"An Answer to the Question: What Is
Enlightenment?
The Public Work of Rhetoric_nodrm
See, for example, Hudson Mohawk Independent Media Center, "Independent Media in a Time of War," http://video.
google.
com/videoplay?
docid=-6546453033984487696 (accessed June 8, 2008).
Cynics might argue that any account of political context would necessarily be biased, and some psychoanalysts might argue that of course the hege- monic public is incapable of dealing more directly with the terrible Thing (ultimately unknowable Nature), but this, I maintain, is to categorically confuse the necessary dis- tance between language and materiality and the relative distance between accounts of materiality and that which actually occurred.
72 M. Lane Bruner
31. Z ? iz ? ek, Welcome to the Desert. See also Baudrillard, Simulacra and Simulation, 29-40. According to the theoretical perspective presented here, the "stage" is set in both inten- tional and unintentional ways.
32. For a sampling of the literature on public memory, memorialization, and the poli- tics of memory, especially in Germany, Russia, and Canada, see Bruner, Strategies of Re- membrance, 125-35.
33. Bruner, "Rhetorical Criticism. "
34. See Laclau, On Populist Reason. However, Laclau completely ignores the important work on collective identity construction done by rhetoricians in the United States.
35. The memorial stirred considerable controversy. For a thorough critique of Holo- caust memorials as an exemplary instance of the public work of rhetoric, see Carrier, Holocaust Monuments.
36. Hartmann, Bitburg in Moral, xii.
37. Ibid. , xiv. Kathryn M. Olson also discusses how Reagan attempted to redefine the notion of "victims" prior to and during his Bitburg visit. See Olson, "Controversy. "
38. Brockmann, "Bitburg Deconstruction. " 39. Olson, "Controversy. "
40. Brockmann, "Bitburg Deconstruction," 163.
41. Bruner, Strategies of Remembrance, 68-88; Charland, "Constitutive Rhetoric. "
42. On the parade of sovereignties, see Bruner, Strategies of Remembrance, 40-41.
43. The debate between those supporting elite management of public opinion and
those supporting public education is nicely traced in the work of Walter Lippmann and John Dewey. See Lippmann, Public Opinion; Dewey, Public.
44. Rhetorical critics, who tend to publish their work in obscure academic journals, are, as would be expected, generally ignored when it comes to their political warnings. For example, in 1939 Kenneth Burke penned a critical essay on Hitler's rhetoric, warn- ing that Hitler's dark "magic" was likely to spell doom for Europe. Nobody listened. See Burke, "Rhetoric of Hitler's Battle. "
Works Cited
Althusser, Louis. "Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses. " In Lenin and Philosophy, 127-86. Translated by Ben Brewster. London: New Left Books, 1977.
Anderson, Benedict. Imagined Communities. New York: Verso, 1991.
Aris, Ben, and Duncan Campbell. "How Bush's Grandfather Helped Hitler's Rise to
Power. " Guardian, September 25, 2004.
Asen, Robert, and Daniel C. Brouwer. Counterpublics and the State. Albany: SUNY Press,
2001.
Baudrillard, Jean. Simulacra and Simulation. Translated by Sheila F. Glaser. Ann Arbor:
University of Michigan Press, 1994.
Benjamin, Walter. "Critique of Violence. " In Reflections, edited by Peter Demetz, 277-300.
New York: Schocken, 1978.
Biesecker, Barbara. "Rhetorical Studies and the 'New' Psychoanalysis: What's the Real
Problem? Or Framing the Problem of the Real. " Quarterly Journal of Speech 84 (1998):
222-59.
Bormann, Dennis R. "Some 'Common Sense' about Campbell, Hume, and Reid: The
Extrinsic Evidence. " Quarterly Journal of Speech 71 (November 1985): 395-421. Bourdieu, Pierre. Language and Symbolic Power. Cambridge, Mass. : Harvard University
Press, 1991.
Brockmann, Stephen. "Bitburg Deconstruction. " Philosophical Forum 17 (1986): 159-74.
The Public Work of Critical Political Communication 73
Bruner, M. Lane. "Carnivalesque Protest and the Humorless State. " Text and Performance Quarterly 25 (2005): 137-56.
------. Democracy's Debt: The Historical Tensions between Political and Economic Liberty. New York: Humanity Press, 2009.
------. "Global Constitutionalism and the Arguments over Free Trade. " Communication Studies 53 (2002): 25-39.
------. "Global Governance and the Critical Public. " Rhetoric & Public Affairs 6 (2003): 687-708.
------. "Norm Revolutions and World Order. " Rhetoric & Public Affairs 9 (2006): 153-81. ------. "Rationality, Reason and the History of Thought. " Argumentation 20 (2006):
185-208.
------. "Rhetorical Criticism as Limit Work. " Western Journal of Communication 66
(2002): 281-99.
------. "Rhetorical Theory and the Critique of National Identity Construction. " National
Identities 7 (2005): 309-28.
------. "Rhetorics of the State: The Public Negotiation of Public Character in Germany,
Russia, and Quebec. " National Identities 2 (2000): 159-74.
------. Strategies of Remembrance: The Rhetorical Dimensions of National Identity Construc-
tion. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2002.
