Chi-
cago: University of Illinois at Chicago, March 2006.
cago: University of Illinois at Chicago, March 2006.
The Public Work of Rhetoric_nodrm
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. 5 billion overhaul of public housing that called for the demolition of approximately 22,000 of CHA's 39,000 units, the construction of 8,000 units, and the rehabilitation of the remaining 17,000 units. In its final phases in 2006, the plan called for a massive relocation of tens of thousands of public housing residents into mixed- income housing and onto the private rental market through the Housing Choice Voucher program. That Wilson Yard will be solely populated by voucher holders, thus functioning informally as public housing, is a real possibility.
25. Chicago Metropolitan Agency for Planning, "Greater Chicago Housing. "
26. Nyden, Lewis, and Williams, Affordable Housing, 2.
27. Affordable Chicago, 2.
28. Other critiques of the process include that there were no trained facilitators pres-
ent at the charrettes; that the decks were stacked for affordable housing at planning tables by Uptown community organizers and activists; and that the survey was unsci- entific and biased. The survey yielded more community input than is typical, but in terms of the survey's credibility, although "low cost housing" was ranked second behind "movie theater" in response to the question about desired development, "retail" yielded a much higher number of votes overall. Critics argue that this fact was obscured by the survey design, which asked people to check off very specific types of stores, such as Starbucks, Target, and so on, as opposed to one general box for a corporate retail chain.
29. Wilson Yard is partially funded through TIF, which captures incremental property tax growth over twenty-three years, redirecting it toward development projects within a given geographic area. While TIF law requires public hearings for all TIF proposals and a formal municipal approval process, "state law does not require the City to respond to those comments or act on public input regarding TIF districts. " See Neighborhood Cap- ital Budget Group, "TIF Process. " Alderman Shiller, therefore, was not legally required to initiate the extensive community-based process that she did to determine what to build at Wilson Yard.
30. Mouffe, Democratic Paradox, 49.
54 Candice Rai
31. The criticism that TIF may not promote economic development, and that it might negatively affect property values, is fairly novel in the sense that TIFs are typically criti- cized for prompting economic development without taking into account the social repercussions of gentrification. In this case, the TIF, often considered a neoliberal devel- opment policy, is being used both for prompting economic development and for coun- teracting the social consequences of development by constructing affordable units.
32. Young, City Life and Difference, 227.
33. In 2008 members of the Uptown Neighborhood Council started the Fix Wilson Yard Organization, which, as its Web site claims, "evolved as a grass-roots effort by dedi- cated volunteers in the Uptown community" to stop the project through legal injunc- tion. The organizers wrote in August 2008: "Despite years of trying to work with the public officials to develop a responsible use of taxpayer dollars, they were not willing to listen. This summer, without announcement, they began pre-construction prepara- tion, leaving us no choice but to start the legal battle. " See Fix Wilson Yard, "What Is Wilson. "
34. Fix Wilson Yard, "What Is Wilson. " Works Cited
Affordable Chicago: The Next Five Year Housing Plan, 2004-2008. Chicago: Chicago Rehab Network, June 2003.
Affordable Housing Conditions and Outlook in Chicago: An Early Warning for Intervention.
Nathalle P. Voorhees Center for Neighborhood and Community Improvement.
Chi-
cago: University of Illinois at Chicago, March 2006.
Burke, Kenneth. A Rhetoric of Motives. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1969. Chicago Metropolitan Agency for Planning. "Greater Chicago Housing and Commu-
nity Development Website. " Chicago Metropolitan Agency for Planning, July 20,
2008. http://www. chicagoareahousing. org/List_CCA. asp. Path: Uptown.
City of Chicago, "Maximum Household Income Area Median Chart. " City of Chicago, July 15, 2008. http://www. aldermanshiller. com/content/view/450/169/. Path: 60%
of the Area Median Income.
Cruikshank, Barbara. The Will to Empower: Democratic Citizens and Other Subjects. Ithaca,
N. Y. : Cornell University Press, 1999.
Fix Wilson Yard, "What Is Wilson Yard? ," Fix Wilson Yard, August 18, 2008. http://
www. fixwilsonyard. org/index. html#Update.
Fleming, David. City of Rhetoric: Revitalizing the Public Sphere in Metropolitan America.
Albany: SUNY Press, 2008.
Haas, Peter, Philip Nyden, Thomas Walsh, Nathan Benefield, and Christopher Gian-
greco. The Uptown Housing and Land Use Study. Chicago: Center for Urban Research
and Learning, December 2002.
Habermas, Ju? rgen. The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry into a
Category of Bourgeois Society. Translated by Thomas Burger with Frederick Lawrence.
Cambridge, Mass. : MIT Press, 1989.
Hauser, Gerard A. Vernacular Voices: The Rhetoric of Publics and Public Spheres. Columbia:
University of South Carolina Press, 1999.
Mouffe, Chantal. The Democratic Paradox. New York: Verso, 2000.
Neighborhood Capital Budget Group. "The TIF Process: Understanding the Process Step-
by-Step. " Neighborhood Capital Budget Group. 2005. August 8, 2006. http://www . ncbg. org/tifs/tif_process. htm.
Power, Publics, and the Rhetorical Uses of Democracy 55
Nyden, Phil, James Lewis, and Kale Williams, eds. Affordable Housing in the Chicago Region: Perspectives and Strategies. Housing Affordability Research Consortium, Chi- cago 2003.
Paley, Julia. "Towards an Anthropology of Democracy. " Annual Review of Anthropology 31 (2002): 469-96.
