Stranger sociability, public hope, and the limits of political transformation

Quarterly Journal of Speech

Volumn 88, Issue 4, 2002, Pages 444-454

  Deem, Melissa ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF IOWA   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 0039484852     PISSN: 00335630     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1080/00335630209384391     Document Type: Article

References (63)

1. Michael Warner, The Letters of the Republic: Publication and the Public Sphere in Eighteenth Century America (Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1995) probably is the most familiar of Warner's works to rhetoricians. See also "The Mass Public and the Mass Subject," in The Phantom Public Sphere, ed. B. Robbins (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1993): 234-256; The Trouble with Normal (Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 2000); "Zones of Privacy," in What's Left of Theory?: New Work on the Politics of Literary Theory (Essays from the English Institute), ed. Judith Butler, John Guillory, and Kendall Thomas (New York: Routledge, 2000); Lauren Berlant and Michael Warner, "Sex in Public," Critical Inquiry 24 (1998): 547-566.
2. Michael Warner, The Letters of the Republic: Publication and the Public Sphere in Eighteenth Century America (Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1995) probably is the most familiar of Warner's works to rhetoricians. See also "The Mass Public and the Mass Subject," in The Phantom Public Sphere, ed. B. Robbins (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1993): 234-256; The Trouble with Normal (Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 2000); "Zones of Privacy," in What's Left of Theory?: New Work on the Politics of Literary Theory (Essays from the English Institute), ed. Judith Butler, John Guillory, and Kendall Thomas (New York: Routledge, 2000); Lauren Berlant and Michael Warner, "Sex in Public," Critical Inquiry 24 (1998): 547-566.
3. Michael Warner, The Letters of the Republic: Publication and the Public Sphere in Eighteenth Century America (Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1995) probably is the most familiar of Warner's works to rhetoricians. See also "The Mass Public and the Mass Subject," in The Phantom Public Sphere, ed. B. Robbins (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1993): 234-256; The Trouble with Normal (Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 2000); "Zones of Privacy," in What's Left of Theory?: New Work on the Politics of Literary Theory (Essays from the English Institute), ed. Judith Butler, John Guillory, and Kendall Thomas (New York: Routledge, 2000); Lauren Berlant and Michael Warner, "Sex in Public," Critical Inquiry 24 (1998): 547-566.
4. Michael Warner, The Letters of the Republic: Publication and the Public Sphere in Eighteenth Century America (Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1995) probably is the most familiar of Warner's works to rhetoricians. See also "The Mass Public and the Mass Subject," in The Phantom Public Sphere, ed. B. Robbins (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1993): 234-256; The Trouble with Normal (Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 2000); "Zones of Privacy," in What's Left of Theory?: New Work on the Politics of Literary Theory (Essays from the English Institute), ed. Judith Butler, John Guillory, and Kendall Thomas (New York: Routledge, 2000); Lauren Berlant and Michael Warner, "Sex in Public," Critical Inquiry 24 (1998): 547-566.
5. Michael Warner, The Letters of the Republic: Publication and the Public Sphere in Eighteenth Century America (Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1995) probably is the most familiar of Warner's works to rhetoricians. See also "The Mass Public and the Mass Subject," in The Phantom Public Sphere, ed. B. Robbins (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1993): 234-256; The Trouble with Normal (Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 2000); "Zones of Privacy," in What's Left of Theory?: New Work on the Politics of Literary Theory (Essays from the English Institute), ed. Judith Butler, John Guillory, and Kendall Thomas (New York: Routledge, 2000); Lauren Berlant and Michael Warner, "Sex in Public," Critical Inquiry 24 (1998): 547-566.
6. Warner, The Trouble With Normal; "Zones of Privacy."
7. Jurgen Habermas, The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity, trans. Frederick Lawrence (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1987); The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry into the Category of Bourgeois Society, trans. Thomas Burger (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1989).
8. Jurgen Habermas, The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity, trans. Frederick Lawrence (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1987); The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry into the Category of Bourgeois Society, trans. Thomas Burger (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1989).
9. John Peters, "Distrust of Representation: Habermas and the Public Sphere," Media, Culture and Society 15 (1993): 541-571.