------. "Taming 'Wild' Capitalism. " Discourse & Society 13 (2002): 167-84.
Bruner, M. Lane, and Noemi Marin. "'Democracies' in Transition in the New Europe. "
Controversia 5 (2007): 15-22.
Bruner, M. Lane, and Viatcheslav Morozov, eds. Market Democracy in Post-Communist
Russia. Leeds, England: Wisdom House Academic Publishers, 2005.
Burke, Kenneth. "The Rhetoric of Hitler's Battle. " Southern Review 5 (1939): 1-21. Carrier, Peter. Holocaust Monuments and National Memory Culture in France and Germany
since 1989. New York: Berghahn Books, 2005.
Charland, Maurice. "Constitutive Rhetoric: The Case of the Peuple Que? be? cois. " Quarterly
Journal of Speech 73 (1987): 133-50.
Debord, Guy. Comments on the Society of the Spectacle. Translated by Malcolm Imrie.
1988. Reprint, New York: Verso, 2002.
------. The Society of the Spectacle. Translated by Donald Nicholson-Smith. 1967. Reprint,
New York: Zone Books, 1995.
Derrida, Jacques. Rogues: Two Essays on Reason. Translated by Pascale-Anne Brault and
Michael Nass. Stanford, Calif. : Stanford University Press, 2005.
Dewey, John. The Public and Its Problems. Athens: Ohio University Press, 1954. Eckermann, Johann P. Conversations with Goethe. Cambridge, Mass. : Da Capo Press,
1998.
Foucault, Michel. Fearless Speech. Edited by Joseph Pearson. N. p. : Semiotext(e) Foreign
Agents, 2001.
------. History of Madness. Translated by J. Murphy and J. Khalfa. New York: Routledge,
2006.
------. "What Is Enlightenment? " Translated by Catherine Porter. In The Foucault Reader,
edited by Paul Rabinow, 32-50. New York: Pantheon Books, 1984.
Fraser, Nancy. "Rethinking the Public Sphere. " In Habermas and the Public Sphere, edited
by Craig Calhoun, 109-42. Cambridge, Mass. : MIT Press, 1992.
Goffman, Erving. The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life. New York: Doubleday, 1959. Hartmann, Geoffrey, ed. Bitburg in Moral and Political Perspective. Bloomington: Indiana
University Press, 1986.
74 M. Lane Bruner
Holton, Robert. "Bourdieu and Common Sense. " Substance: A Review of Theory and Lit- erary Criticism 26 (September 1997): 38-52.
Hudson, Michael. Super Imperialism: The Origin and Fundamentals of U. S. World Domi- nance. Sterling, Va. : Pluto Press, 2003.
Kant, Immanuel.
"An Answer to the Question: What Is Enlightenment? " In What Is Enlightenment? edited by James Schmidt, 58-64. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996.
------. "Beantwortung der Frage: Was ist Aufkla? rung? ," Berlinische Monatsschrift 4 (1784): 481-94.
------. Kant: Political Writings. Edited by Hans Reiss. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1991.
Klein, Noemi. No Logo. New York: Picador, 2002.
Laclau, Ernesto. On Populist Reason. New York: Verso, 2005.
------. "Why Constructing a People Is the Main Task of Radical Politics. " Critical Inquiry
32 (2006): 646-80.
Laclau, Ernesto, and Chantal Mouffe. Hegemony and Socialist Strategy. New York: Verso,
1985.
Lippmann, Walter. Public Opinion. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1997.
Loewen, James W. Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got
Wrong. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1996.
Lyotard, J. F. "Sensus Communis: The Subject in Statu Nascendi. " In Who Comes After the
Subject? edited by E. Cadava, P. Conner, and J. Nancy, 217-35. New York: Routledge,
1991.
Martin, Jane R. "Methodological Essentialism, False Difference, and Other Dangerous
Traps. " Signs 19 (1994): 630-75.
Marx, Karl. The German Ideology. Amherst, N. Y. : Prometheus Books, 1998.
May, Todd. Gilles Deleuze: An Introduction. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005. Mayhew, Leon H. The New Public. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1997. McConnell, Douglas, and Grant Gillett. "Lacan for the Philosophical Psychiatrist. " Phi-
losophy, Psychiatry and Psychology 12, no. 1 (2005): 63-75.
McGee, Michael C. "In Search of 'the People': A Rhetorical Alternative. " Quarterly Jour-
nal of Speech 61 (1975): 235-49.
Morgan, Edmund S. Inventing the People. New York: W. W. Norton, 1988.
Mouffe, Chantal. The Democratic Paradox. New York: Verso, 2000.
Olson, Kathryn. M. "The Controversy over President Reagan's Visit to Bitburg. " Quar-
terly Journal of Speech 75 (1989): 129-51.
Perelman, Chaim. "The Rational and the Reasonable. " In Rationality Today, edited by
T. F. Geraets, 213-14. Ottawa: University of Ottawa Press, 1979.
Phillips, Kevin. American Dynasty: Aristocracy, Fortune, and the Politics of Deceit in the
House of Bush. New York: Viking, 2004.
Rajchman, John, ed. The Identity in Question. New York: Routledge, 1995.