Rawls, John. A Theory of Justice. Cambridge, Mass. : Harvard University Press, 1999. Umberger, Mary. "Chicago Feels Housing Chill. " Chicago Tribune, July 26, 2006. News- Bank Inc. University of Illinois at Chicago, Daley Lib. August 10, 2006. http://www
. uic. edu/depts/lib/.
U. S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, "Median Income and Income
Limits for Section 8 Program. " U. S. Department of Housing and Urban Develop- ment, April 5 and September 9, 2006. http://www. huduser. org/datasets/il/il06/ index . html. Path: Illinois; Open the PDF file; Chicago-Naperville-Joliet.
Young, Iris Marion. Justice and the Politics of Difference. Princeton, N. J. : Princeton Uni- versity Press, 1990.
? The Public Work of Critical Political Communication
M. Lane Bruner
Using the term "critical" political communication, I have worked over the last several years to complement mainstream approaches to political commu- nication in a variety of ways: by applying critical philosophy to theories of the public, by considering the relationship between public discourse and public memory, by bringing together identity studies and critical rhetorical theory, and by otherwise seeking to characterize the healthy state. In pursuing this task, the following types of questions have emerged: What are the interrela- tionships among our real and imagined worlds? How does the construction of public memory impact the health of the state? What constitutes political corruption, and what constitutes effective resistance to corruption? What, in sum, is the relationship between identity construction and the healthy state? Working to answer such questions, I argue, is one way of doing the public work of rhetoric.
Few statements are as open to attack, however, as the claim to study the interrelationship between our real and imagined worlds. Critical philoso- phers since Kant have worked to reveal the ineradicable distance between sub- ject and object, the sensory and linguistic limits of our knowledge, and the political consequences of those limits. 1 More recent poststructural and psy- choanalytic philosophers have persuasively argued that humans cannot pos- sibly have complete access to the real, and this is fully in line with Kantian epistemology. 2 Poststructuralist philosophy, based on the insights of semi- otics, provides devastating critiques of objectivity. 3 Some psychoanalytic the- orists suggest that the real constitutes that which cannot be represented; therefore, there is a fundamental and ultimately unbridgeable distance be- tween the natural world and our symbolic and imaginary ways of experienc- ing that world. 4 Since the material/real ultimately escapes signification, and since no system of representation captures materiality in all its impossible
The Public Work of Critical Political Communication 57
detail, we are always negotiating our distance from the real in "fictional," "tropological," "imaginary," yet politically consequential, ways. 5
If overly emphasized, however, accounts of the unbridgeable distance be- tween our material existence and our discourses threaten political critique itself. If the real is ultimately unknowable, save through certain politically consequential fictions, then how are we to engage in ideological criticism? How is the enlightenment project of working to constantly test and improve discursive limits to proceed? If no one can stand outside of language or, worse yet, outside of some fictional fantasy (based on repression no less), then on what grounds can we responsibly critique discursive practice? What would constitute an improved human condition and an improved subjective prac- tice? How can we even think about characterizing the relationship between the real and the discursive if the discursive necessarily distorts the real?
To my mind, much of critical philosophy, while rationally based upon the apparent laws of language in use, takes us too far away from the practical communication work being done by people seeking to improve the human condition. Yes, we should keep in mind Michel Foucault's warnings about dis- ciplinary discourses, and how even the best-intentioned people can engage in all kinds of repressive measures, but he never gave up on the power of speak- ing truth to power. 6 Still, some poststructural and psychoanalytic approaches to human subjectivity direct our attention away from "commonsense" con- frontations with human suffering, which is very real, and yet which all too often is caused by "sick" discourses. 7 The question is how to critique "sick" discourses, and upon what normative standard.
One normative standard for assessing and judging the distance between the material and discursive economies can be based, perhaps paradoxically enough, on the insights of critical philosophy, particularly as they relate to the political dimensions of our discursive negotiation with the real. Rather than focusing on the ineradicable gap between subject and object, however, the focus should be on the nature and consequences of that ever-changing gap. Perhaps we will learn that sometimes the gap between our material real- ities and the way we imagine them is ultimately progressive and helpful, while sometimes the gap leads directly to disaster. Critical political communication, therefore, can be usefully conceptualized as an ongoing investigation into the relationships among disciplinary discourses, identity construction, and the healthy state. 8 The critical analysis of communication is a political project related to the public work of rhetoric based on a clear set of guiding maxims taken from critical philosophy. For example, to engage in essentialism, or to fail to recognize that subjects change as discursive conditions change, is to ignore the rational dimensions of language in use; therefore, individual beliefs and collective identities based on intractable essentialist assumptions are by definition unreasonable. 9 Also, since all forms of consensus necessarily
58 M. Lane Bruner
marginalize some set of discourses, constant vigilance toward the limits of consensus, and the necessary promotion of responsible transgression at those limits, is essential for political justice to prevail over time.
Based upon these and other normative assumptions, based in turn upon the insights of critical philosophy, I shall proceed, then, to offer a translation of the basic tenets of critical political communication, to provide a theoreti- cal defense for what I think is a helpful critical conception of the public, and then to provide three increasingly complex examples of identity criticism that illustrate the public work of rhetoric described here. I begin by briefly characterizing how my own work attempts to move through critical philoso- phy to return to a more theoretically informed conception of the interrela- tionship between discourse and materiality.
Theorizing Critical Political Communication
It does not take great philosophical insight to determine when your car runs out of gas, how many in a community are homeless, where people are starv- ing, or whose daughter was killed in a war. It takes considerably more insight, however, to discern the primary political, economic, and discursive reasons why cars are so fuel inefficient, or why communities fail to provide housing for their more vulnerable members, or why much-needed food is thrown away instead of shipped where it is needed, or what idiocies start wars. We could quibble, of course, over definitions, or over the fact that we can really never fully understand how discursive political economies work, or over the impossibility of completely grasping all of the factors involved in war. Such quibbling would be meaningless, however, to those without energy, shelter, food, health, peace, or opportunity.
