BUILDING COSMOPOLITICAL SOLIDARITY FROM THE ANTIGONE:
A RETURN TO THE CHORUS
By
Rebecca L. McCarthy
A Dissertation Submitted to the Faculty of
The Dorothy F. Schmidt College of Arts and Letters
In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of
Doctor of Philosophy
Florida Atlantic University
Boca Raton, Florida
August 2007
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Copyright by Rebecca L. McCarthy 2007
ii
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. BUILDING COSMOPOLITICAL SOLIDARITY FROM THE ANTIGONE:
A RETURN TO THE CHORUS
By
Rebecca L. McCarthy
This Dissertation was prepared under the direction of the candidate’s dissertation advisor, Dr. Jan W. Hokenson, Department of Languages and Linguistics, and has been approved by the members of her supervisory committee. It has been submitted to the faculty of the Dorothy F. Schmidt College of Arts and Letters and was accepted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy.
SUPERVISORY COMMITTEE:
Dr. Jah^\| Hokenson, Director of Dissertation
iWilliamsDr. Da iWilliamsDr.
r. Mark V. Frezzo
Chairperson^Department of Comparative Studies
Dean, The Dorothy F. Schmidt College of Arts and Letters
Dean, Graduate Studies and Programs
7/Date^ * in
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I owe a debt of gratitude to many people who helped me to conceive, develop
and write this project. Foremost, I thank my mentor Dr. Jan Hokenson for her expertise
on the Antigone, her guidance, insight, support, direction and detailed notes, which kept
me on track and focused. I am grateful to Dr. David Williams for introducing me to the
writings of Kenneth Burke, and for nurturing in me a love for rhetorical theory. I also owe
a great deal of gratitude to Dr. Mark Frezzo, who introduced me to cosmopolitism and
social movement theory and literature, and who helped me navigate the stormy waters
of neoliberal logic and workings. Several other friends and mentors from Florida Atlantic
University also contributed in various ways to this project including Dr. Richard
Shusterman for introducing me to pragmatism, Dr. Farshad Araghi for nurturing in me a
love for the social sciences, Dr. Noemi Marin, Dr. Anthony Tamburri, Dr. Susan Love
Brown, Dr. Sandra Norman, Stefanie Gapinski, Gabrielle Denier, Rebecca Kuhn,
Alessandra Senzani (thank you for sending me the clowns), Jacqueline May, Margaret
Schaller, Marc Rhorer, Shereen Siddiqui, Lois Wolfe, Chiara Mazzucchelli and Silvia
Giagnoni. I would also like to thank the Graduate Studies Department and the late Mrs.
Aurel B. Newell for the Dr. Daniel B. Newell and Aurel B. Newell Doctoral Fellowship,
which allowed me to complete this dissertation and my studies.
Finally, I could not have gone back to earn my Ph.D. or complete this dissertation
without the support and love of my family and friends. Thank you Deborah McCarthy,
Lee Grossman, Emily Hadley, Jonathan Hadley-McCarthy, Fred McCarthy, Amy Snyder
and Catherine Coats-Milanoski. I especially thank my husband George Wabey for his
friendship, support and editorial efforts. To my mom, k. Margaret Grossman, thank you
for everything.
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Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. ABSTRACT
Author: Rebecca L. McCarthy
Title: Building Cosmopolitical Solidarity from the Antigone: A Return to the Chorus
Institution: Florida Atlantic University
Dissertation Advisor: Dr. Jan Hokenson
Degree: Doctor of Philosophy
Year: 2007
“Building Cosmopolitical Solidarity from the Antigone.” takes an in-depth look at
how the Antigone by Sophocles has been used by social movements and
social/politically concerned playwrights, theorists and activists as either a tool for
discursive and performative resistance, or as a way to reinforce status-quo state rule
since at least the Enlightenment to present day. I argue that Sophocles’ characters
Creon and Antigone are not ideal images for social movements who seek a
cosmopolitical democracy. Rather it is to Sophocles’ Chorus and the Watchman that we
must turn when proposing democratic cosmopolitanism. Thus, a new communication
approach is proposed: a choral dialogue driven by pragmatic logic and employing an
aesthetic, often comedic, improvisational experience. Further, this work strives to unite
theories from social science, social movement theory, rhetoric, philosophy and theatre.
Its aim is to offer practical tools for social movements who wish to gain international,
cosmopolitical, stature and to encourage a progressive democratic space. Core study
groups include the Project for a New American Century, Reverend Billy and the Church
of Stop Shopping, ACT-UP, andthe Clandestine Insurgent Rebel Clown Army.
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Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. TABLE OF CONTENTS
Prologue...... 1 The Antigone Paradigm...... 3 Cosmopolitical Communication and Improvisational Choral Workings...... 4 Plan for Chapters and Claims ...... 8
The Antigone
Parodos ...... 17 Framing, Sheer Motion and Action ...... 19 Antigone and Creon ...... 27 Ideographic Arguments and Framing Construction ...... 33 Tiresias and Haemon ...... 38
Episode O ne ...... 41 Creating Distance through a Dramatic Choral Incongruity ...... 43 The Comic Corrective or the Comic Perspective by Incongruity ...... 52 The Collective that Learns ...... 57
The First Stasimon ...... 64 Hegel’s Antigone ...... 65 Kierkegaard’s Either/Or...... 70 The Antigone as a Political Touchstone—The Theatre of Jean Anouilh ...... 75 Antigone and the Terrorist Events of September 11, 2001 ...... 82
Cosmopolitanism and Nationalism
Episode Two ...... 89 The Ancient Greek and Roman Roots of Cosmopolitanism ...... 90 From Cosmopolitanism to Universalism ...... 96 Cosmopolitanism Distorted—Just another Empire...... 99 Immanuel Kant’s Perpetual Peace through Cosmopolitanism ...... 103 The Modern Call For and Against Cosmopolitanism ...... 108 Cognitive/Ethical Cosmopolitanism ...... 110 Political /Praxis Cosmopolitanism ...... 113 Rooted Cosmopolitanism ...... 117
The Second Stasimon ...... 120 The Rise of the American Neoconservative Movement ...... 128 The Project for a New American Century ...... 133 Creating a Creonic Master Frame— Patriotism and Moral Authority ...... 138 Universalizing Americana—Perverting the Antigonal Frame ...... 140
Episode Three ...... 149 Rooted Citizens of the World ...... 151 Imagining the Other ...... 153 Cosmopolitical Democracy ...... 158 Pragmatic Idealism-Promoting Process over Ends ...... 162 vi
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Reorientation From-Below 167
Cosmopolitical Choral Configurations
The Third Stasimon ...... 175 Shifting Main Frames—From Consumerism to Interpersonal Relationships ...... 176 Rediscovering Life’s Processes: Reverend Billy and the Church of Stop Shopping .178 Bureaucratizing the Commodity as a Truth and an End ...... 182 Doxa versus Truth with a Capital “T” ...... 184 Pragmatic Aesthetics...... 188 Reverend Billy and the Church of Stop Shopping’s Cell Phone Opera ...... 191 Action as Process ...... 194 From Process to Praxis...... 198
Episode Four ...... 200 ACT-UP’s “Stop the Church” ...... 202 Dramatism...... 205 Placing the Obstacle in Dramatism ...... 209 Dramatism as Praxis...... 213 Dramatism for the Social Movement as Actor ...... 215 Social Movement as Improvisational Actor ...... 218 The Lecoq Technique ...... 220
The Fourth Stasimon ...... 228 Choral Configurations ...... 231 The “I” and the “We” ...... 233 CIRCA’s Choral Configuration ...... 238 Rethinking the Role of the Intellectual ...... 242 Comic Frames of Resistance ...... 245 All Aboard! The Final Stop—Carnival ...... 252 Epilogue ...... 257
References ...... 259
Vita...... 279
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Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Prologue
On the 13th of February, 2003, audiences gathered at the Town Hall Theatre in
Galway, Ireland, to see Storytellers Theatre Company’s production of Conall Morrison’s
Antigone. Like many playwrights before him (Jean Anouilh [1944/2000]; Bertolt Brecht
[1984]; Athol Fugard [1974]; and Griselda Gambaro [1989/1992] to name a few)
Morrison saw in Sophocles’ classical tragedy a perfect vehicle to explore current themes
of singular, reductive and exclusionary social and political actions that affect the space of
both nationalism and globalism. In this particular instance, Morrison asks his audiences
to consider and explore the unrest in the Middle East after 9/11 and the then pending
invasion of Iraq by the United States. How do national interests affect global affairs?
Although Morrison’s adaptation strays little from Sophocles’ original, he does reduce the
Chorus to one actor and transforms Antigone into a suicide bomber (Payiatakis, 2005,
para. 12), he transports us from Ancient Thebes to the modern-day Middle East through
the use of a bare stage set only with a burnt-up car, as well as disturbing images
projected in the background of war and mourning women crying for their dead loved
ones. When asked by a reporter from the Galway Adviser why he had chosen Antigone
as his inspiration to explore the situation in the Middle East, Morrison stated: “The play is
an invitation to think and think again even if such a process may seem tedious and futile.
It is the adherence to dogmatic positions that is the most personally and politically lethal.
The phrase ‘you are either with us or against us’ could yet kill us all!” (CMcB, 2003, para.
8).
I use the example of Morrison’s Antigone, because as for other writers, directors,
and activists today, the Antigone is once again an attractive means of symbolic action for 1
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. those wishing to support or protest the-way-things-are in our economically globalized
world where questions of nationality, identity, spirituality and other values clash on our
local and world stages. While using the Antigone as a means of support or protest,
directors and audiences often identify with either Creon (a nationalist frame) or Antigone
(a universalist frame) as the champion of their particular position. Furthermore, this
either/or appropriating of Creon or Antigone is particularly relevant today when
considering the ideological positions between cosmopolitism and nationalism. We
should question, however, whether our identifying with Antigone or Creon is wise. That
is, we must ask if it is wise to reenact or reproduce the Antigonal (universal) or Creonic
(national) space of communication on our local and world stages, while negotiating
questions concerning our responsibilities to a cosmopolitical democracy or to
nationalism. These concerns reflect four pivotal questions that this work seeks to
answer:
• Are the claims used by Antigone and Creon appropriate for collective, social,
mobilization, and the formation for a cosmopolitical democracy?
• What is the best way to envision and promote a cosmopolitical democracy?
• What is the best way to oppose a neoliberal, from-above, globalization project
while, at the same time, bridging Antigonal (universal) and Creonic (national)
master frames?
• How can social movements and actors help promote a cosmopolitical
democracy, while disrupting dominant either/or master frames?
By answering these questions, this study aims to contribute to the project of
progressive cosmopolitanism by accepting the challenge posed by Craig Calhoun (2003)
to find an alternative structure and discourse to the abstract use of utopic visions often
promoted by advocates of cosmopolitical democracy (p. 110). Since my main interests
2
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. lie in social justice movements, communication, history, literature and performance, it is
my hope that by examining Sophocles’ Antigone I will be able to demonstrate that the
master frames used by either Creon or Antigone would be detrimental to a
cosmopolitical democracy. Furthermore, I will attempt to show how their arguments do
not induce participation but, rather, encourage a spectator mentality, as can be seen in
the character of Ismene (Antigone’s sister). Thus, I will argue that it is to Sophocles’
Chorus and Watchman that we must turn for inspiration, because both the Chorus and
the Watchman present us with a way out of the either/or mode of communication by
offering a Burkean perspective by incongruity. Further, the Watchman and the Chorus
can be viewed as a metaphor for democratic deliberation.
The Antigone Paradigm
In his renowned tragic play Antigone (441 B.C.E.), Sophocles presents to the
audience, and the modern reader, two extreme, implacable, unyielding characters:
Antigone and Creon. For two millennia now, most readers agree that although they are
complex figures, generally Antigone stands for what she calls the “unwritten laws” of the
family and the gods, while Creon stands for the laws of the state, the realm of man.
These characters’ values (one set private, one set public) and discourses clash in a
tragic confrontation where there can be no winner. Further, each character’s discourse
is composed of nationalistic (Creon) or religious (Antigone) absolutist views that
prevents identification between members in a community, and, instead, promotes
division.1 George Steiner (1984) in his critical work Antigones posed the question of
whether a state could or should contain either Antigones or Creons and still function
sanely (pp. 262-263). The correct answer to this question, I think, is a resounding “no,”
1 Kenneth Burke (1951) defines rhetoric within the frame of identification and not simply persuasion. Thus, instead of being persuaded or acted upon “by a conscious external agent,” identification becomes a two way process where a participant “earnestly yearns to identify themselves with some group or other” (p. 203b). 3
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. yet it is difficult to ignore the fact that since the Enlightenment and the French Revolution
many social movements, performers and writers have invoked the image of “Antigone”
or “Creon” as a metaphor for “universal” social rights, as well as for state rule and law.
Likewise, today the discourse and argument frames used by many social movements in
seeking solutions to urgent social and political problems, echoes either the “universal”
values of Antigone or the “rule-of-law” call offered by the character Creon. For example,
in the contemporary project for cosmopolitism, defined here as the promotion of
universality plus difference (Appiah, 2006, p. 151), as well as the rooted universal citizen
as someone who is rooted in the local but can connect the local to the international
(Appiah, 1996/2002; Tarrow, 2005; and Appiah, 2006), it is tempting to adopt the master
frame of Antigonal discourse with its appeal to universal laws (vague and ambiguous
language that is linked to concepts of “universal law,” “universal rights” or “private
rights"), or Creonic discourse with its appeal for a nationalistic rule-of-law (defined as
ambiguous and ideographic language directing issues back towards concepts of the
state and the rule-of-law). However, as I shall demonstrate, both of these paradigms
are not only counter-productive, but produce tragic results as seen in the Antigone and
in real life.
Cosmopolitical Communication and Improvisational Choral Workings
As it is used in the contemporary political scene, the Antigone/Creon model of
confrontational argument frames is an either/or model of reference. The nationalistic,
and one might add the religious and ethical, construction of absolutist discourse, relying
on universal, abstract or ideographic terms, poses a problematic dichotomy of the
“either/or” sort that Kenneth Burke (1937/1959) warns hinders the transcendence of
differences (p. 275). In the following pages, I argue against such master frames and
propose an alternative: A choral-based model of communication and action, driven by
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Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. pragmatic logic and improvisational techniques, while employing an aesthetic and often
comedic experience. This proposed model entails a collective or, what I term, a choral
configuration and deliberation based in pragmatism. Such a choral configuration
emphasizes process over product, that is, a narrowly defined end. Using Sophocles’
Chorus from the Antigone as a metaphor, I propose that the choral experience promotes
an active space of learning (Nussbaum, 1986/2001. p. 69), where reflection on material
realities is valued over ideological absolutes. Yet this choral space is not a space of
homogenization, but a space where plurality can exist among members who are united
because of a common concern or circumstance. Further, the choral experience is an
aesthetic one, as described by John Dewey (1934/1980) in his definition of the aesthetic.
For Dewey, an aesthetic sense is felt when an individual or group has an experience.
Creating a distinction between “a” experience and having “an” experience, Dewey wrote
that “a” experience occurs when no continuous interaction takes place between a “live
creature” and the “environing conditions involved in the process of living” (p. 35). Thus
“a" experience is a singular experience devoid of connection to one’s environment and
fellow beings. Within the Antigone. I argue, both Antigone and Creon are anti-aesthetic,
because they cloister themselves off within a solitary space that rejects true interaction
with material realities, as well as with communal and personal relations. This cloister
effort creates a narrow end where the contingencies of life and relations are not allowed
to progress or evolve. Thus, the process of living and action is cut short, since such
processes must conform only to the Antigonal or Creonic space of existence that creates
Ismenism or, as I also call it, the Ismene syndrome: A space of motion, rather than
conscious action, where forces act upon you instead of you willfully acting in life.
Conversely, having “an” experience, which Dewey describes as inherently aesthetic (p.
40), occurs when there is continuous “interaction of live creature[s] and environing
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Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. conditions involved in the process of living” (p. 35). It is in this sense that the Chorus
and the Watchman embody the aesthetic, since they do not behave as cloistered
entities, but allow material conditions as well as human interaction to connect them fully
with their environment. This aesthetic space promotes engagement and an appreciative
interaction with alternative viewpoints that, through choral or democratic group
deliberation, encourages and leads people toward eventual arrival at an agreement over
ideas.
I will also make use of Dewey’s pragmatic aesthetic framework because it
stresses the importance of everyday lived experience, while challenging the abstract
notion of an “ultimate truth.” Everyday lived experience is constructed upon multiple
truths and not any single, absolute Truth with a capital “T” (James, 1907/1981, p. 77).
Unfortunately, the “ultimate Truth” approach characterizes the argument frames used by
many social movements, national actors, and NGOs (nongovernmental agencies), from
the past to the present, as mirrored indeed by Antigone and Creon. To this end, I
propose the alternative of the Sophoclean Chorus who, in the play Antigone, learn the
lessons of multiple truths, as Martha Nussbaum shows, and speak as a multifaceted
collective rather than an individualistic solitary image of truth or wisdom.
To work well in real conditions today, it is crucial that this choral configuration
entail improvisational techniques, which will equip rhetors and collectives with the ability
to respond and deliberate reasonably on a moment’s notice. Inspired by the theoretical
concepts and practical techniques of Jacques Lecoq and Kenneth Burke, I will suggest a
form of improvisational dramatism, which will allow democratically minded social
movements and social actors to mobilize resources and information quickly with the aim
of pragmatic communication that is rooted in the local, but is also connected to the
international or cosmopolitical. Since improvisation relies on a collective interactive
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Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. space to be successful, it is inherently receptive to democratic processes. Additionally,
the role of the comic is important, indeed perhaps the essential tactic for disrupting the
tragic and the singular mode of being and communication (Burke, 1937/1959, p. xiii).
To demonstrate and highlight the difference between the Antigonal/Creonic
master frames compared to a choral configuration, I will present several case studies:
First, I will examine how the Antigonal master frame has been historically associated
with cosmopolitism. However, cosmopolitism tends to be distorted and, rather,
promoted as a pseudo-Antigonal universal master frame that works, in the end, to
exclude members of a population, while discouraging difference. Next, I wiil examine
the Creonic master frame through documents presented by members from the
neoconservative think tank, The Project for the New American Century (PNAC). Like the
perverted universal frame, this neoconservative Creonic frame also presents itself as a
pseudo-Antigonal frame where American interests are promoted as universal interests.
In the last section of this work, I will examine three main local and cosmopolitical social
movements who are already employing different aspects of the proposed master choral
configuration: Reverend Billy and the Church of Stop Shopping, AIDS Coalition to
Unleash Power (ACT-UP), and the Clandestine Insurgent Rebel Clown Army (CIRCA).
Taken as a whole, these social movements’ best embody a choral configuration driven
by pragmatic logic and employing an aesthetic experience, as well as comic and
improvisational techniques, with notable success on a local and cosmopolitical level. All
these improvisational and dialogic features characterize the language of Sophocles’
Chorus, the language of the collective over the language embedded within the Creonic
neoconservative and pseudo-Antigonal neoliberal rhetoric of individualism. And
because the Chorus is not static, but changes and grows in knowledge and perspective,
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Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. they are, as Lacan (1986/1992) states in The Ethics of Psychoanalysis, the “people who
are moved" (p.252).
Plan for Chapters and Claims
The plan for this work is divided into three sections: Antigone, cosmopolitanism
vs. nationalism, and choral configurations. The first part of this work will detail and lay
out my argument against utilizing the master frames presented by Creon or Antigone,
while arguing for a choral configuration. Chapter One, “Parodos: Antigonal and Creonic
Framing,” will examine the master argument frames used by Antigone and Creon in the
Antigone. I will briefly describe the plot and characters in the Antigone, and explain how
theorists and theater goers alike walk away with the image of Antigone and Creon
fighting it out to the very end, never allowing each other the room to change or adjust
their positions, leading to the tragic space of death. Next, I will ask the question: Why
Antigone? This is a question that George Steiner (1984) repeatedly asks in his
influential work Antigones (p. 6,110), and he comes to the conclusion that the key is “just
below the surface of our speech-acts” (p. 137). Indeed, beneath the characters’ speech-
acts in Antigone are either/or frames and themes that at once question the absolute
frames of such dualities, while at the same time reinforcing such frames.
Because either/or frames are so prominent in Antigone and in modern arguments
for both patriotism and cosmopolitanism, I will define the concepts of argument frames
as theorized by Kenneth Burke (1937/1959), in social movement theory (Goffman, 1974;
Tarrow, 2005) and cognitive linguistics (Lakoff, 2004, 2006). Framing theory helps
demonstrate how the characters of Antigone and Creon constantly reinforce simple
either/or frames of “rule-of-law,” by structuring their arguments within ideographic
language (McGee, 1980). In discussing how both Creon and Antigone rely on
ideographs to support their claims, I will define the concept of the ideograph as put forth
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Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. by the rhetorical scholar Michael McGee, and demonstrate how ideographs, which utilize
ambiguous language and relie on the audience to bring their own meaning to such
words as “rule-of-law,” “unwritten laws” and “liberty," are used to construct and maintain
frames.
In contrast to Antigone and Creon, in Chapter Two, “Episode One: The Chorus
and the Watchman—Perspective by Incongruity,” I will explore Sophocles’ Chorus and
the Watchman. Drawing on Aristotle’s Poetics (1961/1989) and Rhetoric (1823),
Frederich Schiller (1803), Friedrich Nietzsche (1872/1956), Humphrey Davy Findley Kitto
(1956) and Albert Weiner (1980), I will consider the original function of the Chorus in
Classical Greek tragedy and how the Chorus promotes a dramatic perspective by
incongruity by creating a distancing effect between the audience and the action on
stage. This distancing effect propels the audience to learn and to reflect on the action
taking place on stage, and to relate those actions and consequences back to real life
situations. Further, as Nussbaum (1986/2001) has demonstrated, the Chorus, prompted
by circumstances and the Watchman, demonstrate the ability to learn and evolve
throughout the Antigone. Looking to Nussbaum (1986/2001) and Segal (1981), among
others, I will suggest that although other characters in Antigone also demonstrate the
ability to learn (Haemon, Ismene, Tiresias), since these characters assert themselves as
individuals, rather than uniting, they become doomed to the same tragic endings
experienced by Creon and Antigone. Finally, I will examine Sophocles’ comic
Watchman and demonstrate how, through the use of comedy, the Watchman is able to
create a comedic perspective by incongruity for the Chorus who, then, is propelled to
action by creating a collective action frame of justice, a frame that successfully counters
Creon’s narrow nationalist frame by the end of the play.
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Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. The final chapter of part one, “The First Stasimon: Antigone as a Social and
Political Touchstone,” will demonstrate how Antigone has been extensively used as a
political and social touchstone from the start of the modern period and the French
Revolution, to today. I will explore Friedrich Hegel’s (1807/1977) Phenomenology of
Spirit and Kierkegaard’s (1843/1959) Either/Or. demonstrating how both authors leave
the reader with a frame of doomed individualism that offers no room for a choral
configuration or collection action. Next, I will present a brief description of how the
Antigone has been used by modern playwrights and other writers as a means of protest.
Some of this literature will include: Jean Anouilh’s (1944/2000) adaptation of Antigone,
Bertolt Brecht’s (1984) Antigone. Griselda Gambaro’s (1989/1992) Antigona Furiosa,
Athol Fugard’s (1974) The Island, as well as Seamus Heaney’s (2004) Burial at Thebes.
However, I will focus my discussion on Anouilh’s adaptation of Antigone because it was
viewed both as a vehicle for resistance to and support of the Germans during WWII and
the occupation of France. I will end the chapter by demonstrating how the Antigone is
already being used as a metaphor for proponents both for and against cosmopolitism
(Deneen, 2000; Palmer, 2003), as well as other social actors reacting to the
consequences of economic globalization and unrest in the Middle East.
With concern for part one of this project, it should be noted that like the Antigone,
this work is riddled with dualities and binaries (Segal, 1981, p. 186): comic vs. tragic,
nationalism vs. cosmopolitanism, social vs. economic, ambiguity vs. specifics, and other
god vs. devil conceptual polar frames that present an either/or worldview. As this work
argues, when we tightly situate ourselves within these polar opposites or binaries, we
reenact an Antigonal or Creonic tragedy of destructive proportions—cutting off action
and, instead, promoting motion or Ismenism. Neither, however, does this work argue for
the ideological notion of “moderation” or “centrist positions” between any binary, polar,
10
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. position. I concur with George Lakoff (2006), in his new publication Thinking Points, that
the concept of a true “ideological center" is simply a comfortable myth used for rhetorical
persuasion (p. 11-12). It is the rhetoric of 'playing-it-safe' within the social and political
arena. Instead, I endorse and propose that as social and political actors, we must learn
how to navigate polar binaries through our ability to imagine the other’s position. This
act of imagination does not imply that we will switch ideological places with the other, but
it does allow for new spaces of possible thought and action, as well as communication
and deliberation that absolute either/or frames deny. Therefore, unless otherwise
specified, I define polar dialectics as the either/or space of communication and argument
where transcendence from binaries is denied as a result of the inability of participants to
participate and imagine.
Part two of this project examines the relation between the either/or frames of
universalism and nationalism, while offering a proposal on how a cosmopolitical
democracy can be approached. Chapter 4, “Episode Two: Historicizing
Cosmopolitanism,” will first situate the historical concept of cosmopolitanism, or the
universal citizen. I will link the western concept of “cosmopolis” (universal city) to the
early Greeks and Romans and especially to Cynic and Stoic philosophy. Martha
Nussbaum (1996/2002) in “Patriotism and Cosmopolitism," suggests that the concept of
a universal city and a universal citizen stems from the Cynic philosopher Diogenes the
Cynic who stated, “I am a citizen of the world” (Diogenes as cited in Nussbaum, p. 3).