Remarque, Erich Maria. All's Quiet on the Western Front. Translated by A. W. Wheen. New
York: Fawcett Columbine, 1996.
Sandoval, Chela. Methodology of the Oppressed. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota
Press, 2000.
Schaeffer, John D. Sensus Communis: Vico, Rhetoric, and the Limits of Relativism. Durham,
N. C. : Duke University Press, 1990.
Schopenhauer, Arthur. The World as Will and Representation, Vol. 1. New York: Dover,
1969.
The Public Work of Critical Political Communication 75
Sennett, Richard. The Fall of Public Man. New York: W. W. Norton, 1992.
Silverman, Kaja. The Subject of Semiotics. New York: Oxford University Press, 1983. Sloterdijk, Peter. Critique of Cynical Reason. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press,
1987.
Stavrakakis, Yannis. Lacan and the Political. New York: Routledge, 1999.
Warner, Michael. Publics and Counterpublics. New York: Zone Books, 2005.
Weintraub, Jeff. "The Theory and Politics of the Public/Private Distinction. " In Public
and Private in Thought and Practice: Perspectives on a Grand Dichotomy, edited by Jeff
Weintraub and Krishan Kumar, 1-42. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997. Z ? iz ? ek, Slavoj. "Against the Populist Temptation. " Critical Inquiry 32 (2006): 551-74. ------. "Schagend, aber nicht Treffend! " Critical Inquiry 33 (2006): 185-211.
------. Welcome to the Desert of the Real. New York: Verso, 2002.
? Rhetorical Engagement
in the Cultural Economies of Cities
John M. Ackerman
"The power of place--the power of ordinary urban landscapes to nurture citizen's public memory, to encompass shared time in the form of shared territory--remains untapped for most working people's neighborhoods in most American cities. "1
"Civic engagement," as a policy realm and educational scene, appears to accurately name the rhetorical investments of citizen-scholars in the public life of their cities. "Civic" is a keyword in rhetoric,2 as it is synonymous with "city" and thus recalls the venerable claim that rhetoric once had over pub- lic life in the polis, located physically and symbolically in the public space of the agora. As many have noted, throughout antiquity the achievement of civic virtue by the (exclusively male) citizenry was measured by the health and vitality of the polis,3 and the agora was the preeminent site for both policy and economic deliberation and, as such, a daily commemoration to the iden- tity and power of the city. The word "civic" also, and to this day, is synonymic with civility,4 indexing a cultural investment in consensual discourse, the rule of law and logic, and a "republican" political style that features open debate, oratory, agreement, and tolerance. 5 Civic engagement taken at its word(s) ges- tures to the endemic nature of rhetorical practice in the polis because citizens engage each other through words and actions to rewrite the symbolic terrain of public life, recorded in the material artifact of the city.
The word "engagement" connotes less of rhetoric's civic legacy, but its claim to keyword status is in its gesture to the indispensable role of the inter- locutor in public deliberation and the indispensable role of public delibera- tion in a participatory democracy. Democracy in civic life, as a centrist ideal, regenerates itself through an inclusive, poly-vocal, and capricious poie^sis (that is, a bringing forth in craft and nature), in essence the polis as vita activa as Hannah Arendt describes it,6 capable of populating any corner of public life
Rhetorical Engagement in the Cultural Economies of Cities 77
with the rudiments of democratic action. Civic engagement, then, would appear to complement the sorts of rhetorical engagements presented in this collection, but the coin of the realm of "civic engagement"--as anyone em- ployed by a public or private university would know--far exceeds that of rhe- torical practice in civic life. Civic engagement (and not rhetoric) has achieved brand-name status through a burgeoning policy industry, amassing great cul- tural capital in interrelated fields of influence. It operates as a disciplinarily transcendent educational policy that presents engagement, service, and com- munity outreach as cornerstones of a liberal education in the twenty-first century and as pathways between institutions of higher learning and their public constituencies. As a result, civic engagement is now a centerpiece in strategic planning exercises at public and private colleges and universities. With gathering momentum through the latter moments of the twentieth cen- tury, the university has made its own public turn through civic engagement and as an educational policy. Civic engagement has joined innovation, en- trepreneurialism, and global economic competitiveness to guide university planning. Coincidental with this rise in institutional prominence, civic en- gagement linked with economic progressivism has become an instrument for partisan and postpartisan political policy debates. Civic engagement (and its variants) increasingly is featured in political arguments for economic sol- vency and geopolitical power in the United States and abroad in the twenty- first century.
This essay begins with a sketch of interrelated policy spheres aligned with civic engagement--in educational policy and in political and economic plat- forms--to show why civic engagement no longer simply identifies the motives and context of an isolated classroom or off-campus learning event. As soon as civic engagement jumps the track from experiential learning for the causes of progressive education to planning and political spheres, it is implicated in global economic policies. Because public policy is inherently economic in Western society, and because public life is determined by the marketplace more than the democratic ideal, our rhetorical engagements? as pure as we believe them to be of spirit and purpose--are fundamentally political and economic. When the logic of fast capitalism subsumes the logic of progres- sivism in the name of civic engagement, there is rhetorical work to be done to unravel this discourse and its material consequences and to rescue from purely political ambition the commonplace economies of the city--to re- claim, in Harry Boyte's words, "the interplay of distinctive, unique interests and perspectives to accomplish public purposes. "7 Rhetorical analysis and participation, attuned to the economic tableau of the polis, can point us toward the locations and locutions where economic equity has been denied through false promise or cultural misstep and where economic futures can be revitalized.