10. Toby Miller has discussed the dynamics of reserved public space and oppositional performance in The Well-Tempered Self: Citizenship, Culture, and the Postmodern Subject (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1993). Being oppositional is not forbidden in reserved public space; seemly opposition can be accommodated. What cannot be accommodated is the conjunction of acting against the interests controlling the space and acting in an uncivil or unseemly manner.
11. Meagan Morris, Too Soon, Too Late: History in Popular Culture (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1998).
12. In a sense we are left to choose between Nancy Fraser's subaltern counterpublics with their reliance on the dominant norms of stranger sociability through critical-rational discourse and Warner's poetic world-making of more corporealized discursive modes. See Nancy Fraser, "Rethinking the Public Sphere: A Contribution to the Critique of Actually Existing Democracy," Social Text 25/26 (1990): 56-80.
13. Deleuze and Guattari develop the concept of "minor literature" in order to examine political practices by those who have been politically displaced and marginalized within dominant landscapes. Produced in the cramped space of political displacement, minor literature does not come from a minor language; rather, it is what a minority constructs within a major language. Minor and major refer to different ways of doing something, not to essences and states. Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, Kafka: Toward a Minor Literature, trans. Dana Polan (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1986), 16.
14. Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia, trans. Brian Massumi (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota, 1987).
15. Melissa Deem, "From Bobbitt to SCUM: Re-memberment, Scatological Rhetorics, and Feminist Strategies in the Contemporary United States," Public Culture 8 (1996): 511-37.
16. Deleuze and Guattari, Kafka.
17. Deleuze and Guattari argue that one property of a minor literature is that it is intensely political and collective. Morris has criticized this concept for its benign elitism. See "Banality in Cultural Studies," Discourse 31 (1988): 3-29.
18. Deem, "From Bobbitt to SCUM."
19. Pierre Bourdieu, Distinctions: A Social Critique of the Judgment of Taste, trans. Richard Nice (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1984); Robert Hariman, "Decorum, Power, and the Courtly Style," Quarterly Journal of Speech 78 (1992): 149-172.
20. Pierre Bourdieu, Distinctions: A Social Critique of the Judgment of Taste, trans. Richard Nice (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1984); Robert Hariman, "Decorum, Power, and the Courtly Style," Quarterly Journal of Speech 78 (1992): 149-172.
21. Lucie White, "Subordination, Rhetorical Survival Skills, and Sunday Shoes: Notes on the Hearing of Mrs. G," Feminist Legal Theory: Readings in Law and Gender, ed. K. Bartlett and R. Kennedy (San Francisco: Westview Press, 1991), 404-428.
22. Laura Kipnis, "(Male) Desire and (Female) Disgust: Reading Hustler," in Cultural Studies, ed. Larry Grossberg, C. Nelson, and Paula Treichler (New York: Routledge, 1993), 373-391.
23. Karlyn Kohrs Campbell, Man Cannot Speak for Her: A Critical Study of Early Feminist Rhetoric (Praeger: New York, 1989).
24. Kenneth Cmiel, "The Politics of Civility," in From Memory to History, ed. David Farber (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1994), 263-290.
25. Michael Leff, "The Habitation of Rhetoric," in Argument and Critical Practices: Proceedings of the Fifth SCA/AFA Conference of Argumentation (Annandale, VA: Speech Communication Association, 1987); Thomas Rosteck and Michael Leff, "Piety, Propriety, and Perspective: An Interpretation and Application of Key Terms in Kenneth Burke's Permanence and Change," Western Journal of Speech Communication 53 (1989): 327-341; Hariman. For a reading of the importance of decorum for the field of rhetoric as illuminated by two distinct moments, one theoretically driven, the other driven by the material force of events, see Melissa Deem, "Decorum: The Flight from the Rhetorical," Argumentation and Values: Proceedings of the Ninth SCA/AFA Conference on Argumentation (Virginia: Speech Communication Association, 1995), 226-229.
26. Michael Leff, "The Habitation of Rhetoric," in Argument and Critical Practices: Proceedings of the Fifth SCA/AFA Conference of Argumentation (Annandale, VA: Speech Communication Association, 1987); Thomas Rosteck and Michael Leff, "Piety, Propriety, and Perspective: An Interpretation and Application of Key Terms in Kenneth Burke's Permanence and Change," Western Journal of Speech Communication 53 (1989): 327-341; Hariman. For a reading of the importance of decorum for the field of rhetoric as illuminated by two distinct moments, one theoretically driven, the other driven by the material force of events, see Melissa Deem, "Decorum: The Flight from the Rhetorical," Argumentation and Values: Proceedings of the Ninth SCA/AFA Conference on Argumentation (Virginia: Speech Communication Association, 1995), 226-229.