Likewise, both the Stoic philosophers Seneca and Plutarch suggested “we should give
our first allegiance to no mere form of government, no temporal power, but to the moral
community made up by the humanity of all human beings” (Nussbaum, p. 4). Next, I will
examine how cosmopolitism was historically transformed into a pseudo-universal frame
where nationalism and national interests were promoted as cosmopolitism, as seen with
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Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Ancient Rome and Marcus Aurelius (1964/2005). A pseudo-Antigonal frame was also
adopted by the early Christians who, as described by Badiou (2003) in Saint Paul: The
Foundation of Universalism. equated a narrow spiritual “rule-of-law” and universalism
with cosmopolitanism. I will then explore how modern authors have continued to distort
cosmopolitism, viewing it as a narrow universal instance where cosmopolitism becomes
an excuse for empire and imperialism. This will be contrasted with Kant’s (1784/1798
and 1795/1798) vision for cosmopolitism as laid out in his Idea for a Universal History
and Eternal Peace. Kant’s vision for cosmopolitism is often looked to by modern authors
who promote cosmopolitical democracy today. As such, I will examine the modern call
for cosmopolitical democracy and detail how modern scholars envision and promote
cosmopolitism cognitively and ethically, practically and politically, as well as through
economic organization and neoliberal globalization.
Chapter five, “The Second Stasimon: Creonic Perversion—Promoting Pax
Americana as an Antigonal Project,” will demonstrate how a current Creonic frame of
nationalism, as seen with the promotion of a Pax Americana, is being put forth as a
pseudo-Antigonal frame where national American interests and culture are seen as
being universally good for the world. By examining documents put forth the by members
of the conservative think tank, Project for the New American Century (PNAC), I will
demonstrate how members within the current G.W. Bush administration are selling
national interests and culture as a cosmopolitical project. As such, PNAC utilizes a
from-above approach where ideographic words such as “democracy,” “freedom” and
“liberty” are promoted within a narrow American, Creonic, master frame that shuns
difference, while excluding large portions of the global population.
The final chapter of part two, “Episode Three: Envisioning Cosmopolitical
Democracy,” will propose four ways in which a cosmopolitical democracy can be
12
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. conceptualized as a choral configuration of participatory democracy: (1) We need to see
ourselves as being rooted citizens of the world who may dwell in local spaces, but can
relate the local to the global. This requires us to be able to imagine the other, as well as
being able to imagine the different ways our local habits and customs might affect others
globally. (2) We must shun an either/or dichotomy for a choral configuration that
promotes a participatory democracy. Democracy is proposed here as a process of
popular participation and deliberation rather than a simple act of voting. (3) We must
unite the idea of a cosmopolitical democracy with the concept of process rather than
narrow or set ends. Kant (1784/1798 and 1795/1798) suggests that the idea of
something is vital to the realization of that something. The idea, as here proposed, helps
propel a process of becoming, rather than a predetermined end. In this light, a
cosmopolitical democracy should not be conceptualized as an end product (such as a
particular form of global government) but should be seen as a choral process of
becoming. (4) Finally, a cosmopolitical democracy will be best realized through a “from-
below” approach where the process of reaching for a cosmopolitical democracy is not
imposed globally, but is nurtured among everyday people, in their everyday lives, on
local and global levels. Since I argue that a cosmopolitical democracy is best viewed as
a process, I find inspiration from Burke (1961/1970) and Tarrow (2005) who both
propose a “double process” where negotiation and a re-articulation of ideas and
concepts occur on a linguistic level (from general ideas and terms to particular ideas and
terms, and back again) and on a structural level where local issues and concerns are
view globally and where the global articulation of ideas and practices are transferred
back to the local level.
Part Three lays out the philosophical and the proposed attributes for a comic
choral configuration master frame. In Chapter seven, “The Third Stasimon: Embracing
13
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Interpersonal Processes through Pragmatic Aesthetics,” I demonstrate how the process
of reaching for a cosmopolitical democracy is best constituted through rediscovering
interpersonal relationships and promoting process over ends. While examining the
philosophy behind the social movement of Reverend Billy and the Church of Stop
Shopping, I will demonstrate how a pragmatic aesthetic philosophy can encourage
process and interpersonal relations, while disrupting an absolutist frame of
consumerism, which see an end, a product, as a truth. I will link the early Greek
Sophists’ understanding of doxa, opinion, and phronesis, practical wisdom, to the
modern movement of pragmatism, as envisioned by William James (1907/1981). Next, I
will explore the concept of pragmatic aesthetics (Dewey, 1934/1980) and how this
philosophy not only promotes process over ends, but how it helps to reinvigorate
interpersonal relations with fellow members of society, as well as everyday realties.
Finally, I will demonstrate how Reverend Billy and the Church of Stop Shopping promote
a pragmatic aesthetic process by examining one of their direct actions, “The Cell Phone
Opera.”
Since process is central to this project, it is vital that social movements as actors
have a way to break an either/or frame orientation that promotes Ismenism. Often, when
experiencing Ismenism, being propelled by outside forces, people are not conscious that
forces are working to move them. People are often blinded to those frames that direct
their lives and actions. In order to break either/or frames that promote Ismenism, this
project suggests that social movements as actors actively direct a perspective by
incongruity, which encourages people to view the forces working on them, and to open
themselves up to new frames of reference. One concrete way to help create a directed
incongruity is through improvisational dramatism. While exploring AIDS Coalition to
Unleash Power’s (ACT-UP) direction action of “Stop the Church,” I will demonstrate how
14
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Kenneth Burke’s concept of dramatism can be united with improvisational techniques, as
put forth by the improvisational and commedia master Jacques Lecoq, to help social
movements as actors plan for, execute, and be prepared for contingencies experienced
during non-violent actions that seek to promote an aesthetic perspective by incongruity.
With the use of improvisational dramatism, social movements and activists as actors will
be able to adjust their message and actions in order to appropriately and effectively
meet the needs of any situation.
The final chapter, “The Forth Stasimon: Comic Choral Configuration—Clowning
Around for Cosmopolitical Democracy,” explores how a comic choral configuration can
exist and operate in today’s world by examining the social movement, Clandestine
Insurgent Rebel Clown Army (CIRCA). Unfortunately, the image of a chorus often brings
to mind a perfect mixing of voices where individual identities are consumed by the
whole, while the whole becomes homogenized. Such an image compels us to wonder
what happens to the individual when in a chorus. Does the chorus, the “we,” consume
and control the “I” or the individual? Moreover, should the “I” control the “we,” or the
chorus? While examining M.M. Bakhtin’s theories on heteroglossia and dialogism, I
suggest that the individual and the chorus define and redefine each other. Therefore,
meaning between the individual and the chorus is constantly negotiated, allowing for
both the individual and the chorus, while promoting plurality. I also suggest that an
intellectual’s relation to a social movement must be rethought. Drawing on Edward Said
(1996 and 2004) and Bourdieu (1998), this project supports the concept of the collective
intellectual. Further, I argue that moments of exigency require different members within
a social movement to take the lead when called upon. As exigency often calls for
different modes of specialization, it only make sense that members within a social
movement who embody the called upon expertise take the lead when needed. Once the
15
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. exigency has been met that momentary intellectual or leader will assume his or her
place back into the choral configuration, ready to follow if needed or to take the lead
again when called upon. In this way, a social movement can guard against being
defined through an intellectual—an act that often becomes fatal for a movement when
their intellectual leaves.
The last chapter will also ask the question: Why collective comedy? Reflecting
back to the Antigone. I will revisit how an either/or master frame creates and promotes
tragedy. In order to break a tragic frame, as Burke (1937/1959) suggests, a comic
corrective is needed. Unlike a tragic master frame, a comic master frame promotes joy
and laughter, while, at the same time, encouraging interpersonal relationships and
process. This is core to CIRCA’s philosophy and practice and I demonstrate how they
utilize not only a choral configuration, but a comic master frame specifically created to
break a tragic frame of reference. Finally, this chapter will briefly examine the concept of
carnival, the living embodiment of a comical choral configuration. While looking at
Bakhtin’s theories on carnival, I will explore how the technique of “Carnival Against
Capital” is successfully challenging Antigonal and Creonic frames today.
16
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. The Antigone
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Parodos
Antigonal and Creonic Framing
Sophocles’ tragic play Antigone was most likely introduced to an Athenian
audience around 442-441 B.C.E. as part of Sophocles’ Theban Cycle which included
Oedipus the King. Oedipus at Colonus and Antigone (Woodruff, 2001b, p. xxvii). In
Antigone (Sophocles, 2001), which depicts the story of the final fall of the house of
Oedipus, Creon, Antigone’s uncle and King of Thebes, has decreed that no one shall
bury Polyneices, Antigone’s brother, who brought an army against Thebes in order to
take the throne from his brother Eteocles. In Sophocles’ Oedipus at Colonus
(1967/1971), which was written after Antigone and performed after Sophocles’s death,
the reader finds that Polyneices and Eteocles were at first content to allow their uncle
Creon to rule as regent in order to avoid bringing pollution onto the city of Thebes.
However, as Ismene explains to Oedipus, there soon developed a rivalry between the
two brothers, and the younger brother Eteocles deprived Polyneices of the throne:
The hotbrained youth, the younger born, has deprived the elder, Polyneices, of
the throne, and has driven him from his fatherland. But he, as the general rumor
says among us, has gone as exile to hill-girt Argos and is taking up a new kinship
and warriors for his friends . . . (Sophocles, 1967/1971, pp. 228-229)
Polyneices, determined to win kingship, brings an army against Thebes, and war
ensues. Antigone (Sophocles, 2001) resumes events after the war, revealing that
Polyneices and Eteocles have killed each other during battle, leaving Creon to rule (line
14). Creon is honoring Eteocles as a hero of the state, giving him a proper burial, but he
17
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. is condemning Polyneices as an enemy by leaving his body unburied and exposed to
the elements. Antigone, who is engaged to Creon’s son Haemon, cannot bear to leave
her brother Polyneices unburied, and defies Creon’s edict twice in the name of
“unwritten laws” which, she says, supersede the laws of man and state (line 457). It is
the nonburial of Polyneices that causes the main conflict in the play. As Woodruff points
out, in the introduction to his translation of Antigone, not burying a traitor was common in
ancient Greece since it placed shame on the traitor as well as his entire family.
However, to leave a corpse exposed as food for animals was extreme. The body was
normally thrown into a pit or the sea, thereby avoiding the possibility of its causing
pollution, a type of curse that invades the land “that has not treated its dead with
propriety,” while still maintaining a stigma of shame (p. x). Antigone is reacting to the
extreme nature of Creon’s edict. When she is caught during her second attempt to bury
her brother Polyneices (Sophocles, 2001, lines 423-435), she claims that ancient
unwritten laws, greater than the laws of man, dictate that the gods be honored by proper
burial of the dead. Creon retorts that order must be maintained by obedience to the laws
of the state. Thus, when Antigone is caught after burying her brother a second time,
Creon condemns Antigone to be buried alive (lines 773-776). Yet his condemnation and
his burial edict towards both Polyneices and Antigone bring “pollution” into the city of
Thebes (lines 1014-1015). Creon learns of his crimes too late, by the blind seer
Tiresias, and his own house falls with the consequent suicides of his last living son
Haemon, and his wife Eurydice.
There are several other characters in Antigone, including Antigone’s sister
Ismene, the Chorus, a Watchman and a Messenger, but many scholars, theatre goers,
and readers leave this play with the image of Antigone and Creon fighting it out, holding
their ground rigidly and finally dissolving into non-winnable oppositions of private versus
18
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. public, man versus woman, the secular versus the religious, and so on. One could say
that the continuing success and longevity of Antigone stems from Sophocles’ ability to
pare down, reduce, and concentrate these recurring historical themes into a simple
perfection of representation. Yet this concentrated, potent play is far from simple in
construction. Rather, Sophocles was able to create simplicity out of complexity and a
great deal of this creation comes down to how Sophocles constructs dialogue in singular
ways in the Antigone.
George Steiner (1984) asks a pivotal question with relation to our enduring love
affair with Sophocles’ Antigone: Why Antigone? (p. 6, 110). Steiner, I believe, points
rightly to the language found within Antigone when he says: “The principle of returning to
Greek sources, the ricorso which is so central an impulse in Western literature and
thought, is implanted, as it were, just below the surface of our speech-acts” (p. 137).
The either/or themes in Antigone, the private versus public, spiritual versus secular, as
well as man versus woman, are presented within a discourse that at once questions the
-absolute frames of such dualities, while at the same time reinforcing such frames. Thus,
Charles Segal (1981) in “Antigone: Death and Love, Hades and Dionysus,” part of his
study Tragedy and Civilization: An Interpretation of Sophocles, points out that the larger
issues of private versus public are represented within polarized language, creating an 7
say” versus “they say” framework (p. 161).
Framing. Sheer Motion and Action
This polarizing argumentative framework demands more than simply the binary
of public versus private claims—such arguments actually encompass all linguistic word
usages. Kenneth Burke (1937/1959), in Attitudes Towards History, suggests that we
must break free of polarizing argument frames in order to transcend to a space of
agreement or identification. Specifically, Burke suggests that absolute opposing options
19
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. of either “A” or “B” offer no room for a meeting place. To obtain transcendence, Burke
suggests “adopting" another point of view from which “A” and “B” “cease to be opposites”
(p. 336). In Burke’s example, “A” and “B” represent polarizing frames that reinforce their
opposing positions. A frame, then, is a word, phrase or concept that evokes a
“conceptual structure used in thinking” (Lakoff, Feb. 14, 2006, para.1; Tarrow, 2005, 61).
George Lakoff, suggests in his essay “Simple Framing” that frames consist of four
morals, or, as I prefer to approach the concept, principles: (1) “Every word evokes a
frame.” (2) “Words defined within a frame evoke the frame.” (3) “Negating a frame
evokes the frame,” and (4) “evoking a frame reinforces that frame” (para. 1). Thus, as
Lakoff suggests, if you were told not to “think of an elephant,” you would find the task
impossible since the word “elephant” reinforces the conceptual image of an elephant.
You cannot, for example, immediately envision a monkey, because “every time a neural
circuit is activated [in the brain], it is strengthened” (para. 1).
It is vital to note that Lakoff’s suggestion of neural circuit activation implies that
“deep frames,” defined by Lakoff and Halpin (Dec. 14, 2005) as conceptual frames
rooted in our values and principles (para. 13), work on an unconscious reaction level in
the same way that ideology is said to sway individuals. To this end, Goffman (1974)
states that most of us are unaware of our organizational frames and would be “unable to
describe the framework with any completeness if asked” (p. 21). From a Burkean
(1945/1969) point of view, we must be aware that deep frames (also referred to as a
primary or master frame) can reduce action to motion, creating “a kind of inverted
transcendence” (p. 10), because an individual is no longer “in conscious or purposive
motion” (p. 14). Indeed, many employers of deep frames rely on the fact that humans
will simply react to the frame used instead of critically questioning or responding to the
assumptions upholding the deep frame. This often occurs with polarizing frames that
20
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. rely on, first, an appeal to emotion and, second, a reduction of scope where “there is the
reduction of one terminology to another” (Burke, 1945/1969, p. 96). With regard to the
former in Antigone, both Antigone and Creon resort to using emotional fear tactics
whenever someone challenges their master frame. For example, Creon tries to scare
the Chorus when they suggest that maybe the gods had a hand in burying Polyneices:
“Stop right there, before I’m gorged with rage!/ You want to prove that you’re as stupid
as you are old?” (Sophocles, 2001, lines 278-279). Likewise, when Ismene disagrees
with Antigone’s plan to bury Polyneices, Antigone threatens to cut Ismene out of her life:
“I won’t press you any further. I wouldn’t even let/ You help me if you had a change of
heart” (lines 44-77). With regard to a reduction of scope, both Antigone and Creon
reduce their argument frames and discourse to a narrow frame of reference,
constructing what I term Antigonal and Creonic discourses. Antigonal discourse, with its
appeal to the-unwritten-rule-of-law, involves vague and ambiguous language that is linked
to concepts of “universal law,” “universal rights,” “divine laws,” or “private rights” that are not
defined or specified. Similarly, Creonic discourse, with its appeal for a nationalistic rule-of-
law, is ambiguous and ideographic language that directs issues back towards concepts of
the state and civic/public rule-of-law. Both forms of discourse rely on the emotional and
the reductive to propel individuals into a kind of sheer motion space of agreement, or, as
1 refer to it, into Ismenism.2
It is important to clarify the concept of Ismenism in relation to Burke's
understanding of sheer motion. As Burke explains, action, dramatically considered, is
defined as “the human body in conscious or purposive motion" (Burke, 1945/1969, p.
14). Sheer motion, on the other hand, occurs when the human body is being acted upon
2 The inspiration for this term came from Spyros Payiatakis’ (2005) description of the Greek people as “Ismene,” in relation to Greece’s place within the UN Security Council. Payiatakis’ comparison will be further examined in the First Stasimon below.
21
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. and is lacking conscious will. In Language as Symbolic Action (1966a) Burke states that
the “the slashing of the waves against the beach, or the endless cycle of births and
deaths in the biologic organisms would be examples of sheer motion” (p. 53). For Burke
(1978a), in “(Nonsymbolic) Motion/(Symbolic) Action,” the action-motion pair constitutes
a basic polarity (p. 809). However, whereas sheer motion, or nonsymbolic motion, does
not require symbolic action for its existence, Burke states that “there could be no
symbolic action unless grounded in the realm of motion” (p. 811). This distinction is vital
because there are times when humans react symbolically, and these reactions are
sometimes conscious reactions, and, in other moments, habitual reactions that take on
the characteristics of sheer motion. Burke (1945/1969) views reaction, or what I term
Ismenism, as “action-minus” or “attitude-minus,” which is “halfway between motion and
action” (p. 237). Attitude for Burke is a “kind of incipient or future action” (Burke, 1978a,
p. 816) that can “substitute for an action” (Burke, 1945/1969, p. 236). In the attitude-
minus equation, a rhetor or a social system can work to induce a reaction:
A social relation is established between the individual and external things or
other people, since the individual learns to anticipate their attitudes toward him.
He thus, to a degree, becomes aware of himself in terms of them (or generally, in
terms of the ‘other’). And his attitudes, being shaped by their attitudes as
reflected in him, modify his ways of action, (p. 237)
Thus, Ismenism, which I will also refer to as the Ismene syndrome, is the space of
“attitude-minus” where people find their lives and decisions determined by the will of
others, as well as determined by embedded societal structures which encourage
reaction rather than willful action.3 For example, in the Antigone (Sophocles, 2001),
3 For example, a consumerist culture tends to encourage Ismenism because such a culture suggests that personal and emotional needs can be fulfilled through a product. However, when a specific purchase does not fulfill an emotional need, a need better fulfilled through human to human relations, the consumer looks 22
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. although Ismene disagrees with Antigone’s plan to bury Polyneices, originally refusing to
help Antigone (lines 49-68), she later declares herself Antigone’s accomplice (lines 536-
537), because she fears being cut out of Antigone’s life (lines 544-545). Unfortunately,
just like the character Ismene, who disappears from the final half of the play, the Ismene
syndrome works to move people into the background, or backdrop, of life. As I shall
demonstrate, when confronted by doubt or critical, active questioning of their purposive
action, both Creon and Antigone must cut the questioning individual out of their space in
order to induce Ismenism, which allows Creon and Antigone to maintain the integrity of
their master frames.
However, beyond the plane of Ismenism, the activation, construction, and
employment of frames also occurs on the level of purposive action. As Lakoff (2004)
states in Don't Think of an Elephant!, “reframing is social change” because reframing
changes “the way the public sees the world. It is changing what counts as common
sense” (p. xv). Thus, social scientists and social movement theorists have actively
worked to document how social actors and social movements employ the reframing
process (Goffman, 1974; Snow, Rochford Jr., Worden, and Benford, 1986; Benford and
Snow, 2000; Tarrow, 2005). Benford and Snow see reframing as “an active, processual
phenomenon that implies agency and contention at the level of reality construction .. .
that involves the generation of interpretive frames that not only differ from existing ones
but that may also challenge them" (p. 614). When used by collectives or social
movement organizations, this process is called collective action framing: “collective-
action frames are action-oriented sets of beliefs and meanings that inspire and legitimate
the activities and campaigns of a social movement organization (SMO)” (p. 614).
Accordingly, collective-action frames are composed of two characteristics: First, the
for new or different products to do the trick, thereby propelling that person into a motion of buying without the function o f active and critical thinking. 23
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. action occurs when members of a collective negotiate “shared understanding of some
problematic condition or situation they define as in need of change . . . and urge others
to act in concert to affect change” (p. 615); and second, a discursive process where
members of a collective decide on the best way to articulate their intended frame and
how to amplify that frame to others (p. 623).
Within the Antigone, the process of challenging and reinterpreting frames can be
seen, in greater or lesser degrees, with the characters Ismene, the Watchman, Haemon,
and Tiresias. However, because these characters stand alone in their efforts, their
attempt at reframing is easily rejected by both Antigone and Creon. It is only with the
Chorus’ gradual reframing efforts with developing a collective-action frame that we see a
viable challenge to the narrow, polarizing frames offered by Creon and Antigone. This
choral framing is accomplished through frame bridging efforts where the Chorus
transcends the polarizing frames presented by Creon and Antigone. Burke (1937/1959)
defines frame bridging, in Attitudes Towards History, as “symbolic mergers” which offer
“a way across" a conflict (p. 224). Snow, Worden and Benford (1986) specify the
concept by stating that frame bridging works to link two “or more ideologically congruent
but structurally unconnected frames regarding a particular issue or problem” (p. 467b).
As I will show more specifically in the next chapter, Episode One, Sophocles’ Chorus
works to link two structurally similar yet polarizing concepts of rule-of-law, to create a
new collective-action frame encompassing the larger bridging concept of justice. This
new frame is not only a deep, or master, frame, but a collective-action frame which
allows the Chorus to influence the action, the plot, in Antigone twice (Woodruff, 2001b,
p. xxiii).4
4 The function of the Chorus will be considered in the next chapter, Episode One. However, it is helpful to point out that it was unusual for a Greek Chorus in ancient tragedy to take direct action within the play. 24
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Finally, to pursue Burke’s point, it is important to realize that once a polarizing
frame is introduced, any reference to one frame immediately brings to mind the
contrasting frame not mentioned and reinforces the polar opposing energy between the
two frames—often setting up a dialectical opposition where one frame is placed in direct
conceptual opposition, or antithesis, to another frame (Burke, 1945/1969, p.34). This is
where the mythical good versus bad, or “god” versus “devil,” competition arises. As
polar frames compete for a winning place, each conceptual frame works to discredit its
competition by frequently employing a technique called scapegoating. According to
Burke, scapegoating works through a “god” and “devil,” or as Sega! suggests an “I say”
versus “they say,"framework (Segal, p. 161). In this case, the dialectical framework
“represents the principle of division,” where a projected “devil” competing frame, social
collective, or individual becomes the “sacrificial vessel” for a so-called “god” frame
(Burke, 1945/1969, p. 406). As a symbolic sacrifice for a cause or for the greater good,
the scapegoat or sacrificial vessel must be killed so that purification can occur (Burke,
1941/1973, p. 40), the “burdens of individual and collective guilt” (p. 31) can be relieved,
and the “good” frame can reign supreme: “For one must remember that a scapegoat
cannot be ‘curative’ except insofar as it represents the iniquities of those who would be
cured by attacking it” (Burke, 1945/1969, p. 406). Both the reinforcement of polar
framing and the scapegoat are employed by Creon and Antigone as they create and
recreate their discourses. However, the use of scapegoating is seen most clearly in
Creon’s action. As Segal (1981) points out, Creon uses Antigone as a pharmakos or
scapegoat figure, since she is seen as the human sacrifice “that would cleanse the city
of its polluted past” (p. 175). In ancient Greece, the term pharmakos (in Greek
(pappaKog)relates to the practice of choosing scapegoats who would be sacrificed to the
Direct action is normally only a function of the main characters. The fact that the Chorus in Antigone can intervene and therefore consciously direct the action is thus a significant aspect of the play. 25
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. gods in order to purge a city of sin.5 Of course, the crimes in Sophocles’ city of Thebes,
as related to this extended royal family, are vast: Starting with Oedipus’ original sin, or
his unintentional crimes, of killing his father and marrying, and having children with, his
mother;6 continuing with the war between Oedipus’ sons, Polyneices and Eteocles, for
rule of Thebes; Creon’s resulting decree which denies Polyneices his proper burial
rights, and finally Creon’s mistaken choice of Antigone as the sacrificial scapegoat that
will purge the city of all pollution. However, because Creon has only a limited “notion of
what constitutes pollution” (Segal, 1981, p. 174), one could argue that Creon does not
realize that his choice of sacrificial vessel is misguided, and brings more pollution onto
Thebes. In any case, it is quite clear that Creon is concerned about his actions—worried
that he might be on shaky ground in ordering Antigone’s death. Here it is interesting to
note that Creon never takes direct responsibility for Antigone’s death even though it is
his law, and ultimately his decision, which condemns her. He blames Antigone herself
for committing the deed (Sophocles, 2001, lines 480-483), and he blames death itself
(line 575). Further, the decision to bury her alive was made, according to Creon, not by
him specifically, but collectively with the Chorus, who, we should note, questioned the
judgment of the act (line 575). The act itself is not performed by Creon. Although in
lines 773-776 Creon says that he’ll do the task of burying Antigone alive underground
(specifically saying “I”), the task is actually performed by guards (lines 883-890; 931-
932). It is as if Creon wishes to distance himself from the killing even though he sees
5 In Athens, the sacrifice took place during the first day of the Festival of Apollo,Thargelia, where two pharmakoi were sacrificed. Originally,pharmakoi meant “magicians” and“pharmakon meant a magic spell or formula, then a healing drug” (Durant, 1939/1966, p. 194).
