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Monday, November 28, 2005
The Way We Argue Now: Amanda Anderson and Theoretical Dissent
Do scholars come any sharper than Amanda Anderson? Now that I’ve finished The Way We Argue Now: A Study in the Cultures of Theory
The final chapter presses this reading of Habermas further, suggesting how we might view the ostensibly abstract and impersonal practice of postconventional critique and proceduralist democracy as an ethos in its own right. This chapter revisits Lionel Trilling’s Sincerity and Authenticity so as to provide a larger context for understanding the divergent trajectories of poststructuralist and proceduralist political theory. I claim that poststructuralism is in crucial respects the inheritor of the authenticity concept that Trilling saw as coming to dominate over sincerity in the modern period. Proceduralism, by contrast, as a provocative reframing of the sincerity concept, makes it possible to imagine the ways in which cultivated practices of reflection and argument can themselves be articulated as an ethos, at both the individual and collective levels.
[...]
What this final chapter attempts, then, is a displacement of the tendency to oppose reason and ethos, precisely by claiming an ethos of reason and argument. In doing so, I am also pressing for a culture of argument skeptical of the trumping claims made on behalf of the more limiting, antirational conception of ethos--variously conceived as charismatic critique, pregiven identity, or accommodating tact in the face of claims to the primacy of culturally specific systems of belief. This is the most provocative claim of the book: that the dominant paradigms within literary and cultural studies have had an adverse effect on the fostering of public-sphere argument precisely insofar as identity has come to seem the strongest argument of all.
Comments
Oy, but the prose. It doesn’t flow off the tongue.
So what exactly is the claim that’s supposed to be so provocative? (Is it that identity isn’t an argument at all, so that talking as if it is both an argument and a really good argument makes folks forget that conversations about matters of public concern are most helpful when they involve considering the merits of actual arguments?)
The argument seems to hinge on some specialized use of the word “ethos” that is not obvious from the context here. Why are “reason” and “ethos” to be opposed in the first place? Once they are, you can make reason an ethos “in its own right.”
This would appear to be a fairly standard Habermasian critique of identitarian politics. What I think she means is that Habermassian ideals, while often criticized as too abstract and procedcural, too insenstive to cultural differences, ultimately offer more hope of resolving ethical problems, that these ethical concerns should be addressed in rational argument. The prose is lamentably wooden.
Yes, blah and Jonathan, the prose is wooden, but it’s wooden in a transparent fashion, i.e. it doesn’t hinder the reader’s ability to understand what she’s saying. I think that’s a conscious decision on her part. Another book I really like, one which also challenges identitarian politics, Dorothy Hale’s Social Formalism, is written in a similarly dry style; it may be the nature of the beast they assail that forces them to write in this careful, cutting manner.
Zehou, that’s one way of saying it, but the one reservation I had about excerpting from the intro. is that I don’t think the book contains the coherent critique she imagines it does. It’s incredibly successful on the local level, so I don’t think it should be judged on the merits of its global claims...which means I shouldn’t have trumpeted the intro. to the book.
Jonathan, her critique is Habermasian, at least, in the intro. she imagines that to be the position from which she enters these debates; but what I find so compelling about the individual chapters is the way in which she takes all these arguments on their own terms, and demonstrates that they fail on those terms. Theory A advocates Practice A, but Practive A only works by undermining the validity of Theory A’s assumptions, therefore Theory A shouldn’t advocate Practice A, &c. (Actual examples when I return home and have the book in front of me.)
Someone respond to this thread. I was just getting interested!
I’m surprised that the paragraphs quoted above (I haven’t read the book and may not for a while) command anything other than general assent around here. I find them useful and true. If you find them wooden or inelegantly phrased, I invite you to try rephrasing them in more elegant but no less specific language. The task may prove harder than you expect.
I share Scott and accomodatingly’s appreciation for Anderson, but, much as I wish it were otherwise, I don’t find her argument here convincing. Anderson wants to rebut the romantic critique of reason by saying: you think argument isn’t a culture, but it is so. That’s just not a forceful rebuttal, I think, because it doesn’t really address the complaint at issue. It seems pretty clear to me that it’s not really the case that the romantic view doubts that enlightment values are actually a distinctive set of cultural values. What romantic wouldn’t be happy to concede that notion? Sure, argument is an ethos, they’d be happy to say: it’s the ethos of the bourgeoisie, or of western hegemony, or of masculine domination, or what have you? The romantic complaint isn’t that argument lacks an ethos, but that the ethos is thin, or inhumane, or imperial, or some combination of the above. Anderson may want to combat that view, but I think she comes closer to affirming it.
Why would a call for a culture of argument provoke only “general assent”? Nobody said that writing about complex issues with clarity and elegance was easy, but a sentence like this, while not horrible, simply concatenates too many elements for my taste.
“In doing so, I am also pressing for a culture of argument skeptical of the trumping claims made on behalf of the more limiting, antirational conception of ethos--variously conceived as charismatic critique, pregiven identity, or accommodating tact in the face of claims to the primacy of culturally specific systems of belief.”
We have an I, who presses for a culture of argument.
A culture of argument, skeptical of trumping claims
These trumping claims are made on behalf of a limiting, antirational conception of ethos
This conception is conceived variously as charismatic critique
pregiven identity, or
accomodating tact
This tact accomodates claims of primacy of “culturally specific systems of belief.”
I almost have to admire this little machine of a sentence. It is even clear--if you already know the terms of the debate. For example, if you know what “charismatic critique” is in this context. I happen not to know, so I am in the dark.
"I share Scott and accomodatingly’s appreciation for Anderson, but, much as I wish it were otherwise, I don’t find her argument here convincing. Anderson wants to rebut the romantic critique of reason by saying: you think argument isn’t a culture, but it is so. That’s just not a forceful rebuttal, I think, because it doesn’t really address the complaint at issue. It seems pretty clear to me that it’s not really the case that the romantic view doubts that enlightment values are actually a distinctive set of cultural values. What romantic wouldn’t be happy to concede that notion? Sure, argument is an ethos, they’d be happy to say: it’s the ethos of the bourgeoisie, or of western hegemony, or of masculine domination, or what have you? The romantic complaint isn’t that argument lacks an ethos, but that the ethos is thin, or inhumane, or imperial, or some combination of the above. Anderson may want to combat that view, but I think she comes closer to affirming it.”
This is of course not an original thought, but to my mind the Romantic critique tears itself apart because it’s either
1- A bald assertion
Or
2- An arguement ( whether factual or ethical “i.e the ethos is thin, or inhumane, or imperial")
Both are clearly deeply problematic assertions for those who oppose arguementation. It’s a preformative contradiction, epistemological hypocrisy if you will.