights as a property owner are any different than someone who rents. . . . I think I have equivalent rights. But that's the problem, I feel like people try to diminish my voice . . . to assert . . . that the condo owners are bad and only interested in increasing our property values. I don't think of my property values. I think of where I could walk with my daughter and not expose her to bad things. "
This defense of condo owners is important. The dynamics in Uptown no doubt place individuals in contradictory positions; for example, a left-leaning middle-class homeowner who believes in equal access to decent, affordable housing must come to terms with the reality that such housing might con- flict with his or her desire for better schools, higher property values, quality shopping, and safer streets. Interestingly, the resident quoted above is con- cerned about being silenced; yet he is, at least economically speaking, quite privileged in relation to citizens who would benefit from the right to afford- able housing. Nevertheless, this claim of being silenced fits squarely into the democratic mythos, which claims, on the one hand, to protect private inter- ests, and, on the other, to secure public goods. In attempting to protect the interests of those disenfranchised by gentrification, it would seem that Alder- man Shiller and her supporters may have excluded the interests of those who do not support affordable housing. However, the inequities of redistribution within capitalism that systematically disenfranchise along class lines open the question of what responsibilities democratic citizens, leaders, and institu- tions have to "correct" such inequities.
Power, Publics, and the Rhetorical Uses of Democracy 51
Conclusion
The city is commonly theorized as a model of the democratic public sphere-- a catalyst and depository for our collective and contradictory democratic hopes. Iris Marion Young described the city, which she considered an ideal model for liberal democracy, as the "being together of strangers. " She under- stood "city life" as "a vision of social relations affirming group difference" that "instantiates social relations of difference without exclusion. "32 This com- pelling vision of the city as a space for greater tolerance, radical diversity with- out exclusion, dynamism, creativity, and openness has fueled wave after wave of urban planning schemes and community-based efforts designed to bring forth the "ideal city," which always seems just beyond reach. An Uptown renter since 1995 characterized the Wilson Yard controversy as a debate over what a city is and who has the right to live in one: "Some of this fight," she said, is "about what it means to live in the city. And how people imagine the city. . . . I think a lot of this has to do with the vision of what a city should be and what a city should function as. "
Despite its shortcomings, the public sphere remains a very powerful topos. Rather than a means to a transcendent end, the model might be better under- stood as a process that can be used to make claims for rights that accom- modate wide-ranging ideologies; a heuristic for locating the foundational questions, contradictions, limitations, and possibilities of democratic life; and as a conceptual and material site for rhetorical invention, where arguments that inspire and justify a range of "democratic" actions and sentiments can be discovered and effectively mobilized in this or that fleeting moment of persuasion.
Democratic rhetorics have, historically, inspired some of the most coura- geous (and fraught) extensions of rights. Concern over whether something is or is not democratic obscures the more important question of whether vari- ous social investments do or do not produce desirable and just social conse- quences. However, it is precisely the question of what constitutes the content of desirable and just action that democratic rhetorics cannot finally deter- mine. Despite the deep contradictions within the public sphere, it is, ironi- cally, the promised ideals reflected within the model that provide many with the courage and power, along with the rhetorical toolkit, to continually dream up and work toward new worlds that are more just and less cruel--worlds that we hope might finally transcend the horrors, contradictions, and suffer- ing found within our material circumstances. And yet here again we hit the absolute limit, the endgame: for democracy alone cannot ensure peace, dig- nified actions, material stability, or shared conceptions of justice.
More than twelve years after a fire destroyed the old Wilson train yard in 1996, all that remains is an empty lot. The reasons for continual construction delays remain publicly murky but, in part, involve finances. In 2006 the
52 Candice Rai
movie theater company slated for construction in the original plan declared its investment as cost prohibitive and backed out of the project, leaving a gaping hole. In 2008 the Orange Shirts formed a nonprofit group called Fix Wilson Yard, which had raised over $60,000 for a legal injunction waged against Alderman Shiller, the city of Chicago, and the Department of Plan- ning to stop the project in the name of "democracy. " Their core claim was that TIF is being used illegally to fund a project that is detrimental to the community and antithetical to the will of the citizens. 33 Fix Wilson Yard phrases their mission as a collective, citizen-led movement to correct the "failures and abuses of the current Wilson Yard TIF and Redevelopment Plan while protecting the rights and interests of Chicago's taxpayers. "34 Meanwhile, affordable housing activists push to secure 183 units of affordable housing ten years (and counting) in the making from going up in smoke. The prevailing emptiness of Wilson Yard signifies the ultimate limits of democracy; unravels the conception of democracy as a morally virtuous, noncomplicit social proj- ect; and points to the demise of the democratic hope to secure a radically inclusive future that avoids exclusion.
Notes
1. Burke, Rhetoric of Motives, 23.
2. Ibid. , 276, 298-301.
3. The fieldwork presented in this essay is part of an ongoing ethnographic project
that explores the democratic processes occurring in Uptown. All of the names of pri- vate individuals have been changed to protect their identity.
4. In the 2000 census Uptown's population of 63,000 was 42 percent non-Hispanic White, 21 percent African American, 20 percent Latino, 13 percent Asian, and 4 percent "other. " Uptown's median income rose from 75 percent of the Chicago median in 1990 to 84 percent in 2000. See Haas et al. , Uptown Housing, 12.
5. In 1998 the Wilson Yard Redevelopment Taskforce conducted a survey in six lan- guages to gather community input. There were 1,762 respondents. Survey results were initially presented at two community meetings in October 1998. In June 1998 and again in June 2000 the public was invited to participate in a charrette-type planning session to discuss their reactions to the survey, brainstorm for new ideas, and voice dissent. The current proposal is based on the results of the survey and the input gathered at these charrettes.