6 Kenneth Burke in his unpublished work Poetics. Dramatically Considered (also published in condense form under “Form and Persecution in the Oresteia.” in the Sewanee Review. L X (Summer) 1952, 377-396), would call Oedipus’ original sin the generating principle for the form and style of Sophocles’ Theban Cycle. Thus, the logic of the events and imagery found in Oedipus the King. Oedipus at Colonus. and Antigone can be directly linked back to Oedipus’ original sin. 26
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. her death as a way to uphold the order in the city. This distancing is seen through
Creon’s calculated and secretive employment of Antigone’s sacrifice:
CREON: I’ll take her off the beaten track, where no one’s around,
And I’ll bury her alive underground, in a grave of stone.
I’ll leave her only as much food as religious law prescribes,
So that the city will not be cursed for homicide, (lines 773-776)
The fact that Creon commands that the act be done “off the beaten track,” and with just
enough food to avoid a charge of homicide, informs the audience that Creon knows his
actions are questionable. In the end, it is his need to save face as a ruler and not the
need to cleanse the city of pollution that concerns Creon. Yet both concerns, cleansing
the city of pollution and the need to appear as a strong leader, require a sacrifice, and so
Creon gambles that his choice of scapegoat will serve both purposes. He is, of course,
wrong. As Burke (1946/1969) points out, a scapegoat must be worthy to be effective (p.
406). Thus, the scapegoat must serve as what Burke terms a “representative anecdote,”
that is, the scapegoat must represent the perceived underlying ills of the community in
order to achieve purification of perceived guilt (Burke, p. 59), and to uphold specific
master frames. As Segal (1981) points out, in the end it is not up to Creon to identify the
source of pollution or miasma, but the gods: “The final choice of the miasma is made by
the gods, not by men, and it is Creon himself (line 175).
Antigone and Creon
Antigone and Creon utilize an identical form of righteous, absolutist argument
construction to defend their respective causes - framed arguments that allow for no
transcendence of their either/or framework. Martha Nussbaum (1986/2001), in
“Sophocles’ Antigone: Conflict, Vision, and Simplification,” examines the main characters
in Antigone as well as their corresponding discourses used in validating claims. The
27
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. character Creon relates his views on family, honor and love back to the state, and the
state works to define and determine these relations and conditions (p. 55). Likewise,
Segal (1981) calls this narrowing of the Creonic framework a “perverted concept of
logos" which Creon uses as “an instrument of rule" (p. 162). Consequently, as
Nussbaum (1986/2001) shows, all ethical issues, all personal and private issues, are
connected, for Creon, narrowly with the state and a perverted logos: honor and respect
(p. 55), what is just and good (p. 56), family, sexuality (p. 57), and the role of the gods
(p. 58). For example, concerning what is just or right, Creon does not look at the larger
issues of ethics or the contingent nature of what constitutes the good, but sees
leadership and justice in absolute terms: “But when the city takes a leader, you must
obey,/Whether his commands are trivial, or right, or wrong” (Sophocles, 2001, lines 667-
668). Here, as Nussbaum (1986/2001) rightly observes, the civic good is established
only through a leader: “Creon has, then, made himself a deliberative world into which
tragedy cannot enter. Insoluble conflicts cannot arise, because there is only a single
supreme good, and all other values are functions of that good” (p. 58). This reduction of
linguistic and ethical scope, of reducing one terminology to another (Burke, 1945/1969,
p. 96), is central for Creon’s attempt to control his surroundings and therefore avoid
tragedy.
In order for Creon to conceive and construct the world in this narrow framework,
he must use words and concepts that reinforce it, language that allows for no
contingency or variation. So, when Creon asserts, wrongly, that only Antigone, in all of
Thebes, disagrees with his stance and decree (Sophocles, 2001, line 508), we, the
reader and the audience, understand and anticipate Creon’s later objection towards his
son Haemon’s information that the city is indeed against Creon:
HAEMON: The common man, you see, lives in terror of your frown;
28
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. He’ll never dare to speak up in broad daylight
And say anything you would hate to learn.
But I’m the one who hears what’s said at night—
How the entire city is grieving over this girl.
No woman has ever had a fate that’s so unfair
(they say), when what she did deserves honor and fame, (lines 690-695).
CREON: Do you really think, at our age,
We should be taught by a boy like him? (lines 724-725)
Creon cannot object to Haemon’s information directly—instead he resorts to accusations
of naivety or youthful ignorance to rationalize his arguments and actions. This recourse
is also seen when Creon accuses Tiresias of being greedy and trying to trick Creon out
of money (lines 1035-1036), or when he wrongly accuses the Watchman of being
responsible for burying Polyneices in exchange for money (line 322). In this way, Creon
controls the perimeters of his linguistic frames and his environment to ensure that
anarchy has no opening to invade: “But reject one man ruling another, and that’s the
worst./ Anarchy tears up a city, divides a home,/ Defeats an alliance of spears. But
when people stay in line and obey,/ Their lives and everything else are safe” (lines 672-
676). Indeed, as suggested above, when people do not agree with, or act against,
Creon, they no longer exist for him: “Her [Antigone]? Don’t speak of her. She is no
more" (line 571). In the end, Creon’s linguistic and ethical framework is so narrow that
he cannot entertain other modes of being, nor can he transcend conflict insofar as he
works to deny the validity or existence of conflict itself.
Conversely, yet similarly, Antigone’s discourse is narrowed to connect conditions
of love, honor, family and state to the narrow frame of kinship (Nussbaum, 1986/2001, p.
29
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 63) and a perverted sense of “mythos” (Segal, 1981, p. 165). Just as Creon’s definition
of the state is “impoverished” and simplistic (Nussbaum, p. 60), so too is Antigone’s
definition of kinship a “ruthless simplification of the world of value” (p. 63). As Nussbaum
further points out, Antigone draws a tight “circle around the members of her family: what
is inside . . . is family. Therefore loved one and friend; what is outside is non-family,
therefore, in any conflict with the family, enemy” (p. 63). Segal agrees, and adds that
Antigone “stand[s] in an ambiguous relation to civilized values . . . by challenging one
principle of civilization in the name of another, she generates a tragic division that calls
the nature of social order itself into question” (p. 152).
Immediately, in the first line of the play, Antigone emphasizes that Ismene is
considered blood, family, and kin to Antigone: “Ismene, dear heart, my true sister”
(Sophocles, 2001, line 1). Holderlin (1804/2001) translated this line literally to
emphasize how Antigone specifically associates the concept of oneness with family: “O
common sisterly Ismene’s head .. .” (p. 71). Steiner (1984) suggests that Holderlin’s
effort here is to capture the “implicit physicality and ‘primitivity’, to which Antigone turns
and addresses her fatal plea” (p. 85). Through the literal translation, the use of common
sisterly head instead of dear sister or, as Segal (1981) phrases, “common self-(wombed)
sister" (p. 186), a profound character trait is uncovered: Namely how Antigone
associates familyhood not only with the aspect of shared blood and womb, but with
shared thought as well. Familyhood is oneness in all its dimensions: Shared blood
lines, shared womb, and shared thought processes. If, for Antigone, there is a break in
the process of shared thought (or even purpose to some degree), there is a break in
family itself. Thus, after the opening line of the play when Antigone asks Ismene to help
her bury their brother Polyneices, Ismene’s status as kin and family is redefined when
she refuses to collaborate. Because Ismene refuses to share in the conceptual process,
30
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. in Antigone’s thoughts and purpose, she is no longer a common sisterly head and is
placed in familial exile. In anger, Antigone responds by saying: “I won’t press you any
further. I wouldn’t even let/ You help me if you had a change of heart” (Sophocles, 2001,
lines 69-70). Like Creon’s actions towards Polyneices and Antigone, Antigone will not
forgive or forget Ismene’s betrayal, nor will she allow a family member to possibly make
a mistake and then redeem or fix their position. This singular mode of response is
further demonstrated later in the play, when Ismene offers herself up as an accomplice
to the crime of burial:
ISMENE: I did it, I confess. That is, if we are partners, anyway.
I am an accomplice, and I bear responsibility with her.
ANTIGONE: I will not permit this penalty to fall on you.
No. I never wanted to give you a share.
ISMENE: But these are your troubles! I’m not ashamed;
I’ll be your shipmate in suffering.
ANTIGONE: I have witnesses: the gods below saw who did the work.
I won’t accept a friend who’s only friends in words, (lines 536-543)
Because Ismene did not accept Antigone’s original proposal, she is now labeled the
enemy, in league with Creon: “Oh yes, you are sensible; these men [Creon and the
Chorus] agree” (line 557). As in Creon’s case, anyone who does not agree with
Antigone is cut from her life and, in a sense, no longer exists.
It is interesting to note that both Antigone and Creon’s actions entail what Burke
terms tragedy. In The Philosophy of Literary Form (1941/1973), he states that “a
tragedy is not profound unless the poet imagines the crime—and in thus imagining it, he
symbolically commits it” (p. 48). Certainly the same can be said about a character in a
play or even an authentic social actor in real time. In the case of the Antigone, both
31
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Creon and Antigone imagine a crime and then proceed to commit the crime imagined.
For example, Antigone imagines that Creon's crime, his transgression, against the family
occurs when he refuses to allow both of his nephews, Antigone’s brothers, proper burial,
denying Polyneices. Antigone wishes to defend the act of burying Polyneices in the
name of familial love and duty, as well as religious obligations. Creon challenges
Antigone’s defense by putting the “fatherland” above familial love, suggesting that one
brother, Polyneices, is deserving of disgrace (Sophocles, 2001, line 516), and “an
enemy is always an enemy, even in death” (line 522). Creon’s position of state over
family is made clear early in the play when he states: “But it’s even worse when he [a
leader] plays favorites,/ Puts family or friends ahead of fatherland” (lines 182-183).
Antigone, however, replies by stating: “I cannot side with hatred. My nature sides with
love” (line 523). Yet this siding with love does not apply when Antigone feels betrayed,
as she does with Ismene—in effect, she commits the crime she imagined Creon
committing: The betrayal of familial bonds. Creon also commits the crime he imagined
others committing. For Creon this entails duty to the rule-of-law. In this case, Creon is
relentless to those who would break his decree regarding the burial of Polyneices. Yet
he, himself, commits the crime of breaking the rule-of-the-unwritten [spiritual]-laws the
moment he forbids the burial of Polyneices (lines 23-26), In both cases, Creon and
Antigone cannot see their own tragic crimes partly because they frame their worldviews
within a strict reductive frame (ethical as well as linguistic) that, in effect, acts as a
blinder, or as Burke (1966) would suggest a terministic screen (p. 45). Again, this
reductive scope is seen in the language employed by both Antigone and Creon,
including their use of ideographs when trying to sway an audience.
32
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Ideographic Arguments and Framing Construction
Both Creon and Antigone rely on ideographs for their arguments. As Michael
McGee (1980) says in his essay “The Ideograph: A Link between Rhetoric and
Ideology,” ideographs are the “one-termed sum of an orientation, the species of ‘God’ or
‘Ultimate’ term that will be used to symbolize the line of argument” in political discourse
(p. 429). These species of ultimate terms contain a “unique ideological [cultural]
commitment” (p. 428), rely on the status-quo of language, and are powerful tools for the
rhetor who wishes to maintain the status-quo of not only discourse but power relations.
In summing up the characteristics of the ideograph, McGee states:
It is a high-order abstraction representing collective commitment to a particular
but equivocal and ill-defined normative goal. It warrants the use of power,
excuses behavior and belief which might otherwise be perceived as eccentric or
antisocial, and guides behavior and belief into channels easily recognized by a
community as acceptable and laudable. . . Ideographs are culture-bound .. .
[and] each member of the community is socialized, conditioned, to the
vocabulary of ideographs as a prerequisite for ‘belonging’ to the society, (p. 435)
Words like “freedom,” “liberty,” and “justice” are all ideographs because, for the
audience, they hold a multitude of emotional and cultural specific meanings, but are not
specifically defined. As a consequence, a rhetor can use these words to sway an
audience without asking them to think about the use or the context of the word being
employed. Finally, ideographs should be analyzed diachronically and synchronically. A
diachronic examination of the word would examine the past usage of the ideograph
because “each ideograph has a history, an etymology, such that current meanings of the
term are linked to past usages of it diachronically” (McGee, 1980, p. 436). A synchronic
33
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. examination of present usage would take into account how an ideograph is related to
other ideographs surrounding the concept:
All ideographs taken together. . . are thought at any specific ‘moment’ to be
consonant, related to another in such a way as to produce unity of commitment in
a particular historical context. Each ideograph is thus connected to all others as
brain cells are linked by synapses, synchronically in one context at one specific
moment, (p. 436).
Before examining how Antigone and Creon utilize ideographs to sell their
arguments, it is vital to note the connection between ideographs and frames, since
ideographs can be used to erect and sustain primary or deep frames. As McGee (1980)
rightly asserts, we are “‘conditioned,’ not directly to belief and behavior, but to a
vocabulary of concepts that function as guides, warrants, reason, or excuses for
behavior and belief (p. 428). I argue that frame building, a linguistic act, often occurs
within a vocabulary that is culturally conditioned through and by our use of ideographs.
In the US, for example, the ideographs of “liberty,” “freedom,” and “juistice-for-aH” work to
erect and maintain the primary “American" frame. Indeed, “liberty,” “freedom," and
“justice-for-all” are repeatedly used by politicians and others when arguing for a set of
actions or proposals that upholds American interests and ideas. Thus, Goffman (1974)
suggests, and McGee later echoes, in relation to the diachronic and synchronic nature of
ideographs:
The primary frameworks of a particular social group constitute a central element
of its culture, especially insofar as understandings emerge concerning principle
classes of schemata, the relations of these classes to one another, and the sum
total of forces and agents that these interpretive designs acknowledge to be
loose in the world. (Goffman, p. 27)
34
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Goffman’s “classes of schemata” can also be seen as classes of ideographic
orientations. For my purposes, Benford and Snow’s (2000) distinction between schema
and frames is helpful. In “Framing Processes and Social Movements” (quoting Tannen
and Wallat’s 1993 work, “Interactive frames and knowledge schemas in interaction,” in
Framing in Discourse), they suggest that the distinction lies in how the schemas are
organized by the frame: “The implied distinction between schemas and frames can be
stated more concretely by thinking of schemas as 'participants’ expectations about
people, objects, events, and settings in the world, as distinguished from alignments
being negotiated in particular interaction,” which is what frames do (Benford and Snow,
p. 614). From a rhetorical or persuasive point of view, the schemas or “participants’
expectations” are often formed through ideographs. I would also suggest that the frame
itself is born into existence and becomes valid though the use of ideographs. Both the
organizational frame and the supporting ideographs are in continuous need of each
other, as I shall demonstrate by examining Antigone and Creon’s ideographic rule-of-law
arguments.
In a brilliant move, Sophocles (2001) has both his main characters rely on the
same ideographic umbrella or argument frame: The-Rule-of-Law. Both characters make
the same argument: The law requires . . . However, because Antigone argues for the
private/spiritual rule-of-law, while Creon argues for the public/civic rule-of-law, the two
characters cannot see the similarities in their frames or arguments. Antigone’s
arguments are utopic and ambiguous in nature (Segal, 1981, p. 152), and are based
within her primary frame, the private familial and spiritual realm, which is constructed
through her ideographic call to the rule-of-the-unwritten-laws (Sophocles, 2001, line
457). Her call to the “unwritten laws” is utopic because Antigone suggests that these
“unwritten laws” are universal laws, that exist in a space of perfection above the laws of
35
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. men: “These laws weren’t made now/ Or yesterday. They live for all time,/ And no one
knows when they came into light” (line 457-458). This call is also ideographic insofar as
the spectator, and the characters in Antigone, including Antigone herself, cannot know
who wrote such laws, what such laws cover, and if there can ever be a time when such
laws can be suppressed, or made to yield to, the laws of humanity. Further, Antigone’s
call is political in the sense that these laws require political as well as spiritual
recognition, as Creon tragically learns later. These unwritten laws are also culturally
specific because they are directly related back to the laws of Hades and the gods that
rule the underworld—as worshiped in ancient Greek society. Also, utilizing McGee’s
(1980) terms here, Antigone’s call to the unwritten laws both “warrants the use of
power," and “excuses behavior and belief which might otherwise be perceived as
eccentric or antisocial” (p. 435). Finally, her primary frame, the private familial and
spiritual sphere, could not be upheld without her reliance on the unwritten laws or her
call to the-rule-of-spiritual-law. This is seen in the opening of the play where Antigone,
speaking with Ismene, relates the private realm, that of family, to the spiritual, to burial
rights, to the law:
ANTIGONE: It’s the burial of our two brothers. Creon
Promotes one of them and shames the other.
Eteocles—I heard Creon covered him beneath
The earth with proper rites, as law ordains [emphasis added],
So he has honor down among the dead.
But Polyneices’ miserable corpse—
They say Creon has proclaimed to everyone:
Give him to the vultures, unwept, unburied,
To be a sweet treasure for their sharp eyes and beaks.’
36
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. That’s what they say the good Creon has proclaimed
To you. And me. He forbids me, too. (line 21-32)
Creon also utilizes an ideograph to create and organize his primary argument
frame of the public realm and the state. Like Antigone, Creon relies on the concept of
law, but for him the law is man-made. These man-made laws are created to maintain
the state or the city which is likened to a lifeboat: “I know this well: The City is our
lifeboat: we have no friends at all/ Unless we keep her sailing right side up./ Such are
the laws. By them I’ll raise this city high” (Sophocles, 2001, lines 187-191). Although,
like Antigone, he does not specifically use the phrase, Creon relies on the public/civic
‘rule-of-law’ ideograph, his “established law” (line 481), which constitutes and upholds
Creon’s master frame. Reflecting McGee’s (1980) definition of the ideograph, the
“established law” concept in this case is both politically oriented and culturally bound.
Further, for the Athenian audience, it relies on the fact that “each member of the
community is socialized, conditioned, to the vocabulary of [this] ideograph as a
prerequisite for ‘belonging’ to the society” (p. 435). It is for this reason that, after Creon
declares the “established law” of not burying Polyneices, the Chorus of Elders simply
agree to Creon’s decree, stating: “Make any law you want—for the dead, or for us who
live” (Sophocles, 2001, line 214). This initial choral act of Ismenism, or acquiescence, is
part of the reason why Creon’s city as a lifeboat image becomes emotionally charged for
Creon’s audience (both the Chorus of Elders and the audience spectators), who'
understand the danger of sailing and the need to have a strong captain at the helm to
steer the boat straight—to keep the passengers safe—by creating, as the Chorus sings
in their Ode to Man, the laws that govern the city (line 357). Yet when closely examined,
the ideograph of “established law” or “rule-of-law" used as a stand-alone, ambiguous
phrase becomes weak and unsustainable. Here, in the concept of “lifeboat," it is
37
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. specifically implied that the city or “lifeboat” is always in distress, is always at risk of
tipping over. Furthermore, rational “laws” will not always save the lifeboat from harm.
Contingencies such as the sea, the wind, the food supply, and the other crew members
do not always behave in rational terms and respond to rational laws. As McGee says
about ideographs (p. 430)7 and as Lakoff (2004) states about frames (p. 10-11, 33),8 the
rational plays no real part in this equation—it is the idea and the resulting affiliations with
the idea which sway an audience. Finally, although Creon implies “we,” as if the
steering of the boat were a group project, he quickly exchanges “we” for “I” by stating
that only by his laws will the ship sail safely. Thus, he narrows the scope of “established
law” to “my” established law. In the end, it is not only Antigone who “stand[s] in an
ambiguous relation to civilized values” (Segal, 1981, p. 152), but also Creon. In the
words of the Chorus, humans, including Antigone and Creon, are deinon, wonderful and
terrible (Segal p. 153; Nussbaum, 1986/2001, p. 52): “Many wonders, many terrors
[deinon], But none more wonderful [deinon] than the human race/ Or more dangerous”
(Sophocles, 2001, lines 332-334). Antigone and Creon stand for the absolute extremes
of deinon, extremes that take them away from their humanness (Nussbaum, p. 65). Still,
as polarizing as these two characters are, not all characters in Antigone exist in this
absolute, abstract world of unmoving truth—the exceptions are notably Tiresias,
Haemon, and the Chorus.
Tiresias and Haemon
Nussbaum (1986/2001) rightly points to the characters of Tiresias, Haemon, and
the collective Chorus as being the entities who best understand the role of contingency
7 For McGee, ideographs are not related to the rational or the ethical, but the social and the “idea” (430). Thus, you could not use an ideograph to test a truth or establish a truth (431).
8 Lakoff specifically debunks the “rational actor metaphor,” which states that people are rational and always act in their own self-interest. Instead, Lakoff maintains that we act in accord with our values or ideas, not facts or rational “self-interest” (33). 38
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. in the world and who urge against a simplification of values—avoiding narrow worldview
frames, ideographic arguments and ambiguity. In this light, it is interesting to briefly
examine how Tiresias and Haemon differ from the Chorus in Antigone.
Haemon, Creon’s son and Antigone’s beloved, lives in a world of contingency,
bridging both logos and mythos. This is seen specifically in the scene between Haemon
and Creon (Sophocles, 2001, lines 631-765) that occurs after Antigone has been caught
burying Polyneices for the second time and after the Chorus’ Second Stasimon. Haemon
knows that his father has condemned his fiancee to death, and he has come to reason
with Creon. First, Haemon approaches Creon from the position of family and a son’s
concern for his father:
HAEMON: My natural duty’s to look out for you, spot any risk
That someone might find fault with what you say or do.
The common man, you see, lives in terror of your frown;
He’ll never dare to speak up in broad daylight
And say anything you would hate to learn.
But I’m the one who hears what’s said at night—
How the entire city is grieving over this girl, (lines 688-693)
He also attempts to appeal to Creon’s sense of reason, urging him to not cling to anger
(line 705), nor to discount other opinions (lines 707-709) and, insisting that it is not
shameful to change one’s mind, since learning is the key to wisdom for all wise men (line
710). This theme, the insistence on evolving and learning, is also used later by Tiresias
when he addresses Creon toward the end of the play:
TIRESIAS: Take thought, my son, on all these things:
It’s common knowledge, any human being can go wrong.
But even when he does, a man may still succeed:
39
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. He may have his share of luck and good advice
But only if he’s willing to bend and find a cure
For the trouble he’s caused. It’s only being stubborn
Proves you’re a fool, (lines 1023-1029)
However, both Tiresias and Haemon act and advise alone as individuals, and,
thus, lack the power of collective persuasion. Just as individualistic efforts put forth by
Creon and Antigone entail, in the end, a doomed framework, so too are the efforts put
forth by Haemon (who takes his own life) and Tiresias (whose prophesies and wisdom
come too late). Rather, it is the collective Chorus who not only demonstrates the ability
to grow and learn but, as a collective, they have the potential to challenge the space of
absolutes more dramatically and, in the end, more efficiently than any singular character
is able to do.
40
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Episode One
The Chorus and the Watchman—Perspective by Incongruity
Before examining Antigone’s Chorus specifically, it is helpful to consider the role
of the Chorus in ancient Greek tragedy in general. Although modern tragedy no longer
utilizes a Chorus,9 tragedy, from the Greek tragoidia or “goat song," developed out of an
original tragic Chorus, as a separate form, as well as out of the satyr plays, and the
origins of the two are intertwined. The first tragedies contained only the Chorus
(Nietzsche, 1872/1956, p. 47), and numbered around fifty members at the beginning of
the fifth century B.C.E. (Weiner, 1980, p. 205). Durant (1939/1966), in “The Common
Culture of Early Greece,” describes these original performances as religious “mimic
representations, in dancing and singing, of satyrlike Dionysian revelers dressed in the
costume of goats” (p. 231). The early Greek Chorus was confined to the orchestra (the
dancing place) (Weiner, p. 205), and performed a combination of poetry, dancing and
singing (Kitto, 1956, 1b). However, we know nothing about what the music sounded like,
or what the dancing looked like, since we have no records or description of the original
performances (p. 1b). As Steiner (1984) notes, the only hint we have regarding the
music performed by a Chorus are “five ‘notes’ on a second-century B.C.E. papyrus
fragment of a choral antistrophe in Euripides’ Orestes (lines 338-44)” (p. 167). We do
know that Thespis of Icaria was the first to separate himself from the Chorus and recite
lines as an individual (Durant, p. 232), and once actors were introduced, the Chorus was
9 George Steiner (1984) points out that after the sixteenth century, productions of Antigone usually did away with the Chorus. Steiner does point to some exceptions including Bertolt Brecht’s (1984) Antigone (p. 170-171), and there have been others since Steiner’s book appeared. 41
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. diminished in numbers. Aristotle (1961/1989) states that Aeschylus raised the number
of actors to two, while reducing the Chorus to twelve, and Sophocles raised the number
of actors to three (4.12-13), but also restored some members back to the Chorus, raising
it from twelve to fifteen members (Weiner, p. 205). The original poetic rhythm, or meter,
evolved from the trochaic tetrameter to an iambic measure, moving tragedy from a
musical genre to a space of dialogue: “Once dialogue had come in, Nature herself
discovered the appropriate measure. For the iambic is, of all measures, the most
colloquial” (Aristotle, 1961/1989, 4.14).
