Deliberative Acts: Democracy, Rhetoric, and Rights

232 Pages·2013·3.393 MB·English

by  Arabella Lyon

Deliberative acts
RDD
RHETORICANDDEMOCRATICDELIBERATION
VOLUME 7
edited by cheryl glenn and j. michael hogan
the pennsylvania state university
Editorial Board:
Robert Asen (University of Wisconsin–Madison)
Debra Hawhee (The Pennsylvania State University)
Peter Levine (Tufts University)
Steven J. Mailloux (University of California, Irvine)
Krista Ratcliffe (Marquette University)
Karen Tracy (University of Colorado, Boulder)
Kirt Wilson (The Pennsylvania State University)
David Zarefsky (Northwestern University)
Rhetoric and Democratic Deliberation is a series of
groundbreaking monographs and edited volumes focusing
on the character and quality of public discourse in politics and
culture. It is sponsored by the Center for Democratic Deliberation,
an interdisciplinary center for research, teaching, and outreach
on issues of rhetoric, civic engagement, and public deliberation.
Other books in the series:
Karen Tracy, Challenges of Ordinary Democracy:
A Case Study in Deliberation and Dissent / volume 1
Samuel McCormick, Letters to Power:
Public Advocacy Without Public Intellectuals / volume 2
Christian Kock and Lisa S. Villadsen, eds., Rhetorical Citizenship
and Public Deliberation / volume 3
Jay P. Childers, The Evolving Citizen: American Youth and the Changing
Norms of Democratic Engagement / volume 4
Dave Tell, Confessional Crises: Confession and Cultural Politics in
Twentieth- Century America / volume 5
David Boromisza- Habashi, Speaking Hatefully: Culture, Public Communication,
Political Action in Hungary / volume 6
Deliberative acts
democracy, rhetoric, and rights
arabella lyon
The Pennsylvania State University Press | University Park, Pennsylvania
A version of chapter 3 previously appeared as
“Misrepresenting Missing Women in the U.S. Press: The
Rhetorical Uses of Disgust, Pity, and Compassion,” in Just
Advocacy? Women’s Human Rights, Transnational Feminism,
and the Politics of Representation, edited by Wendy S. Hesford
and Wendy Kozol (New Brunswick: Rutgers University
Press, 2005).
Library of Congress Cataloging- in- Publication Data
Lyon, Arabella, 1951–
Deliberative acts : democracy, rhetoric, and rights /
Arabella Lyon.
p. cm. — (Rhetoric and democratic deliberation)
Summary: “Offers a theory of performative deliberation,
arguing that speech acts, performances, and performatives
constitute citizens, agency, and events. Through analysis of
human rights conflicts, it reveals difference’s productivity
and necessity as it demonstrates the power of performative
theory”—Provided by publisher.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
isbn 978-0-271-05974-7 (cloth : alk. paper)
1. Deliberative democracy.
2. Performative (Philosophy).
3. Human rights.
I. Title.
jc423.L88 2013
321.8—dc23
2012047606
Copyright © 2013 The Pennsylvania State University
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America
Published by The Pennsylvania State University Press,
University Park, PA 16802–1003
The Pennsylvania State University Press is a member of the
Association of American University Presses.
It is the policy of The Pennsylvania State University Press
to use acid- free paper. Publications on uncoated stock
satisfy the minimum requirements of American National
Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper
for Printed Library Material, ansi z39.48–1992.
This book is printed on paper containing
30% post-consumer waste.
contents
Acknowledgments vii
Introduction: Deliberation in the Global Era 1
1 Defining Deliberative Space: Rethinking Persuasion, Position,
and Identification 29
2 Performative Deliberation and the Narratable Who 66
3 Narrating Rights, Creating Agents: Missing Women
in the U.S. Media 103
4 The Beauty of Arendt’s Lies: Menchú’s Political Strategy 127
5 Voting like a Girl: Declarations, Paradoxes of Deliberation,
and Embodied Citizens as a Difference in Kind 151
Notes 183
Works Cited 197
Index 215