6. In Chicago, 60 percent was $45,240 for a family of four in 2008. See City of Chicago, "Maximum Household Income. " Further, in this latter building 23 percent of the units are restricted to "extremely low income" earners (households making up to 30 percent of the Chicago Area Median Income [AMI], which was $0-$22,600 for a family of four in 2006); 56 percent for "very low income" (households making 30-50 percent of the AMI at $22,600-$37,700; and 21 percent for "low income" (households making 50-80 percent of the AMI at $37,700-$59,600). See U. S. Department of Hous- ing and Urban Development, "Median Income. "
7. When I refer to stakeholders, I refer to the broadest definition: Uptown's renters, homeowners, business owners, workers, organizers, politicians, activists, homeless indi- viduals, and so on.
8. Mouffe, Democratic Paradox, 105.
Power, Publics, and the Rhetorical Uses of Democracy 53
9. Paley, "Towards an Anthropology," 486. 10. Cruikshank, Will to Empower, 18.
11. Hauser, Vernacular Voices, 61. 12. Ibid. , 64.
13. Ibid. , 63.
14. Fleming, City of Rhetoric, 34 15. Ibid. , 52.
16. Cruikshank, Will to Empower, 124.
17. Ibid. , 41.
18. Ibid. , 20, 22.
19. The sale of single-family homes dropped 15 percent between June 2005 and June
2006. Umberger, "Chicago Feels Housing Chill. " 20. Affordable Housing Conditions, 2-4.
21. Ibid. , 34.
22. Haas et al. , Uptown Housing, 18-19. These agencies include: the city of Chicago's
Department of Housing, the Illinois Development Agency, the Chicago Housing Author- ity, the U. S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, and the Housing Choice Voucher program (Section 8 program).
23. Chicago Metropolitan Agency for Planning, "Greater Chicago Housing. "
24. This fear should be read within the context of CHA's Plan for Transformation, a ten-year, $1.
Schloemann, Johan. "Entertainment and Democratic Distrust: The Audiences's Atti- tudes towards Oral and Written Oratory in Classical Athens. " In Epea and Grammata: Oral and Written Communication in Ancient Greece, edited by I. Worthington and J. M. Foley, 133-46. Leiden: Brill, 2002.
Sprat, Thomas. History of the Royal Society of London, for the Improving of Natural Knowl- edge. London: J. Martyn at the Bell, 1667.
Tannen, Deborah. The Argument Culture: Stopping America's War of Words. New York: Bal- lentine Books, 1998.
Taylor, Archer. "The History of a Proverbial Pattern. " De Proverbio: An Electronic Journal of International Proverb Studies 2, no. 1 (1996). http://www. deproverbio. com/DPjournal //DP,2,1,96/PROVERBIAL_PATTERN. html (accessed September 24, 2006).
Toulmin, Stephen. Cosmopolis: The Hidden Agenda of Modernity. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990.
Zerba, Michelle. "The Frauds of Humanism: Cicero, Machiavelli, and the Rhetoric of Imposture. " Rhetorica 22, no. 3 (2004): 215-40.
? Power, Publics, and the Rhetorical Uses of Democracy
Candice Rai
"The Rhetoric must lead us through the Scramble, the Wrangle of the Market Place, the flurries and flare-ups of the Human Barnyard, the Give and Take, the wavering line of pressure and counter pressure, the Logomachy, the onus of ownership, the Wars of Nerves, the War. "1
In this essay, I argue that rhetorics, specifically rhetorics of democracy, can be turned on their head, picked up and used to support diametrically opposed agendas. I understand democratic rhetorics as comprised of a tangled discur- sive web of commonplace myths, symbols, stock tales, and contradictory blue- prints for the good life that we collectively associate with democracy. This includes the arsenal of topoi that embody democratic ideals, such as freedom, equality, and liberty. The flexible uses of democratic rhetoric is possible be- cause its topoi function as persuasive rhetorical engines that proliferate mean- ing and mobilize action by activating discourse already circulating in the social imagination. Kenneth Burke referred to such topoi as "god-terms" be- cause they are capable of "transcending brute objects" and of doing the work of gods by providing the "ground of all possibility; substance . . . truth . . . ideal, plan, purpose. "2 I contend that the "public sphere," one of democracy's core topoi, crystallizes the hopes and ideals, as well as the limits and contra- dictions, of liberal democracy. The public sphere is predicated on the power- ful faith that rational deliberation among private citizens about matters of public concern will produce a more inclusive, empathetic, and just society. The sheer moral force of these promised public goods is capable of obscuring gaps between democratic ideals and material realities, eliding the inherent contradictions within the democratic project, and legitimizing arguments that make use of democratic rhetorics, regardless of content or social consequence.
Whatever it is we imagine democracy to mean, we can be sure that our neighbors will have a very different understanding. That both conflicting claims, mine and my neighbor's, can be theoretically legitimate within a single
40 Candice Rai
democratic framework means that determining the content of "democracy" might be more a matter of raw power and rhetorical savvy than about whose argument is more rational, just, or better equipped to secure public goods and increase neighborliness. Since democratic ideals can inspire action toward very different ends, it is dangerous to equate democracy with social justice or to presume that democracy alone can mitigate human suffering and violence, and further, it suggests that democratic politics cannot be comprehended strictly from a god's-eye view.