But one question remains: As tragedy evolved from a religious choral experience
to what we see in Sophocles’ Antigone (2001), in the fifth century, what was the function
of the Chorus then? This is a difficult question to answer because past and modern
scholarship demonstrates that there is no single theory regarding the purpose of the
ancient Greek Chorus (Aristotle, 1961/1989; Schiller, 1803; Schlegel, 1846/1904;
Nietzsche, 1872/1956; Kitto, 1956; Weiner, 1980). Within the Poetics, Aristotle barely
discusses the Chorus, stating only that the Chorus should function as one of the actors
who take a “share in the action, in the manner not of Euripides but of Sophocles” (18.7).
Thus, for Aristotle, the Chorus does not function separately from the other actors, the
play, or the plot as a whole, but should be seen as an active participant within the play.
This comment stems from Aristotle’s concern and observation that later tragic
playwrights only used the Chorus, and the choral odes, as “mere interludes,” a practice
initiated by the tragic playwright Agathon (c. 448-400 B.C.E), that pertained “as little to
the subject of the piece as to that of any other tragedy” (18.7). Later theories regarding
the Chorus range from the Chorus functioning as the ideal spectator (Schlegel, p. 59),10
10 Schlegel introduced the theory of the Chorus as the “ideal audience,” a theory rightly criticized by Nietzsche who states: “If we hold this view against the historical tradition according to which tragedy was, 42
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. to acting as a buffer between the actors and the audience, to being the entity, the vessel,
that transforms the passions of the characters on stage “which are necessarily diffused,
into sharp focus" (Weiner, p. 206), and finally to being a “'foreshadowing’ of
constructional democracy,” an idea rejected by Nietzsche (p. 47). However, considering
Sophocles’ Antigone. I argue that this Chorus and the choral odes work to create a
distance between the audience and the action on stage in order to promote critical
reflection. Further, this distancing is accomplished through the use of dramatic
incongruity.
Creating Distance through a Dramatic Choral Incongruity
Within the corpus of Kenneth Burke’s work, his theory of what he terms a
“perspective by incongruity” is central. For Burke, a “perspective by incongruity” is “a
way of seeing two ways at once" (Burke, 2003, p. 350). That is, when presented with a
limited or narrow framework, Antigonal or Creonic frames for example, Burke suggests
that we need to challenge that frame with another incongruous, or unexpected, frame in
order to see things in a new light. On a linguistic level, one way to accomplish a
perspective by incongruity is through “atom cracking," where words from one category
are “wrenched loose and metaphorically applied . . . to a different category”:
The metaphorical extension of perspective by incongruity involves casuistic
stretching, since it interprets new situations by removing words from their
‘constitutional’ setting. It is not ‘demoralizing,’ however, since it is done by the
‘transcendence’ of a new start. It is not negative smuggling, but positive cards-
face-up-on-the-table. It is designed to ‘remoralize’ by accurately naming a
situation already demoralized by inaccuracy. (Burke, 1937/1959, pp. 308-309)
in the beginning, nothing but a chorus, it turns out to be a crude, unscholarly, though dazzling hypothesis” (pp. 47-48). 43
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Drawing on Burke, dramatic incongruity, as proposed here, works on two levels: First,
incongruity is accomplished on a linguistic level where cognitive frames are challenged
by incongruous vocabularies and metaphors. Second, incongruous dramatic styles
(dialogue vs. lyrical meters for example) and acts disrupt what is perceived to be a
unified space of action or thought, thereby creating a distance between a speaker and
audience. This distancing resembles a Brechtean alienation effect, which promotes
reflection and critical thinking. Within the Antigone, the choral odes accomplish both
these tasks on a dramatic level.
The theory that the choral odes create distance between an audience and the
action on the stage, which then prompts the audience to critically reflect, is not a new
one. Frederich Schiller (1803) in his essay “On the Use of the Chorus in Tragedy,”
which preceded his play The Bride of Messina, sees the Chorus “as a living wall which
tragedy draws itself in order to achieve insulation from the actual world, to preserve its
ideal ground and its poetic freedom” (p. 49). Schiller believed that the old tragic Chorus
grew naturally out of the “‘poetical’ aspect of real life" (p. 8), whereas the new tragic
Chorus, in Romantic drama, should be seen as a way to “declare open and honorable
warfare against naturalism in art” (p. 7). Schiller held that the ideal was in danger of
being destroyed by naturalism, the ordinary, the everyday, and the sensible (p. 10). The
poetic (in this case the Chorus) acted as a medium between the ideal and the
everyday—it was a buffer that allowed the audience time to reflect on the action taking
place on stage. In this formulation, the choral function of creating distance between the
action on stage and the audience occurs partly because the “naturalistic” action on stage
is disrupted by the “poetic” choral odes. Reflecting back to early Greek tragedy of the
fifth century, the choral odes were stylistically and rhythmically different from the main
dialogue in the play which utilized, as Aristotle points out, an iambic rhythm, or iambic
44
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. trimeter (4.14). Whereas iambic trimeter,11 also referred to as blank verse, is suitable for
dialogue and speaking, odes employed a variety of lyrical rhythms more appropriate to
singing.12 As Kitto (1956) points out in “The Greek Chorus,” the word ode means song
(1b) and the rhythms used in the ode were not speech-rhythms, “but music-rhythms”
(2a). For Kitto, this means that the metrical structure of the choral odes offers a “ground-
plan of a music-dance movement” (2b). As a result, the choral odes were stylistically
incongruous to the naturalistic style that the dialogue, using iambic rhythms, relied on.
This incongruous juxtaposition between a more naturalistic action and dialogue with the
poetic and lyrical odes can create a distance for the audience, allowing them to stop,
consider the action taking place and to reflect, one hopes critically, on the frame being
presented. Thus, as Schiller proposed, the Chorus is a “living wall” which “keeps
reflection apart from the incidents” (p. 11) and “gives repose to the action” (p. 12).
Although Schiller does not term this “repose to the action” as an act of distancing
accomplished through dramatic incongruity, his image of the Chorus as a “living wall”
functions in this way.
The choral odes’, use of dramatic incongruity in order to create a distancing or an
alienation effect (as proposed by Brecht), is explored by Albert Weiner (1980) in his
essay “The Function of the Greek Chorus.” Drawing on Aristotle’s short paragraph
regarding the Chorus, Weiner suggests that the choral songs were not “dramatic"
interruptions, but “lyric” interruptions that acted as “major interludes of alienation during
which the audience could readjust itself, relax, watch the dancing, listen to the music”
11 Kitto (1956) states that blank verse “is the distinction between long and short syllables, the long being, conventionally, twice the length of the short” (p. 2a).
12 Some of the choral meters used included: dactyls, a metrical foot composed of one long syllable followed by two short syllables; anapests, a march-rhythm utilizing a metrical foot composed of three syllables with the stress placed on the last syllable; trochees, a metrical foot composed of two syllables with the stress being placed on the first syllable; and glyconics, which Kitto describes as “a four-bar phrase, of which the first or second or third bar is in four-time, the others in three-time” (p. 5b). 45
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. and that aroused “the emotions and passions of the audience while forcing it to think at
the same time” (p. 211). For Weiner, the Chorus is not a dramatic element, but a
functioning element that was required in order to (a) win the ancient Greek dramatic
competitions, and, (b) provide a kind of distance, or alienating effect, between the
dramatic action taking place on stage and the audience (p. 209). With this latter
argument, Weiner is applying Bertolt Brecht’s concept of the alienation effect.
According to Brecht, the audience needs some distance from the action on the
stage in order to begin critical thinking which then leads to the creation of independent
conclusions: “Brecht believed that, in making an audience take stock of the elements in
a situation, the theatre was serving the purpose of leading its audience to a juster
understanding of the society in which it lived, and so to learning in what ways that
society was capable of change” (Brook, 1968, p. 73). With this function in mind, the
Chorus became pivotal for Brecht (1984) in his rendering of Antigone. As Steiner (1984)
notes, "the chorus’s own distance and self-distancing from the regal terrors enacted
before it would help to achieve just those effects of alienation, of critical dispassion,
which Brecht aims at” (p. 171). Concerning Greek tragedy, the incongruous
juxtaposition between the stylistic opposites of the lyrical choral odes and the more
naturalist main action and dialogue of the play creates a dramatic distancing or
alienation effect. I say dramatic because comic forces, used incongruously, can also
create a distancing effect, such as the Watchman’s in Antigone (2001), which will be
discussed shortly. However, the chorus odes offer incongruity not only because they are
stylistically different from the dialogue and action presented on stage, but because the
odes employ what Burke calls verbal “atom cracking."
As briefly discussed above, Burke (1937/1959) in Attitudes Toward History,
defines “perspective by incongruity” (verbal ‘atom cracking’) as “a method for gauging
46
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. situations. That is, a word belongs by custom to a certain category—and by rational
planning you wrench it loose and metaphorically apply it to a different category” (p. 308).
To challenge a master frame and its terminology with an incongruous vocabulary, is to
challenge our assumptions regarding that master frame and its corresponding
vocabulary, as we are forced to look upon these things with a different perspective. As
Gusfield (1989) says while examining Burke’s theory: “If the world around us is at least
partially a matter of how it is framed, how the situation is defined, then the reader, the
observer, the audience can best understand how the procedure operates by getting
outside the box of his own logic" (p. 7). The work of atom cracking, then, also works as
a “frame-discrediting break” (Goffman, 1974, p. 403) where an incongruous vocabulary
promotes distance from a master frame. This distance helps to create a break in the
“applicability of the frame, a break in its governance” (p. 347). Thus, on drama, Goffman
states that “sophisticated producers have drawn on the Brecht pattern of drawing
attention periodically to the fictive character of the whole, so that the audience isn’t
allowed too long a period for holding one set of laminations” (p. 403). Within Sophocles’
Antigone, a Brechtean distancing is accomplished through the choral odes where master
frame vocabularies, subject matter, and metaphors are challenged.
We are first introduced to the Chorus in Antigone (2001) after the intense first
scene between Antigone and Ismene. As we have seen, Antigone informs her sister
that Creon has forbidden the burial of Polyneices under penalty of death:
ANTIGONE: They say Creon has proclaimed to everyone:
‘No Burial of any kind. No wailing, no public tears.
Give him to the vultures, unwept, unburied,
To be a sweet treasure for their sharp eyes and beaks.’ (lines 27-30)
. . . -he [Creon] takes
47
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. This seriously—that if anyone does what he forbids
He’ll have him publicly stoned to death, (lines 34-36)
Wishing to go against Creon’s “established” law and bury Polyneices, Antigone asks
Ismene to help her, to “share” in the “work and trouble” (line 41), but Ismene refuses:
“How horrible it will be to die outside the law/ If we violate a dictator’s decree!” (lines 59-
60). The scene rises to a crescendo when Antigone accuses Ismene of betraying her
family (lines 69-77). After they exit, the Chorus enters and sings their entry song or the
Parodos (lines 100-54).
In direct contrast to what just took place, the Chorus sings in joy and praise.
Kitto (1956) states that the Parodos does not start out with the normal anapaest meter, a
marching meter conventionally used for the Parodos in Greek tragedy, but the glyconic
meter which is a “plastic dance-rhythm”: “This means that the chorus enters, not
processionally, but dancing” (p. 5b). This would be appropriate, since the Chorus is
celebrating victory in the war (lines 148-149), the defeat of Polyneices (lines 120-126),
and praising the sun (line 100), Zeus, and Thebes. Woodruff (2001b) sees this ode as
a “hymn of jubilation” (p. xxiv), but he also points to the odd shift of spiritual emphasis
between referencing the power of Zeus (lines 127-133), and celebrating Bacchus and
the joy of dance (lines 150-154): “This shifting focus, unusual in such an ode, promises
us a wild ride from the chorus and a turn to Dionysus toward the end of the play”
(Woodruff, p. xxiv). Not only are we promised a wild ride, but the audience has been
distanced from the intense emotions and actions that were witnessed between Antigone
and Ismene, by the choral mood of celebration. This distancing is further accomplished
through verbal 'atom cracking’ where metaphors and concepts used by the Chorus
challenge traditional notions associated with the image of birds, a metaphor first
introduced by Antigone and then transformed by the Chorus.
48
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. In the first scene between Antigone and Ismene, Antigone uses the image of the
victorious vulture enjoying the “sweet treasure” (Sophocles, 2001, line 29) of Polyneices’
“miserable corpse” (line 26). Here the vulture is portrayed as a victor—enjoying the
fruits of war. However in the Parodos, the Chorus describes Polyneices as a “screaming
eagle” (line 112) who after losing the war is not able to pluck “his beak in our blood” (line
121). The 'atom cracking’ occurs in Sophocles’ treatment of our traditional notions of
bird metaphors, or, as Burke suggests when examining associational clusters, “what
goes with what” (Burke, 1941/1973, p. 20). First, the vulture is rarely depicted as a bird
associated with victory, but usually as a creature associated with death. It is a
scavenger bird that feeds on the carcasses of dead animals. However, in Greco-Roman
tradition, the vulture was also sacred to Apollo because it was the bringer of omens
(Chevalier and Gheerbrant, 1969/1996b, p. 1075). In the Antigone, the vulture is
associated with both victory and death, but the emphasis in lines 29-30 focuses on the
birds’ victory and the prize of blood, which delights their beaks. Further, the vulture
image offers a prophetic function as well, suggesting that more death is yet to come.
Likewise, a screaming eagle is often seen as a metaphor for the successful warrior
bound for victory, the king, and the messenger of all messengers: “king of the BIRDS,
deputy or messenger of the highest heavenly godhead and of the FIRE of Heaven, the
Sun, at which it alone dares stare without burning its eyes” (Chevalier and Gheerbrant,
1969/1996a, p. 323). Further, as Nussbaum (1986/2001) states, the eagle was Zeus’
bird (p. 72). In this ode, the eagle is defeated, its “white-snow wing” (Sophocles, 2001,
line 114) struck down “with a missile of fire” (line 131), and unlike the vulture, its beak
will never delight in the prize of blood (line 121). In both cases, our traditional notions of
“what goes with what” become incongruous as the vulture is associated with victory,
while the eagle, Zeus’ bird, is placed in the category of defeat. This leads us to ask:
49
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Who is hero? Who is enemy? Can we ever know with certainty? Questions the
audience must again consider during the next choral ode.
The first Stasimon (Sophocles, 2001, lines 332-375), Sophocles’ famous Ode to
Man, occurs after Creon has gotten the Chorus to agree to his new law regarding
Polyneices’ burial, and after the Watchman has come, reluctantly, to report that
someone has broken the law and buried Polyneices. Here the audience is introduced to'
the unyielding and righteous Creon who, Segal (1981) suggests, “subverts the civilized
principles that he should be defending” (p. 152). Creon asserts his new-found place as
King of Thebes, although this right was awarded by default (Sophocles, lines 173-174),
and defends the importance of his commands (line 191). Then, the Watchman enters
and tells Creon that Polyneices has been buried and given full burial rites (lines 245-
247). This defiance angers Creon, and when the Chorus suggests that the gods might
be behind the act (line 279), he is enraged further, accusing the Chorus of being as
stupid as they are old (line 281). Looking for someone to blame and punish, Creon
holds the Watchman responsible, suggesting that he did it for money (line 322). The
Watchman denies having a hand in the burial and accuses Creon of false judgment (line
324). Both the Watchman and Creon exit the stage leaving the Chorus alone to recite
their first Stasimon.
The Ode to Man13 again distances the audience from the action through the use
of a Burkean dramatic incongruity by using the ambiguous word deinon, meaning both
wonderful and terrible, to describe humanity: “Many wonders, many terrors,/ But none
more wonderful than the human race/ Or more dangerous” (Sophocles, 2001, lines 332-
334). Contrasting this dual view to the decisive and unmoving nature of Creon, the
Chorus begs us to consider those moments when the human race is at its most glorious,
13 For a more detailed account o f the Ode to Man, see Segal (1981), pp. 152-179. 50
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. the moments where we are at our most dangerous and, finally, those times when the line
between wonder and terror is blurred. Even in those ventures that we might consider
wondrous, such as our conquering of the earth (line 338), our yoking of the animals
(lines 342-352), or the invention of language (line 354), there is an element of terror
involved. As Woodruff (2001 b) points out, the end of the ode “comes as a shock: Man
(the gender is clear on this point) may have tamed animals and women, but he has not
tamed death, and disaster awaits those who are wicked” (p. xxv). But who, we are led to
consider, is the wicked one? With the end of the Ode to Man, there is really no way to
know who the Chorus might side with, Creon or Antigone, as their last lines seem to
justify the position of both characters: “If he honors the law of the land/ And the oath-
bound justice of the gods,/Then his city shall stand high” (Sophocles, 2001, lines 370-
371). The choral questioning compels the audience to again question their positions:
Shall we stand with Antigone or with Creon? Or, one may suggest, neither? Notably, it
would have been difficult to reflect on this question during the play without the Chorus’
promotion of the distancing of the spectator from the action, which is necessary for such
reflection.
The rest of the choral odes produce a similar type of distancing in conjunction
with, and in contrast to, the action on the stage. Not only are we offered, as the
audience, a physical repose to the action, Sophocles (2001) uses language, such the
word Deinon, that challenges what appears to us, the audience, as right or just—where
our loyalties should lie. At the moment when we find ourselves rooting for Antigone and
wishing to see her safely married off to Haemon, the Chorus sings of the dangers and
madness of love, the destroyer that is love, which sickens the mind and the reason (lines
781-800). Love then, one might reconsider, should be questioned, even Antigone’s love
for Polyneices which perhaps compelled her to perform a “perverted" act (line 792).
51
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Maybe then Creon, with his mantle of reason, is right after all. The Chorus never allows
us to settle on one position, propelling us with each dramatic or poetic act of distancing
to reconsider our personal stance and loyalties. But who, one may ask, compels the
Chorus to evolve and think? Where do they receive their own distance which helps
them develop from simple “yes-men,” at the beginning of the play, to critical thinkers?
The answer, I believe, can be seen in Sophocles’ rendering of the Watchman and his
ability to offer a comic perspective by incongruity, as an intense form of distancing.
The Comic Corrective or the Comic Perspective by Incongruity
In Attitudes Toward History, Kenneth Burke (1937/1959) describes the comic
frame as the “attitude of attitudes” (p. xiii). It is the “methodic view of human antics as
comedy, albeit as a comedy ever on the verge of the most disastrous tragedy" (p. xiii).
The comic frame mediates upon and, one hopes, corrects what Burke calls the
“bureaucratization of the imaginative.” This “process of processes” occurs when
humanity tries to “translate some pure aim or vision into terms of its corresponding
material embodiment, thus necessarily involving elements alien to the original, ‘spiritual’
(‘imaginative’) motive” (p. xiii). Once the ideal has been translated into the material, we
have the makings, or the potential for, tragedy. Burke offers an entertaining example of
a man, who, after visiting the New York Public Library, discovers a way to save the
world. Upon leaving the library, this man runs into a friend of his, Steffens, and starts to
tell him of his fantastic discovery. As the two men are talking, and walking, Steffens
realizes that a third man is listening to everything being said. Upon closer examination,
Steffens notices that the man, “a distinguished-looking gentleman,” is the Devil:
STEFFENS: ‘You seem to be interested in my friend’s plan.’
THE DEVIL: ‘Decidedly!’
STEFFENS: ‘What do you think of it?’
52
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. THE DEVIL: ‘I think it’s an excellent plan.’
STEFFENS: ‘You mean to say you think it would work?’
THE DEVIL: ‘Oh yes. It would certainly work.’
STEFFENS: ‘But in that case, how about you? Wouldn’t it put you out of a job?’
THE DEVIL: ‘Not in the least. I’ll organize it.’ (p. xiv)
A current example of bureaucratizing an idea can be seen in the war in Iraq. In the US’
attempt to establish our ideographic ideals of freedom, democracy and liberty in Iraq, we
have bureaucratized and promoted these ideals through the use of war and forced
organization that has now caused a civil war between the Iraqi Sunni and Shiites. The
line between the comic and the tragic blurs when the handling of the Iraq war can be
called a comedy of errors, and the bureaucratized ideals have created a tragic frame of
grand proportions. Quite similarly, in the Antigone (2001), both Creon and Antigone
tragically bureaucratize the imaginative. To serve the law and the rule-of-law, Creon
enacts his ideal to such a degree that he fails to follow the spirit of the law (his wish to
keep Thebes from pollution) and, by sticking to the material letter-of-law, concerning the
burial, causes pollution and thus tragedy. Antigone does the same with her call to the
unwritten laws, ignoring the spirit for the material. Yet as Burke terms it, we have a
disruptor at our disposal to help avert the tragic: The comic corrective, or a comic
perspective by incongruity. In the Antigone, the Watchman acts as a comically
incongruous figure for both the audience and, importantly, for the Chorus—provoking
them to think critically and to create a collective-action frame of justice.
The Watchman first enters at a pivotal point in the action. The Chorus of Elders
have met with Creon and agreed, easily, to Creon’s decision that Polyneices should not
be buried, in fact, should be left exposed for “birds and dogs” to feed upon (Sophocles,
53
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 2001, line 205). At this moment, lines 211-214, the Chorus appears as simple ‘yes-men’
ready to agree to anything Creon proclaims:
CHORUS: That is your decision, son of Menoeceus,
As to the one who meant our city well
And the one who meant it ill. It’s up to you:
Make any law you want—for the dead, or for us who live.
In some ways, the Chorus of Elders’ easy compliance is puzzling. Although they are
joyous that Thebes was saved and eager to support their king, they are also, one
assumes, aware of the religious burial rites required by the gods of the underworld. As
Woodruff (2001b) explains regarding ancient Greek culture, “the gods in the Underworld,
principally Hades, are entitled to have the dead in their domain. To keep the dead
above ground and to send the living below ground—both of these are affronts to the
gods below” (p. x). Certainly the Chorus has great respect for the gods, as is seen in the
Parodos where they praise Zeus’ power (Sophocles, lines 127-133) for helping win the
war, and celebrate victory through being ruled by Bacchus (lines 148-154). For them to
easily ignore the possible, although unknown, consequences associated with
disregarding the laws of the gods, of Hades, is perplexing. In any case, no critical
thought is involved in their answer to Creon, only Ismenian motion. The scene ends with
Creon asking the Chorus not to side with “anyone who disobeys” his new law (line 219),
while speculating that some man will try to bury Polyneices because “hope/ And
bribery—often have led men to destruction” (lines 221-222). At this moment, the
Watchman enters with critical news—someone has buried Polyneices.
From the start, the Watchman is incongruous to the other characters as well as
to the tragic and serious tone of the play, since he is comically fashioned as a wise but
54
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. bumbling fool. As he enters the stage, we find him trying to sum up the courage to
inform Creon that someone has defied his order:
WATCHMAN: Sir, I am here. I can’t say I am out of breath.
I have not exactly been ‘running on light feet.’
I halted many times along the road so I could think,
And I almost turned around and marched right back.
My mind kept talking to me. It said, ‘you poor guy,
Why are you going there? You’ll just get your ass kicked.’ (Sophocles,
2001, lines 223-228)
By so fashioning the comic Watchman, Sophocles offers his audience and the Chorus of
elders a comic perspective by incongruity, which distances the audience and,
importantly, the Chorus from the master, tragic frame being played out by the other
characters. Once jolted out of the tragic frame, the Chorus is allowed the space to think
more deeply about the situation at hand. For example, when the Watchman explains
that the guards have no idea who committed the crime because no clues were left
behind (line 252), the Chorus is finally compelled to think, critically, about the gods and, I
suggest, about the consequences of not following their laws: “You know, sir, as soon as I
heard, it came to me:/ Somehow the gods are behind this piece of work” (lines 278-279).
Upon hearing this, Creon tries to stop the Chorus from the process of independent
critical thought by suggesting that they are as “stupid” as they “are old” (line 281). As
Nussbaum (1986/2001) points out, Creon believes that everyone should be on one
plane of reality or thought—his: “The opposition, who see differently, are, in his
imagination altogether without vision” (p. 71). This becomes clear when we see Creon
question Antigone, asking her if she is not ashamed to have “a mind apart from theirs”
(Sophocles, 2001, line 510). Still, Creon’s insults cannot stop the process that the
55
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Watchman’s comic frame has started. It is at this moment that the Chorus stops being
Creon’s ‘yes-men,’ and starts the journey of learning. When the scene ends with the exit
of the Watchman and Creon, the Chorus continues their critical-thinking journey with the
Ode to Man (lines 332-375), which ends with the Chorus reflecting on the importance of
the laws of both man and gods:
CHORUS: If he honors the law of the land
And the oath-bound justice of the gods,
Then his city shall stand- high.
But no city for him if he turns shameless out of daring.