27. Michael Leff, "The Habitation of Rhetoric," in Argument and Critical Practices: Proceedings of the Fifth SCA/AFA Conference of Argumentation (Annandale, VA: Speech Communication Association, 1987); Thomas Rosteck and Michael Leff, "Piety, Propriety, and Perspective: An Interpretation and Application of Key Terms in Kenneth Burke's Permanence and Change," Western Journal of Speech Communication 53 (1989): 327-341; Hariman. For a reading of the importance of decorum for the field of rhetoric as illuminated by two distinct moments, one theoretically driven, the other driven by the material force of events, see Melissa Deem, "Decorum: The Flight from the Rhetorical," Argumentation and Values: Proceedings of the Ninth SCA/AFA Conference on Argumentation (Virginia: Speech Communication Association, 1995), 226-229.
28. Warner, "The Mass Public and the Mass Subject."
29. The logics of abstraction have received much attention from those concerned with the practices of domination within the political. For instance, feminist political theorists have documented the logics of abstraction that allow the political to serve a certain segment of the population. See Kathleen Jones, Compassionate Authority: Democracy and the Representation of Women (New York: Routledge, 1993); Carol Pateman, The Disorder of Women (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1998); Iris Marion Young, Justice and the Politics of Difference (Bloomington: University of Indiana, 1990).
30. The logics of abstraction have received much attention from those concerned with the practices of domination within the political. For instance, feminist political theorists have documented the logics of abstraction that allow the political to serve a certain segment of the population. See Kathleen Jones, Compassionate Authority: Democracy and the Representation of Women (New York: Routledge, 1993); Carol Pateman, The Disorder of Women (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1998); Iris Marion Young, Justice and the Politics of Difference (Bloomington: University of Indiana, 1990).
31. The logics of abstraction have received much attention from those concerned with the practices of domination within the political. For instance, feminist political theorists have documented the logics of abstraction that allow the political to serve a certain segment of the population. See Kathleen Jones, Compassionate Authority: Democracy and the Representation of Women (New York: Routledge, 1993); Carol Pateman, The Disorder of Women (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1998); Iris Marion Young, Justice and the Politics of Difference (Bloomington: University of Indiana, 1990).
32. Landes has discussed the concurrent development of an austere, masculine speech with the masculinist bourgeois public. At the same moment that women and groups associated with the body were excluded from participation, a rhetorical mode that excludes the body, affect, and desire became dominant in the political realm. See Joan Landes, Women and the Public Sphere in the Age of the French Revolution (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1988).
33. Ellen Rooney, Seductive Reasoning (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1989).
34. See Habermas, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere, 209.
35. Seyla Benhabib, Situating the Self (New York: Routledge, 1992); Nancy Fraser, "Rethinking the Public Sphere," in Habermas and the Public Sphere, ed. Craig Calhoun (Cambridge: MIT, 1992), 109-142.
36. Seyla Benhabib, Situating the Self (New York: Routledge, 1992); Nancy Fraser, "Rethinking the Public Sphere," in Habermas and the Public Sphere, ed. Craig Calhoun (Cambridge: MIT, 1992), 109-142.
37. Warner, "Publics and Counterpublics."
38. Michael Warner, "The Mass Public and the Mass Subject"; Lauren Berlant, The Queen of America Goes to Washington City: Essays on Sex and Citizenship (Durham: Duke University Press, 1997).
39. Robyn Wiegman, American Anatomies: Theorizing Race and Gender (Durham: Duke University Press, 1995), 49.
40. Warner, "The Mass Public"; Wiegman, American Anatomies.
41. Warner, "The Mass Public"; Wiegman, American Anatomies.
42. Melissa Deem, "The Scandalous Fall of Feminism and the First Black President," in A Companion to Cultural Studies, ed. Toby Miller (Massachusetts: Blackwell Publishers, 2001), 407-429.
43. Berlant, The Queen of America; Berlant and Warner, "Sex in Public"; Warner, The Trouble with Normal and "Zones of Privacy."