I situate these arguments, therefore, within fieldwork conducted between 2005 and 2008 in Uptown, a gentrifying Chicago neighborhood, to consider how stakeholders use democratic rhetorics to argue about the future of their neighborhood. 3 I begin by discussing the public sphere, as the conceptual model of democracy, arguing that although the transcendent ideals repre- sented in the model are capable of inspiring conviction and action, the sub- stance of these ideals remains elusive until they are put to use in concrete situations. I then examine the uses of democratic rhetoric in debates over affordable housing in Uptown to consider how democratic rhetorics are used to support very different investments.
One can travel to Uptown's central hub from downtown Chicago by taking the redline train due north for five miles to the Wilson stop. Since its annexa- tion to the city in 1889, Uptown has served as a port of entry for African, Latin American, Asian, and European immigrants and refugees; African Ameri- can and white Appalachian migrants from the South; and Native Americans displaced by the Relocation Act of 1956. 4 An economically and ethnically diverse population crosses paths while going about their business on Wilson Avenue. The neighborhood's population ranges from the very affluent to the very poor--with people in the upper quintillion of income sharing blocks with people in the lowest. Visitors would immediately face the material evi- dence of gentrification as they left the train: a new condominium flashes its bronze facade next door to the Wilson Hotel, infamous for housing transient "undesirables. "
In the heart of Uptown, there is a five-acre empty lot known simply as Wil- son Yard, which stands literally at the crossroads of affluence and decay. There is nothing particularly striking about the lot: it lies sandwiched between the El train and a strip of hodgepodge businesses. The lot made its public debut in 1996 when a fire destroyed a repair shop owned by the Chicago Transit Authority (CTA). The controversial public debates over what to build in this lot have been ongoing since 1997 when the CTA sold the land to the city, prompting Uptown's alderman Helen Shiller to initiate a community-driven, "democratic" planning process to collectively design a project at Wilson Yard. 5 The eventual outcome was to represent the will of the people and stand as a material monument to the ability of inclusive dialogue in the public sphere to create the greatest good for all.
Power, Publics, and the Rhetorical Uses of Democracy 41
The hotly contested Wilson Yard plan includes a Target, street-level retail, and two ten-story publicly subsidized affordable apartment buildings. One building includes ninety-nine units for low-income seniors, and the other-- which lies at the center of this controversy--will house eighty-four units for households making no more than 60 percent of the area median income. 6 Beginning in 1998, dozens of organizations and hundreds of Uptown stake- holders have evoked democratic rhetoric in public discourse and at commu- nity meetings to justify and support arguments both for and against affordable housing at Wilson Yard;7 to both slander and support public officials; and to both legitimate and blast the processes of gentrification. I am interested here in how two such different investments--one claiming that creating affordable housing on behalf of those at risk of being displaced by gentrification is demo- cratic, and the other claiming that such a move is undemocratic because it favors the poor, silences the voices of property owners, and unjustly reappro- priates taxes--could both be supported using democratic rhetoric. Many peo- ple are invested in Uptown, just not in the same outcomes. To help elucidate these investments, I turn to a description of the contention at Wilson Yard, and to a consideration of how competing publics in Uptown illustrate the theoretical and practical contradictions within the democratic project.
Democratic Theory, Power, and the Limits of the Public Sphere Trope
By analyzing Uptown's emergent public in action, one bears witness to what Chantal Mouffe calls the "paradox of democracy. " Mouffe articulates this "paradox" as the incompatibility between political liberalism (which fore- grounds a politics of liberty and individual rights) and democracy (which foregrounds a politics of equality). Arguing that this paradox is an inherent and valuable feature of democracy, she advocates "agonistic pluralism," a poli- tics that secures contestation as a permanent and foundational condition of democracy. In rejecting the possibility of "establishing a consensus without exclusion," agonistic pluralism calls for the maintenance of democratic insti- tutions and processes that keep "democratic contestations alive. "8 Compelling in theory, "agonistic pluralism" presents serious limitations in the material world where concrete, timely, and compromised decisions must finally be made. In Uptown, something must be developed at Wilson Yard despite what could be an infinite debate over what should be built. There is much to be learned from the stalemate of competing rhetorics in Uptown, in that even- tually, public policy must act, and often act in ways that some part of the con- stituency may deem "undemocratic. "
Alderman Shiller has publicly referred to Wilson Yard, which still awaits construction in 2009, as a "virtual basket" because its design emerged from ostensibly democratic, community-driven planning processes. Rather than something like a public park, which would certainly be easier to claim as a
42 Candice Rai
universal public good, the development is a pastiche that represents a bit of everyone's interest while simultaneously fulfilling no one's. With a Target, a large parking structure, and two mid-rise affordable apartment buildings jammed into a five-acre lot, one can see how Wilson Yard earned the name "Franken-development" from an Uptown dissenter. In the following ethno- graphic scene, which recounts the public unveiling of Wilson Yard on Sep- tember 8, 2004, Mouffe's "democratic paradox" can be empirically observed not only in the tension between stakeholders but also in the competing inter- ests that are captured in the literal design of space. A six-year "democratic" process preceded this meeting in which multiple spaces where these and other adversarial positions about the future of the neighborhood were vetted.