He will be no guest of mine,
He will never share my thoughts,
If he goes wrong, (lines 369-375)
Finally, it can be argued that the Watchman, as a comical incongruous character,
is directly responsible for the Chorus’ creation of the Ode to Man. As Nussbaum
(1986/2001) points out, the critical word deinon, the central theme in the Ode to Man,
was used only twice before in the play, both times by the Watchman (Sophocles, 2001,
line 73). The Watchman uses deinon first when he breaks the news that Polyneices has
been buried: “It’s terrible [deinon] news. I can’t come right out with that” (line 243). One
can read this as both terrible and wonderful news. Terrible because the news will anger
Creon and, as is suggested by the Watchman, no one relishes angering Creon (lines
227-228); it can also be seen as wonderful news because the unwritten spiritual laws
have been upheld. It is difficult to know if the Chorus sees this as wonderful or terrible
news. The second time the Watchman uses deinon occurs towards the end of the
scene when he becomes the first person to challenge Creon’s judgment head-on: “It’s
terrible [deinon] when false judgment guides the judge” (line 323). Could Creon, the
56
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. king, possess false judgment? Certainly, but his judgment has not been questioned to
his face before this point. The Chorus, who were just shut down and shut up, after
suggesting that the gods buried Polyneices, hears the Watchman, a lowly being on the
pecking scale of Theban life, question Creon’s judgment, quite incongruously—a
peasant questioning a king. The Watchman’s questioning and his use of deinon propels
the Chorus to think not only on the deinon of humanity, but humanity’s place with respect
to judgment and law (lines 369-375).
The Collective that Learns
The Chorus in Antigone (2001) acts not only as a distancing vehicle between the
action on stage and the audience, but, to argue against Albert Weiner’s (1980) thesis
discussed above, as a dramatic collective character that undergoes character evolution
and influences the action of the play by developing the collective-action frame of justice.
Although the Chorus takes little direct action in Antigone, the fact that this collective
reflects and learns is important. As Nussbaum (1986/2001) notes, the theme of learning
is seen on two levels: Learning becomes the overall theme in the Antigone as can be
seen, first, in the complicated and interlinked choral odes, and second, in the Chorus as
a dramatic character (p. 68-69). On Nussbaum’s first argument, the choral odes, read
critically and serially, demonstrate Sophocles’ concern with the theme of learning and
discourage the “search for the simple and, above all, for the reductive" (p. 89). The
theme of learning is also the subject of the final line in the Antigone where the Chorus
states: “So it is one learns, in old age, to be wise" (Sophocles, linel 353). As the final
line suggests, even the Chorus is not exempt from the process of learning and, indeed,
as a dramatic character, they excel in this process.
As discussed above, at first the Chorus appears as nothing more than Creon’s
yes-men (Sophocles, 2001, lines 213-214). However, even early on, with the Ode to
57
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Man, the reader and spectator realize that the Chorus is not made up of simple beings,
but are wise and insightful elders who learn gradually as material circumstance unfold
before them. The first glimpse of this choral learning personality is seen when they
describe the complexities of humankind as deinon, trying to control a contingent world
and nature, learning all the while what is needed to survive in an unpredictable world
(lines 332-375). Humanity as deinon might not have been a new concept for the
Chorus, but they at least relearn this concept when listening to the Watchman. For the
Chorus, wisdom can be learned from anyone including a lowly Watchman or from a man
who is young in years—as Haemon rightly states: “it’s good to learn from anyone who
speaks well” (line 723).
When Haemon confronts his father (Sophocles, 2001, lines 626-765), the Chorus
again recognizes the need for learning and bending to new truths and insights. When
the young Haemon attempts to reason with his father, he reminds him that wisdom
comes from many places. The Chorus agrees, stating: “Sir, you should learn from him, if
he is on the mark. And you,/ Haemon, learn from your father. Both sides spoke well”
(Sophocles, 2001, lines 724-725). Creon, however, questions this advice asking the
Chorus if it is wise to learn from a boy (lines 726-727). The Chorus does not readily
answer, but unlike Creon (line 757), they listen. Because the Chorus takes the time to
listen and to critically think, they do not jump blindly into action or decision. When they
decide to act, however, as they do on two occasions, their action appears wholly justified
by events.
As Woodruff (2001b) points out, the Chorus influences the plot twice (p. xxiii).
First, the Chorus convinces Creon not to condemn Ismene along with her sister
Antigone, since Ismene had no part in breaking the law:
CREON: Let him [Haemon] go, him and his lofty ambitions! Good riddance!
58
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. But those two girls shall not escape their fate.
CHORUS: Are you really planning to kill both of them.
CREON: Not the one who never touched the crime. You’re right, (lines 768-771)
The Chorus’ intervention is not one committed quickly or on a whim but was thought out.
Before, when Antigone was first brought in for the crime, Creon accused and served
judgment on Ismene even though it was made very clear that Ismene had no part in the
crime (lines 543-544). Nevertheless, because Creon lacks the ability to listen (he hears
but he rarely listens), he condemns Ismene even without proper evidence. The Chorus,
aware of this fact, waits for the right moment to challenge Creon on his decree regarding
Ismene and, because they learn and listen, they are able to determine the best moment
to intervene.
The second moment of dramatic intervention occurs towards the end of the play.
Tiresias, the priest, has come to report a bad omen for Creon and for Thebes. Drawing
again on the image of birds, Tiresias states that the birds were “clawing each other to
death with their talons” (Sophocles, 2001, line 1004), that his sacrifice was not accepted,
leaving no omens to read at all (lines 1012-1012), and that all of this was a result of
Creon’s edict regarding Polyneices:
TIRESIAS: So, now, surrender to the dead man.
Stop stabbing away at his corpse. Will it prove your strength
If you kill him again? Listen, my advice is for your benefit.
Learning from good words is sweet when they bring you gain, (lines 1029-
1032)
Once again, Creon will not listen and, reminiscent of his accusations towards the
Watchman, accuses Tiresias of trying to exhort money from the crown: “You’ll never
collect your fee; I’m not changing my mind” (line 1063). The Chorus, having listened to
59
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. the exchange between Tiresias and Creon, is shaken: “The man is gone, sir. His
Prophecies were amazing,/ Terrible. .. ./ I’m quite certain he has never sung a
prophecy,/ Not once, that turned out to be false for the city” (lines 1091-1094). The
Chorus suggests to Creon that “good judgment is essential” (line 1098), and Creon,
finally ready to listen, asks the Chorus what he should do:
CHORUS: Let the girl go. Free her from underground.
And build a tomb for the boy who lies exposed.
CREON: Really? You think I should give in?
CHORUS: As quickly as you can, sir, before you’re cut off.
The Gods send Harm racing after wicked fools.
CREON: It’s so painful to pull back; it goes against my heart.
But I cannot fight against necessity.
CHORUS: Go and do this now. Don’t send others in your place, (lines 1100-
1107)
The Chorus not only directs Creon’s act, they insist that he do it alone! This is criticai,
since Creon has denied responsibility for his actions throughout the play.14 The Chorus,
who has watched, listened and learned, knows this and so they know that it is only
Creon who can save Thebes. Moreover, the Chorus was only able to affect the action in
the play after they formed a new master frame, a collective-action frame and a discourse
which bridged Antigone and Creon’s polar rule-of-law discourses.
As discussed in the Parodos, to Burke, transcendence of conflict occurs when
two conflicting frames, “A” and “B,” are bridged by finding an alternative, “C,” which
bridges the polar frames. In the Antigone (2001), the Chorus realizes that Antigone and
Creon’s use of rule-of-law is reductive because their respective uses of this frame (one
14 See my argument in the Parodos regarding Creon’s avoidance of responsibility, p. 10. 60
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. private/religious, one public/civil) works to exclude other realms of law—reducing law to
an either/or structure. Once rule-of-law is reduced in this manner, justice cannot prevail.
With this realization, as is first suggested by the Watchman (line 322) then articulated in
the Ode to Man (lines 369-375), the Chorus starts to develop a collective-action frame
which bridges and subverts the material rule-of-law. A new master frame, the justice
frame, allows the Chorus to transcend the polar conflict, while giving them the ability to
redirect action. The choice of a justice frame, in this case, is not reductive insofar as it
recognizes the plurality of law, while redirecting thought and action towards the spirit of
law and away from the material and reductive letter-of-the-law. The Chorus finally
articulates this new master frame while speaking to Creon towards the end of the play:
“Yes, it is late, but you have seen where justice lies” (line 1270).
Finally, as Nussbaum (1986/2001) points out, the Chorus demonstrates that
critical thinking and learning is not only an intellectual act, but an emotional act as well
(p. 69). The Chorus experiences both, and allows both the intellectual and the emotional
to influence their dramatic evolution without reducing arguments to one space or
another. Even as they support reason and wisdom, concurring with Haemon and
Tiresias, they also fully feel and allow that feeling to direct them:
CHORUS: Now I, too, am swept away,
Out of bounds, when I see this.
I cannot contain the surge of tears:
For now I see Antigone, soon to gain
The marriage bed where everyone must sleep, (lines 801-805)
If we contrast the Chorus’ ability to navigate both the intellectual and the emotional with
that of Antigone or Creon, or even Haemon, we have a clear picture of the need to utilize
both capacities without falling into the trap of being consumed by one mode of being.
61
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Although Creon is quick to anger, he stresses the rational, creating a “perverted concept
of logos” (Segal, 1981, p. 162). Antigone embodies emotion and even when she
appeals to the intellect, as she does when she evokes the unwritten laws, this appeal is
emotional. Haemon starts out offering a wise and reasonable argument to Creon
regarding his edict concerning Antigone, but he quickly switches to the emotional,
prompting the Chorus to say: “Sir, the man has gone. He is swift to anger;/ Pain lies
heavily on a youthful mind” (lines 766-767). The Chorus, on the other hand, tends to
have control of both the rational and the emotional and to utilize both. Unlike Antigone
and Creon, the Chorus sees the validity of argument from all perspectives, commenting
on those of Creon and Haemon (line 725), Antigone (line 836), as well as Tiresias (lines
1091-1094). Although the Chorus can initially appear extreme in its views (lines 213-
214), they eventually understand the need to learn, to debate, and even to avoid silence:
“If you ask me, a silence so extreme/ Is as dangerous as a flood of silly tears” (lines
1251-1252). Moreover, as a collective, the Chorus shares common concerns and
struggles, rather than individualistic and isolated claims:
For these people experience the complexities of the tragedy while and by being a
certain sort of community, not by having each soul go off in isolation from its
fellows; by attending to what is common or shared and forming themselves into a
common responding group, not by reaching for a lonely height of contemplation
from which it is a wrenching descent to return to political life. This entire ethical
experience, then, stresses the fundamental value of community and friendship; it
does not invite or even permit us to seek for the good apart from these.
(Nussbaum, p. 70)
In the end, the reader and spectator notice that the Chorus, as a collective, is the least
physically touched by tragedy and misfortune, which is experienced by the other singular
62
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. characters: Antigone, Creon, Haemon, Ismene, and Eurydice. However, it is the
clashing of values in the conflict between Creon and Antigone that traditionally brings
people back to Antigone, and prompts political thinkers and theorists, in particular, to use
these characters to symbolize social and political movements.
63
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Antigone as a Social and Political Touchstone
For Aristotle (1961/1989), plot is the “soul of tragedy” (6.13) and there must be a
tragic act that inspires pity and fear in the audience (14.3). Thus, “those who employ
spectacular means to create a sense not of the terrible but only of the monstrous, are
strangers to the purpose of Tragedy” (14.2). For Aristotle, Haemon and Creon are not
tragic because they threaten a terrible act of killing without following through on the
threat: “But of all these ways, to be about to act knowing the persons, and then not to
act, is the worse. It is shocking without being tragic, for no disaster follows” (Aristotle,
14.7-8). Maybe this is one of the reasons why Aristotle preferred Sophocles' Oedipus
the King over Antigone (13.5). Although both plays have acted as a cultural touchstone
ever since, Oedipus particularly during the decades following Freud, the Antigone has
always tended to transcend space and time because of the political and social tensions
explored in the play regarding public versus private rights, the individual versus the
state, and the state versus the universal.
George Steiner (1984) points out that extant translations and adaptations of
Sophocles’ Antigone can be historically traced back at least to the 1530s. Since that
time, there has been a plethora of translations, adaptations, scholarly interest, as well as
dramatic interest in the play. It has been transformed into poetry, prose-poems, operas,
novels, dramatic adaptations, short stories, as well as musical scores, ballets, and
pieces of visual art all over the world. However, it is in the wake of the French
Revolution (1789-1799) and Friedrich Hegel’s (1807/1977) Phenomenology of Spirit, and
64
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. in the contexts of the modern construction of the state, that the Antigone again found a
particularly prominent place in art and thought (Steiner, p. 7). Further, since the
Antigone can be construed to challenge concepts of absolute rule, as well as supporting
images of the state, it is not surprising to find that it resonated during the French
Revolution when absolute rule of monarchy was being challenged by advocates of
representational government. As Steiner suggests, admirers of this play Included
“enthusiasts for the French Revolution,” as well as admirers of Kantian Idealism, who
were “equally determined to restore to the enlightened soul what Hblderlin called ‘that
golden age of truth and of beauty which was Greece,’” and, meanwhile, “Hegel,
Hblderlin, and Schlegel turned to identical imperatives and modes of radiance” (pp. 7-8).
These “identical imperatives and modes of radiance” could, for these thinkers, be found
in the Antigone. In Sophocles’ (2001) classic play, they saw a similar call for rationality
in the state—hailing Creon’s call to the universal claim of civic law over nature and family
(Sophocles, 2001, line 183). But if the state is the ethical end and is celebrated as the
pure ethical spirit materialized, as Hegel proclaimed, what then becomes of the
individual? This is the question that Hegel and later Kierkegaard (1843/1959) both
explored, by using the Antigone as their crucible—anticipating a persistent theme in
modernity, which will later be transformed in postmodernity as the state versus the
cosmopolitical.
Hegel's Antigone
Although Aristotle prefers Oedipus the King to Antigone. Hegel (1807/1977)
embraced Antigone as the greatest tragedy ever written and its title character as the
“ideal embodiment of a principle ‘recognizing its opposite in its own actuality’” (Woodruff,
2001a, p. 64). Like the Chorus’ choice of the word deinon, ambiguously conjoining the
wonderful and the terrible, Hegel’s Phanomenologie des Geistes can be translated either
65
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. as the Phenomenology of Mind or the Phenomenology of Spirit, for Geist (Geistes)
ambiguously suggests both the mind and the spirit. Hegel (1807/1977) was concerned,
as Steiner (1984) points out, with the tension between the private and the public, the
“relation between man as a ‘state-being’ ( staatlich) and as a ‘burgher’ or citizen-
bourgeois with essential familial, economic, and self-conservative motivation,” and with
how to unify these two domains (Steiner, p. 26). Thus an individual within a community
is divided between the binary frames of private (the family and the divine) and public (the
state and the laws of man). In their pure forms, these two realms can clash. For Hegel,
the true Spirit, the true ethical order, is consciousness, and action divides this
consciousness (Hegel, p. 266; 6.444-445) into the “actual substance,” the nation, and
the “actual consciousness,” the citizens of the nation (p. 267; 6.447). This division is
also seen between the family, who is the “inner Notion [of the ethical order],” and the
state or nation (p. 268; 6.450). Therefore, we have an opposing division between two
primary frames of law, the human and the divine: “It thus splits itself up into distinct
ethical substances, into a human and divine law” (p. 266; 6.444).
As individuals, we align ourselves, according to our own innate natures, with one
frame or the other. For Hegel (1807/1977), women are naturally aligned with the family
and the household gods, or divine laws, while men are more aligned with the public, or
human Laws (pp. 274-275; 6.457). However, neither gender can strictly ally itself with its
natural inclination because when we live in a community, we live within both realms.
Women may reside in the home, with the divine, but her family and home exist within a
larger community, the state. Likewise, men live at home with their family, and so they
cannot strictly align themselves to the consciousness of the state.15 The divine and the
15 For Hegel’s detailed account of the family, familial relations, the sacred/pure relationship between a brother and sister, the sacred role of burial, and a return to the ethical sphere, see chapter six, 449-476, of the Phenomenology. 66
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. human master frames reside together and sometimes, as we see in the Antigone, they
clash.
For Hegel (1807/1977), the finest representation of the pure ethical order, the
divine, is Antigone’s words regarding the unwritten laws which “weren’t made now/ Or
yesterday. They live for all time,/ And no one knows when they came into the light”
(Sophocles, 2001, lines 456-457). Antigone adheres to the pure divine ethical order
because she sides with the “unwritten laws” which are “valid unconditionally” (Hegel, p.
261; 5.436). However, at the moment she acts to fulfill these laws, she realizes and
acknowledges the contradiction between the divine and the human. But while her action
and realization bring forth her true essence of being, her strict natural alignment with the
divine; this process also ends up destroying the ethical order—both divine and human:
It learns through its own act the contradiction of those powers into which the
substance divided itself and their mutual downfall, as well as the contradiction
between its knowledge of the ethical character and its action, and what is in its
own proper nature ethical, and thus finds its own downfall, (p. 266; 6.445)
According to Hegel, who is using Holderlin’s (1804/2001) translation of Antigone
(Woodruff, 2001a, p. 64), Antigone is aware that her action of burying Polyneices goes
against the ethical order of man, the state, but she still “knowingly commits the crime”
(Hegel, p. 284; 6.470). Because Antigone is conscious of this conflict between the
divine and the human ethical order, and because she chooses to act only in accord with
the divine, she must, according to Hegel, acknowledge guilt: “Because we suffer we
acknowledge we have erred” (p. 284; 6.470). However, it is important to note, as
Woodruff points out, that Hegel’s conclusion relies on Holderiin’s translation of line 926-
928 in Antigone, where Antigone says: “But if this thing is lovely to the gods/ We suffer it
and beg forgiveness for/ How we have sinned” (Holderlin, p. 99). Holderlin’s translation
67
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. suggests that Antigone is willing to admit that she is guilty of violating the human ethical
order. Woodruff (2001a) does not agree with Holderlin’s translation of these lines and
instead translates them as: “If the gods really agree with this,/ Then suffering should
teach me to repent my sin" (Sophocles, 2001, lines 925-926). In Woodruffs translation,
there is not an admission of guilt (p. 65). However, as Woodruff points out, Hegel’s
argument hinges on an admission of guilt because without this acknowledgment, the
conflict between the divine and human ethical order cannot be resolved. Once,
however, guilt is acknowledged, Hegel (1807/1977) maintains that “there is no longer
any conflict between the ethical purpose and actuality; it signifies the return to an ethical
frame of mind, which knows that nothing counts but right” (p. 284; 6.471). Unfortunately,
the conflict resolution does not come without a price. Once the doer, Antigone in this
example, acknowledges the right of the opposing ethical order (man-made laws) to the
ethical order she fully aligned herself with (divine laws), she destroys herself because
her ethical substance (the divine) ceases to be her substance: “Instead of attaining
actuality it has become an unreality, a sentiment or disposition” (p. 284; 6.471). In the
case of Antigone, and the interests of the state, because Antigone’s act and strict
alignment with her divine substance destroys the ethical orders, she must also be
destroyed so that the state, the polis, can survive:
Human law in its universal existence is the community, in its activity in general is
the manhood of the community, in its real and effective activity is the
government. It is, moves, and maintains itself by consuming and absorbing into
itself the separatism of the Penates, or the separation into independent families
presided over by womankind, and by keeping them dissolved in the fluid
continuity of its own nature, (p. 287-288; 6.475)
68
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Woman, “the everlasting irony [in the life] of the community” according to Hegel, works to
turn the universal end of the government into a private end, and “transform its universal
activity into a work of some particular individual, and perverts the universal property of
the state into a possession and ornament for the Family” (p. 288; 6.475). This is what
Antigone, Hegel’s ideal manifestation of the ethical individual, does, and so this feminine
manifestation must be suppressed since the community “can only maintain itself by
suppressing this spirit of individualism” (p. 288; 6.475).16
In Hegel’s view, then, there can be no bridge between the pure human and the
pure divine ethical orders or master frames. Both frames, realized in their pure form
through action and individuation, will destroy the community, “the spirit’s highest form of
consciousness,” which must be upheld at all costs (Hegel, 1807/1977, p. 286; 6.473).
Thus when these two frames in their individualized realization meet, they must destroy
each other (p. 285; 6.472). And it is only when both sides have fallen that “absolute
right” can be accomplished, and that the “ethical substance as the negative power which
engulfs both sides, that is, omnipotent and righteous Destiny, steps on the scene” (p.
285; 6.472). So it is in Antigone that not only must Antigone die to save the community,
Creon must also be destroyed. As Steiner (1984) states: “Antigone and Creon must
both perish inasmuch as they have yielded their being to the necessary partialities of
action. It is in this exact sense that character, that individuation is destiny” (p. 35).
However, without a true frame-bridging method, this tragic either/or process of mutual
destruction is doomed to continue until an equilibrium can be found through a Hegelian
dialectic, “a historical advance through tragic pathos” (p. 36). Finally, it is interesting to
note that Hegel's community, this highest form of consciousness, must be led by a
16 For contemporary rebuttals to Hegel’s account of the feminine, see Judith Butler’s (1996/2002) Antigone’s Claim: Kinship between Life and Death, and Cecilia Sjdholm’s (2004) The Antigone Complex: Ethics and the Invention of Feminine Desire.
69
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result, there is no real Chorus, no community collective per se outside the Creonic
government, because the community as nation is really “itself an individuality, and
essentially is only such for itself by other individualities being for it, by excluding them
from itself and knowing itself to be independent of them” (p. 288; 6.475). Therefore,
there can be no collective-action frame development, which might allow us to bridge the
either/or Hegelian frames. Instead, Hegel leaves us with the image of the inevitably of
doomed individualization which opposes the community. Such inevitability cannot be
averted until a natural dialectic between the two resolves itself over a long and arduous
journey of conflict.
Kierkegaard's Either/Or
Hegel's (1807/1977) account of human history as read through this play has
ignited vast debates in philosophy and literature from his time to the present day.
Central to these debates are the reoccurring themes found in the Antigone of private
versus public, the individual versus the state, and “I” versus “we,” themes which Soren
Kierkegaard (1843/1959), who was influenced by the German Idealists and Hegel
(Steiner, 1984. p. 52), explores in Either/Or: The Ancient Tragical Motif as Reflected in
the Modern.17 One theme in particular is shared in Hegel and Kierkegaard’s
interpretation of the Antigone in relation to the larger tension between the state and the
individual: Historically, individualism is inevitable, yet the individual is doomed—doomed
to be destroyed for the sake of the community (Hegel), or doomed to simply suffer and
exist outside of and in spite of community (Kierkegaard).
In the Either/Or (1843/1959), Kierkegaard takes up this binary of “I” versus “we”
as he attempts to distinguish between the ancient Greek and the modern sense of
17 George Steiner (1984) notes a Hegelian influence on Kierkegaard’s Either/Or. However, he says it is not clear how familiar Kierkegaard was with Hegel’s work (p. 52). 70
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. tragedy. A fundamental difference between the ancient and modern sense of tragedy,
Kierkegaard rightly points out, is the modern insistence on individuality and self
reflection, which was not part of the ancient worldview (p. 144). Because of the modern
insistence of the centrality of the individual, the modern heroine will stand and fall on her
own, must be responsible only for her own self, and is, therefore, disconnected from her
community (p. 141). The ancient heroine experiences ambiguity insofar as her fate is
connected with community and spirituality in an epic environment of interconnectedness
(p. 141). Because of these differences in worldviews, the ancient heroine and audience
experienced deeper sorrow and had a greater ability to feel compassion (p. 147).
Conversely, the modern heroine and audience experience more pain, because of a lack
of aesthetic ambiguity, and they also lack the ability to feel true compassion (p. 145),
indeed they lack, one might suggest, a Chorus. Kierkegaard also points to the condition
of anxiety as being the modern ailment resulting from this insistence on individuality (p.
154). In the end, Kierkegaard attempts to bring Antigone into the modern world by
uniting both the ancient and the modern aspects of tragedy together in his new
fragmentary prose version of the play.
As Steiner (1984) observes, Kierkegaard’s (1843/1959) version of Antigone “knit
fundamental strands in [his] personal existence and discourse. Antigone is, for a time,
one of the inmost guises of his being” (Steiner, p. 52). Thus, when Kierkegaard
introduces his character Antigone, he seems to be introducing the many facets of
himself was well:
She [Antigone] is my creation, her thoughts are my thoughts, and yet it is as if I
had rested with her in a night of love, as if she had entrusted me with her deep
secret, breathed it and her soul out in my embrace, and as if in the same moment
she changed before me, vanished, so that her actuality could not be traced in the
71
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. mood that remained, instead of the converse being true, that my mood brought
her forth to a greater and greater actuality. (Kierkegaard, p. 151)
Kierkegaard’s modern Antigone has a secret which causes her great pain and anxiety,
namely her father’s past. And this is where the Greek Antigone and Kierkegaard’s
modern tragedy part ways. In this modern fragment, Oedipus has committed the crimes
of killing his father and marrying his mother. Like the Greek original, he had four
children with his mother. Unlike the Greek original, no one knows about Oedipus’
crimes, possibly not even Oedipus himself—he did not gouge his eyes out, nor was
Oedipus sent into exile, made apolis, but lived and died as a celebrated King. Somehow
while Antigone is still young, she finds out about her father’s crimes. She is the only one
who knows of them and this secret causes her anxiety, pride and pain. The anxiety is
decidedly modern, as a result of inner reflection rather than outward sorrow, but it is a
sorrow that is assimilated and internalized (p. 152). Yet her secret also affords her pride
because she has been selected “to be in a peculiar manner the saviour of the honor and
renown of the house of Oedipus” (p. 155). She is special and, “feels her own
importance” (p. 155).