78 John M. Ackerman
Civic Engagement across Education, Planning, and Political Spheres
For most academic readers, the "scholarship of engagement" is familiar in name and in practice, encompassing a growing set of academic policy initia- tives. Coined by Ernest Boyer, the term strives to connect "the rich resources of the university to our most pressing social, civic, and ethical problems, to our children, to our schools, to our teachers, and to our cities. "8 In principle, it is woven into the fabric of campus life, often with direct ties to experiential and service learning, to Campus Compact, and to outreach programs offer- ing service, internships, and undergraduate research opportunities. Engaged scholarship is now ubiquitous in public and private schools, colleges, and universities, growing exponentially through the 1990s and into the twenty- first century. Nearly every major policy agency of higher education promotes and tracks it, and examples abound. The Association of American Universities (AAU) began in 1996 to compile a directory of community service and out- reach programs that now account for nearly 100 percent of AAU membership. 9 The Campus Compact began in 1985 and has grown to 1,100 colleges and universities. 10 The American Association of State Colleges and Universities, in partnership with the New York Times, hosts the American Democracy Project and the Civic Engagement in Action series with 229 member institutions. 11 The Association of American Colleges and Universities, representing 1,150 institutions, claims that civic engagement has become "an essential learning goal throughout higher education. "12 And the Higher Learning Commission of the North Central Association lists "Engagement and Service" as one of the five criteria guiding reaccreditation. 13 With so much information and interest in circulation, major clearinghouses have emerged such as the National Cen- ter for Public Policy and Higher Education. 14
Now that civic engagement and service are centrally part of innovation and review at the university, it is not surprising to find "engagement" written into the strategic vision of postsecondary institutions as a vehicle to strengthen the collegiate experience, to compete for the best students, and to ensure a university's economic future. As a Google search of "civic engagement strate- gic planning" reveals, civic engagement and global economic competitive- ness intertwine in the strategic plans of most colleges and universities. The Flagship 2030 strategic plan at the University of Colorado, my employer, seeks to redefine the "flagship university of the 21st century," as one that is
intellectually inspiring, a dynamic global force,
promoting cultural understanding, and civic and community engagement, moving the state of Colorado forward, an international crossroad,
with a sense of responsibility, a commitment to learning,
with the financial and operational models to its vision and mission. 15
Rhetorical Engagement in the Cultural Economies of Cities 79
Kathy Chaput charts how universities historically have remade themselves for the demands of capitalism. With the implosion of the nation-state and the explosion of digital communication, universities have had to compete for regional and national recognition by attracting the best students and by pro- viding increasingly "bite-size" portions of the university experience that imi- tate the outsourcing and downsizing of other consumer commodities. 16 With more and more university services delivered on-line, and as they temporally align themselves with consumer culture, universities are complicit in the growth market for more "casual" labor. Chaput's critique is that "ostensibly benign" university programs that deliver "service learning, peer instruction, and unpaid internships" contribute, however inadvertently, to a global econ- omy hungry for free or replaceable labor. This critique extends the horizon of rhetorical criticism whenever "self improvement and civic engagement" for global citizens are intoned along with global competitiveness and economic redevelopment. 17
As pervasive as civic engagement has become in educational and univer- sity policy, it has also risen in prominence in the discourse of U. S. political policy and economic reform. January 2009 marked the end of the George W. Bush presidency, an era when almost all domestic and foreign policy was shaped by an "age of terror" linked to the events of September 11, 2001. Ter- ror and national security, however, are now being usurped by a global eco- nomic crisis, and national service has been elevated to a presidential priority for the twenty-first century. On September 11, 2008, ServiceNation and Co- lumbia University hosted the first presidential forum on "service and civic engagement," following the Democratic and Republican conventions. "18 ServiceNation is affiliated with Be the Change, a nonprofit consortium of com- munity and financial leaders, many from the Boston area, which promotes "a bold and innovative policy agenda that is rooted in the practical experience of social entrepreneurs and civic leaders . . . [with] better public polices . . . active citizenship and citizen democracy. "19
ServiceNation seeks a coalition of "100-million Americans" to elevate community involvement in the public consciousness and policy on a scale never seen before and required, it claims, in the wake of failed "conventional strategies" to address "systematic problems" such as poverty, the environment, sickness, and a faulty economic system. ServiceNation espouses a service agenda with "meaningful opportunities for service at every key life stage, and for every socio-economic group" to address the failures of our national sys- tem and to share "American ideals and idealism with the rest of the world. "20
As the public face of Be the Change, ServiceNation is building a nonpar- tisan action group, and its Leadership Council lists members as politically diverse as Caroline Kennedy and Mike Huckabee. Many on the council are affiliated with the Democratic Party, however, and their civic and service agen- das are sympathetic to the platform of the Democratic Leadership Council
80 John M. Ackerman
(DLC), which in turn is affiliated with the Progressive Policy Institute (PPI), whose membership and philosophy grew out of the Clinton presidency. The PPI proposes to "adapt progressive values to the new challenges of the infor- mation age. "21 The Hyde Park Declaration: A Statement of Principles and a Policy Agenda for the 21st Century is one of the DLC's charter documents, and it cap- tures the interlacing frames of influence I sketch here. It seeks a transcendent political identity for U. S.