Over 600 Uptown stakeholders crowded into Truman College's cafeteria to hear about the Wilson Yard plan. The room was electric with tension. The sound of buzzing chatter and metal chair legs scraping on waxed linoleum punctuated the palpable anticipation of the homeowners, renters, community organizers, urban planners, city officials, business owners, religious leaders, and journalists who gathered. It was apparent on which side of the affordable housing controversy people stood. Those who opposed it were primarily mem- bers of the Uptown Neighborhood Council, which was formed explicitly to oppose low-income housing at Wilson Yard. These activists wore bright orange T-shirts that read "Unite Uptown" on the front, and "Build a Better Commu- nity through the Arts" on the back. The "Orange Shirts," as they are known, argued that if affordable housing must be built, and they would prefer that it was not, that it should be reserved as an artists' residence. Those who favored affordable housing at Wilson Yard wore green stickers that read "Uptown Sup- ports Affordable Housing. " This contingency represented a variety of political agendas that converged around the support of affordable housing as a means of counteracting gentrification, and included longtime Uptown residents and members of a diverse array of neighborhood organizations such as Jesus People, Queer to the Left, Organization of the North East, and Coalition of Uptown Residents for Affordability and Justice (COURAJ). Shouts and counter- shouts were blurted throughout the meeting in an effort to discredit speakers. Those in orange shouted things like: "This development will concentrate poverty. We have enough subsidized housing in Uptown! " "We don't want our tax money to be spent on this. " "This isn't democracy. I didn't want this. " Those in green shouted: "This represents all of our interests. We need afford- able housing. Uptown needs to take care of all of its citizens! " After the for- mal presentation, things became so raucous that, at one point, the president of Truman College came to the microphone with great exasperation to tell the crowd to calm down or she would have to end the meeting.
The rather unruly "public" that emerged on this evening is a far cry from idealized images of citizens engaged in empathetic, rational deliberation about the common welfare. This public appears nothing like John Rawls's ideal
Power, Publics, and the Rhetorical Uses of Democracy 43
liberal model where stakeholders bracket their private interests behind a "veil of ignorance" in order to derive universal principles of justice that ensure the greatest good for the greatest number. On the contrary, Uptown stakeholders nakedly display their investments with visual flair--agendas literally embla- zoned on brightly colored stickers and T-shirts. Splintered by competing in- vestments, this is a public incapable of deriving consensus.
And further, the trump card in the Wilson Yard debates is often "democ- racy" itself. Below, affordable housing advocates and members of Queer to the Left discuss the tactical uses of democratic discourse in Uptown. Marie reflects on the Wilson Yard planning charrettes that took place between 1998 and 2000, and the others on statements made at the public unveiling de- scribed above:
Marie: Everyone was invited [to the charrettes]. They were held at Truman College. I mean what is not democratic . . .
Gene: One of the people who spoke at the last Wilson Yard meeting [in 2004] said that this process is not legitimate because this process has taken so long. They said, "You are basing the project on principles that were laid out in 1999-2000, but we are all different now, and we were left out and we should have a say in what gets built. Now, we want a voice. We're new and we were left out. "
Diane: You know there are problems with democracy because I can imagine us on that side. This example makes that clear. I can image us organizing around this argument. "Well . . . but . . . now we are here and we want to be consulted. " . . . There is something about the whole thing that is fraught with indeterminacy.
This scene crystallizes some of the logomachy that underscores the uses of democracy in Uptown and exemplifies Julia Paley's argument that the "use of the word 'democracy' occurs neither alone, nor steadily, nor completely; it is, rather, ethnographically emergent. Therefore we must ask: Whose term is it? What does its usage in any particular case signify? Where does the term arise and where not? "9 Democracy is "ethnographically emergent" because the indeterminate meanings of democratic topoi can only be understood within the concrete contexts within which they are evoked.
By insisting that the solution to the problems of democracy does not reside in a more participatory or better-executed democracy, Barbara Cruikshank calls into question the large body of public sphere theory dedicated to con- ceptualizing an ever-more robust, inclusive, and just civil society. Rather than accepting democracy as an a priori virtuous good, she understands demo- cratic government, like all government, as "relations of power" that are "con- tinually recreated. "10 It is not that we need a more accurate model of the public sphere, therefore, but a way to theorize how democratic politics pro- duce subjectivities and sentiments that are reinforced and activated through
44 Candice Rai
"relations of power" in particular circumstances that make certain beliefs and actions seem more reasonable (and more "democratic").
In the unveiling of Wilson Yard, the core tensions within democratic sub- jectivity manifest through two pulls. In the first, democracy is framed as indi- vidual liberty, which appears in the Orange Shirts' claim that the plan is undemocratic because their private interests are not being served (This isn't democracy. I didn't want this. ), and that taxpayers should have control over how their money is spent (We don't want our tax money to be spent on this. ). The sec- ond pull frames democracy in terms of social equality, which appears in the mobilization of affordable housing as a "public good" (We need affordable housing. Uptown needs to take care of all of its citizens! ). My concern here is not to determine which sentiment is morally superior to the other, but to high- light that both pulls are always legitimately at play in liberal democracies. Rather than representing two distinct conceptions of democracy, these pulls signal contradictory tensions within a single theoretical framework. The demo- cratic subject circumscribes the desire for both liberty and equality, for both individual and social rights, and thus encompasses the paradoxical stale- mates to which these competing transcendent ideals point.
Before returning to a discussion on the uses of democratic rhetoric in Up- town, I turn to a consideration of how we might regard the "public sphere" in light of these stalemates. Ju? rgen Habermas's model of the public sphere catalyzed a body of criticism on the possibilities and limitations of democ- racy as a deliberative, nonviolent means of deriving principles to guide a demos that is both inclusive and radically diverse. Theorists--including Nancy Fraser, David Fleming, and Gerard Hauser--have critiqued the Habermasian model as idealized, each driven by a similar impetus to conceive a public that better accounts for the political complexities that confound democratic delib- eration.