The community, indeed the Chorus which is missing from Kierkegaard’s
fragment, plays no part in this equation except as a reminder that we moderns must
keep our pain internal and singular, as the “I” standing alone and outside. For this
modern Antigone does not wish for someone to understand or share her pain
(Kierkegaard, 1843/1959, p. 156). If she shares her pain with the community, she must
share her secret and to do this, she must betray her father, who may or may not know of
his crimes. But she cannot betray her beloved father and so his guilt becomes her guilt
(p. 159). Maybe, Kierkegaard suggests, Antigone could have shared this secret with her
father before he died and, thereby, shared the sorrow and pain. But Antigone did not do
72
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(p. 159).
Kierkegaard’s (1843/1959) modern tragedy escalates into a tragic collision at the
moment when Antigone falls in love and wishes to unite with another. But to unite would
mean to share herself, her sorrow, pain, and secret, with her intended:
Her dowry is unusual—it is her pain. She cannot belong to a man without this
dowry; she feels that would be very hazardous. To conceal it from such an
observer would be impossible, to wish to conceal it would be a betrayal of her
love. (p. 160)
This we know she cannot do. Yet she longs to be with her love. To continue to keep her
secret, she must also sacrifice her love, and this is the second tragic collision (p. 161).
Her lover wishes to convince her that they must be together. So one day he follows her
to Oedipus’ grave where she goes to find comfort for her pain. It is there that he
confronts Antigone, begging her to explain herself. Antigone finds her pain increased by
her love (p. 162), and this reality becomes unbearable. Her only way out, her sole path
to peace, is through death: “Only in the moment of death can she admit the intensity of
her love, admit that she belongs to him only in the moment that she does not belong to
him’’ (p. 162).
Thus Kierkegaard (1843/1959) leaves us with his modern fragmented tragedy
where as individuals we are domed to exist outside the collective. By focusing on the
character Antigone, barely addressing other characters and doing away with the Chorus,
Kierkegaard gives the impression of having resigned himself to a world where solitary
individualism reins supreme and disconnectedness from fellow members of the
community is, and will remain, the norm. That is, in modernity we exist mostly within the
master frame of individualism, and must nurture our anxiety outside of the collective, and
73
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. to share our anxiety, our pain and sorrow, is to spread our guilt and, one could infer, to
doom society itself just as it would have doomed Kierkegaard’s Oedipus: “But while her
father lived she had not been able to confide her sorrow in him, for she did not know
whether he knew about it, and consequently there was a possibility of plunging him also
into a similar pain” (p. 159). It can be suggested that Kierkegaard offers us the internal
journey of the modern tragic individual’s path towards Hegelian suppression of the
individual for the sake of the state. The individual’s guilt must not be spread to the rest
of society, and so, like his Antigone, our individual sufferings must be hidden from view:
And yet she dares not give way to her sorrow, dares not grieve; she feels how
much depends on her; she fears if anyone saw her suffering that people would
begin to ask questions, and so, on this side too, she knows not sorrow but pain,
(p. 159)
In the end, Either the individual must stop this guilt from spreading, Or society, as Hegel
(1807/1977) insists, in the name of self-preservation, must step in and forcibly stop the
spread of such pollution by destroying the individual. Finally, as in Hegel’s account,
there is no room for bridge-building, for Kierkegaard’s tragedy is the inevitable collision
between an individual and his or her pain. And since we have in modernity lost the
Chorus, our fate no longer being connected to the community or the spiritual, there can
be no collective action framing processes, because there is only the individual—or in
contemporary parlance, only a type of identity politics.
However, we know that this insistence that the individual-stands-alone (or, as in
the childhood song “The Farmer in the Dell,” the cheese-stands-alone) is not inevitable.
In times of great strife, the individual, with her or his identity politics, is often rallied by
the state to form a type of Chorus—a community composed and encouraged by a
particular identity—characterized as nationalism. This was seen in World War II and in
74
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Hitler’s plan for Germany. As Burke (1941/1973) states in “The Rhetoric of Hitler’s
‘Battle,” by using the image of place (Germany), along with the promise of manifest
destiny (the uniqueness of the German people), as well as the creation of a devil or
scapegoat (the Jewish people), Hitler was able to inspire what I call a choral identity of
Germanness which supported the state’s ambitions of world domination.18 Thus,
whether a choral formation is a force for good or a force for ill, it is, in the end, a force to
be reckoned with. And, I believe, nationalism creates a choral force. In relation to the
Antigone, the either/or frames of competing nationalisms have also been played out
utilizing the image of Creon versus Antigone, as was seen in Jean Anouilh’s
(1944/2000) adaptation of Antigone during the German occupation of France.
The Antigone as a Political Touchstone—The Theatre of Jean Anouilh
H. G. McIntyre (1981) states, in The Theatre of Jean Anouilh, that “each time the
myth is re-enacted, we are free to read it anew and differently, just as each age and
generation of mankind sees the world through fresh eyes and discovers the meaning of
life again for itself (p. 50). So it is that the Antigone has been re-enacted and
reimagined by politically minded artists as a form of protest: Jean Anouilh’s (1944/2000)
adaptation of Antigone has been seen as both supporting the German occupation of
France in World War II, as well as supporting the French resistance effort. Bertolt
Brecht's (1984) Antigone was first performed in 1948, in Switzerland and in Germany,
and challenged the earlier German population’s complacency in the face of Nazi terror.
Likewise, Griselda Gambaro’s (1989/1992) adaptation Antigona Furiosa was written
right after the trial of the Dirty War commanders in Argentina and “deals with passivity in
the face of repression, popular compliance with terror” (Feitlowitz, 1992, p. 9). Athol
Fugard’s (1974) play The Island is actually based on a true story from the author’s life:
18 Burke’s (1941/1973) essay can be found in his larger work, Philosophy of Literary Form. 3rd Ed., revised. Berkeley: University of California Press, (1941) 1973. Pp. 191-220. 75
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. The actor Norman Ntshinga, hired for a production of Antigone that Fugard was directing
in the 1960s, was arrested and eventually charged with being a member of the African
National Congress (then an illegal group). The play details the ten years that Ntshinga
spent imprisoned on Robben Island and how he rehearsed Antigone with his chain mate.
There is also Seamus Heaney's (2004) Burial at Thebes, which tailors Antigone to
promote the Irish cause against the British. What these selected authors and their
versions of Antigone all have in common is that they use the play and the image of
Antigone to represent resistance against what is considered oppressive rule. However,
in my opinion, Anouilh’s Antigone is the clearest case study for how the characters of
Creon and Antigone, as well as their ideographic argument frames, can be used
simultaneously by both sides of a conflict and, thus, how they are not suitable symbols
for an inclusive political project, such as a progressive cosmopolitical democracy.
Anouilh’s (1944/2000) adaptation was performed in German-occupied Paris
during World War II. Douglas Alden (1947), Leo Forkey (1949), and Ted Freeman
(2000) all point to the controversy surrounding Anouilh’s adaptation, as both the French
resistance and the German occupation authorities claimed this production as an
endorsement of their respective causes (p. xlvii). Forkey points out that the classical
Greek characters and mythological themes offered a way around German censorship (p.
303), and Freeman explains how French theatrical and “cultural activity had been
encouraged throughout the war, no doubt for propaganda reasons, by the Germans and
the collaborators” (p. xlvi). In his description, Freeman seems to suggest that Anouilh
was in fact a German collaborator and not a French resistant. However, such an
accusation is assumptive at best. What can be said is that Anouilh’s insistence on his
privacy fueled the fire; and, in a sense, his silence on the subject has allowed both the
resistors and the collaborators to claim him. Thus, unlike the Greek characters Antigone
76
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. and Creon, Anouilh’s intentions become ambiguous. In any case, his Antigone escaped
German censorship to become a call to both the French resistance as well as the
German occupation:
The play had been authorized for performance without difficulty shortly after its
completion in 1942, and the German bureau of censorship had no second
thoughts during the play’s long run of some five hundred performances. The
reason is not difficult to find: the Germans and their eager French collaborators
also had ways of interpreting Antigone’s defiance, and they were actually quite
pleased with the play. (p. xivii)
Identifying with the character Creon, the Germans saw Anouilh’s new compassionate
Creon, this just and kind ruler, as being the real hero of the play, a “slave to his duty who
sacrifices everything that is dear to him for the sake of his country” (Charles Mere19 as
cited in Freeman, p. xlvii). Critical to the German’s attraction to this Creon was Anouilh’s
rendering of him. No longer the intransigent Creon of Sophocles, placing family and
friends over the fatherland, Anouilh’s Creon is transformed into a kind and understanding
ruler who had no choice but to rule for the sake of the nation, family and friends. He is
an ordinary man seeking justice: “What Thebes needs now is an ordinary king with no
fuss” (Anouilh, p. 33). Furthermore, Freeman suggests, Anouilh’s Creon was seen by
German collaborators as being representative of Marshal Petain, the 84-year old former
French World War I hero who assumed the role of Chief of State at Vichy in central
France, ruling the part of France that was not under German control, as a dictator and
Nazi puppet:
19 Freeman explains that Charles Mere (1883-1970) was a French playwright writing for the magazine Auiourd’hui. Freemen also suggests that he was a colleague of Alain Laubreaux who was “a leading reviewer inJe suis partout [a fascist journal] and a notorious collaborator” to the Germans in France (p. xlvii). Both felt that this Antigone was chaotic (Laubreaux) and a “degenerate, unintelligent madwoman whose revolt produces only anarchy, disaster and death” (Mere as cited in Freeman, p. xlvii).
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Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Just as Anouilh’s Creon had not wanted to become King of Thebes and would
have preferred to be left in peace with his books, Petain, it was argued, had
come out of a well-earned retirement to save France from chaos; collaboration
was just a sad necessity, a way of sparing France from a worse fate if the
Germans were provoked. (Freeman, pp. xlvii-xlviii)
One can understand the attraction that the Germans and the supporters of Marshal
Petain felt for Anouilh’s Creon. He is, above all, a gentle and just ruler wishing only to
heal the state after a failed revolution (Anouilh, p. 37). He is also a man who did not
seek power, but found it thrust upon him: “One morning I woke up King of Thebes.
Though heaven knows there were things in life I loved better than power” (p. 38).
Further, Creon knows that he has been cast as the villain (p. 41), even though he strives
to do what is best for the community.
Like Sophocles’ original, Anouilh’s Antigone is caught, after burying Polyneices
for a second time, and brought to Creon in handcuffs. However, unlike the original,
Creon does not wish to kill Antigone:
Have you put to death! You can’t have looked at yourself in the glass, you little
sparrow! You’re too thin. You want to fatten yourself up a bit and give Haemon
a nice sturdy son! You’d do Thebes more good that way than by dying, believe
me. (Anouilh, 1944/2000, pp. 33-34)
This pragmatic man, whose only interest is to see the world “a bit more sensibly run” (p.
33), is willing to sit, listen and reason with Antigone instead of putting her to death. After
all, he loves her like a father (p. 34). He tries to understand Antigone’s motives: Does
she really believe in these silly religious rites? No, Antigone replies. Is she is trying to
set the people against Creon? Again, no. Why then, and for whom, is she willing to
forfeit her life, Creon asks: “No one. Myself,” is her reply (p. 35). She is then, Creon
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Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. suggests, just like her father Oedipus (p. 33). A man who leaned towards passion and
pathos, rather than reason, logos. But Creon is not this type of ruler. Given the chance,
he would not have sought out his lineage as Oedipus did, succumbing to his own woes
over one’s duty to the state (p. 33). On the contrary, one must be about the job of living
(p. 40), and as a ruler, saving the ship from drowning:
For God’s sake! Try to understand for a minute, you little fool! I’ve tried hard
enough to understand you! Someone has to say yes. Someone has to steer the
ship. It’s letting in water on all sides. It’s full of crime and stupidity and suffering.
The rudder’s adrift. The crew won’t obey orders - all they’re interested in is
looting the cargo, (pp. 39-40)
On the other side of the question, many in the audience saw Anouilh’s
(1944/2000) Antigone as representing the French resistance, and “this was a plausible
interpretation of Antigone’s stubborn defiance and self-sacrifice. It might seem a matter
for congratulations then that Anouilh, like Sartre before him, had appeared to pull the
wool over the eyes of the German Censor” (Freeman, 2000, p. xlvii). In this light,
Anouilh’s Antigone, both the play and the character, becomes a space for “passive
resistance” to German oppression (Alden, 1947, p. 270). Like the French resistance,
Antigone is standing up to a man, and a nation, who wears only a false cloak of justice
and reason. Here is a man who would force Antigone to surrender to live a life and a lie
of happiness: “Life is probably nothing other than happiness” (Anouilh, p. 45). But,
Antigone, with those in the French resistance, asks at what cost this happiness will
come:
And what will my happiness be like? What kind of a happy woman will Antigone
grow into? What base things will she have to do, day after day, in order to
snatch her own little scrap of happiness? Tell me—who will she have to lie to?
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Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Smile at? Sell herself to? Who will she have to avert her eyes from, and leave to
die? (p. 46)
For the French resistance, to live under German rule is to live a lie. And there is no real
happiness to be found there. As for Marshal Petain, he could have said no to power:
“You’re loathsome . . . you should have said no!” (Anouilh, 1944/2000, p. 38). In the
end, in this reading, just as Antigone says no to Creon’s version of happiness, so too the
French resistance must say no to German occupation: “You can’t save me, and you
can’t force me to do what you want” (p. 36). And if this Antigone must die, she will die as
a martyr, uniting the French against German occupation and rule.
Because saying no to German occupation was a risky business that needed to
be done carefully, Anouilh’s choice of the Antigone was brilliant. As Klemes von
Klemperer (1992) points out while examining historic instances of solitary German
resistance within Germany during World War II, in “What is the Law That Lies behind
These Words?,” Anouilh’s Antigone, the character, best represents the solitary example
of resistance in situations where totalitarian rule is absolute. Indeed, outward, physical,
resistance would have been impossible in an environment where death camps, the
Gestapo, and extermination of the “other" were everyday realities. There is, in the end,
a need for passive resistance.
Yet by choosing to identify with the individual characters Antigone or Creon, by
ignoring the collective, the Chorus, proponents for each cause, the German
collaborators and the French resistance, placed themselves in an ambiguous space
where Anouilh’s adaptation of Antigone could stand for no one, for some, or for
everyone. Anouilh seems to have left us once again in an either/or space where, like
Hegel’s (1807/1977) Antigone, there can be no bridge between the two polar arguments.
We have two choices—Antigone or Creon. But where is our Chorus, the entity that
80
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. teaches us to question these choices? Although Anouilh maintains a type of Chorus, a
single actor who is little more than a narrator, this Chorus is firmly embedded in the
Ismene syndrome, resigned to allow a preordained scene move him. Indeed, as the
Chorus tells us, all of the characters are resigned to Ismenism. This resignation is best
seen through how the Chorus describes Antigone, while she is thinking about dying at
the beginning of the play: “But there’s nothing to be done. Her name is Antigone, and
she’s going to have to play her part right through to the end” (Anouilh, 1944/2000, p. 3).
From the first lines in this adaptation, the audience knows there is no hope.
There are two levels to my reading here: First, the audience is reminded that
they are watching a play, a prewritten piece of fiction which the actors must play out (as
written) and the audience must, passively, watch. Second, there is the insistence of
predestination that suggests our hands are tied in this and in life. Like Antigone, who, it
is suggested, is doomed because of her identity, we in the audience must also play out
the roles written for us. There is no hope for action here and, importantly, we are faced
with an extreme case of Ismenism which resembles what Burke (1945/1969) calls “sheer
motion” rather than “action-minus” (pp. 236-237). Like Eurydice, who the Chorus tells us
will “go on knitting right through the tragedy, until it’s her turn to stand up and die”
(Anouilh, pp. 4-5), we must allow a scene to determine our actions until our preordained
roles are played out, our usefulness is expired, and our death awaits. However, at the
very end of Anouilh’s Antigone we are confronted with an ambiguous glimmer of hope—
a suggestion by the Chorus that the tragic events in Antigone might have been avoided if
it were not for our tendency toward resignation, indifference, and silence. The Chorus
says:
So. Antigone was right - it would have been nice and peaceful for us all without
her. But now it’s over. It’s nice and peaceful anyway. Everyone who had to die
81
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. is dead: those who believed in one thing, those who believed in the opposite . . .
even those who didn’t believe in anything, but were caught up in the story without
knowing what was going on. All dead: quite stiff, quite useless, quite rotten. . . .
It’s over. Antigone’s quiet now . . . A great, sad peace descends on Thebes, and
on the empty place where Creon will begin to wait for death. Only the guards are
left. All that has happened is a matter of indifference to them. None of their
business. They go on with their game of cards." (emphasis added, pp. 60-61)
Yet this call is ambiguous at best, since these final words leave a lot of room for
interpretation. We are also struck by the fact that Anouilh’s Chorus is played by a single
actor, not a collective but a single narrator who does not provide for the audience any
distance in order to reflect, any comic or incongruous discourse which might have
challenged the tragic master frame, prompting the audience to think about an alternative
to the either/or insistence that promotes Ismenism. Instead, he leads us tonelessly
through the tragedy like Charon leading the dead across the Acheron—provided that,
unlike Polyneices, we show up with our coin, our fare for the ride.
Antigone and the Terrorist Events of September 11. 2001
Although Antigone as a vehicle for social and political protest has never gone out
of style, there are some moments in history that urge us back to this play—asking us to
consider, once again, those tensions between private versus public, the individual
versus the state, and even the danger of silence as demonstrated by Eurydice and
warned against by the Chorus (Sophocles, 2001, lines 1251-1252). The terrorist events
of September 11, 2001, and President G.W. Bush’s handling of these events, called the
Antigone back into to service as a way to protest, support, and make sense of these
public events and their aftermath.
82
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. In June of 2003, Conall Morrison's version of Antigone was performed in the
Town Hall Theatre in Galway, Ireland. Inspired by the war in Iraq, Morrison sets his
production in the Middle East with Antigone as a suicide bomber defying her uncle
Creon (Payiatakis, 2005, para. 12). When asked by a reporter from the Galway Adviser
why he had chosen Antigone as his forum to explore the situation in the Middle East,
Morrison stated:
The play is an invitation to think and think again even if such a process may
seem tedious and futile. It is the adherence to dogmatic positions that is the most
personally and politically lethal. The phrase ‘you are either with us or against us’
could yet kill us all! (para. 8).
In February of 2005, on their Web site, the Embassy of Greece posted a letter written by
Spyros Payiatakis (2005), Vice President of the State Theater of Northern Greece, who
compares America and President G.W. Bush to Creon, the American people to
Antigone, and the Greek people to Ismene. Reflecting on how the Greeks feel left out of
the international process because they are a non-permanent member of the U.N.
Security Council, Payiatakis compared Greece to Ismene:
Greece [has] no direct say in the talks between [the] US and the E.U., with
France and Germany at its center. . . Along with Antigone’s sister Ismene, we
Greeks have to argue with square humanistic logic: ‘We are in the grip of those
stronger than ourselves, and must obey them in this and in things still more
cruel.’ (para. 19-27).
The image of Antigone is also evoked in the defiant anti-war efforts of Cindy Sheehan:
When the Common Dreams News Center, a progressive internet news source,20
recently featured an article by Jan Hartman (2005), “Cindy Sheehan: American
20 See the Common Dreams Web site at:
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Antigone.” Comparing Sheehan’s vigil outside G.W. Bush’s Crawford ranch to
Antigone’s vigil “at the gates of King Creon's Ancient Thebes” (para. 1), saying,
“Antigone started an inexorable process of natural justice. It may well be that Cindy
Sheehan—equally outspoken—is doing the same” (para. 15).
Surely unknown to each other, people in the above examples all equate
President G.W. Bush to Creon—not Anouilh’s sympathetic Creon, but Sophocles’ rigid
Creon. It is also in such terms that Diane Christian (2005), in “The Politics of Death,"
sees Bush’s actions in response to the Florida medical case of Terry Schiavo and the
question of whether she, who had been declared brain-dead, should be taken off life
support. Christian writes:
When people discuss Antigone’s courage they usually frame her conflict as
family versus government allegiance. But Sophocles’ play really [reflects a]
sharper conflict. Does political might make right, does it justify the death penalty,
can the commander-in-chief do anything with impunity? (para. 3)
Still, G.W. Bush is not always depicted as villainous Creon, but occasionally as a hero
more in the mold of Antigone. In Joseph Skelly’s (17 March, 2006) article the “Irish
Antigone,” published in the National Review Online. Skelly uses the Antigone as a frame
for his story recounting the killing of Joseph Rafferty by the Irish Republican Army (IRA).
After summarizing the plot of Antigone. Skelly writes: “Today, the central moral tension
of Sophocles’ drama is being played out again, not in Greece, but in Ireland, where a
sister is seeking justice for her deceased brother in the face of recalcitrant forces of evil”
(para. 2). Antigone’s image is also brought up in relation to G.W. Bush when Skelly asks
us to “contrast IRA/Sinn Fein’s callous disregard for human life and the rule of law with
the ethical and moral stance of the Bush Administration” (para. 7). At the Whitehouse,
President G.W. Bush agreed to meet with the sister, Ester Rafferty, on Saint Patrick’s
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Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Day, thus revealing his “moral depth.” Whereas the IRA destroys, Skelly insists, Bush
protects the individual:
[He] grasps how one of the fundamental lessons of Sophocles’ Antigone applies
to this case: in a democracy the purpose of the state is to safeguard the dignity of
each and every individual. . . Kreon incorrectly believed that the reverse was
true: the individual must bend to an autocratic state. In our time, international
terrorists, whether in Ireland, the Middle East, or Asia, embrace a modern,
distorted version of the same: the individual must submit to the ideologies and
organizations of terror, (para. 8)
Skelly’s conclusions here present us with an interesting dilemma because he offers a
Hegelian vision where the state, that ethical substance actualized, exists to safeguard
individual citizens. However, the state still demands, even if it is a democratic state, a
Hegelian suppression of the individual for the sake of the state. Terrorism may threaten
the individual, but it also threatens the state, and in order for the state to protect the
individual, that individual must “bend” to the state. Thus, we are still left with a Creonic
frame where in order for the individual to be protected by the state, that individual must
bend to that state’s rules. Here the Creonic frame is not erased, as Skelly suggests, but
simply disguised to resemble an Antigonal stance.
At the core of all these examples and many others is the concept of conflict and
how we can overcome conflicting interests, whether they are those of public or private,
war or peace, man or woman, old or young, and endless other binaries. After a 2005
production of Antigone that Spyros Payiatakis attended at the Department of Performing
Arts of the American University in Washington, D.C., participants were asked to stay for
a post-performance discussion. At the discussion, a professor of theatre history,
Franklin J. Hildy, stated:
85
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Greek playwrights saw themselves as the agents of change. But the kind of
change you think is being suggested by this play may depend on whether you
view ‘Antigone’ as the tragedy of the title character, or the tragedy of Creon.
(Hildy as cited in Payiatakis, para. 13).
Hildy offers a fairly typical response to Antigone: Either we support and mourn for Creon
or we support and mourn for Antigone. As George Steiner (1984) has shown, this
either/or binary has a long lineage in Western intellectual and dramatic history, and
offers no room for change, no room for hope or for potential. If we take this view, and
support either Antigone or Creon, we take the side of absolute tragedy, where there are
no winners, not even the innocent bystanders of Thebes, the US, Iraq, or any other
place, country, or indeed relationship. This tragic view of either/or does not affect only
the players in any specific conflict, but it also affects those people who never knew or
cared about the conflict, because it always affects the community at large. In such
conventional usage, by evoking Antigone and the discourse used by Antigone and
Creon, we evoke the continuing tragic frame of no winners. The war continues, and
players die until the Chorus, almost always ignored in life as in later adaptations of
Antigone, is the only one left standing. Thus I must respectfully disagree with Hildy:
Yes, the ancient Greek playwrights saw themselves as agents of change, as Nussbaum
(1986/2001) has shown, but the change suggested is not represented by either Creon or
Antigone, rather the play is a warning against both such binary positions - these two
unmovable sides of a conflict are themselves the obstacle.
Further, this either/or frame offers no room for a democratic cosmopolitanism
since it works to exclude voices from the process of collective deliberation, in the same
way, as Payiatakis (2005) suggests, that Greece is being left out of deliberations within
the U.N Security Council. We will all become Ismenes—silenced and resigned, being
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Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. left to play cards, as the guards do in Anouilh’s (1944/2000) Antigone, while decisions
are being made for us. The threat of Ismenism, however, has not stopped proponents
for and against a cosmopolitical project from using the Antigone in the familiar, polarizing
way, urging us toward either/or argument frames. In support of a neoliberal form of
cosmopolitanism, Tom G. Palmer (2003) of the Cato Institute, in “Globalization,
Cosmopolitanism, and Personal Identity,” demonstrates that the call for universal laws is
not a new idea by evoking the Antigone/Creon dynamic (p. 4). On the other side, in
opposition to cosmopolitanism, there is Patrick J. Deneen (2000) of Princeton University
and his essay, “Against Cosmopolitanism: Resisting the Siren’s Song.” Antigone is not
his central figure (that honor goes to Odysseus) but Deneen too recalls her image and
story when he examines the choral “Ode to Man” in Antigone, and stresses its last line
pertaining to the inevitability of man’s death. We must, Deneen insists, like Odysseus,
reject Calypso’s offer of immortality and accept, as we accept the inevitability of death,
“a whole range . . . of limitations,” including the limitations of cosmopolitanism (p. 35).