Because it is obvious that people have radically uneven access to the condi- tions for a happy subjectivity, it does take philosophical insight to understand why we as a species have proven ourselves utterly incapable of constructing widespread patterns of identification, and political systems based on those patterns, capable of radically ameliorating human misery. Our world is pop- ulated by billions who are poor, unhealthy, underfed, inadequately housed or educated, or at war. Even relatively happy communities are not as happy as they might be, and solutions to the basic problems of subjectivity and com- munity continue to elude us. Why is this so? What can be done?
It is patently true that, on the whole, humankind is still very far from being enlightened about the nature of language in use and its necessary dan- gers, and this unnecessarily compounds human misery. Patterns of collective identity construction that were useful before capitalism (for example, tribal, religious, patriarchal), and at an earlier age of capitalism (the feudal monar- chical state, the totalitarian state, the liberal nation-state), now stand in the way of more enlightened communicative practices, locally and globally. Today what passes for global political reason, at least in the "advanced" parts of the
The Public Work of Critical Political Communication 59
world, is a combination of neoliberal capitalism, cultural hybridization, and competitive self-interest. While "market democracy" works to dissolve the reli- gious, ethnic, and cultural prejudices that not so long ago were the engines for world war, who can deny that our political world still teeters on the edge of catastrophe because of various "patriotisms" and essentialist reactions to the present process of cultural and economic globalization? It is crucial, there- fore, to provide a convincing case for post-neoliberal, postnationalist, and postessentialist political visions, and doing the public work of rhetoric can help with this task.
If one is to investigate the relationship between identity and politics, or the relationships among public memory, national identity construction, and statecraft, grappling with critical philosophy is only the beginning. In addi- tion to studying how language works, and how language inevitably leads to politically consequential patterns of identification,10 it also helps to study the history of political theory (including constitutional theory) and the history of republican politics, since history suggests that the healthiest states tend to be republics of a certain type. 11 Close attention to the rhetorical arts and the history of rhetorical theory, with special attention to critical rhetorical the- ory, is also important, since one cannot responsibly critique the political except in light of rhetorical practice. This is not to say that the political can be reduced to rhetoric, for it also has material consequences, but to say instead that matters related to economic and state power can always be traced back to the ways we imagine our world, and the ways we are imagined by others.
Situated by such studies to consider the public work of rhetoric, in my own research I have reasoned as follows. Just because what individuals and groups believe to be true is always some distance from what is actually true, this does not entail that all beliefs are equally distant from the true. It is mani- festly obvious that some people are more taken in by violent collective fan- tasies (for example, of racial superiority, fundamentalist dogmas) than others, that entire populations live in discursive worlds that produce highly destruc- tive collective fantasies, and that other populations manage to live in a rela- tively healthy, happy, and peaceful prosperity. This is not to say there is "a perfect fantasy," or "a discourse that precisely mirrors the real," or any such thing, but to claim that the more we come to collectively understand the rela- tionship between the ways we speak and the kinds of worlds we live in, the more enlightened as a species we become.
I have maintained in my work, therefore, that the public work of rhetoric is to critique the distance between our ideational and material economies as best we can. 12 What, I have asked, are the qualities of the ideational economy, or the economy of ideas in specific political communities? What constitutes healthy interrelationships between what people believe and the trajectory of policies and institutions? What can be done to remedy the political sickness that oftentimes follows when people's beliefs about their political situation
60 M. Lane Bruner
seem to be radically at odds with their actual situation, and when those beliefs make material conditions worse not only for themselves but for others? How can we trace the difference between beliefs and conditions, and agency and structure, given the limits of language and subjectivity?
In an attempt to do this kind of work, I have critiqued, for example, the rhetorical dimensions of national identity construction, where I studied "strategic memory," ideological narratives of belonging, and discourses that challenged those narratives. 13 I have studied the process of economic globali- zation, the rhetoric of free trade that sustains it, and how that process and rhetoric impacts world politics. 14 I have analyzed and critiqued political pro- tests in different states, as well as transnational norm revolutions. 15 I have also studied the global collapse of Communism, the newly hegemonic discourse of neoliberalism, and the political, economic, and discursive consequences of that transformation. 16 Together, this work has attempted to determine what political communication means from a critical theoretical stance and in so doing to engage in the public work of rhetoric at the level of collective iden- tity construction.
Theorizing the Public Work of Rhetoric
But why does the critique of "political communication" constitute doing the public work of rhetoric? Characterizing precisely what "the public" is, and what the "public work" of rhetoric might be, is not so simple. The term "pub- lic" is a complicated concept with a long and interesting history. Just to name three of the many conceptions of the public that hardly overlap, there are feminist, neoliberal, and classical republican theories of the public. 17 Some feminist theories conceptualize the private sphere as the home and the pub- lic sphere as everywhere outside of the home; neoliberals tend to conceptu- alize the private sphere as the market and the public sphere as the state; and classical republican theories conceptualize the public sphere as a realm of criti- cal citizenship outside of both the market and the state. My own theoretical approach at present is based in part on John Dewey's notion that "the pub- lic" is a term referring to concerns that issue indirectly from conjoint action; therefore, the most just political state is composed of institutions artfully constructed to address those ever-emerging concerns. 18 It is also based in part on the work of Ernesto Laclau, who argues that states and dominant cultures can usefully be conceived as "hegemonic" publics, or particular collections of factions or interests within a community who claim to represent the people. 19 In so doing, such "publics" always, according to a political logic based on the language philosophy of Laclau, necessarily create a field of unmet demands. 20 When isolated, those demands can be repressed, ignored, or integrated into the hegemonic system. When those unmet demands come together, how- ever, they can form a "populist" movement, or "counterpublic," with suffi- cient force to transform the hegemonic public. 21 This new hegemonic public,
The Public Work of Critical Political Communication 61
however, in turn creates yet another set of unmet demands, and the process continues ad infinitum. 22 Every "people," every "public," every "hegemony," and every "counterpublic" is based on identifiable discourses, and one can trace the outlines of these discourses and determine what they exclude and why via rhetorical critique. 23 By engaging is such a critique, it becomes clear that some discourses, some counterpublics, some hegemonic publics, and some states do a better job of addressing the indirect consequences of conjoint action, and of improving the material conditions of human life, than others.