72 M. Lane Bruner
31. Z ? iz ? ek, Welcome to the Desert. See also Baudrillard, Simulacra and Simulation, 29-40. According to the theoretical perspective presented here, the "stage" is set in both inten- tional and unintentional ways.
32. For a sampling of the literature on public memory, memorialization, and the poli- tics of memory, especially in Germany, Russia, and Canada, see Bruner, Strategies of Re- membrance, 125-35.
33. Bruner, "Rhetorical Criticism. "
34. See Laclau, On Populist Reason. However, Laclau completely ignores the important work on collective identity construction done by rhetoricians in the United States.
35. The memorial stirred considerable controversy. For a thorough critique of Holo- caust memorials as an exemplary instance of the public work of rhetoric, see Carrier, Holocaust Monuments.
36. Hartmann, Bitburg in Moral, xii.
37. Ibid. , xiv. Kathryn M. Olson also discusses how Reagan attempted to redefine the notion of "victims" prior to and during his Bitburg visit. See Olson, "Controversy. "
38. Brockmann, "Bitburg Deconstruction. " 39. Olson, "Controversy. "
40. Brockmann, "Bitburg Deconstruction," 163.
41. Bruner, Strategies of Remembrance, 68-88; Charland, "Constitutive Rhetoric. "
42. On the parade of sovereignties, see Bruner, Strategies of Remembrance, 40-41.
43. The debate between those supporting elite management of public opinion and
those supporting public education is nicely traced in the work of Walter Lippmann and John Dewey. See Lippmann, Public Opinion; Dewey, Public.
44. Rhetorical critics, who tend to publish their work in obscure academic journals, are, as would be expected, generally ignored when it comes to their political warnings. For example, in 1939 Kenneth Burke penned a critical essay on Hitler's rhetoric, warn- ing that Hitler's dark "magic" was likely to spell doom for Europe. Nobody listened. See Burke, "Rhetoric of Hitler's Battle. "
Works Cited
Althusser, Louis. "Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses. " In Lenin and Philosophy, 127-86. Translated by Ben Brewster. London: New Left Books, 1977.
Anderson, Benedict. Imagined Communities. New York: Verso, 1991.
Aris, Ben, and Duncan Campbell. "How Bush's Grandfather Helped Hitler's Rise to
Power. " Guardian, September 25, 2004.
Asen, Robert, and Daniel C. Brouwer. Counterpublics and the State. Albany: SUNY Press,
2001.
Baudrillard, Jean. Simulacra and Simulation. Translated by Sheila F. Glaser. Ann Arbor:
University of Michigan Press, 1994.
Benjamin, Walter. "Critique of Violence. " In Reflections, edited by Peter Demetz, 277-300.
New York: Schocken, 1978.
Biesecker, Barbara. "Rhetorical Studies and the 'New' Psychoanalysis: What's the Real
Problem? Or Framing the Problem of the Real. " Quarterly Journal of Speech 84 (1998):
222-59.
Bormann, Dennis R. "Some 'Common Sense' about Campbell, Hume, and Reid: The
Extrinsic Evidence. " Quarterly Journal of Speech 71 (November 1985): 395-421. Bourdieu, Pierre. Language and Symbolic Power. Cambridge, Mass. : Harvard University
Press, 1991.
Brockmann, Stephen. "Bitburg Deconstruction. " Philosophical Forum 17 (1986): 159-74.
The Public Work of Critical Political Communication 73
Bruner, M. Lane. "Carnivalesque Protest and the Humorless State. " Text and Performance Quarterly 25 (2005): 137-56.
------. Democracy's Debt: The Historical Tensions between Political and Economic Liberty. New York: Humanity Press, 2009.
------. "Global Constitutionalism and the Arguments over Free Trade. " Communication Studies 53 (2002): 25-39.
------. "Global Governance and the Critical Public. " Rhetoric & Public Affairs 6 (2003): 687-708.
------. "Norm Revolutions and World Order. " Rhetoric & Public Affairs 9 (2006): 153-81. ------. "Rationality, Reason and the History of Thought. " Argumentation 20 (2006):
185-208.
------. "Rhetorical Criticism as Limit Work. " Western Journal of Communication 66
(2002): 281-99.
------. "Rhetorical Theory and the Critique of National Identity Construction. " National
Identities 7 (2005): 309-28.
------. "Rhetorics of the State: The Public Negotiation of Public Character in Germany,
Russia, and Quebec. " National Identities 2 (2000): 159-74.
------. Strategies of Remembrance: The Rhetorical Dimensions of National Identity Construc-
tion. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2002.
------. "Taming 'Wild' Capitalism. " Discourse & Society 13 (2002): 167-84.
Bruner, M. Lane, and Noemi Marin. "'Democracies' in Transition in the New Europe. "
Controversia 5 (2007): 15-22.
Bruner, M. Lane, and Viatcheslav Morozov, eds. Market Democracy in Post-Communist
Russia. Leeds, England: Wisdom House Academic Publishers, 2005.
