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The Spirit of Transformational Politics: Human Nature, Communication, and Community

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THE SPIRIT OF TRANSFORMATIONAL POLITICS: HUMAN NATURE, COMMUNICATION, AND COMMUNITY Mary Elizabeth Domenico A dissertation submitted to the faculty at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Department of Communication Studies. Chapel Hill 2017 Approved by: Christian Lundberg William Balthrop Elizabeth Grosz Randall Styers Eric King Watts @ 2017 Mary Elizabeth Domenico ALL RIGHTS RESERVED ii ABSTRACT Mary E. Domenico: The Spirit of Transformational Politics: Human Nature, Communication, and Community Under the Direction of Christian Lundberg This project in communication ethics explores the interrelations among views of human nature, theories of communicative action, and conceptualizations of the constitutive forces of community in Western thought. The central argument, that doctrines of human nature that include extra-material human capacities open avenues for rethinking contemporary political agency, is developed through a genealogy of doctrines of human nature intended to display how ideas of the self are historically configured and influential in thinking about human capacities. I begin with ancient Greek theories of a robust human spirit as portrayed by Homer, Plato, and Aristotle. The second cluster of theorists depicts the degradation of human spirit in religious (Augustine), philosophical (Descartes), and modern scientific doctrines. The third cluster addresses the recuperation of human spirit in the theories of Spinoza, Bergson, and Nancy. These genealogical clusters represent three distinct ways of viewing human nature and capacities for political agency. I challenge theories that presume ideational rationality and discourse are constitutive of community and reformulate the foundation of ethical community based on human spiritual capacities for knowledge beyond the empirical, the creation of new ways of relating to one another, and materializing our ontological connectedness. iii To my mother, who taught me to smile at strangers. iv ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Any major endeavor is achieved only with the assistance of others, and this dissertation is no exception. To my advisor, Christian Lundberg, my gratitude for believing in my theoretical impulse, helping me develop a coherent project, and sharing your insights. I want to thank Elizabeth Grosz for generously sharing her ideas and for her unwavering support of this project. I thank Bill Balthrop for his friendship and guidance in learning to appreciate ancient Greek philosophy. To Eric Watts, thank you for your example of politically relevant scholarship. I thank Randall Styers for his pointed challenges that made me refine my intentions. To the faculty in the Department of Communication Studies, thank you for helping me to fulfill a lifelong dream of achieving a Ph.D.. My gratitude, too, to the Royster Society for the fellowship that allowed me to devote time to this study. Special gratitude goes to these women: Lucy Burgchardt, Jessica Rich, Elizabeth Melton, Maggie Franz, Heather Woods, Ali Na, Erin Arizzi, and Ashley Mattheis. Thanks, too, to my steadfast friends who believed in me: Brian Ott, Sonja Foss, Gordana Lasik, Theresa Johnson, Kathie Jeffers, Harrison Fletcher, Casey Wopat, Kirstin Runa, Evan Litvak, Andrew Davis, and Harry Archer. Heartfelt gratitude to my children, Kate and Daniel Aid, whose courage and sense of justice continually inspire me. Finally, and most deeply, my thanks to Howard Haenel who teaches me daily the meaning and importance of a generous spirit. v We are the authors of the future. Dan Aid vi TABLE OF CONTENTS INTRODUCTION: THE SPIRIT OF TRANSFORMATIONAL POLITICS Introduction……………………………………………………………………………………………..1 Notes on Method………………………………………………………………………………….…11 Human Nature …………………………………………………………….………………………....19 Human Spirit…………………………………………………………………………………………..22 Communication and Community……………………………………………………………...26 Chapter Overview……………………………………………………………………………………33 CHAPTER 1: ANCIENT RHETORICS OF HUMAN SPIRIT IN HOMER, PLATO, AND ARISTOTLE Introduction…………………………………………………………………………………………...38 Psychosomatic Humans in Homer’s Enchanted World………………………………45 Rational Humans in Plato’s Dualistic Cosmos……………………………………………54 Hylomorphic Humans in Aristotle’s Natural World…………………………………...72 Conclusion………………………………………………………………………………………………89 CHAPTER 2: RHETORICS OF A DIMINISHED HUMAN: RELIGIOUS, PHILOSOPHICAL, AND SCIENTIFIC ACCOUNTS Introduction……………………………………………………………………………………………95 Humans as Souls in Augustine’s Divine Creation…………………………………......104 Humans as Minds in Descartes’ Dualistic Universe………………………………….119 vii Material Humans in a Scientific World……………………………………………...........135 