Hauser rightly moves away from Habermas's idealism, offering what he calls the reticulate public sphere, which he defines as "a discursive space in which individuals and groups associate to discuss matters of mutual interest and, where possible, to reach a common judgment about them. "11 Hauser's insistence that "publics do not exist as entities but as processes" is predicated on the idea that "collective reasoning is not defined by abstract reflection but by practical judgment," and therefore, a public's "awareness of issues is not philosophical but eventful. "12 To say that a public is "eventful" is to say that it manifests, kairotically, in response to exigencies in concrete material space. While Hauser notes that "rhetorically salient meanings are unstable," he also hopes that the physical proximity of agents in local publics might make contestation less volatile and more prone to the "formation of shared judg- ments. "13 Similarly, Fleming pursues a public sphere--rooted in embodied experiences, vernacular tactics, and local exigencies--that remains "open to hybridity, pluralism, and mobility. " He seeks a "commonplace" that is both
Power, Publics, and the Rhetorical Uses of Democracy 45
material and conceptual "where we can disclose our differences to one another but also solve our shared problems, where we can encounter conflict and opposition but still feel that we belong and matter. "14 He considers urban neighborhoods as ideal sites where such publics might emerge as a "space between community and society" that offers a "setting which is true to human diversity but still allows for 'commonality' and 'solidarity. '"15 While Fleming and Hauser have contributed much to our understanding of the rhetoricality of actually existing publics, I understand their projects--given their desire to accommodate social plurality without exclusion or violence--as reinvesting Habermas's idealism into miniaturized, competing, vernacular public spheres that may be more qualitatively grounded, but no less idealistic.
However, tensions within democratic society are not a matter of scale, but rather cut down to the very core, to the most local, to the most finite detail of social interaction and knowledge production: down to the production of the democratic subject itself. The irresolvable conflicts in Uptown emerge not from a lack of rhetorical competency, a dearth of material spaces for debate, or a disconnect from official channels of power. Democratic publics do not fail simply because of misunderstanding, procedural distortion, or failure to achieve rhetorical stasis. In Uptown, we see a radically diverse public actively engaged in deliberation, but completely unable to agree on a collective vision of their neighborhood's future. Democratic participation abounds around the Wilson Yard development--in city hall, in neighborhood meeting rooms, in community organizations, on the streets, in public discourse, and in public oratorical performances. The impasse reached by this public has not resulted from procedural malfunction. The commitment to solving the problems of democracy by practicing "better" democracy requires one to hold on to a transcendent conception of democracy that does not exist. There is no avail- able Platonic truth that Uptown stakeholders might discover through more refined dialectical practice.
Rather than understanding democratic politics as occurring "out there, in the public sphere," Cruikshank insists that we are better served by understand- ing how democracy works at the "very soul of subjectivity. "16 Cruikshank is particularly interested in how what Foucault called "biopower" "operates to invest the citizen with a set of goals and self-understandings. "17 Biopower complicates the image of the democratic subject defined as free and autono- mous. As Cruikshank argues, the "citizen and subjects are not opposites," rather "citizens are made and therefore subject to power even as they become citizens," and "although democratic citizens are formally free, their freedom is a condition of the operationalization of power. "18 In light of Cruikshank's rendering of democratic subjectivity, the question of how to better facilitate solidarity among autonomous, free citizens in the public sphere shifts to a concern with how "democracy" (its practices and rhetorics) leverages power unevenly through the active participation of citizens who are collectively
46 Candice Rai
engaged in defining contested urban space. The preoccupation in public sphere theories with how to produce more effective persuasion is undermined by the limit written into the impossibility of rational deliberation to produce con- sensus, a shared sense of justice, or material force. Moreover, the tendency in public sphere theory to cast rhetoric in the role of superhero is sorely chal- lenged by this case study, which reveals the shakiness of democracy's moral foundation, in lieu of which sheer power typically bowls over rhetorical com- petency.
In the Field: Uptown's "Public" and the Rhetorical Uses of Democracy
In a gentrifying neighborhood, housing is a good lens through which to see the core tensions in democratic society because its accessibility literally deter- mines who can afford to remain part of the "demos. " The frenzied Chicago real estate market that began gathering momentum in the mid-1990s started showing signs of distress in 2006. 19 Beneath this boom loomed an affordable housing crisis characterized by gentrifying inner-city neighborhoods, an aging housing stock overconcentrated in poverty-stricken areas, a net loss of 11,000 public housing units under Chicago's Plan for Transformation, and dwin- dling federal and state dollars for housing. In 2006 approximately 30 percent of Chicago's households were rent-burdened (paying more than 30 percent of their income on rent), and of those households, 72 percent were classified as "extremely low-income" (earning $20,350 or less for a family of four). 20
Uptown was particularly affected by this housing boom, given its access to Lake Michigan and downtown, abundance of public transportation, and ample stock of historic brownstones. Between 1990 and 2000, Uptown's median rent increased 38 percent, and the median home value nearly dou- bled, increasing 94 percent from $139,000 to $270,000. 21 Although Uptown became less "affordable," it is critical to note that at the end of the 1990s, 18. 2 percent of Uptown's housing stock was publicly subsidized through various city, state, and federal agencies,22 and in 2000, 25 percent of Uptown's popu- lation lived at or below the poverty line. 23 Although Wilson Yard is not public housing, the images of "stockpiling" the poor (which evoke the hor- rific conditions of Chicago's public housing complexes built during urban renewal) are commonplace. The fear that the housing will become gang- and drug-invested "towers of desperation" that breed poverty and social dysfunc- tion runs rampant in public discourse. 24 The general concern over the further concentration of poverty is not without cause, as Uptown has a large home- less population and visible street drug culture. Further, the Wilson Yard Tax Increment Financing (TIF) district encompasses two census tracts where 44. 2 percent and 35. 1 of the respective population is already living at or below the poverty line. 25 The concentration of poverty and subsidized affordable hous- ing in Uptown has been the basis for some to reasonably argue that the neigh- borhood is already saturated beyond the tipping point.
