Benhabib Clarifies Arendt, and the FYW Course Engaged in Practical Discourse

Previous post on Hannah Arendt and action = promise + forgiveness

If I accept Arendt's proposition that action requires promise and forgiveness in an ideal public, or even to nurture a nascent public, then I also need to define that public as an associative one, not an agonistic one, such as our current social constitution today. Seyla Benhabib explains this where he argues that Arendt's vision of public is a liberal one, in the Kantian sense, such that liberalism is a culture where the question of legitimacy is paramount and necessarily consistent. Calling upon Ackerman

“Whenever anybody questions the legitimacy of another’s power, the power holder must respond not by suppressing the questioner but by giving a reason that explains why he is more entitled to the resource than the questioner is” [Ackerman 14]. Ackerman understands liberalism as a way of talking about power, as a political culture of public dialogue based on certain kinds of conversational constraints. The most significant conversational constraint in liberalism is neutrality, which rules that no reason advanced within a discourse of legitimation can be a good reason if it requires the power holder to assert that his conception of the good is better than asserted by his fellow citizens …” (Benhabib 81)

My only concern with Benhabib at this point is that he assumes that values are needed, or assumed, instead of negotiated. Soon after, he clarifies this:

In each realm -- society, personality, and culture … the functioning of institutional life, the formation of stable personalities over time, and the continuity of cultural tradition -- the reflective effort and contribution of individuals becomes critical. (86)

And so the writing courses again -- is the FYW course designed not only to listen to reflective efforts and individual contribution, but also to nurture and strengthen these? Or, is the writing course designed to mimic and support a larger, assumed and invisible power? For that matter, is the university so designed? We know the latter is a mirror image of dominant ideologies, but the writing course need not be so. What is "critical" is this "reflective effort and contribution of individuals" -- and that discussion would lead us to critical pedagogy, which, later.

To create a public sphere, a la Habermas in a democratic-socialist late capitalist world, Benhabib expects multiple, concurrent environments to be sustained by interested participants:

1. As Habermas [JH] argues that modernity signifies differentiation, individuation, and bifurcation, 
2. within the realm of institutions, generation of general norms of action through practical discourses moves to the fore; therefore
3. In the realm of personality formation, individual identities become increasingly dependent on the reflexive and critical attitudes of individuals in weaving together a coherent life story beyond conventions, so that 
4. appropriation of cultural tradition becomes more dependent upon the creative hermeneutic of contemporary interpreters (85). 
5. Again, as JH sees public participation not as an activity only possible in a narrowly defined political realm, but as an activity that can be realized in the social and cultural spheres as well (86),
6. and as both liberals and JH see legitimization in a democratic society can results only from a public dialog, JH does not stand under the constraint of neutrality, but the dialog is judged according to the criteria represented by the model of a “practical discourse.” The public sphere comes into existence whenever and wherever all affected by general social and political norms of action engage in a practical discourse, evaluating their validity (88). This means, then, that 
7. normative dialog is a necessary conversation of justification taking place under the constraints of an “ideal speech situation” (JH) – each participant must have equal chance to initiate and to continue communication; each must have equal chance to make assertions, recommendations, explanations; all must have equal chances to express their wishes, desires, and feelings; within dialog, speakers must be free to thematize those power relations which otherwise would constrain wholly free articulation of opinions and positions [bracketing]. Together these conditions = egalitarian reciprocity (89). All this means that 
8. the discourse model of public dialog undermines the substantive distinctions between justice and the good life (liberalism), public matters of norms as opposed to private matters of value, public interests versus private needs (89).

And so back to the writing course again. I ask myself, "Is the first year writing course ideal? Can it be?" Naturally, it becomes immediately problematic, since states make it mandatory and universal, so the student does not have an equal chance to make assertions even before the first day, since the first assertion will often be to leave the course. But, once in the classroom, can the course be designed to approach an ideal speaking environment, where ideas are evaluated based on validity, where normative dialog is seen by both professor and student as part of the meaning-making process, where justice and the good life are seen as the ideal of rhetoric, instead of seeing writing as a "service course" or focusing on "error" correction? 

Idealism, all of it. But the alternative is a silenced, fake, empty course filled with the colonization ideology of the dominant culture, the very opposite of a true public sphere. So neither the students, nor the professor, practice public sphere rhetorics in a course designed around Enlightenment rhetorical ideals (though most people wouldn't recognize that). When Arendt calls for the action of forgiveness to create a rational and liberalized public, now we need to review the promise of action, too, as writing in meaning-making. 

References

Ackerman, Bruce A. Social Justice in the Liberal State. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1980. Print.

Benhabib, Seyla. "Feminist theory and Hannah Arendt's concept of public space." History of the Human Sciences 6.2 (1993): 97-114.

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