Burke, Kenneth. "The Rhetoric of Hitler's Battle. " Southern Review 5 (1939): 1-21. Carrier, Peter. Holocaust Monuments and National Memory Culture in France and Germany
since 1989. New York: Berghahn Books, 2005.
Charland, Maurice. "Constitutive Rhetoric: The Case of the Peuple Que? be? cois. " Quarterly
Journal of Speech 73 (1987): 133-50.
Debord, Guy. Comments on the Society of the Spectacle. Translated by Malcolm Imrie.
1988. Reprint, New York: Verso, 2002.
------. The Society of the Spectacle. Translated by Donald Nicholson-Smith. 1967. Reprint,
New York: Zone Books, 1995.
Derrida, Jacques. Rogues: Two Essays on Reason. Translated by Pascale-Anne Brault and
Michael Nass. Stanford, Calif. : Stanford University Press, 2005.
Dewey, John. The Public and Its Problems. Athens: Ohio University Press, 1954. Eckermann, Johann P. Conversations with Goethe. Cambridge, Mass. : Da Capo Press,
1998.
Foucault, Michel. Fearless Speech. Edited by Joseph Pearson. N. p. : Semiotext(e) Foreign
Agents, 2001.
------. History of Madness. Translated by J. Murphy and J. Khalfa. New York: Routledge,
2006.
------. "What Is Enlightenment? " Translated by Catherine Porter. In The Foucault Reader,
edited by Paul Rabinow, 32-50. New York: Pantheon Books, 1984.
Fraser, Nancy. "Rethinking the Public Sphere. " In Habermas and the Public Sphere, edited
by Craig Calhoun, 109-42. Cambridge, Mass. : MIT Press, 1992.
Goffman, Erving. The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life. New York: Doubleday, 1959. Hartmann, Geoffrey, ed. Bitburg in Moral and Political Perspective. Bloomington: Indiana
University Press, 1986.
74 M. Lane Bruner
Holton, Robert. "Bourdieu and Common Sense. " Substance: A Review of Theory and Lit- erary Criticism 26 (September 1997): 38-52.
Hudson, Michael. Super Imperialism: The Origin and Fundamentals of U. S. World Domi- nance. Sterling, Va. : Pluto Press, 2003.
Kant, Immanuel.
"An Answer to the Question: What Is Enlightenment? " In What Is Enlightenment? edited by James Schmidt, 58-64. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996.
------. "Beantwortung der Frage: Was ist Aufkla? rung? ," Berlinische Monatsschrift 4 (1784): 481-94.
------. Kant: Political Writings. Edited by Hans Reiss. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1991.
Klein, Noemi. No Logo. New York: Picador, 2002.
Laclau, Ernesto. On Populist Reason. New York: Verso, 2005.
------. "Why Constructing a People Is the Main Task of Radical Politics. " Critical Inquiry
32 (2006): 646-80.
Laclau, Ernesto, and Chantal Mouffe. Hegemony and Socialist Strategy. New York: Verso,
1985.
Lippmann, Walter. Public Opinion. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1997.
Loewen, James W. Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got
Wrong. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1996.
Lyotard, J. F. "Sensus Communis: The Subject in Statu Nascendi. " In Who Comes After the
Subject? edited by E. Cadava, P. Conner, and J. Nancy, 217-35. New York: Routledge,
1991.
Martin, Jane R. "Methodological Essentialism, False Difference, and Other Dangerous
Traps. " Signs 19 (1994): 630-75.
Marx, Karl. The German Ideology. Amherst, N. Y. : Prometheus Books, 1998.
May, Todd. Gilles Deleuze: An Introduction. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005. Mayhew, Leon H. The New Public. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1997. McConnell, Douglas, and Grant Gillett. "Lacan for the Philosophical Psychiatrist. " Phi-
losophy, Psychiatry and Psychology 12, no. 1 (2005): 63-75.
McGee, Michael C. "In Search of 'the People': A Rhetorical Alternative. " Quarterly Jour-
nal of Speech 61 (1975): 235-49.
Morgan, Edmund S. Inventing the People. New York: W. W. Norton, 1988.
Mouffe, Chantal. The Democratic Paradox. New York: Verso, 2000.
Olson, Kathryn. M. "The Controversy over President Reagan's Visit to Bitburg. " Quar-
terly Journal of Speech 75 (1989): 129-51.
Perelman, Chaim. "The Rational and the Reasonable. " In Rationality Today, edited by
T. F. Geraets, 213-14. Ottawa: University of Ottawa Press, 1979.
Phillips, Kevin. American Dynasty: Aristocracy, Fortune, and the Politics of Deceit in the
House of Bush. New York: Viking, 2004.
Rajchman, John, ed. The Identity in Question. New York: Routledge, 1995.
Remarque, Erich Maria. All's Quiet on the Western Front. Translated by A. W. Wheen. New
York: Fawcett Columbine, 1996.
Sandoval, Chela. Methodology of the Oppressed. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota
Press, 2000.
Schaeffer, John D. Sensus Communis: Vico, Rhetoric, and the Limits of Relativism. Durham,
N. C. : Duke University Press, 1990.
Schopenhauer, Arthur. The World as Will and Representation, Vol. 1. New York: Dover,
1969.
