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Some Preliminary Thoughts on Democratic Style
| Content Provider | Semantic Scholar |
|---|---|
| Author | Engels, Jeremy |
| Copyright Year | 2008 |
| Abstract | The forum that follows is an occasional one, inspired by two events—the publication of Robert Hariman’s 1995 Political Style and a panel I organized for the 2006 National Communication Association convention in San Antonio that considered the enticing topic of “democratic style.” On that warm November afternoon, the panelists took up Hariman’s charge to theorize political styles beyond the realist, courtly, republican, and bureaucratic. We talked about what democratic style might look like, in theory and in practice, normatively and empirically. Though the conversation was at times perfunctory, there were some genuine flashbulb moments and even a little dialogue—and, by the way, thanks to those who came to the panel, asked questions, and made it feel like something more than a vita line and something like a town hall meeting. I will not recount the main arguments of Political Style here; the contributors do an admirable job of this, and I do not want to bore the reader with duplicated summaries or spoil the surprises that await. I can say, however, that in the months following NCA, many of us discovered why Professor Hariman did not include a chapter on democracy in his book—because, as he told those who gathered at our panel (to some serious chuckles, I might add), if he appended this fifth chapter he would still be writing. Democracy is difficult, and conceptualizing this amorphous thing called democratic style is equally difficult. There might be no such thing as a democratic style. Arguing that it reduces everything to the lowest common denominator, Friedrich Nietzsche saw democracy as styleless, “hollow,” “very boring.”1 For different reasons, the pragmatists, especially John Dewey, would also be critical of this forum. They believed that democracy was constantly being enacted, invented, and reinvented as circumstances and exigencies changed—for them, democracy was found in the doing, not in the theorizing. Yet I believe that, as a resource for |
| Starting Page | 439 |
| Ending Page | 440 |
| Page Count | 2 |
| File Format | PDF HTM / HTML |
| DOI | 10.1353/rap.0.0049 |
| Volume Number | 11 |
| Alternate Webpage(s) | http://www.gproxx.com/http://blogxd.info/dspace/uk/wf.pdf |
| Alternate Webpage(s) | https://doi.org/10.1353/rap.0.0049 |
| Language | English |
| Access Restriction | Open |
| Content Type | Text |
| Resource Type | Article |