Based on the rule of law tempered by a reflexive appreciation for the vio- lence of the law, consensus, and so on, healthy publics, and, therefore, healthy states, institutionally guarantee thick public spheres, and in so doing they maximally anticipate the indirect consequences of conjoint action by encour- aging the proliferation of "counterpublics" with sufficient force to ensure the constant critique of laws, institutions, and disciplinary measures. Sick publics, and, therefore, sick states, conversely, suppress critical thought in a wide vari- ety of ways, both intentionally and unintentionally, that cause them to fail to address the problems created by the indirect consequences of conjoint action. 24 Following such reasoning, the public work of rhetoric, conceived as critical political communication, is to better understand the relationship be- tween discourse and the political in order to use the arts, educational systems, scholarly and civic activism, social movements, and revolutionary activity, when necessary, to productively transform sick publics and states into healthy publics and states.
The violence of human history, from the perspective of critical political communication offered here, is primarily the result of both intentional and unintentional forms of miscommunication (cynical and self-interested manip- ulation and ideological blindness); therefore, there is a direct relationship between the quality of human communication and the good state. When the hegemonic public's perception of history dramatically diverges from their actual history, or their actual condition and its causes, political illness is usu- ally the result.
However, and as we know, political illness is all too obviously the norm.
One main reason for the persistence of political illness, and, therefore, an equally important reason for engaging in the public work of rhetoric, is the innumerable intentional "communicative" forces deployed precisely to keep people from realizing historical/material truths (Richard Nixon's "I am not a crook," William Clinton's "I did not have sex with that woman," George W. Bush's "They hate us because of our liberty," and so forth). 25 There are public relations agencies, marketers, spin doctors, brand managers, White House press agents, propaganda ministers, and similar forces all designed precisely to keep people informed in a particular way at the expense of other, perhaps more truthful, ways. These agents of self-interest are directly responsible for what Guy Debord defined as the "society of the spectacle," and when coupled
62 M. Lane Bruner
with the "natural" dangers of identification (for example, being raised in idea- tional economies where religious fundamentalism, racism, jingoism, sexism flourish), we can plainly see some of the challenges facing those who would do the public work of rhetoric: revealing how these discourses contribute to the human condition so we can more responsibly reflect on them in order to construct the healthiest possible publics and the healthiest possible states. 26
Three examples--one from the realm of fiction, one from recent world his- tory, and one more concrete and extended example taken from my work on West German national identity construction just prior to the reunification of Germany--will hopefully elaborate my main point that there is indeed a nec- essary distance between what people think and their material conditions, but that some distances are greater than others, that some politically consequen- tial fictions are more healthy than others, and that the public work of rheto- ric is to map and diagnose those distances as accurately as possible in order to help promote the healthy and beautiful state.
Mapping the Unspeakable and Diagnosing Identity
A first and clear example of the distance between what people think is true and what is actually true, and the terrible consequences of that distance, is taken from the experience of Paul Ba? umer in Erich Remarque's All Quiet on the Western Front, a fictional account of a German soldier's experience of the First World War. As a young and impressionable student, Paul listens to his teacher Kantorek, who convinces him and his fellow students to join the "glorious" war effort. When Paul experiences war firsthand, however, he quickly sees the distance between the illusion of the "glory" of war and its grim reality. Returning home on leave, after seeing most of his comrades killed and with little hope of surviving the horrors of the front upon his return, Paul tries to reason publicly with the jingoistic men from his small hometown. He tells them of the horrors of the war, and of the excellent chance that nothing they desire will be accomplished by it. They angrily and summarily denounce his negative, though firsthand, characterization of the war, however, exclaiming that Paul knows "nothing about it! "27 The narcotic of jingoistic patriotism has blinded them. In truth (albeit it a fictional truth in this case) it is of course the townspeople who know "nothing about it," save for their tragic and dis- torted way of imagining the war, its causes and it consequences.
But who will deny there was a real First World War that included hostili- ties between two political entities that were imagined (really) in politically consequential ways as "Germany" and "France"? Who will deny that careful historical work could, with relatively high precision, inform us about the ideational, economic, and material causes of the war? 28 Remarque provides a fictional example of how public perceptions of the First World War and its actual causes and effects were almost totally unrelated. In reality, however, we know the deadly results of those perceptions for millions of people consumed
The Public Work of Critical Political Communication 63
by their imaginary interpretation of the material situations in which they found themselves.
A more difficult but productive way to pursue the kind of mapping that I am calling for here is through a study of the attacks against the United States on September 11, 2001. The attacks, of course, were very real, and very real peo- ple died and suffered. So much is uncontroversial. But if we attempt to under- stand the historical causes of those attacks, and the ideational and material forces that were at work, things become much more complicated. We are once again dealing with a deep distance between what most people imagined was true and what was actually true, but we are now seeing an example of the very real violence of collective identity construction and public memory at work, as well as the forces of anti-enlightenment.