The Public Work of Critical Political Communication 75
Sennett, Richard. The Fall of Public Man. New York: W. W. Norton, 1992.
Silverman, Kaja. The Subject of Semiotics. New York: Oxford University Press, 1983. Sloterdijk, Peter. Critique of Cynical Reason. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press,
1987.
Stavrakakis, Yannis. Lacan and the Political. New York: Routledge, 1999.
Warner, Michael. Publics and Counterpublics. New York: Zone Books, 2005.
Weintraub, Jeff. "The Theory and Politics of the Public/Private Distinction. " In Public
and Private in Thought and Practice: Perspectives on a Grand Dichotomy, edited by Jeff
Weintraub and Krishan Kumar, 1-42. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997. Z ? iz ? ek, Slavoj. "Against the Populist Temptation. " Critical Inquiry 32 (2006): 551-74. ------. "Schagend, aber nicht Treffend! " Critical Inquiry 33 (2006): 185-211.
------. Welcome to the Desert of the Real. New York: Verso, 2002.
? Rhetorical Engagement
in the Cultural Economies of Cities
John M. Ackerman
"The power of place--the power of ordinary urban landscapes to nurture citizen's public memory, to encompass shared time in the form of shared territory--remains untapped for most working people's neighborhoods in most American cities. "1
"Civic engagement," as a policy realm and educational scene, appears to accurately name the rhetorical investments of citizen-scholars in the public life of their cities. "Civic" is a keyword in rhetoric,2 as it is synonymous with "city" and thus recalls the venerable claim that rhetoric once had over pub- lic life in the polis, located physically and symbolically in the public space of the agora. As many have noted, throughout antiquity the achievement of civic virtue by the (exclusively male) citizenry was measured by the health and vitality of the polis,3 and the agora was the preeminent site for both policy and economic deliberation and, as such, a daily commemoration to the iden- tity and power of the city. The word "civic" also, and to this day, is synonymic with civility,4 indexing a cultural investment in consensual discourse, the rule of law and logic, and a "republican" political style that features open debate, oratory, agreement, and tolerance. 5 Civic engagement taken at its word(s) ges- tures to the endemic nature of rhetorical practice in the polis because citizens engage each other through words and actions to rewrite the symbolic terrain of public life, recorded in the material artifact of the city.
The word "engagement" connotes less of rhetoric's civic legacy, but its claim to keyword status is in its gesture to the indispensable role of the inter- locutor in public deliberation and the indispensable role of public delibera- tion in a participatory democracy. Democracy in civic life, as a centrist ideal, regenerates itself through an inclusive, poly-vocal, and capricious poie^sis (that is, a bringing forth in craft and nature), in essence the polis as vita activa as Hannah Arendt describes it,6 capable of populating any corner of public life
Rhetorical Engagement in the Cultural Economies of Cities 77
with the rudiments of democratic action. Civic engagement, then, would appear to complement the sorts of rhetorical engagements presented in this collection, but the coin of the realm of "civic engagement"--as anyone em- ployed by a public or private university would know--far exceeds that of rhe- torical practice in civic life. Civic engagement (and not rhetoric) has achieved brand-name status through a burgeoning policy industry, amassing great cul- tural capital in interrelated fields of influence. It operates as a disciplinarily transcendent educational policy that presents engagement, service, and com- munity outreach as cornerstones of a liberal education in the twenty-first century and as pathways between institutions of higher learning and their public constituencies. As a result, civic engagement is now a centerpiece in strategic planning exercises at public and private colleges and universities. With gathering momentum through the latter moments of the twentieth cen- tury, the university has made its own public turn through civic engagement and as an educational policy. Civic engagement has joined innovation, en- trepreneurialism, and global economic competitiveness to guide university planning. Coincidental with this rise in institutional prominence, civic en- gagement linked with economic progressivism has become an instrument for partisan and postpartisan political policy debates. Civic engagement (and its variants) increasingly is featured in political arguments for economic sol- vency and geopolitical power in the United States and abroad in the twenty- first century.
This essay begins with a sketch of interrelated policy spheres aligned with civic engagement--in educational policy and in political and economic plat- forms--to show why civic engagement no longer simply identifies the motives and context of an isolated classroom or off-campus learning event. As soon as civic engagement jumps the track from experiential learning for the causes of progressive education to planning and political spheres, it is implicated in global economic policies. Because public policy is inherently economic in Western society, and because public life is determined by the marketplace more than the democratic ideal, our rhetorical engagements? as pure as we believe them to be of spirit and purpose--are fundamentally political and economic. When the logic of fast capitalism subsumes the logic of progres- sivism in the name of civic engagement, there is rhetorical work to be done to unravel this discourse and its material consequences and to rescue from purely political ambition the commonplace economies of the city--to re- claim, in Harry Boyte's words, "the interplay of distinctive, unique interests and perspectives to accomplish public purposes. "7 Rhetorical analysis and participation, attuned to the economic tableau of the polis, can point us toward the locations and locutions where economic equity has been denied through false promise or cultural misstep and where economic futures can be revitalized.