44. Berlant, The Queen of America; Berlant and Warner, "Sex in Public"; Warner, The Trouble with Normal and "Zones of Privacy."
45. Berlant, The Queen of America; Berlant and Warner, "Sex in Public"; Warner, The Trouble with Normal and "Zones of Privacy."
46. In this way, counterpublic theories such as those offered by Nancy Fraser in her now canonical essay do not fit ("Rethinking the Public Sphere"). Fraser's formulation relies on the norms of critical-rational discourse and is based on identity formation.
47. Warner, "Publics and Counterpublics," 54.
48. Warner, "The Mass Public"; Wiegman, American Anatomies.
49. Warner, "The Mass Public"; Wiegman, American Anatomies.
50. Deem, "The Scandalous Fall of Feminism and the First Black President."
51. Warner, "Publics and Counterpublics," 57.
52. See especially Lauren Berlant, "National Brands/National Body: Imitations of Life," in The Phantom Public Sphere, ed. B. Robbins (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1993): 173-208; Berlant, The Queen of America Goes to Washington City; Berlant, "Intimacy: A Special Issue," Critical Inquiry 24 (1998): 281-288; Berlant, "The Subject of True Feeling: Pain, Privacy, and Politics," in Cultural Studies and Political Theory, ed. Jodi Dean (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2000); Warner "The Mass Public and the Mass Subject"; Warner, The Trouble with Normal; Warner, "Zones of Privacy"; Berlant and Warner, Sex in Public. Berlant argues that intimacy has been transformed from a private relation to a structuring aspect and affect of citizenship in the contemporary U.S. public sphere (The Queen of America, 31).
53. See especially Lauren Berlant, "National Brands/National Body: Imitations of Life," in The Phantom Public Sphere, ed. B. Robbins (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1993): 173-208; Berlant, The Queen of America Goes to Washington City; Berlant, "Intimacy: A Special Issue," Critical Inquiry 24 (1998): 281-288; Berlant, "The Subject of True Feeling: Pain, Privacy, and Politics," in Cultural Studies and Political Theory, ed. Jodi Dean (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2000); Warner "The Mass Public and the Mass Subject"; Warner, The Trouble with Normal; Warner, "Zones of Privacy"; Berlant and Warner, Sex in Public. Berlant argues that intimacy has been transformed from a private relation to a structuring aspect and affect of citizenship in the contemporary U.S. public sphere (The Queen of America, 31).
54. See especially Lauren Berlant, "National Brands/National Body: Imitations of Life," in The Phantom Public Sphere, ed. B. Robbins (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1993): 173-208; Berlant, The Queen of America Goes to Washington City; Berlant, "Intimacy: A Special Issue," Critical Inquiry 24 (1998): 281-288; Berlant, "The Subject of True Feeling: Pain, Privacy, and Politics," in Cultural Studies and Political Theory, ed. Jodi Dean (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2000); Warner "The Mass Public and the Mass Subject"; Warner, The Trouble with Normal; Warner, "Zones of Privacy"; Berlant and Warner, Sex in Public. Berlant argues that intimacy has been transformed from a private relation to a structuring aspect and affect of citizenship in the contemporary U.S. public sphere (The Queen of America, 31).
55. See especially Lauren Berlant, "National Brands/National Body: Imitations of Life," in The Phantom Public Sphere, ed. B. Robbins (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1993): 173-208; Berlant, The Queen of America Goes to Washington City; Berlant, "Intimacy: A Special Issue," Critical Inquiry 24 (1998): 281-288; Berlant, "The Subject of True Feeling: Pain, Privacy, and Politics," in Cultural Studies and Political Theory, ed. Jodi Dean (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2000); Warner "The Mass Public and the Mass Subject"; Warner, The Trouble with Normal; Warner, "Zones of Privacy"; Berlant and Warner, Sex in Public. Berlant argues that intimacy has been transformed from a private relation to a structuring aspect and affect of citizenship in the contemporary U.S. public sphere (The Queen of America, 31).