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. 5 billion overhaul of public housing that called for the demolition of approximately 22,000 of CHA's 39,000 units, the construction of 8,000 units, and the rehabilitation of the remaining 17,000 units. In its final phases in 2006, the plan called for a massive relocation of tens of thousands of public housing residents into mixed- income housing and onto the private rental market through the Housing Choice Voucher program. That Wilson Yard will be solely populated by voucher holders, thus functioning informally as public housing, is a real possibility.
25. Chicago Metropolitan Agency for Planning, "Greater Chicago Housing. "
26. Nyden, Lewis, and Williams, Affordable Housing, 2.
27. Affordable Chicago, 2.
28. Other critiques of the process include that there were no trained facilitators pres-
ent at the charrettes; that the decks were stacked for affordable housing at planning tables by Uptown community organizers and activists; and that the survey was unsci- entific and biased. The survey yielded more community input than is typical, but in terms of the survey's credibility, although "low cost housing" was ranked second behind "movie theater" in response to the question about desired development, "retail" yielded a much higher number of votes overall. Critics argue that this fact was obscured by the survey design, which asked people to check off very specific types of stores, such as Starbucks, Target, and so on, as opposed to one general box for a corporate retail chain.
29. Wilson Yard is partially funded through TIF, which captures incremental property tax growth over twenty-three years, redirecting it toward development projects within a given geographic area. While TIF law requires public hearings for all TIF proposals and a formal municipal approval process, "state law does not require the City to respond to those comments or act on public input regarding TIF districts. " See Neighborhood Cap- ital Budget Group, "TIF Process. " Alderman Shiller, therefore, was not legally required to initiate the extensive community-based process that she did to determine what to build at Wilson Yard.
30. Mouffe, Democratic Paradox, 49.
54 Candice Rai
31. The criticism that TIF may not promote economic development, and that it might negatively affect property values, is fairly novel in the sense that TIFs are typically criti- cized for prompting economic development without taking into account the social repercussions of gentrification. In this case, the TIF, often considered a neoliberal devel- opment policy, is being used both for prompting economic development and for coun- teracting the social consequences of development by constructing affordable units.
32. Young, City Life and Difference, 227.
33. In 2008 members of the Uptown Neighborhood Council started the Fix Wilson Yard Organization, which, as its Web site claims, "evolved as a grass-roots effort by dedi- cated volunteers in the Uptown community" to stop the project through legal injunc- tion. The organizers wrote in August 2008: "Despite years of trying to work with the public officials to develop a responsible use of taxpayer dollars, they were not willing to listen. This summer, without announcement, they began pre-construction prepara- tion, leaving us no choice but to start the legal battle. " See Fix Wilson Yard, "What Is Wilson. "
34. Fix Wilson Yard, "What Is Wilson. " Works Cited
Affordable Chicago: The Next Five Year Housing Plan, 2004-2008. Chicago: Chicago Rehab Network, June 2003.
Affordable Housing Conditions and Outlook in Chicago: An Early Warning for Intervention.
Nathalle P. Voorhees Center for Neighborhood and Community Improvement.
Chi-
cago: University of Illinois at Chicago, March 2006.
Burke, Kenneth. A Rhetoric of Motives. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1969. Chicago Metropolitan Agency for Planning. "Greater Chicago Housing and Commu-
nity Development Website. " Chicago Metropolitan Agency for Planning, July 20,
2008. http://www. chicagoareahousing. org/List_CCA. asp. Path: Uptown.
City of Chicago, "Maximum Household Income Area Median Chart. " City of Chicago, July 15, 2008. http://www. aldermanshiller. com/content/view/450/169/. Path: 60%
of the Area Median Income.
Cruikshank, Barbara. The Will to Empower: Democratic Citizens and Other Subjects. Ithaca,
N. Y. : Cornell University Press, 1999.
Fix Wilson Yard, "What Is Wilson Yard? ," Fix Wilson Yard, August 18, 2008. http://
www. fixwilsonyard. org/index. html#Update.
Fleming, David. City of Rhetoric: Revitalizing the Public Sphere in Metropolitan America.
Albany: SUNY Press, 2008.
Haas, Peter, Philip Nyden, Thomas Walsh, Nathan Benefield, and Christopher Gian-
greco. The Uptown Housing and Land Use Study. Chicago: Center for Urban Research
and Learning, December 2002.
Habermas, Ju? rgen. The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry into a
Category of Bourgeois Society. Translated by Thomas Burger with Frederick Lawrence.
Cambridge, Mass. : MIT Press, 1989.
Hauser, Gerard A. Vernacular Voices: The Rhetoric of Publics and Public Spheres. Columbia:
University of South Carolina Press, 1999.
Mouffe, Chantal. The Democratic Paradox. New York: Verso, 2000.
Neighborhood Capital Budget Group. "The TIF Process: Understanding the Process Step-
by-Step. " Neighborhood Capital Budget Group. 2005. August 8, 2006. http://www . ncbg. org/tifs/tif_process. htm.
Power, Publics, and the Rhetorical Uses of Democracy 55
Nyden, Phil, James Lewis, and Kale Williams, eds. Affordable Housing in the Chicago Region: Perspectives and Strategies. Housing Affordability Research Consortium, Chi- cago 2003.
Paley, Julia. "Towards an Anthropology of Democracy. " Annual Review of Anthropology 31 (2002): 469-96.