Power, Publics, and the Rhetorical Uses of Democracy 47
Advocates of affordable housing tend to rest their arguments on the ideal of social equality, arguing that all citizens should have a right to decent, affordable housing. Chicago's Housing Affordability Research Consortium, a coalition of housing advocates, asserts that "one of the main obstacles to increasing public support for development of affordable housing is the per- ception that the free market will ultimately provide sufficient housing if left to do so. "26 The belief that affordable housing needs will be met through mar- ket demand, however, is untenable, in part because the very idea of afford- able housing necessitates selling or renting below the market rate, which runs counter to market logic and requires government intervention to achieve.
The Chicago Rehab Network, a coalition of community organizations that advocates balanced development, frames affordable housing as a basic human right: "We believe we are better off with all people being better off--and having basic rights of food, clothing, and shelter. We believe it is in valuing affordability that we return to a core principle of democratic practice for our neighborhoods and city. "27 Here the "core principle of democratic practice" is construed as guaranteed equal rights to basic public goods for all citizens. By positing "housing" as one of these guaranteed rights, the argument carries a weighty, moral force. Counterarguments waged against affordable housing are most forceful when they respond with universal appeals for public goods that carry equal moral heft, such as public safety. The jockeying for moral high ground, abetted through inventive deployments of democratic rhetoric, underscores the arguments for and against housing at Wilson Yard that I dis- cuss below.
In the following sections I analyze how democratic topoi are used flexibly in Uptown affordable housing debates to structure responses, mobilize action, establish ethos, and both support and blast competing understandings of what it means to live and act within democratic society. The two interconnected topoi I examine (democracy as an inclusive, deliberative process and democ- racy as justice) are by no means exhaustive.
Topos One: Democracy as an Inclusive Deliberative Process
Attacking the credibility of a democratic process is one effective rhetorical strategy for discrediting the outcome of that process, and Uptown residents who oppose affordable housing commonly resort to this tactic. When asked to comment on the legitimacy of the Wilson Yard planning process, one dis- senter said, "Ha! And, how good was that study . . . if we can even call it a survey? Number one, I believe the charrettes were done in the middle of the day, and most people . . . have full time jobs and couldn't attend. Number two, it was far and away not a scientific survey. . . . I mean how many peo- ple actually did the survey, 400? " That this is factually incorrect (1,762 com- pleted the survey, and charrettes were held on Saturday mornings) is beside the point. The "truth" of the matter is less important than the way this
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speaker discredits the ethos of the democratic process itself, thereby discred- iting the resulting plan. 28 It is important to note that Chicago aldermen, as democratically elected representatives, are generally under no obligation to gather extensive community input on development projects. 29
In contrast, proponents of affordable housing stress the inclusiveness of the community process as evidence that the outcome of Wilson Yard is demo- cratic. The following Uptown renter since 1998, who organized for affordable housing, describes such a take: "The TIF did open a process for involvement. Our alderman opened the process for us. It helped to have a progressive alder- man. I think in the Wilson Yard project, we all felt that there was a possibil- ity of having a voice in the process. " This resident establishes a moral ethos for both the process and its outcome by framing them as a consideration of people who "belonged here" and "who had the right to be here. " This senti- ment can easily be turned on its head, however. As mentioned earlier, the Wilson Yard process is sometimes discredited by claiming that because the demographics of the neighborhood have changed in the ten years that have elapsed since the process began, the plan no longer can be said to represent the demos. The perceived fairness and transparency of the democratic process continue to be debated; kairotic discursive jabs around the virtue or corrup- tion of the process have been endemic in public discourse.