However, mere nationalism at the expense of cosmopolitanism is not inevitable.
As Kwame Anthony Appiah (2006) suggests, in Cosmopolitanism: Ethics in a World of
Strangers, we are now living in a world interconnected by economics and information,
where we are dependent globally for our everyday livelihood. We can no longer resign
ourselves to not thinking about the other—that person halfway across the world, who,
incidentally, might be responsible for growing the food on our table and creating the
items that fill our home. The concept of morality actually suggests that “each person you
know about and can affect is someone to whom you have responsibility” (p. xiii). As our
livelihood now depends on the “global tribe we have become” (p. xiii), it is time to walk
away from our isolated card game and, as Burke (1941/1973) would say, put our cards
face up on the table (p. 182). We can avoid the Ismene syndrome, allowing
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Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. governments to carry out policies in our name (Appiah, p. xiii), by forming a progressive,
democratic, cosmopolitical Chorus that has action on its agenda. In choosing
cosmopolitanism, however, we must be careful because we can easily fall into the
either/or trap that keeps us in that doomed tragic space of polar frames. To avoid this
trap, it is helpful to understand the history of cosmopolitanism, and its relation to both
Antigonal and Creonic frames, as well as to an imposed Ismenism.
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Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Cosmopolitanism and Nationalism
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Episode Two
Historicizing Cosmopolitanism
It seems predictable and even natural that the Antigone should be used in
either/or fashion to promote both cosmopolitanism and its opposite, nationalism. It is
almost as if the parts were cast long ago in the image of Creon championing the state
and Antigone the cosmopolitical. Some might argue that placing Antigone in the role of
championing the cosmos is an error or an overstatement. However, she does call for us
to recognize and pledge our allegiance to the universal unwritten laws that govern
everyone—from Greece to Africa, to the Middle East and even presumably to those
living in the US. But the critics who doubt this assumption would, in the end, be correct
insofar as championing an ambiguous universal is not promoting the cosmopolitical.
They are two very different concepts, even though they are often seen as
interchangeable.
To aid in distinguishing between universalism and cosmopolitanism, it is helpful
to keep Kwame Anthony Appiah’s (2006) slogan, in Cosmopolitanism: Ethics in a World
of Strangers, in mind: Cosmopolitanism is universality plus difference (p. 151). Using
this formula, there is little doubt that Antigone stands for universality, a concept opposed
to the Creonic call for nation-state supremacy. Thus, Hegel (1807/1977) gravitated
toward the Antigone while searching for a unified, universal theory of history. Is there
any character then, in the Antigone, who entails the cosmopolitical, this universality plus
difference? In my estimation that is the nature and function of the Chorus—the
community who recognizes that there are some universal values, such as the concept of
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involved in the real, everyday contexts of these values. As Nussbaum (1986/2001)
observes, in “The Antigone: Conflict, Vision and Simplification,” the Chorus realizes that
insistence upon universality without difference is an invitation for tragedy: “Where Hegel
sees the hope of a harmony, they see, then, only the terrible power of unconstrained
contingency. If you attempt to yoke it you violate and are yoked; if you acknowledge it
you melt away" (p. 78). Thus, cosmopolitical democracy and the figure of the Chorus
provide the bridge that will transcend the polar argument between nationalism and
universalism. However, as will be discussed in Episode Three, this cosmopolitical
bridge must not be viewed as an exact, firm structure, but as one in which the process of
continual choral translation of how universal values are interpreted into the particularities
of law, and agreement is championed. We must focus on the process, rather than on a
simple, perfected end product, an absolute Truth with a capital “T.” Nevertheless, it is
difficult to champion a democratic cosmopolitical bridge because cosmopolitanism, in
general, is a contested term and an ideal that has been reenvisioned throughout history.
Loosely defined, it suggests that we belong to the world rather than a local space, but
even this definition has been reworked over time. In order to understand how a
cosmopolitical democracy can function today, it is vital to understand the traditions
associated with cosmopolitanism historically, as well as how this articulation both
inspires and discourages a modern program in a cosmopolitical democracy.
The Ancient Greek and Roman Roots of Cosmopolitanism
As might be expected, like the Antigone, cosmopolitanism finds its roots in
ancient Greek culture and thought, and can be understood culturally, politically and
economically. The etymology of the word entails two Greek root words: Kdofjog (kosmo)
meaning world, and noAig (polis) meaning city. Traditionally the concept of “citizen of
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241), also known as Diogenes of Sinope (c. 412-323 B.C.E). A contemporary of
Socrates and Plato, Diogenes was said to have held disdain for Plato (pp. 225-226) and
for civilization in general, preferring a back-to-nature philosophy: “Diogenes stood to
Socrates in somewhat the same relation as Rousseau to Voltaire: he thought that
civilization was a mistake, and that Prometheus had deserved his crucifixion for bringing
it to mankind” (Durant, 1939/1966, 509). If the best society was one without “artifices or
[man-made] laws” (p. 509), then one should reject the concept of nation-state, preferring
nature and the cosmos. Our first allegiance is not to the state, but to a world of humans.
In this sense, Diogenes’ philosophy was in direct contrast to that of Plato and Socrates,
who highly valued the nation-state and citizens’ responsibility towards the nation-state.
This esteem for the nation state is particularly seen in Plato’s (2006) Crito. In this
dialogue, Crito is trying to convince Socrates to flee Athens in order to escape the
sentence of death, placed on his head for allegedly corrupting the youth and
disrespecting the gods. Socrates refuses to leave—and, in order to explain his
reasoning, fashions a Creonic image of the State, as an imaginary individual, to prove
his point. First the State asks Socrates if he thinks that the State could survive if
individuals disregarded its laws (p. 392a; 50.b). Next, the State insists that even if
Socrates believes the sentence against him is unjust, he made an agreement with the
State to uphold all its laws when he agreed to live within the State. Further, the State
brought Socrates into existence and without the State, Socrates would not exist:
Did we not bring you into existence? . . . since you were brought into the world
and nurtured and educated by us, can you deny in the first place that you are our
child and slave, as your fathers were before you. (p. 392a; 50.d-e)?
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that the State was unjust, but Socrates did not make this choice and so must abide by
the laws whether he deem them just or not (p. 392b; 51.d-e). Accordingly, an agreement
is made between the State and a citizen, giving the State the right to destroy the citizen,
if necessary; however, the citizen does not have the right to destroy the State:
Has a philosopher like you failed to discover that our country is more to be
valued and higher and holier far than mother or father or any ancestor, and more
to be regarded in the eyes of the gods and men of understanding? (p. 392a;
51.a-b)
If Socrates were to flee Athens, as Crito insists, he would be in exile or apolis, a
condition associated with shame and dread in ancient Greece. Further, he would be
shunning justice.
This contrast between Diogenes’ declaration of kosmopolites, and
Socrates/Plato’s emphasis on the State and national citizenship demonstrates a tension
in social/political worldviews. The polis, however, could not survive without an
economic infrastructure that included trade and commerce. Thus a form of economic
cosmopolitanism, what will later be termed globalization, existed in Ancient Greece as
well. Tom Palmer (2003) suggests, in “Globalization, Cosmopolitanism and Personal
Identity,” that fundamental to the Greek world of the fifth century’s cosmo-polis was trade
(p. 3) and, citing Book Nine of Homer’s Odvssev, Palmer links Greek civilization with
commercial trade: “For the Cyclops have no ships with crimson prows, no shipwright
there to build them good trim craft that could sail them out of foreign ports of call as most
men risk the seas to trade with other men” (Homer as quoted in Palmer, p. 3). Trade
was seen as an essential part of civilization and “those who refused or failed to engage
in trade were portrayed as savages” (Palmer, p. 3). Since Palmer is promoting and
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deregulating markets with a so-called natural evolution of globalization (p. 1), it is not
surprising that he frames the idea of cosmopolitanism tightly with trade and economy, on
a Homeric Greek precedent, as basis for the contemporary beginnings of such a project.
In any case, active trade routes worked to spread cosmopolitan culture by allowing
distant cultures to meet, intermingle, trade and influence each other. The process of
empire building, ancient colonialism, and war also influenced the cultures it touched,
spreading not only destruction but culture and philosophy including a Stoic insistence on
cosmopolitan values. As Appiah (2006) points out, the Stoics start to refine the
cosmopolitan “creed" in the beginning of the third century B.C.E. (p. xiv). Stoicism,
which was influenced by teachings of the Cynics and originated with the philosopher
Zeno of Citium, emphasized the idea that humanity was a part of nature, and goodness
could be found by cooperating with nature or “the Law of the World”: “There is no
contradiction between the good of the individual and the good of the cosmos, for the law
of well-being in the individual is identical with the law of Nature” (Durant, 1939/1966;
654). This Stoic belief might explain why Chrysippus the Stoic did not dedicate any of
his reported seven hundred books to a sovereign, an act that was deemed arrogant by
the later Roman historian Laertius (Laertius, 1895, p. 330). It was, in any case, the
beginning of a concept that would be further defined by Roman Stoics such as Seneca,
Plutarch, and Marcus Aurelius.
In Martha Nussbaum’s (1996/2002) influential and controversial essay
“Patriotism and Cosmopolitanism,” she states that the Stoics believed humans lived in
two communities: The local and the cosmo or universal. This latter community, to
Seneca, is “truly great and truly common, in which we look neither to this corner nor to
that, but measure the boundaries of our nation by the sun” (Seneca as cited in
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should regard all human beings as our fellow citizens and neighbors” (Plutarch as cited
in Nussbaum, p. 7). However, this does not mean that the Stoics rejected the concept of
the local, recognizing only the universal. As Nussbaum adds while drawing on the Stoic
philosopher Hierocles ( l st-2nd B.C.E), the Stoics’ suggested that we view ourselves
within a series of concentric circles:
The first one encircles the self, the next takes in the immediate family, then
follows the extended family, then, in order, neighbors or local groups, fellow city-
dwellers, and fellow countrymen. . . Our task as citizens of the world will be to
‘draw the circles somehow toward the center’ making all human beings more like
our fellow city-dwellers, and so on. (p. 9)
However, Hierocles’ formulation, as presented by Nussbaum, suggests a kind of
pseudo-cosmopolitanism where the plurality of the world’s cultures are transformed to
resemble the “local” or “making all human beings more like our fellow city-dwellers”
(Nussbaum, p. 9). This “local universalism,” or what I will call a pseudo-Antigonal frame,
suggests that a certain local society (its culture, economics, ideals and so on) should be
viewed as universally good, therefore, good for the world over. Here, a Creonic frame
and its corresponding national interests are projected as universal interests and,
therefore, as being cosmopolitical. This pseudo-Antigonal frame as projected
cosmopolitanism can be seen in the Roman Empire and in Marcus Aurelius.
As a Stoic philosopher and emperor, Marcus Aurelius (161-180 CE) strove to
create a cosmopolitical space where different localities and cultures could exist and unify
under the singularity of the Empire. In his famous Meditations (1964/2005), Marcus
Aurelius reflects on this process which, he noticed, reflected the nature of language
itself:
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same part to play as the bodily limbs in an organism that is unity. . . This
reflection will impress you more forcibly if you constantly teil yourself, ‘I am a
‘limb’ (melos) of the whole complex of rational things.’ If you think of yourself as a
‘part’ (meros) only, you have as yet no love from the heart for mankind . . . (7:13)
As Nussbaum (1996/2002) reminds us, Marcus Aurelius was faced with the task of
assimilating various civilizations into the Roman Empire and needed to remember that
each part was a limb that the whole depended upon (p. 10). This not to say, of course,
that the Roman Empire with Marcus Aurelius at its head succeeded in creating a just
cosmopolitical or cosmopolitan space, since many people including slaves, women, and
men who could not afford to buy their freedom or citizenship, were excluded from
citizenship and the rights that are granted therein. This is one reason Sissela Bok
(1996/2002), in “From Part to Whole,” questions Marcus Aurelius’ cosmopolitan virtues
(p. 40).21 Not only were such values offered for a small and select portion of the
population, but the Empire promoted cosmopolitanism through the narrow frame of
Roman “universal” values. Furthermore, groups such as the rising Christian sect were
rigorously suppressed and excluded by Marcus Aurelius’ Rome. It is thus ironic that
early Christianity was influenced not only by Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations, but also by
the Stoic sense of cosmopolitanism (Appiah, 2006, p. xiv). However, in the Catholic
Church’s effort to create a new Christian cosmopolitanism, the cosmopolitan ideal of
universality plus difference was transformed into a pseudo-Antigonal frame where
universalism could be defined only though specific Christian values and beliefs, and
21 Bok is correct in her observation, and it is difficult to reconcile the need to purchase Roman citizenship with Marcus Aurelius' (1964/2005) view of cosmopolitan citizenship: “O Man, citizenship of this great world-city has been yours . . . whatever the law of that city decrees is fair to one and all alike” (12:26). 95
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frame.
From Cosmopolitanism to Universalism
The Stoic creed of cosmopolitanism found its place in the emerging
consciousness of Christianity and there it was transformed into a singular truth as
founded on an event: the resurrection of Jesus Christ. As Alian Badiou (2003) argues
beautifully in Saint Paul: The Foundation of Universalism, Saint Paul’s aim was to create
a universal Christian truth, a singularity, which transcended the material particulars of
nationalism (Roman Empire), law (the rule-of-law), and cultural discourse (Greek and
Jewish). For Paul, this universal truth is only found in Jesus’ resurrection:
The pure event is reducible to this: Jesus died on the cross and resurrected. The
event is ‘grace’ ( kharis). Thus, it is neither a bequest, nor a tradition, nor a
teaching. It is supernumerary relative to all this and presents itself as pure
givenness. (p. 63)
This event creates not only a universal truth, but a truth procedure formed through four
main positions. First, no “Christian subject” or discourse existed before the resurrection.
Therefore, the Christian subject cannot be constructed solely through Greek, Roman, or
Jewish discourses (Badiou, p. 14). Second, truth is subjective and “it is the order of a
declaration that testifies to a conviction relative to the event” (p. 14). Therefore,
Christian truth cannot be realized under a rule-of-law, and it must be kept from becoming
a particularity under law (pp. 14-15). Third, because truth is a process, there must be a
“fidelity to the declaration,” which requires three concepts: Faith/conviction, charity/love,
and hope/certainty (p. 15). Finally, “a truth is of itself indifferent to the state of the
situation” (p. 15). Thus, there is a difference and distance from a state (such as Rome),
as well as from the “State in people’s consciousness: the apparatus of opinion” as truth
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enter into a world of particulars and contingencies.
By declaring the truth stemming from an event, Paul displaces the truth from a
geographic location, a center, and also from established discourses, which require the
particular and the material contingencies. As Badiou (2003) explains, this is vital since
the new Christian discourse, the discourse of the son, has universal potential, a
potentiality that is lacking in Greek and Jewish discourses:
Greek and Jewish discourses are both discourses of the Father. That is why
they bind communities in a form of obedience (to the cosmos, the Empire, God,
or the Law). Only that which will present itself as a discourse of the Son has the
potential to be universal, detached from every particularism, (p. 42)
Further, by distancing the Christian universal truth from a material center, it can also be
distinct from a material concept of rule-of-law: “For you are not under law, but under
grace” (Rom. 6.14) (Paul as cited in Badiou, p. 63). Because of this distancing, Paul can
declare that faith, not truth or rule-of-law, is what redeems and unites us.
However, as Badiou (2003) demonstrates, Paul’s formulation of Christianity
offers a particular form of universalism that grants room for cosmopolitanism only if
differences are dissolved into a Christian universal, thus creating another pseudo-
Antigonal frame after the Roman one:
With regard to what has happened to us, to what we subjectivate through a
public declaration (faith), to what we universalize through a fidelity (love), and
with which we identify our subjective consistency in time (hope), differences are
indifferent, and the universality of the true collapses them. (p. 106)
In the end, this Christian truth is formulated, as it were, as an Antigonal discourse. Even
though truth in this equation is, originally, free from a “rule-of-law,” in my estimation, the
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law, for membership within the universality. Thus, this so-called universality is
plummeted back into the world of particulars and contingency. It is, as Burke
(1937/1959) would suggest, “‘bureaucratized’ in an objective, material order” and a new
cultural frame for this universal is materialized (p. 112). Thus, the Christian discourse,
the discourse of the son, was easily rearticulated into a discourse of particulars where a
geographic center is reaffirmed (Jerusalem as the spiritual center and Rome as the
material center), and where the discourse of the Father is redirected as the discourse of
the fathers of the Church (those who oversee the production and the adherence to the
universal Christian truth). Once again, as dramatized in the Antigone, an either/or
frame appeared. As Christianity became more popular and organized, eventually
becoming enmeshed with the Roman Empire itself, Paul’s universal truth found itself
entangled with this new divide between universal and man-made rule-of-law master
frames.
The truth found in the event went from a form of universalism to moral absolutism
where the master frame of grace was widened to equate the event with a moral
imperative or directive—that is, simply, law. This development, in turn, called for
directors to orchestrate and uphold the law—the Fathers of The Church. So it is that
Paul’s universal became entrenched in particulars that worked to exclude any member
of society who did not share faith in the resurrection. Once there was a return to the
either/or polar framework, the ideographic rule-of-law frame again turned into tragedy as
the Crusades worked to recapture the spiritual center, Jerusalem, and make various,
different civilizations ritualized scapegoats for this new bureaucratized empire.
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This Christian frame, however, is not a true cosmopolitan frame insofar as
difference must either surrender itself or be ritually sacrificed, just as Hegel believes that
Antigone must be sacrificed to save the community. We could call the universal frame a
distorted cosmopolitan frame where the terms, and scene, are reduced to the universal
at the expense of difference. The misnomer of equating universalism with
cosmopolitanism, as if they were interchangeable terms, is very common in both past
and current scholarship. For example, Antonio Gramsci (1971/2005), in his Prison
Notebooks, observes that the later “'Italian' culture is the continuation of the mediaeval
cosmopolitanism linked to the tradition of the Empire and the Church. Universal
concepts with ‘geographical’ seats in Italy” (p. 117). A more current example can be
seen in Tom Palmer’s (2003) conception of cosmopolitanism. As mentioned above,
Palmer starts out by evoking the Antigone, and he equates Antigone's unwritten laws
with cosmopolitanism. The universal as cosmopolitanism is also expressed, Palmer
continues, in Aristotle’s articulation of justice, in his Nicomachean Ethics, where justice
exists in two spheres—the natural (universal/cosmopolitical), and the conventional (man-
made and particular) (p. 4). Palmer ends his historical overview and endorsement of
cosmopolitanism by literally renaming the concept to read “universalist
cosmopolitanism”: “Universalist cosmopolitanism is deeply engrained in the culture of
the West and has become in recent years a staple of ‘world culture,’ itself a
cosmopolitan ideal made real” (p. 6). Here, the pseudo-Antigonal frame rises again
since a “universalist cosmopolitanism,” as articulated in the “west," becomes a “staple of
'world culture’” (p. 6). Palmer’s formulation not only works to exclude large portions of
the global population, those who do not see specific “western” values as being universal
values, but by equating universalism with cosmopolitanism, Palmer place us back into
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there is no room for difference because both the Antigonal and Creonic master frames
require us to align our interests with theirs. Either we side with Creon and we view the
universal in a narrow rule-of-law as defined through the state, or we side with Antigone
and we view the universal in the narrow rule-of-law as defined through the chimerical
unwritten laws. There is no room for real difference or for the Chorus between these two
master frames, because both the Chorus and difference must be absorbed into a
particular universal as understood by either Antigone or Creon. However, the Chorus,
as a cosmopolitical metaphor, can be seen as embodying both the universal and
difference. On one level, the Chorus can be understood as a collective of unique
individuals who come together because they share a concern for justice. Further, unlike
Antigonal and Creonic master frames that work to limit and narrow ideals behind a “rule-
of-law” ideograph, the Chorus, as the entity who learns, understands that universal
values, such as justice, must be continuously negotiated rather than bureaucratized into
a narrow and unyielding rule-of-law end.
Since a universal value can be easily bureaucratized, it is helpful to question the
term universal itself. As Judith Butler (1996/2002) rightly points out in “Universality in
Culture,” concepts regarding the universal are culturally and historically articulated,
making universal a “contested term” (p. 46). This is why certain philosophies, while
deemed universal, are actually particular and exclusionary. What is often deemed
universal by one group or culture is not so for another. This does not mean that the term
or the ideal of universal should be discarded but, rather, as Butler points out, it must be
articulated further (p. 46). Because it is difficult to say what is universal, it is helpful to
first examine those moments in history when the universal declaration is called into
question and to deconstruct how and why such ideals were declared universal in the first
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better claim for what is or might be truly universal. This undertaking requires continuous
translation efforts across cultures and history (Butler, p. 52), as well as the courage to
refrain from simply dismissing the universal outright or using the universal (as a concept)
in merely reductive frames. For when what is declared universal is really reductive and
particular, it becomes a dangerous form of mythos, as is seen in the Antigone. For the
moment, it is enough to question this use of the ideal universal, but also, at the same
time, to suggest that the term universal (or universalism) is still a useful one. A closer
examination of this issue, as well as how we can bridge the universal with the particular
without bureaucratizing the ideal will be explored in Episode Three.
When cosmopolitanism is articulated as a simple, generalized form of
universalism, then we often find critics opposing it with the argument that this philosophy
is nothing more than an attractive argument for empire and/or imperialism. Timothy
Brennan (2003) in “Cosmopolitanism and Internationalism” believes that internationalism
is not theoretically compatible with cosmopolitanism because, whereas internationalism
accepts “differences in polity as well as culture,” cosmopolitanism works to universalize
both culture and polity (p. 41). In his equation, as in others that deem cosmopolitanism
a type of universalism, difference gets lost. Further, besides supporting a unified,
universal culture, Brennan states that a “universalist” cosmopolitanism also suggests a
world-ruling institution: “Cosmopolitanism projects a theory of world government and
corresponding citizenship. Here the structure of underlying unity conveyed by the
cultural meaning of the term is carried over to the political” (pp. 41-42). Benjamin R.
Barber (1996/2002), in “Constitutional Faith,” also objects to a cosmopolitan project
since it is a call to “abstract universalism” (p. 31), that can become its “own antiseptic
version of imperialism” (p. 33). Brennan and Barber’s concerns are based upon
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reacting, in many ways, to theorists who champion a type of democratic
cosmopolitanism but do so within an ambiguous universalist vocabulary. That is the
case with Barry K. Gills’ (2005) essay "'Empire’ versus ‘Cosmopolis’: The Clash of
Globalizations,” where Gills equates cosmopolis aspirations with an abstract
universalism: “The impetus to Cosmopolis has made itself felt in repeated aspirations for
a universal state, universal peace, a universal church or faith, and a perfect justice and
social order. . .” (p. 6). Although Gills is arguing for a type of democratic
cosmopolitanism (p. 10), his conception of the cosmopolis is constantly equated not only
with a vague Antigonal universalism but, importantly, it starts to sound like a utopic
empire. In his choice of the word “cosmopolis,” we are given the image of a world city, a
world rule, rather than a process as is usually implied in the terms cosmopolitanism or
cosmopolitical. The vision of cosmopolis as utopic empire is evident in phrases equating
the cosmopolis with “perfection in the social universe” (p. 6), or with “a new world order,
one that transcends the unequal structures and gross injustices inherited from the
previous imperial order” (p. 10). So, although Gills is arguing against the concept of
empire, which he says can never “truly be good” (p. 9), his cosmopolis begins to assume
the form of an imperial utopia composed of universal, both ethical and material,
determinants. In this reductive frame and scope, democracy cannot function, because
difference is excluded, although Gills allows that that occurs unintentionally. This
unintentional outcome is a vital point because Gills, like many other contemporary
supporters of cosmopolitanism, is ostensibly supporting a progressive and democratic
cosmopolitanism, one that is part and parcel of the rise of neoliberal globalization that,
as we saw in Palmer’s (2003) discussion, positions economic global rule over national or
global governance, a ranking that will be examined in the next chapter. First, we should
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historical forerunners, and why many contemporary authors, including Gills, look to
Immanuel Kant (1784/1798; 1795/1798) for a model of both cosmopolitical world history,
and also perpetual peace through cosmopolitanism.
Immanuel Kant’s Perpetual Peace through Cosmopolitanism
Because many modern calls for cosmopolitanism are inspired by Immanuel Kant,
it is important to understand how Kant envisioned the cosmopolitical and how modern
authors have aligned with or diverged from his original vision. The two defining essays
that outline Kant’s cosmopolitical point of view are, “Idea for a Universal History from a
Cosmopolitan Point of View” (1784/1798), and “Perpetual Peace; A Philosophical
Sketch” (1795/1798).