Rawls, John. A Theory of Justice. Cambridge, Mass. : Harvard University Press, 1999. Umberger, Mary. "Chicago Feels Housing Chill. " Chicago Tribune, July 26, 2006. News- Bank Inc. University of Illinois at Chicago, Daley Lib. August 10, 2006. http://www
. uic. edu/depts/lib/.
U. S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, "Median Income and Income
Limits for Section 8 Program. " U. S. Department of Housing and Urban Develop- ment, April 5 and September 9, 2006. http://www. huduser. org/datasets/il/il06/ index . html. Path: Illinois; Open the PDF file; Chicago-Naperville-Joliet.
Young, Iris Marion. Justice and the Politics of Difference. Princeton, N. J. : Princeton Uni- versity Press, 1990.
? The Public Work of Critical Political Communication
M. Lane Bruner
Using the term "critical" political communication, I have worked over the last several years to complement mainstream approaches to political commu- nication in a variety of ways: by applying critical philosophy to theories of the public, by considering the relationship between public discourse and public memory, by bringing together identity studies and critical rhetorical theory, and by otherwise seeking to characterize the healthy state. In pursuing this task, the following types of questions have emerged: What are the interrela- tionships among our real and imagined worlds? How does the construction of public memory impact the health of the state? What constitutes political corruption, and what constitutes effective resistance to corruption? What, in sum, is the relationship between identity construction and the healthy state? Working to answer such questions, I argue, is one way of doing the public work of rhetoric.
Few statements are as open to attack, however, as the claim to study the interrelationship between our real and imagined worlds. Critical philoso- phers since Kant have worked to reveal the ineradicable distance between sub- ject and object, the sensory and linguistic limits of our knowledge, and the political consequences of those limits. 1 More recent poststructural and psy- choanalytic philosophers have persuasively argued that humans cannot pos- sibly have complete access to the real, and this is fully in line with Kantian epistemology. 2 Poststructuralist philosophy, based on the insights of semi- otics, provides devastating critiques of objectivity. 3 Some psychoanalytic the- orists suggest that the real constitutes that which cannot be represented; therefore, there is a fundamental and ultimately unbridgeable distance be- tween the natural world and our symbolic and imaginary ways of experienc- ing that world. 4 Since the material/real ultimately escapes signification, and since no system of representation captures materiality in all its impossible
The Public Work of Critical Political Communication 57
detail, we are always negotiating our distance from the real in "fictional," "tropological," "imaginary," yet politically consequential, ways. 5
If overly emphasized, however, accounts of the unbridgeable distance be- tween our material existence and our discourses threaten political critique itself. If the real is ultimately unknowable, save through certain politically consequential fictions, then how are we to engage in ideological criticism? How is the enlightenment project of working to constantly test and improve discursive limits to proceed? If no one can stand outside of language or, worse yet, outside of some fictional fantasy (based on repression no less), then on what grounds can we responsibly critique discursive practice? What would constitute an improved human condition and an improved subjective prac- tice? How can we even think about characterizing the relationship between the real and the discursive if the discursive necessarily distorts the real?
To my mind, much of critical philosophy, while rationally based upon the apparent laws of language in use, takes us too far away from the practical communication work being done by people seeking to improve the human condition. Yes, we should keep in mind Michel Foucault's warnings about dis- ciplinary discourses, and how even the best-intentioned people can engage in all kinds of repressive measures, but he never gave up on the power of speak- ing truth to power. 6 Still, some poststructural and psychoanalytic approaches to human subjectivity direct our attention away from "commonsense" con- frontations with human suffering, which is very real, and yet which all too often is caused by "sick" discourses. 7 The question is how to critique "sick" discourses, and upon what normative standard.
One normative standard for assessing and judging the distance between the material and discursive economies can be based, perhaps paradoxically enough, on the insights of critical philosophy, particularly as they relate to the political dimensions of our discursive negotiation with the real. Rather than focusing on the ineradicable gap between subject and object, however, the focus should be on the nature and consequences of that ever-changing gap. Perhaps we will learn that sometimes the gap between our material real- ities and the way we imagine them is ultimately progressive and helpful, while sometimes the gap leads directly to disaster. Critical political communication, therefore, can be usefully conceptualized as an ongoing investigation into the relationships among disciplinary discourses, identity construction, and the healthy state. 8 The critical analysis of communication is a political project related to the public work of rhetoric based on a clear set of guiding maxims taken from critical philosophy. For example, to engage in essentialism, or to fail to recognize that subjects change as discursive conditions change, is to ignore the rational dimensions of language in use; therefore, individual beliefs and collective identities based on intractable essentialist assumptions are by definition unreasonable. 9 Also, since all forms of consensus necessarily
58 M. Lane Bruner
marginalize some set of discourses, constant vigilance toward the limits of consensus, and the necessary promotion of responsible transgression at those limits, is essential for political justice to prevail over time.
Based upon these and other normative assumptions, based in turn upon the insights of critical philosophy, I shall proceed, then, to offer a translation of the basic tenets of critical political communication, to provide a theoreti- cal defense for what I think is a helpful critical conception of the public, and then to provide three increasingly complex examples of identity criticism that illustrate the public work of rhetoric described here. I begin by briefly characterizing how my own work attempts to move through critical philoso- phy to return to a more theoretically informed conception of the interrela- tionship between discourse and materiality.
Theorizing Critical Political Communication
It does not take great philosophical insight to determine when your car runs out of gas, how many in a community are homeless, where people are starv- ing, or whose daughter was killed in a war. It takes considerably more insight, however, to discern the primary political, economic, and discursive reasons why cars are so fuel inefficient, or why communities fail to provide housing for their more vulnerable members, or why much-needed food is thrown away instead of shipped where it is needed, or what idiocies start wars. We could quibble, of course, over definitions, or over the fact that we can really never fully understand how discursive political economies work, or over the impossibility of completely grasping all of the factors involved in war. Such quibbling would be meaningless, however, to those without energy, shelter, food, health, peace, or opportunity.