Topos Two: Democracy as Justice
One might argue that the substance of "justice" within a liberal-democratic framework becomes clearer as one moves closer to concrete interaction on the ground, but this is not the case in Uptown. In some instances, justice is predicated on the fairness of the "democratic" process, and in other cases, jus- tice is defined as development that represents all interests. Sometimes justice is perceived as the satisfaction of individual preference, and at others times, as social and economic equality for all. For some, "consensus" signals justice, and for others, it is a form of violence that evacuates politics from public debate, which, in Mouffe's words, becomes the "very condition" for the "elimi- nation of pluralism from the public sphere. "30
The simplest, but most consistent, reason used to argue against the afford- able buildings at Wilson Yard is straightforwardly because "I don't want them. " As an argument for public policy, this statement stands on a percep- tion of democracy as a system that protects private interests and that legiti- mates planning decisions as "just" only if they appear to represent everyone's interests and seem to favor no one's. Alderman Shiller supports affordable housing at Wilson Yard as a project that self-consciously intervenes in the housing market to correct a material inequality, an arguably democratic impetus; however, she is often accused of being undemocratic in her favor- ing the poor and for supporting a project that divides the community. For
Power, Publics, and the Rhetorical Uses of Democracy 49
example, one Uptown resident expressed this latter perception: "I think that [Shiller] is a divisive figure. . . . A good leader would be someone who could bring people together. I would suggest that if you wanted to have no trash on the streets and a more functional El station, then you [should not be seen as being] against the poor, hating them and wanting to kick them out. . . . That is inflammatory and divisive language. That's not the kind of language that fosters common ground. "
Another argument, which attacks the claim that low-income individuals should have formally protected rights to remain in a gentrifying neighbor- hood, is offered by an Uptown homeowner since 2003: "There are no indige- nous people in a neighborhood. It is a complete fallacy. Neighborhoods change and if they don't, they die. By that standard . . . Uptown used to be a playground for the wealthy and socialite in the 20s. Are those the indigenous people? ! ? . . . I don't agree with this idea that you have the right to live in any neighborhood that you want to live in. I don't have that right. You don't have that right. If I want to live in the Gold Coast [an affluent Chicago neigh- borhood], do I have that right? Does the government or someone have the obligation to subsidize my desire to live in the Gold Coast? "
This Uptowner aims to undercut the "rights"-based social-justice argu- ments in favor of affordable housing by suggesting that no one has the right to demand that the government fund his or her preference to stay in a par- ticular neighborhood, and discredits housing at Wilson Yard by attacking the moral foundation that subsidized housing rests upon: namely, that people have a right to not be displaced by uneven market forces, that everyone has a right to decent housing, and that the government has an obligation to pro- vide universal public goods. Further underscoring this argument is a percep- tion of neighborhood change as natural, inevitable, and "good. "
Although many Uptown Neighborhood Council members (that is, the Orange Shirts) were not living in Uptown during the Wilson Yard planning process, they nevertheless feel shut out of the process, arguing that the process was not democratic because it excluded them. One member says: "We were not part of the process. So, what this comes down to is that the community has been disrespected by those who are using our tax dollars to fund their development. "
This comment implies, furthermore, that because property owners invest in a neighborhood by paying taxes, they should have a say in what is built. This argument is strengthened by the fact that the affordable housing is funded through TIF. Property owners who live within the Wilson Yard TIF district and oppose affordable housing will nevertheless pay over 30 percent of the project's projected cost of $151 million through property taxes. The construction of the housing is commonly framed by dissenters as an unjust means of reappropri- ating private money to fund public goods that are unwanted by taxpayers. 31
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An affordable housing activist responds to the argument that taxpayers should have more say than others in Wilson Yard's outcome: "You know its interesting this thing about hearing people saying they don't want their tax dollars spent on this project. . . . I mean we all sort of bemoan the fact that our tax dollars go to Iraq or whatever. It is more of a consumer ideal of citi- zenship; that I want to be able to direct my money wherever I think it will benefit me the most. "
Here, the "consumer ideal of citizenship" is defined through a conflation of individual preference with the right to demand of the social contract exactly what one wants. Within this model, anything that is funded with my tax dollars that I do not want is perceived as unjust. Some homeowners believe they are paying for something that is not only harmful to their invest- ment and the general public, but is celebrated as a democratically derived decision, for which they had no opportunity to intervene. Unlike other com- modities, housing is not mobile--it is a socially relational investment. Hous- ing creates a social and economic bond between neighbors because the return on investment is intertwined in the "success" and "quality" of one's neigh- bors and neighborhood. Such economic bounds between neighbors certainly come to head in gentrifying neighborhoods.
Discussing the rights of property owners in the neighborhood, one resi- dent who moved to Uptown in 2001 adds: "I don't think that my rights as a property owner are any different than someone who rents. . . . I think I have equivalent rights. But that's the problem, I feel like people try to diminish my voice . . . to assert . . . that the condo owners are bad and only interested in increasing our property values. I don't think of my property values. I think of where I could walk with my daughter and not expose her to bad things. "
This defense of condo owners is important. The dynamics in Uptown no doubt place individuals in contradictory positions; for example, a left-leaning middle-class homeowner who believes in equal access to decent, affordable housing must come to terms with the reality that such housing might con- flict with his or her desire for better schools, higher property values, quality shopping, and safer streets. Interestingly, the resident quoted above is con- cerned about being silenced; yet he is, at least economically speaking, quite privileged in relation to citizens who would benefit from the right to afford- able housing. Nevertheless, this claim of being silenced fits squarely into the democratic mythos, which claims, on the one hand, to protect private inter- ests, and, on the other, to secure public goods. In attempting to protect the interests of those disenfranchised by gentrification, it would seem that Alder- man Shiller and her supporters may have excluded the interests of those who do not support affordable housing. However, the inequities of redistribution within capitalism that systematically disenfranchise along class lines open the question of what responsibilities democratic citizens, leaders, and institu- tions have to "correct" such inequities.
Power, Publics, and the Rhetorical Uses of Democracy 51
Conclusion
The city is commonly theorized as a model of the democratic public sphere-- a catalyst and depository for our collective and contradictory democratic hopes. Iris Marion Young described the city, which she considered an ideal model for liberal democracy, as the "being together of strangers. " She under- stood "city life" as "a vision of social relations affirming group difference" that "instantiates social relations of difference without exclusion. "32 This com- pelling vision of the city as a space for greater tolerance, radical diversity with- out exclusion, dynamism, creativity, and openness has fueled wave after wave of urban planning schemes and community-based efforts designed to bring forth the "ideal city," which always seems just beyond reach. An Uptown renter since 1995 characterized the Wilson Yard controversy as a debate over what a city is and who has the right to live in one: "Some of this fight," she said, is "about what it means to live in the city. And how people imagine the city. . . . I think a lot of this has to do with the vision of what a city should be and what a city should function as. "
Despite its shortcomings, the public sphere remains a very powerful topos. Rather than a means to a transcendent end, the model might be better under- stood as a process that can be used to make claims for rights that accom- modate wide-ranging ideologies; a heuristic for locating the foundational questions, contradictions, limitations, and possibilities of democratic life; and as a conceptual and material site for rhetorical invention, where arguments that inspire and justify a range of "democratic" actions and sentiments can be discovered and effectively mobilized in this or that fleeting moment of persuasion.