78 John M. Ackerman
Civic Engagement across Education, Planning, and Political Spheres
For most academic readers, the "scholarship of engagement" is familiar in name and in practice, encompassing a growing set of academic policy initia- tives. Coined by Ernest Boyer, the term strives to connect "the rich resources of the university to our most pressing social, civic, and ethical problems, to our children, to our schools, to our teachers, and to our cities. "8 In principle, it is woven into the fabric of campus life, often with direct ties to experiential and service learning, to Campus Compact, and to outreach programs offer- ing service, internships, and undergraduate research opportunities. Engaged scholarship is now ubiquitous in public and private schools, colleges, and universities, growing exponentially through the 1990s and into the twenty- first century. Nearly every major policy agency of higher education promotes and tracks it, and examples abound. The Association of American Universities (AAU) began in 1996 to compile a directory of community service and out- reach programs that now account for nearly 100 percent of AAU membership. 9 The Campus Compact began in 1985 and has grown to 1,100 colleges and universities. 10 The American Association of State Colleges and Universities, in partnership with the New York Times, hosts the American Democracy Project and the Civic Engagement in Action series with 229 member institutions. 11 The Association of American Colleges and Universities, representing 1,150 institutions, claims that civic engagement has become "an essential learning goal throughout higher education. "12 And the Higher Learning Commission of the North Central Association lists "Engagement and Service" as one of the five criteria guiding reaccreditation. 13 With so much information and interest in circulation, major clearinghouses have emerged such as the National Cen- ter for Public Policy and Higher Education. 14
Now that civic engagement and service are centrally part of innovation and review at the university, it is not surprising to find "engagement" written into the strategic vision of postsecondary institutions as a vehicle to strengthen the collegiate experience, to compete for the best students, and to ensure a university's economic future. As a Google search of "civic engagement strate- gic planning" reveals, civic engagement and global economic competitive- ness intertwine in the strategic plans of most colleges and universities. The Flagship 2030 strategic plan at the University of Colorado, my employer, seeks to redefine the "flagship university of the 21st century," as one that is
intellectually inspiring, a dynamic global force,
promoting cultural understanding, and civic and community engagement, moving the state of Colorado forward, an international crossroad,
with a sense of responsibility, a commitment to learning,
with the financial and operational models to its vision and mission. 15
Rhetorical Engagement in the Cultural Economies of Cities 79
Kathy Chaput charts how universities historically have remade themselves for the demands of capitalism. With the implosion of the nation-state and the explosion of digital communication, universities have had to compete for regional and national recognition by attracting the best students and by pro- viding increasingly "bite-size" portions of the university experience that imi- tate the outsourcing and downsizing of other consumer commodities. 16 With more and more university services delivered on-line, and as they temporally align themselves with consumer culture, universities are complicit in the growth market for more "casual" labor. Chaput's critique is that "ostensibly benign" university programs that deliver "service learning, peer instruction, and unpaid internships" contribute, however inadvertently, to a global econ- omy hungry for free or replaceable labor. This critique extends the horizon of rhetorical criticism whenever "self improvement and civic engagement" for global citizens are intoned along with global competitiveness and economic redevelopment. 17
As pervasive as civic engagement has become in educational and univer- sity policy, it has also risen in prominence in the discourse of U. S. political policy and economic reform. January 2009 marked the end of the George W. Bush presidency, an era when almost all domestic and foreign policy was shaped by an "age of terror" linked to the events of September 11, 2001. Ter- ror and national security, however, are now being usurped by a global eco- nomic crisis, and national service has been elevated to a presidential priority for the twenty-first century. On September 11, 2008, ServiceNation and Co- lumbia University hosted the first presidential forum on "service and civic engagement," following the Democratic and Republican conventions. "18 ServiceNation is affiliated with Be the Change, a nonprofit consortium of com- munity and financial leaders, many from the Boston area, which promotes "a bold and innovative policy agenda that is rooted in the practical experience of social entrepreneurs and civic leaders . . . [with] better public polices . . . active citizenship and citizen democracy. "19
ServiceNation seeks a coalition of "100-million Americans" to elevate community involvement in the public consciousness and policy on a scale never seen before and required, it claims, in the wake of failed "conventional strategies" to address "systematic problems" such as poverty, the environment, sickness, and a faulty economic system. ServiceNation espouses a service agenda with "meaningful opportunities for service at every key life stage, and for every socio-economic group" to address the failures of our national sys- tem and to share "American ideals and idealism with the rest of the world. "20
As the public face of Be the Change, ServiceNation is building a nonpar- tisan action group, and its Leadership Council lists members as politically diverse as Caroline Kennedy and Mike Huckabee. Many on the council are affiliated with the Democratic Party, however, and their civic and service agen- das are sympathetic to the platform of the Democratic Leadership Council
80 John M. Ackerman
(DLC), which in turn is affiliated with the Progressive Policy Institute (PPI), whose membership and philosophy grew out of the Clinton presidency. The PPI proposes to "adapt progressive values to the new challenges of the infor- mation age. "21 The Hyde Park Declaration: A Statement of Principles and a Policy Agenda for the 21st Century is one of the DLC's charter documents, and it cap- tures the interlacing frames of influence I sketch here. It seeks a transcendent political identity for U. S.