Because it is obvious that people have radically uneven access to the condi- tions for a happy subjectivity, it does take philosophical insight to understand why we as a species have proven ourselves utterly incapable of constructing widespread patterns of identification, and political systems based on those patterns, capable of radically ameliorating human misery. Our world is pop- ulated by billions who are poor, unhealthy, underfed, inadequately housed or educated, or at war. Even relatively happy communities are not as happy as they might be, and solutions to the basic problems of subjectivity and com- munity continue to elude us. Why is this so? What can be done?
It is patently true that, on the whole, humankind is still very far from being enlightened about the nature of language in use and its necessary dan- gers, and this unnecessarily compounds human misery. Patterns of collective identity construction that were useful before capitalism (for example, tribal, religious, patriarchal), and at an earlier age of capitalism (the feudal monar- chical state, the totalitarian state, the liberal nation-state), now stand in the way of more enlightened communicative practices, locally and globally. Today what passes for global political reason, at least in the "advanced" parts of the
The Public Work of Critical Political Communication 59
world, is a combination of neoliberal capitalism, cultural hybridization, and competitive self-interest. While "market democracy" works to dissolve the reli- gious, ethnic, and cultural prejudices that not so long ago were the engines for world war, who can deny that our political world still teeters on the edge of catastrophe because of various "patriotisms" and essentialist reactions to the present process of cultural and economic globalization? It is crucial, there- fore, to provide a convincing case for post-neoliberal, postnationalist, and postessentialist political visions, and doing the public work of rhetoric can help with this task.
If one is to investigate the relationship between identity and politics, or the relationships among public memory, national identity construction, and statecraft, grappling with critical philosophy is only the beginning. In addi- tion to studying how language works, and how language inevitably leads to politically consequential patterns of identification,10 it also helps to study the history of political theory (including constitutional theory) and the history of republican politics, since history suggests that the healthiest states tend to be republics of a certain type. 11 Close attention to the rhetorical arts and the history of rhetorical theory, with special attention to critical rhetorical the- ory, is also important, since one cannot responsibly critique the political except in light of rhetorical practice. This is not to say that the political can be reduced to rhetoric, for it also has material consequences, but to say instead that matters related to economic and state power can always be traced back to the ways we imagine our world, and the ways we are imagined by others.
Situated by such studies to consider the public work of rhetoric, in my own research I have reasoned as follows. Just because what individuals and groups believe to be true is always some distance from what is actually true, this does not entail that all beliefs are equally distant from the true. It is mani- festly obvious that some people are more taken in by violent collective fan- tasies (for example, of racial superiority, fundamentalist dogmas) than others, that entire populations live in discursive worlds that produce highly destruc- tive collective fantasies, and that other populations manage to live in a rela- tively healthy, happy, and peaceful prosperity. This is not to say there is "a perfect fantasy," or "a discourse that precisely mirrors the real," or any such thing, but to claim that the more we come to collectively understand the rela- tionship between the ways we speak and the kinds of worlds we live in, the more enlightened as a species we become.
I have maintained in my work, therefore, that the public work of rhetoric is to critique the distance between our ideational and material economies as best we can. 12 What, I have asked, are the qualities of the ideational economy, or the economy of ideas in specific political communities? What constitutes healthy interrelationships between what people believe and the trajectory of policies and institutions? What can be done to remedy the political sickness that oftentimes follows when people's beliefs about their political situation
60 M. Lane Bruner
seem to be radically at odds with their actual situation, and when those beliefs make material conditions worse not only for themselves but for others? How can we trace the difference between beliefs and conditions, and agency and structure, given the limits of language and subjectivity?
In an attempt to do this kind of work, I have critiqued, for example, the rhetorical dimensions of national identity construction, where I studied "strategic memory," ideological narratives of belonging, and discourses that challenged those narratives. 13 I have studied the process of economic globali- zation, the rhetoric of free trade that sustains it, and how that process and rhetoric impacts world politics. 14 I have analyzed and critiqued political pro- tests in different states, as well as transnational norm revolutions. 15 I have also studied the global collapse of Communism, the newly hegemonic discourse of neoliberalism, and the political, economic, and discursive consequences of that transformation. 16 Together, this work has attempted to determine what political communication means from a critical theoretical stance and in so doing to engage in the public work of rhetoric at the level of collective iden- tity construction.
Theorizing the Public Work of Rhetoric
But why does the critique of "political communication" constitute doing the public work of rhetoric? Characterizing precisely what "the public" is, and what the "public work" of rhetoric might be, is not so simple. The term "pub- lic" is a complicated concept with a long and interesting history. Just to name three of the many conceptions of the public that hardly overlap, there are feminist, neoliberal, and classical republican theories of the public. 17 Some feminist theories conceptualize the private sphere as the home and the pub- lic sphere as everywhere outside of the home; neoliberals tend to conceptu- alize the private sphere as the market and the public sphere as the state; and classical republican theories conceptualize the public sphere as a realm of criti- cal citizenship outside of both the market and the state. My own theoretical approach at present is based in part on John Dewey's notion that "the pub- lic" is a term referring to concerns that issue indirectly from conjoint action; therefore, the most just political state is composed of institutions artfully constructed to address those ever-emerging concerns. 18 It is also based in part on the work of Ernesto Laclau, who argues that states and dominant cultures can usefully be conceived as "hegemonic" publics, or particular collections of factions or interests within a community who claim to represent the people. 19 In so doing, such "publics" always, according to a political logic based on the language philosophy of Laclau, necessarily create a field of unmet demands. 20 When isolated, those demands can be repressed, ignored, or integrated into the hegemonic system. When those unmet demands come together, how- ever, they can form a "populist" movement, or "counterpublic," with suffi- cient force to transform the hegemonic public. 21 This new hegemonic public,
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however, in turn creates yet another set of unmet demands, and the process continues ad infinitum. 22 Every "people," every "public," every "hegemony," and every "counterpublic" is based on identifiable discourses, and one can trace the outlines of these discourses and determine what they exclude and why via rhetorical critique. 23 By engaging is such a critique, it becomes clear that some discourses, some counterpublics, some hegemonic publics, and some states do a better job of addressing the indirect consequences of conjoint action, and of improving the material conditions of human life, than others.