Democratic rhetorics have, historically, inspired some of the most coura- geous (and fraught) extensions of rights. Concern over whether something is or is not democratic obscures the more important question of whether vari- ous social investments do or do not produce desirable and just social conse- quences. However, it is precisely the question of what constitutes the content of desirable and just action that democratic rhetorics cannot finally deter- mine. Despite the deep contradictions within the public sphere, it is, ironi- cally, the promised ideals reflected within the model that provide many with the courage and power, along with the rhetorical toolkit, to continually dream up and work toward new worlds that are more just and less cruel--worlds that we hope might finally transcend the horrors, contradictions, and suffer- ing found within our material circumstances. And yet here again we hit the absolute limit, the endgame: for democracy alone cannot ensure peace, dig- nified actions, material stability, or shared conceptions of justice.
More than twelve years after a fire destroyed the old Wilson train yard in 1996, all that remains is an empty lot. The reasons for continual construction delays remain publicly murky but, in part, involve finances. In 2006 the
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movie theater company slated for construction in the original plan declared its investment as cost prohibitive and backed out of the project, leaving a gaping hole. In 2008 the Orange Shirts formed a nonprofit group called Fix Wilson Yard, which had raised over $60,000 for a legal injunction waged against Alderman Shiller, the city of Chicago, and the Department of Plan- ning to stop the project in the name of "democracy. " Their core claim was that TIF is being used illegally to fund a project that is detrimental to the community and antithetical to the will of the citizens. 33 Fix Wilson Yard phrases their mission as a collective, citizen-led movement to correct the "failures and abuses of the current Wilson Yard TIF and Redevelopment Plan while protecting the rights and interests of Chicago's taxpayers. "34 Meanwhile, affordable housing activists push to secure 183 units of affordable housing ten years (and counting) in the making from going up in smoke. The prevailing emptiness of Wilson Yard signifies the ultimate limits of democracy; unravels the conception of democracy as a morally virtuous, noncomplicit social proj- ect; and points to the demise of the democratic hope to secure a radically inclusive future that avoids exclusion.
Notes
1. Burke, Rhetoric of Motives, 23.
2. Ibid. , 276, 298-301.
3. The fieldwork presented in this essay is part of an ongoing ethnographic project
that explores the democratic processes occurring in Uptown. All of the names of pri- vate individuals have been changed to protect their identity.
4. In the 2000 census Uptown's population of 63,000 was 42 percent non-Hispanic White, 21 percent African American, 20 percent Latino, 13 percent Asian, and 4 percent "other. " Uptown's median income rose from 75 percent of the Chicago median in 1990 to 84 percent in 2000. See Haas et al. , Uptown Housing, 12.
5. In 1998 the Wilson Yard Redevelopment Taskforce conducted a survey in six lan- guages to gather community input. There were 1,762 respondents. Survey results were initially presented at two community meetings in October 1998. In June 1998 and again in June 2000 the public was invited to participate in a charrette-type planning session to discuss their reactions to the survey, brainstorm for new ideas, and voice dissent. The current proposal is based on the results of the survey and the input gathered at these charrettes.
6. In Chicago, 60 percent was $45,240 for a family of four in 2008. See City of Chicago, "Maximum Household Income. " Further, in this latter building 23 percent of the units are restricted to "extremely low income" earners (households making up to 30 percent of the Chicago Area Median Income [AMI], which was $0-$22,600 for a family of four in 2006); 56 percent for "very low income" (households making 30-50 percent of the AMI at $22,600-$37,700; and 21 percent for "low income" (households making 50-80 percent of the AMI at $37,700-$59,600). See U. S. Department of Hous- ing and Urban Development, "Median Income. "
7. When I refer to stakeholders, I refer to the broadest definition: Uptown's renters, homeowners, business owners, workers, organizers, politicians, activists, homeless indi- viduals, and so on.
8. Mouffe, Democratic Paradox, 105.
Power, Publics, and the Rhetorical Uses of Democracy 53
9. Paley, "Towards an Anthropology," 486. 10. Cruikshank, Will to Empower, 18.
11. Hauser, Vernacular Voices, 61. 12. Ibid. , 64.
13. Ibid. , 63.
14. Fleming, City of Rhetoric, 34 15. Ibid. , 52.
16. Cruikshank, Will to Empower, 124.
17. Ibid. , 41.
18. Ibid. , 20, 22.
19. The sale of single-family homes dropped 15 percent between June 2005 and June
2006. Umberger, "Chicago Feels Housing Chill. " 20. Affordable Housing Conditions, 2-4.
21. Ibid. , 34.
22. Haas et al. , Uptown Housing, 18-19. These agencies include: the city of Chicago's
Department of Housing, the Illinois Development Agency, the Chicago Housing Author- ity, the U. S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, and the Housing Choice Voucher program (Section 8 program).
23. Chicago Metropolitan Agency for Planning, "Greater Chicago Housing. "
24. This fear should be read within the context of CHA's Plan for Transformation, a ten-year, $1.