Conclusion……………………………………………………………………………………………145 CHAPTER 3: RECLAIMING HUMAN SPIRIT: SPINOZA, BERGSON, AND NANCY Introduction…………………………………………………………………………………………148 Spinoza’s Monistic Human…………………………………………………………………….154 Bergson’s Intuitive Human…………………………………………………………………….167 Nancy’s Sensing Human…………………………………………………………………………183 Conclusion………………………………………………………………………………………........198 CONCLUSION: COMMUNICATING COMMUNITY Introduction…………………………………………………………………………………………200 Spirit Turned Outward: Human Ethical Value…………………………………………203 Spirit Turned Inward: Care of the Self…………………………………………………….211 Communicating the Reality of Coexistence……………………………………………..217 Communicating Community…………………………………………………………………..221 Conclusion…………………………………………………………………………………………....224 REFERENCES…………………………………………………………………………………………………..228 viii INTRODUCTION: THE SPIRIT OF TRANSFORMATIONAL POLITICS Know Thyself. Inscription, Temple of Apollo, Delphi This project addresses the human future and our ability to transform a broken and suffering world. The contemporary moment, characterized as it is by injustice and violence coupled with crises of collectivity, can make belief in the human potential to heal the world and hope in a better future seem naïvely nostalgic. Technology, capital, and worldwide migration are forming a global human assembly that appears incapable of peaceful coexistence. Shared symbolic systems, long assumed to be the foundations of community, are proving grossly inadequate for bridging cultures and ideologies and instead reinforce seemingly unsurpassable divisions. A dearth of leaders with the vision and ethical stature to inspire and motivate humane action forces us to imagine our own political possibilities. Many people suffer. Some detach, retreat into cynicism, or unthinkingly or defensively exploit privilege. Others, of course, perform acts of social justice. Regardless of our political positions, many of us share a profound doubt that we can salvage human community. What follows is a response to that doubt we have about our own power to create and sustain relations with one another. My claim is that belief in the 1 human ability to realize a transformed world becomes more possible through the revitalization of a casualty of Western philosophy, science, religion, and discourse- centered theory—the human spirit. I argue that one reason we question our ability to be change agents is that we are out of touch with the latent possibilities of our spiritual attributes and do not know how to hone spiritual capacities that have political power. A politics centered on human spirit is not the sole means of advancing ethical community, but attention to spirit does have the power to disrupt preconceptions about creating and sustaining community. A dominant Western belief is that rational discourse constitutes community. In this model, community develops around ideational commitments arrived at through a process of publically critical communication in which different circulating views are debated toward rational consensus (Habermas 1991, 248-249). One preconception of this model is that community is formed around ideational symbolic dynamics, which largely brackets off materiality and reduces human nature to minds and mental processes. A related assumption is that the process of communication that contributes to the formation of community is divorced from physical and emotional affectivity. In this view, the bonds of community are constituted through a sharing of ideas that provokes mental, and not material, or material-immaterial investments. A third presumption is that autonomous minds interact according to the laws of rationality in order to achieve consensus. These presumptions of ideality and rationality contribute to a view of rationality itself as thinking and discursive expression that is scientific or even mathematical in nature, logically consistent, and detached emotionally. Reason 2 becomes a mental process of agreed upon classification that must be mastered in order to contribute to sociality. I suggest that what is missing in this model is an acknowledgement of the differences between requirements of reason that are oriented toward instrumental mastery in and on the world and the affective attachments that are capable of fueling passionate commitments for ethical community. I propose that community is grounded not in discursive rational consensus but in interactions that are affectively powerful and commanding that precede discursive interactions. I maintain that community is the product not of persuasive linguistic encounters but of experiences that physically, emotionally, and mentally orient humans toward ethical sociality. This orientation is not one of instrumentality toward a particular end but one of opening possibilities toward an undeterminable future, in an attitude of
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