56. See especially Lauren Berlant, "National Brands/National Body: Imitations of Life," in The Phantom Public Sphere, ed. B. Robbins (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1993): 173-208; Berlant, The Queen of America Goes to Washington City; Berlant, "Intimacy: A Special Issue," Critical Inquiry 24 (1998): 281-288; Berlant, "The Subject of True Feeling: Pain, Privacy, and Politics," in Cultural Studies and Political Theory, ed. Jodi Dean (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2000); Warner "The Mass Public and the Mass Subject"; Warner, The Trouble with Normal; Warner, "Zones of Privacy"; Berlant and Warner, Sex in Public. Berlant argues that intimacy has been transformed from a private relation to a structuring aspect and affect of citizenship in the contemporary U.S. public sphere (The Queen of America, 31).
57. See especially Lauren Berlant, "National Brands/National Body: Imitations of Life," in The Phantom Public Sphere, ed. B. Robbins (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1993): 173-208; Berlant, The Queen of America Goes to Washington City; Berlant, "Intimacy: A Special Issue," Critical Inquiry 24 (1998): 281-288; Berlant, "The Subject of True Feeling: Pain, Privacy, and Politics," in Cultural Studies and Political Theory, ed. Jodi Dean (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2000); Warner "The Mass Public and the Mass Subject"; Warner, The Trouble with Normal; Warner, "Zones of Privacy"; Berlant and Warner, Sex in Public. Berlant argues that intimacy has been transformed from a private relation to a structuring aspect and affect of citizenship in the contemporary U.S. public sphere (The Queen of America, 31).
58. See especially Lauren Berlant, "National Brands/National Body: Imitations of Life," in The Phantom Public Sphere, ed. B. Robbins (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1993): 173-208; Berlant, The Queen of America Goes to Washington City; Berlant, "Intimacy: A Special Issue," Critical Inquiry 24 (1998): 281-288; Berlant, "The Subject of True Feeling: Pain, Privacy, and Politics," in Cultural Studies and Political Theory, ed. Jodi Dean (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2000); Warner "The Mass Public and the Mass Subject"; Warner, The Trouble with Normal; Warner, "Zones of Privacy"; Berlant and Warner, Sex in Public. Berlant argues that intimacy has been transformed from a private relation to a structuring aspect and affect of citizenship in the contemporary U.S. public sphere (The Queen of America, 31).
59. See especially Lauren Berlant, "National Brands/National Body: Imitations of Life," in The Phantom Public Sphere, ed. B. Robbins (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1993): 173-208; Berlant, The Queen of America Goes to Washington City; Berlant, "Intimacy: A Special Issue," Critical Inquiry 24 (1998): 281-288; Berlant, "The Subject of True Feeling: Pain, Privacy, and Politics," in Cultural Studies and Political Theory, ed. Jodi Dean (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2000); Warner "The Mass Public and the Mass Subject"; Warner, The Trouble with Normal; Warner, "Zones of Privacy"; Berlant and Warner, Sex in Public. Berlant argues that intimacy has been transformed from a private relation to a structuring aspect and affect of citizenship in the contemporary U.S. public sphere (The Queen of America, 31).
60. See especially Lauren Berlant, "National Brands/National Body: Imitations of Life," in The Phantom Public Sphere, ed. B. Robbins (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1993): 173-208; Berlant, The Queen of America Goes to Washington City; Berlant, "Intimacy: A Special Issue," Critical Inquiry 24 (1998): 281-288; Berlant, "The Subject of True Feeling: Pain, Privacy, and Politics," in Cultural Studies and Political Theory, ed. Jodi Dean (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2000); Warner "The Mass Public and the Mass Subject"; Warner, The Trouble with Normal; Warner, "Zones of Privacy"; Berlant and Warner, Sex in Public. Berlant argues that intimacy has been transformed from a private relation to a structuring aspect and affect of citizenship in the contemporary U.S. public sphere (The Queen of America, 31).
61. Berlant has posited the concept of minor intimacies as those intimacies not harnessed to normative affective logics such as heterosexual monogamy and marriage (see "Intimacy"). Minor intimacies, like minor rhetorics, can be generative and productive, although not along established routes of subject formation. In "Adultery," Critical Inquiry 24 (1998): 289-327, Laura Kipnis interrogates the normative logics that constrain intimacy and desire in relation to capital and the state.
62. Warner, The Trouble With Normal; Warner, "Zones of Privacy."
63. Warner, The Trouble With Normal; Warner, "Zones of Privacy."