Based on the rule of law tempered by a reflexive appreciation for the vio- lence of the law, consensus, and so on, healthy publics, and, therefore, healthy states, institutionally guarantee thick public spheres, and in so doing they maximally anticipate the indirect consequences of conjoint action by encour- aging the proliferation of "counterpublics" with sufficient force to ensure the constant critique of laws, institutions, and disciplinary measures. Sick publics, and, therefore, sick states, conversely, suppress critical thought in a wide vari- ety of ways, both intentionally and unintentionally, that cause them to fail to address the problems created by the indirect consequences of conjoint action. 24 Following such reasoning, the public work of rhetoric, conceived as critical political communication, is to better understand the relationship be- tween discourse and the political in order to use the arts, educational systems, scholarly and civic activism, social movements, and revolutionary activity, when necessary, to productively transform sick publics and states into healthy publics and states.
The violence of human history, from the perspective of critical political communication offered here, is primarily the result of both intentional and unintentional forms of miscommunication (cynical and self-interested manip- ulation and ideological blindness); therefore, there is a direct relationship between the quality of human communication and the good state. When the hegemonic public's perception of history dramatically diverges from their actual history, or their actual condition and its causes, political illness is usu- ally the result.
However, and as we know, political illness is all too obviously the norm.
One main reason for the persistence of political illness, and, therefore, an equally important reason for engaging in the public work of rhetoric, is the innumerable intentional "communicative" forces deployed precisely to keep people from realizing historical/material truths (Richard Nixon's "I am not a crook," William Clinton's "I did not have sex with that woman," George W. Bush's "They hate us because of our liberty," and so forth). 25 There are public relations agencies, marketers, spin doctors, brand managers, White House press agents, propaganda ministers, and similar forces all designed precisely to keep people informed in a particular way at the expense of other, perhaps more truthful, ways. These agents of self-interest are directly responsible for what Guy Debord defined as the "society of the spectacle," and when coupled
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with the "natural" dangers of identification (for example, being raised in idea- tional economies where religious fundamentalism, racism, jingoism, sexism flourish), we can plainly see some of the challenges facing those who would do the public work of rhetoric: revealing how these discourses contribute to the human condition so we can more responsibly reflect on them in order to construct the healthiest possible publics and the healthiest possible states. 26
Three examples--one from the realm of fiction, one from recent world his- tory, and one more concrete and extended example taken from my work on West German national identity construction just prior to the reunification of Germany--will hopefully elaborate my main point that there is indeed a nec- essary distance between what people think and their material conditions, but that some distances are greater than others, that some politically consequen- tial fictions are more healthy than others, and that the public work of rheto- ric is to map and diagnose those distances as accurately as possible in order to help promote the healthy and beautiful state.
Mapping the Unspeakable and Diagnosing Identity
A first and clear example of the distance between what people think is true and what is actually true, and the terrible consequences of that distance, is taken from the experience of Paul Ba? umer in Erich Remarque's All Quiet on the Western Front, a fictional account of a German soldier's experience of the First World War. As a young and impressionable student, Paul listens to his teacher Kantorek, who convinces him and his fellow students to join the "glorious" war effort. When Paul experiences war firsthand, however, he quickly sees the distance between the illusion of the "glory" of war and its grim reality. Returning home on leave, after seeing most of his comrades killed and with little hope of surviving the horrors of the front upon his return, Paul tries to reason publicly with the jingoistic men from his small hometown. He tells them of the horrors of the war, and of the excellent chance that nothing they desire will be accomplished by it. They angrily and summarily denounce his negative, though firsthand, characterization of the war, however, exclaiming that Paul knows "nothing about it! "27 The narcotic of jingoistic patriotism has blinded them. In truth (albeit it a fictional truth in this case) it is of course the townspeople who know "nothing about it," save for their tragic and dis- torted way of imagining the war, its causes and it consequences.
But who will deny there was a real First World War that included hostili- ties between two political entities that were imagined (really) in politically consequential ways as "Germany" and "France"? Who will deny that careful historical work could, with relatively high precision, inform us about the ideational, economic, and material causes of the war? 28 Remarque provides a fictional example of how public perceptions of the First World War and its actual causes and effects were almost totally unrelated. In reality, however, we know the deadly results of those perceptions for millions of people consumed
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by their imaginary interpretation of the material situations in which they found themselves.
A more difficult but productive way to pursue the kind of mapping that I am calling for here is through a study of the attacks against the United States on September 11, 2001. The attacks, of course, were very real, and very real peo- ple died and suffered. So much is uncontroversial. But if we attempt to under- stand the historical causes of those attacks, and the ideational and material forces that were at work, things become much more complicated. We are once again dealing with a deep distance between what most people imagined was true and what was actually true, but we are now seeing an example of the very real violence of collective identity construction and public memory at work, as well as the forces of anti-enlightenment.