acknowledgments
At a Christmas party in 2008, in discussing the recent election of Barack
Obama, a stranger expressed both his pleasure at the election’s outcome and
his concern for who the man might prove to be. I was surprised; I thought the
election said less about Obama and more about the character of the Ameri-
can citizen. A majority of voters had examined their nation, its problems,
and their interests and voted for a man of color, a man seemingly outside
the machines of media and party, and a man with ties to Africa and Islam.
That is, many Americans voted for someone who was not like them; they
embraced the natural and endless occurrence of strangers, and they accepted
the unpredictable and impure plurality that is real politics. In repudiating
torture, war, and economic frivolity, voters performed acts of citizenship.
At that point, I had stopped writing on deliberation, democracy, and
rights. The election of Obama revitalized my writing on performative delib-
eration, and so the book owes its greatest debt to the majority of the U.S.
electorate. Even so, this project required the individual help of many people.
Perhaps the biggest backers were the scholars who asked me to contribute
to their projects in a variety of ways, enriching my thinking and keeping
my fingers on the keyboard. I am grateful for the opportunity to write with
Roberta Binkley, Elizabeth Flynn, Carol Lipson, LuMing Mao, Eileen Schell,
Edward Schiappa, Jan Swearingen, Hui Wu, and always Andrea Lunsford.
These scholars are all committed to broadening the Western rhetorical tra-
dition. I particularly remember Carol Lipson’s encouraging me to write on
comparative rhetoric, and when I protested that I couldn’t, as I was leav-
ing soon for a Fulbright year in China, she replied that I must contribute
for just that reason. Working with Wendy Hesford, Wendy Kozol, and Les-
ter Olson taught me so much about the connections between rhetoric and
human rights; I often felt like a student at their feet. Keeping me grounded
in rhetoric, Janet Atwill, Brenda Brueggemann, Suresh Canagarajah, James
Fredal, Lynee Lewis Gaillet, Cheryl Glenn, Deborah Hawhee, Krista Ratcliffe,
and Jack Selzer have given me important opportunities to think and speak.
On more than one occasion, Carol Colatrella, Robin Grey, and Alan Nadel
viii    acknowledgments
have given me directions. Always, the crowd at the SUNY Council on Writ-
ing gave me plenty on which to ruminate: I have grown from my work with
Pat Belanoff, Cynthia Davidson, Tom Friedrich, jil hanifan, John McGinnis,
Kelly McKinney, Michael Murphy, and Melissa Tombro.
The project benefited from my seminars on human rights and the thought-
ful engagement of my graduate students, especially Banu Ozel, Hyeon Jeong
Lee, Swati Bandi, Anita Song, Yvonne Fulmore, Jonathan Fernandez, and
Laura Felschow. A conversation with Nilufar Muhammedova initiated a dis-
cussion on the different origins of women’s rights. My brilliant colleagues
Carrie Bramen, Tom Burkman, Ken Dauber, Roger Desforges, Carine Mar-
dorossian, Alex Reid, Jeff Stadelman, and Jiyuan Yu are the Steinways of
intellectual sounding boards. Each gave me strength at the right moment.
Steven Mailloux and an anonymous reviewer helped me summate and refine
Deliberative Acts. At Penn State Press, Kendra Boileau helped me envision the
manuscript as a book, and the eloquent copyediting of Laura Reed- Morrisson
aided that vision. Laura Taddeo offered me the chance to speak on Amy Tan,
one of my very few forays into literature. Cindy Anderson lent me her issue
of Marie Claire, and the Petrocellis introduced me to popular books on politi-
cal lies. Maeve O’Neil offered her precocious knowledge of language games.
These friends have made my work and my mind better.
I am grateful to the National Endowment for the Humanities for the
opportunity to participate in three summer seminars on politics and politi-
cal theory, two particularly on China. The seminar with Roger Ames at the
East- West Center in 2001 has influenced my thinking ever since. My time in
Asia broadened my understanding of deliberation and rights; for that time I
thank the Fulbright program, especially David Adams, for an opportunity to
live and work at Sichuan University, and University at Buffalo’s Vice Provost
of International Education, Stephen Dunnett, for my year teaching at our
Singapore campus.
Portions of the chapter 3, “Narrating Rights, Creating Agents: Missing
Women in the U.S. Media” first appeared in Wendy Hesford and Wendy
Kozol’s Just Advocacy? Women’s Human Rights, Transnational Feminism, and
the Politics of Representation. I thank them for the opportunity to write on
rights and Rutgers for their generous permission policy.
To my children, Rena and Koko, I owe the pleasure of a chaotic life filled
with music, dance, and art, the basic resources of thought; I know you are
thrilled that the book is finished. I dedicate this book to my mother, Mary H.
Holden, who raised all her children in a world valuing difference and dissen-
sion. She taught me what I know about the ongoingness of deliberation.
introduction: 
deliberation in the global era
Deliberative democracy, of course, attempts to formulate an ideal rational/political structure,
one which is both normative and prescriptive: it says that rational debate among equal actors
ought to constitute the process of democratic decision making.
—Benedetto Fontana, Cary J. Nederman, and Gary Remer, Talking Democracy
America, this republic, the democracy in which we are, is a living thing which cannot be con-
templated or categorized, like the image of a thing which I can make; it cannot be fabricated. It
is not and never will be perfect because the standard of perfection does not apply here. Dissent
belongs to this living matter as much as consent does. The limitations on dissent are the Con-
stitution and the Bill of Rights and no one else. If you try to “make America more American”
or a model of democracy according to any preconceived idea, you can only destroy it.
—Hannah Arendt, “The Ex- Communists”
Shall we speak of Abu Ghraib and torture; shall we educate the children of
illegal immigrants; shall we guarantee health care for all or for most; shall
we intervene in the governance of other nations; shall we ban the hijab (head
scarf), medicinal marijuana, and prayer in the schools; shall we find one
hundred million missing women, the lost boys of Africa, and los desapareci-
dos (the disappeared)? Virtually every page of a good newspaper asks citizens
to consider matters of human rights: we are asked to deliberate on rights
every day. In response to the significance of rights talk within politics and
the world order, both international and civil rights have grown as areas of
academic inquiry. Search the keyword “human rights” in a research uni-
versity library, and over twelve thousand books come up, the vast majority
published since 1994.1 Human rights, exemplified by the Universal Decla-
ration of Human Rights (UDHR) of 1948, have become a key discourse in
international politics after the Cold War, and they have become a key ana-
lytic in academic inquiry in fields from law to social work. The UDHR and
the proliferating supporting documents have created what Michael Ignatieff