In the “Idea for a Universal History from a Cosmopolitan Point of View”
(1784/1798), Kant lays out his thesis, in nine propositions, that humanity is destined, by
Nature’s design, for a specific end: A unified cosmopolitical community where humanity
will be allowed to finally evolve into its natural end. Nature intends that all entities have
a natural end and are meant to realize that end completely (p. 413). For human kind,
this end cannot be realized through an individual, but must be fully developed as a race,
because it takes far more than one lifetime to perfect reason (p. 414). Kant believes that
reason will be perfected, however, since “Nature” has willed that humanity’s happiness
can only come about through the use of reason (action) and not in the realm of
“mechanical” instinct (sheer motion) (p. 415). At this point, Kant’s fourth proposition
resembles, in my estimation, the voice of Sophocles’ Chorus in the Ode to Man,
because he describes humanity as being both wonderful and terrible or, as Sophocles’
Chorus said, deinon. Fundamental to Nature’s design of humanity is that humans are
terrible because our natural inclination is to a state of war, as well as a desire to
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by our equally natural, wonderful desire to live among other human beings and to create
laws and institutions that temper our need for a “savage” freedom. It is through natural
conflict, our “antagonism in society,” that we will be allowed to realize our natural end
(pp. 416-417). But because of our deinon nature, humanity’s greatest problem will be
the construction of a universal, cosmopolitical civil society (p. 419-420). This is our
natural end, and Nature drives us to this end, the last great task and future
accomplishment of humanity (pp. 420-421). Before this end can be realized, states must
learn to lawfully live next to and with each other. Again, this is a difficult path because of
our natural, and necessary, inclination for war. But war will aid us in this effort since it is
through war that new relations between states and within states are established (pp.
421-426). Both wars and efforts at lawful peace are part of Nature’s secret plan for a
unified end: A perfectly constituted state, so that humanity may be fully developed. This
end will naturally bring about perfect cosmopolitical relations between states (pp. 426-
429). Kant’s final proposition is vital to this whole endeavor: The idea will help bring
about the end. Because an idea promotes an end, we must believe that we can achieve
a cosmopolitical union and that this is our final end or destination. With our belief, we
aid Nature in her secret plan (pp. 429-432). Because the idea is vital to the plan, it is up
to us to articulate Nature’s intention. This articulation was Kant’s (1795/1798) intention
in his later work, “Perpetual Peace: A Philosophical Sketch,” which not only furthers the
idea of cosmopolitanism, but also lays out a plan to achieve this condition by showing
how humanity can realize the seventh proposition—states living lawfully with each other
in perpetual peace.
According to Kant (1795/1798) perpetual (eternal) peace between states can be
achieved through adherence to six articles of agreement. First, no state should enter
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cannot be entered into for the sake of momentary convenience (pp. 245-246). Second,
states cannot dominate another independent state by selling, exchanging, or donating it,
nor can an independent state be given as an inheritance (pp. 246-247). Third, all
standing armies should be abolished, since they constitute a continuous promise of
threat to other states or nations (pp. 247-248). Fourth, national debt should only be
contracted because of inter-state affairs, for example the building of roads, not for the
sake of being an “engine for the different powers to counteract one another” (p. 248).
Fifth, no state should use force to interfere with another state’s constitution or
government (p. 249). Finally, when states do war with each other, they should not use
tactics that would eradicate any possibility for a treaty of peace. Accordingly, states
should not use assassins, poisons, instigate treason, or break agreements of surrender.
When states run wars that have no possibility for peace, then these wars are simply
wars of mutual extermination, which must not be allowed (pp. 249-250).
Again, while seeming to echo Sophocles’ Chorus, these six articles of agreement
are needed because humans are conflicted, exactly in the manner of Sophocles’ deinon.
Our natural state is one of war and so peace does not come easily. Yet we have the
capacity to create peace because we have the inclination to create laws (Kant,
1795/1798, p. 253). However, it will be virtually impossible for all states to adhere to
these six articles unless all states evolve into a natural and perfect republican form. This
republican form is essential for Kant, who states that the Republican Civic Constitution is
the best form of government and the only form that will allow perpetual peace (pp. 255-
257). Republicanism must not be confused with democracy, which is a type of
despotism for Kant. To make his case for republicanism, Kant states that there are two
forms of ruling institutions: sovereignty and government. In brief, there are three kinds
105
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. of sovereignty: Monarch (monarchy), nobility (autocracy), and the people (democracy).
There are two kinds of government, based both on the way states use power and on a
constitution:22 Republicanism, which separates the executive power (administrative)
from the legislative power (pp. 258-259), and despotism, in which a state “arbitrarily
executes the laws ordained by itself, [and] by consequence the private will of the regent
is administered as the public will," as is the case in democracy (p. 259).23 In the end, if a
state is not republican, it is without form, arbitrary, “despotic and violent” (p. 259).
States that have reached the preferred republican form should commit to a
federation of free states that forms a league of peace under civil constitutions (Kant,
1795/1798, p. 162). Each state must be a republican state and each of these states
must be respected as a free, independent state. Yet Kant is not suggesting that we form
a cosmopolis composed of states, which would, of course, be difficult because man’s
natural temperament or inclination is for war and for a “savage” form of freedom. Thus,
when states are formed, there is a perverse tendency towards nationalism, a state
“majesty,” which does not like to be “subjected to any external legal” action, and where
“the splendour of its [ruling] head consists in having at his orders, without needing to
expose himself to danger, many thousands, who suffer themselves to be sacrificed for
an affair, which does not concern them” (p. 263). It is because of this tendency towards
state “majesty” that treaties between states do not end a condition of war, but only end
the momentary particulars of dispute (p. 264). There is hope, however, because
humanity has conceived of law and this concept, our capacity to envision the idea, offers
22 Kant (1795/1798) defines a constitution as “the act of the universal will, whereby the multitude becomes a nation” (p. 258).
23 Kant (1795/1798) suggests that in a democracy, everyone wants to be master and thus true representation of national interests is lost: “The fewer the persons, who are in possession of the power of the state (the number of the rulers), and on the contrary the greater the representation, the more does the constitution of state accord with the possibility of republicanism” (p. 260). 106
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. us hope. It is because of this possibility, and because treaties between states will not
end a condition of war, that a league (or federation) of peace must be formed (p. 265).
This league will restrain our natural desire for a savage freedom, a freedom that
endorses “a law of nations as a right to make war”—a savage right that relies on
“unilateral maxims” employed through force (p. 266). This type of freedom is death. If
there cannot be a world republic cosmopolis, we can form an alliance, one that grows
steadily as more states embrace republicanism. However, Kant also warns that this
alliance will always be in peril (p. 267).
His final article states that, concerning individuals, a cosmopolitical law “ought to
be limited to Conditions of Universal Hospitality” (Kant, 1795/1798, p. 269). For Kant,
universal hospitality is a right (p. 269), and he defines it as “the right of a stranger, not to
be treated hostilely on account of arrival upon the territory of another” (p. 269). A person
may be sent away before arriving, as, Kant explains, China and Japan have done (p.
271). However, that person cannot be sent away if he or she will be harmed by doing so
(p. 269). The person seeking hospitality must behave in a “peaceable manner” and can
only claim hospitality as a “right of visiting,” not as a permanent visitor (p. 269).
Ultimately, the right of hospitality resembles Antigone’s respect for the unwritten laws.
Indeed, Kant specifies that universal hospitality is vital because the world is
interconnected:
[A] violation of right in one part of the earth is felt in all parts; the idea of a
cosmopolitical law is not [a] phantastical and overstrained mode of re-presenting
right, but a necessary complement of the unwritten code, as well of the law of
state as the law of nations, for the public law of man in general, and so for the
purpose of everlasting peace . . . (emphasis added, pp. 272-273).
107
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Fundamental to Kant’s (1795/1798) formation of the cosmopolitical ideal (and
important to keep in mind when reviewing the modern call to cosmopolitanism) is the
idea that humanity is deinon. First, in spite of this split nature, and because of it, we will
obtain our natural end—a true cosmopolitical civil law that regulates all states. Second,
there is only one way to achieve this end product, through republicanism because
democracy is a form of despotism that enhances our natural inclination towards war,
tyranny and absolutism. Third, Kant stresses the importance of an idea, both a concept
and a perfected vision of an end product. There is power in an idea, and an idea
provides the motivation to reach a perfected, well defined end—in this case a
cosmopolitan republicanism. Fourth, Kant seems to suggest that a cosmopolis, a global
community, would be ideal, but not likely. Because of this, humanity must strive for a
federation or league of states wherein each state can retain its individual identity, while
still agreeing to certain universal laws. Thus, unlike the Christian articulation of
cosmopolitism as a form of simple universalism, Kant is proposing universality plus
difference. Finally, like Hegel (1807/1977), Kant promotes a dialectical process in which
our innate polar temperaments (for war and for social/civil law) will eventually evolve into
a natural end where peace unites all under cosmopolitical rule. Thus, the dialectic will
gradually end in a bridging of opposing either/or frames.
The Modern Call For and Against Cosmopolitanism
Reflecting on Kant’s view that humanity is situated dually between strife (war)
and law (perpetual peace), it is not surprising that during times of strife and uncertainty,
there are many calls for a cosmopolitan narrative. For example, Hugh Harris (1927), in
“The Greek Origins of the Idea of Cosmopolitanism,” writes in support of
cosmopolitanism while remembering the horrors of World War I and, quoting the poet
Horatio Smith (1779-1849), the dangers found in extreme patriotism: “Patriotism, is too
108
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. often the hatred of other countries disguised as love of our own” (Smith as cited in
Harris, p. 1). Likewise, Tarrow (2005), in The New Transnational Activism, points out
that the contemporary debate regarding cosmopolitanism re-emerged during a time of
great uncertainty—after the collapse of the Soviet bloc in the 1990s (p. 39). It was
thought that the great divide between communism and capitalism, between the western
and Soviet blocs, had melted away, opening the way for a new metanarrative of
liberalism, capitalism, and democracy. The free movement of capital would encourage a
free movement of cultural, political and ethical values that would eventually bridge all
nations. However, economic globalization, while encouraging the free movement of
money, did not encourage the free movement of equalizing values, and cultures around
the globe found their way of life threatened by new neoliberal economic policies.
Further, as Tarrow points out, states also became concerned about illegal immigration—
a concern that prompted nations to close their borders, rather than opening them (p. 40).
Finally, after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, Americans and Western
Europeans became very wary of foreigners and moved to tighten their national borders
even more: “Among mass publics and elites, empirical studies in both Western Europe
and the US began to show a hardening of patriotic sentiments” (pp. 40-41). However, as
a narrow patriotic narrative of nationalism took hold, so too did a counter-narrative of
cosmopolitanism.
The current call for cosmopolitanism takes on different frameworks:
cognitive/ethical, political/praxis and economic organization/neoliberal globalization.
Because the current scholarship is vast, I will narrow this review to four central
publications by way of searching the primary features of cosmopolitical discourse today:
For Love of Country? (1996, 2002), Debating Cosmopolitics (2003), The New
Transnational Activism (2005), and Cosmopolitanism: Ethics in a World of Strangers
109
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. (2006). In 1994, Martha Nussbaum (1996/2002) published “Patriotism and
Cosmopolitanism,” in the Boston Review (October/November), which prompted twenty-
nine responses from scholars; her original article and eleven of those responses were
later published in For Love of Country? Similarly, Debating Cosmopolitics reprints the
New Left Review’s series examining cosmopolitism, between 2000 and 2002, which
featured writers such as Daniele Archibugi, Geoffrey Hawthorn, and David Chandler
among others; with a few new articles, Debating Cosmopolitics offers a critical overview
of democratic cosmopolitics. In their books, Kwame Anthony Appiah, in
Cosmopolitanism: Ethics in a World of Strangers, and Sindey Tarrow, in The New
Transnational Activism, both explore the role of the rooted cosmopolitan—Appiah from
an ethical/cognitive frame and Tarrow from the political/praxis frame.
Cognitive/Ethical Cosmopolitanism
Martha Nussbaum (1996/2002) in “Patriotism and Cosmopolitanism” shares
Horatio Smith’s concern, stating that patriotic pride is morally dangerous because, while
calling for justice and equality, it does so in an exclusionary frame: “To give support to
nationalist sentiments subverts, ultimately, even the values that hoid a nation together,
because it substitutes a colorful idol for the substantive universal values of justice and
right” (p. 5). Rather, she would like to stress the Stoic creed of the cosmopolitan “whose
allegiance is to the worldwide community of human beings” (p. 4). To this end,
Nussbaum argues for the “making [of a] world citizenship, rather than democratic or
national citizenship, the focus for civic education” (p. 11).
By shifting civic education away from a nationalist or democratic emphasis to a
“world citizenship” orientation, Nussbaum (1996/2002) believes future generations will
be better able to understand the values and issues that are globally shared, and
therefore to distinguish between essential (global) and nonessental (local) values and
110
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. ways of life. For example, by studying the different forms in which family life is
articulated and lived, we can understand that there is not any single way to define a
family structure. This realization will allow us to move beyond the particular (a specific
form of family configurations), to the universal or general (the general idea of family
itself) (pp. 11-12). Once we move from the particular to the general, we will understand
how our focus on detailed differences inhibits everyday relations. Further, “air does not
obey national boundaries,” and neither does communications (p. 12). The fact that we
are more intertwined than ever before must alert us to the fact that a global dialogue is
required to deal with the moral obligations we have to our fellow humans and our
physical world (12-13). If our civic education does not reflect this global imperative, then
we are “educating a nation of moral hypocrites who talk the language of universalizability
but whose universal has a self-serving, narrow scope” (p. 13). Therefore, we cannot
simply encourage the perspective of multiculturalism within national, patriotic, frames; to
avoid hypocrisy, we must widen educational perspectives to view multiculturalism in the
context of the world (pp. 14-15).
The responses to Nussbaum’s (1996/2002) article cover a lot of territory but of
central importance to many of the respondents, as well as to my purpose here, was the
charge that an either/or framework shapes Nussbaum’s article. Richard Falk
(1996/2002) in “Revisioning Cosmopolitanism,” writes: “Despite sharing Nussbaum’s
essential vision, I am disturbed by its implicit encouragement of a polarized either/or
view of the tension between national and cosmopolitan consciousness” (emphasis
added, p. 53). Likewise, Hilary Putnam (1996/2002) asks “Must We Choose between
Patriotism and Universal Reason?” (pp. 91-97), while rightly suggesting that what is
needed is not an either/or articulation, but “endless renegotiation” (p. 97). Finally,
Immanuel Wallerstein (1996/2002) reacting to the either/or tone of Nussbaum’s article,
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Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. titles his essay “Neither Patriotism Nor Cosmopolitanism” (pp. 122-124). Like Putnam,
he is concerned with polar calls to either “a self-interested patriotism” or to an
ambiguous call for a world citizenship-just like patriotism, Wallerstein reminds us, this
call “can be used just as easily to sustain privilege as to undermine it” (p. 124). Most
authors responded by stating that both patriotism and cosmopolitanism are needed. To
this end, Michael Walzer (1996/2002) in “Spheres of Affection” asked, “can’t I be a
cosmopolitan American?” (p. 125), and Kwame Anthony Appiah (1996/2002) in
“Cosmopolitan Patriots” championed the rooted cosmopolitan, or the cosmopolitan
patriot, who is grounded in the local but is aware of and takes pleasure in the difference
found in the global arena (p. 22).
The second major concern expressed by several authors centers on the
conflicting concepts of local versus global, and the need to champion the local over the
universal. First, several authors argue that we cannot be a world citizen, since we are
local animals who are engaged only in our local realities. To this end, Benjamin R.
Barber (1996/2002) in “Constitutional Faith” argues that we need to strengthen
democratic workings within our local spaces, instead of an “abstract” universal space,
because no one actually lives in a cosmopolitical world but “rather, we live in this
particular neighborhood of the world, that block, this valley, that seashore, this family” (p.
34). Similarly, Michael Walzer (1996/2002) states that he is not a citizen of the world
and is not “even aware that there is a world such that one could be a citizen of it” (p.
125). Finally, Elaine Scarry (1996/2002) offers the most postmodern argument in “The
difficulty of Imagining Other People,” stating that it is impossible to imagine even our
closest local friends and family, and, therefore, it is even more impossible to try to
expand that imagination to a world stage: “[we must] come face to face with the limits on
imagining other people, since in several different spheres an overly optimistic account is
112
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. used to legitimate the bypassing of legal provisions and constitutional procedures” (p.
99). Taken all together, For Love of Country? returns us to the Creonic/Antigonal master
frames of nationalism and universalism, the particular versus the general, and how to
best bridge these two polar spaces. While many of these authors argue for a bridge,
most of them also argue for a specific, well defined end: The local or some form of the
cosmopolitical (cosmopolitical citizenship, cosmopolitical democracy, or
internationalism). Only Hilary Putnam (1996/2002) and Judith Butler (1996/2002)
(discussed above in relation to the concept of universalism) urge the process of
“continual revision” over preordained ends (Butler, p. 48). However, without some clear
form of “end,” we are left with only an ambiguous call, as Wallerstein (1996/2002)
suggested, that can be easily used for self-interest rather than altruistic ends. Thus,
rather than cognitively or ethically, many theorists and scholars prefer to examine
cosmopolitism from a political/praxis point of view.
Political /Praxis Cosmopolitanism
Those authors who support a cosmopolitical democracy in Debating
Cosmopolitics (2003), are partly reacting against states’ use of unilateral action, a Pax
Americana, as well as against economic globalization that stresses a neoliberal global
market. Rather than separate issues, these three elements are interconnected. For it is
important to understand what is meant by a neoliberal global market. Simply put, it
refers to a “new” form of economic liberalism wherein a market economy lives by its own
logic and, if allowed to function “naturally,” as it is meant to, will regulate itself.24 Karl
Polanyi's (1944/2001) description of the logic behind liberal economics, in The Great
Transformation, is helpful:
241 place the word “new” in quotes because global economics is not new. What is new is the extreme interconnectedness of markets as well as international organizations and agreements, such as NAFTA and the World Trade Organization (W TO), which have worked to orchestrate a world-wide liberalization of economies. 113
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. An economy of this kind derives from the expectation that human beings behave
in such a way as to achieve maximum money gains. It assumes the presence of
money, which functions as purchasing power in the hands of its owners.
Production will then be controlled by prices, for the profits of those who direct
production will depend on them; the distribution of goods also will depend upon
prices, for prices form incomes, and it is with the help of these incomes that the
goods produced are distributed amongst members of society, (p. 71)
On a global level, for neoliberalism to function, there must be a deregulation of markets
as well as the encouragement of privatization, unhindered by state or international
regulation. When linked to cosmopolitanism, as in Tom Palmer’s (2003) model, the
interchange between different cultural economic markets will help spread a cosmopolitan
culture without, he suggests, erasing personal identity. What rules, in this master frame,
is economics.
States, however, still feel a need to regulate and control market behavior in order
to stabilize their national economies and promote national and political self interest.
With the growth of globalization this has become more difficult and, as Archibugi (2003a)
observes in “Cosmopolitical Democracy,” although states are in no danger of
disappearing, they are weakening: “The external threats to the state from the process of
globalization and the internal demands for greater autonomy give new force to the old
aphorism that the state is too large for small issues, too small for bigger ones” (p. 4).
The solution to this problem, according to Archibugi, is not to abandon states, or to
return to a frame that focuses only on states, balance of power, or a unilateral
hegemony, but to encourage a cosmopolitical democracy: “The democratization of the
international community, a process joining together states with different traditions, at
varying stages of development” (p. 7). For this to occur, Archibugi further states that we
114
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. must democratize on three levels: Within states (encourage popular participation),
between states, to strengthen the existing infrastructure of international,
intergovernmental bodies (“the United Nations and its various agencies”), and at a world
level with a world parliament that includes everyday citizens of different states and not
only dignitaries (pp. 8-10). David Held (2003) in “Violence, Law and Justice in a Global
Age" similarly proposes that a global commitment to a rule-of-law,25 not war, be agreed
upon, as well as a new type of global political legitimacy that questions the West’s self-
interested actions, condemns all human-rights violations, renews peace efforts, and
emphasizes foreign policy (pp. 195-196). In this frame, economic markets must not be
allowed to determine issues of ethics and justice in the realm of wealth, income and
power (196).
Richard Falk and Andrew Strauss (2003) in “The Deeper Challenges of Global
Terrorism: A Democratizing Response,” offers the most in-depth proposal to create a
cosmopolitical democracy. Like Archibugi (2003a) and Held (2003), Falk and Strauss
believe that democracy is, or can be, a universal force for good in that it empowers
ordinary people with the ability to help determine their own destiny. They propose a
Global Peoples’ Assembly (GPA) rather than a parliament structure. This GPA will work
to democratize “the formation and implementation of global policy,” while conforming to
the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (p. 204). Besides helping to find democratic
and non-violent solutions to global problems, the GPA should eventually expand to allow
all peoples of the world, regardless of state allegiance, the right to vote (one person, one
vote) on global issues. Furthermore, this GPA can be developed through an alliance of
civil societies, amid the growth of global public opinion, by working with the financial elite
and sympathetic states, as well as encouraging treaties and bolstering relations between
25 Unfortunately, Held’s (2003) call for a “rule-of-law” here is used ideographically, although it is meant to stand in opposition to the use of war to regulate or determine international relations. 115
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. states and civil society (pp. 219-223). However, Falk and Strauss point out that there
are several impediments blocking the formation of a GPA including economic neoliberal
globalization and a from-the-top economic elitist agenda, as in the meetings at Davos
Switzerland (pp. 213-214), states’ fear of losing more power and control (p. 211), the
difficulty of aligning civil societies with such an effort and, finally, questions regarding
legitimacy of leadership and action, as well as how to best obtain such legitimacy (p.
220 ).
Fundamental to such proposals is the idea that democracy is the best way to
challenge a neoliberal agenda and, at the same time, to empower the world’s population.
However, democracy is a loosely defined concept in most of these and similar
proposals, receiving only limited discussion in Falk and Strauss’ (2003) thesis, for
example. Archibugi (2003b) in his later essay “Demos and Cosmopolis” defines
democracy ambiguously as “the power of the many and, internally, the rule of the
majority” (p. 257). Because “democracy” is offered up as an ideograph and not a
concrete process, Nadia Urbinati (2003), in “Can Cosmopolitical Democracy be
Democratic?” (pp. 67-85), can easily question the concept, stating that “cosmopolis is a
project of centralization and unification of power” that works against the democratic idea
and violates Kantian maxims (pp. 67-8). Urbinati asks us to remember that, recalling
Habermas, democracy cannot be a universal value since it is based on the concept of
citizenship, and citizenship depends upon the distinction between members and non
members: “Democracy cannot exist without the inside, outside dialectics” (Habermas as
cited in Urbinati, p. 72).
Another vital question for a cosmopolitical democracy is the debate regarding
“from-below” versus “from-above” implementation of such a project. Urbinati (2003)
suggests a cosmopolitical agenda will always be elitist because issues, not citizens,
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Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. become global—it is then a bottom-up hope created by top-down mentality (p. 80).
Craig Calhoun (2003) in “The Class Consciousness of Frequent Travelers” articulates
this point profoundly. He states that one of the biggest problems with cosmopolitical
discourse is that it suggests views from nowhere but it is really a view
from Brussels (where the postnational is identified with the strength of the
European Union rather than the weakness of, say, African States), or from Davos
(where the illusion of free-floating intelligentsia is supported by a relatively fluid
exchange of ideas across national borders), (p. 91)
Therefore, a cosmopolitical democracy project tends to reflect an elite perspective that
transcends the local (p. 92). So we must remember, Calhoun continues, that
democracy, with its Greek etymological root demos meaning “the people,” must occur
within a from-below program that is articulated first within local spaces (pp. 93-94).
Rooted Cosmopolitanism
It is clear that many authors worry that by promoting the cosmopolitical, we
bypass the local where most of the work needs to be done. Again, however, there is no
need for such an either/or view, since the local and the cosmopolitical can be bridged
with what is called rooted cosmopolitanism. Both Appiah (2006) and Tarrow (2005)
support the concept,26 explaining that as rooted cosmopolitans we are tied to a local
space through relations, national allegiance, and resources, but we also move
“physically” and “cognately” outside our origins (Tarrow, p. 42). Because we move
physically and cognitively from a local space to a space outside our origins, we are
active in a process of continual revision of ideas and concepts that are taken from the
local level to an outside space, and back to a local level again (a process that will be
26 Tarrow (2005) attributes the term “rooted cosmopolitanism” to Mitchell Cohen who proposed a “dialectical concept of rooted cosmopolitanism, which accepts a multiplicity of roots and branches that rests on the legitimacy of plural loyalties, of standing in many circles, but with common ground” (Cohen as cited in Tarrow, p. 42). 117
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. examined more closely in Episode Three, below). Rooted cosmopolitanism is the
opposite of rootless cosmopolitanism, someone having no ties to a local space at all, a
term used by Joseph Stalin in his “anti-Semitic campaign of 1948-1953" (p. 40): “Both
Hitler and Stalin . . . launched regular invectives against ‘rootless cosmopolitans”; and
while, for both, anti-cosmopolitanism was often just a euphemism for anti-Semitism, they
were right to see cosmopolitanism as their enemy” (Appiah, p. xvi). What was being
articulated by Hitler and Stalin was a type of perverse, Creonic nationalism—the kind
that Nussbaum (1996/2002) was reacting to in “Patriotism and Cosmopolitanism.” This
type of nationalism reduces frames of meaning and motivation in such a way as to
bureaucratize the ideal (Burke, 1937/1959, p. 112) into narrow frames of reference,
creating an “us” versus “them” mentality.
As Appiah (2006) writes, intensifying nationalism is not a new occurrence, nor
are the either/or frames a new articulation (p. xx). Unfortunately, a different form of
nationalism is arising today, as is seen in the US with its effort to strengthen and
maintain its place as the sole global hegemonic presence. This effort has intensified
since the fall of the Soviet bloc, and again in the wake of the terrorist attacks of
September 11, 2001, where many neoconservatives called for a “new unipolar system,”
led by the US (Kagan, 2004, p. 119). According to many neoconservatives, this new
American world order or Pax Americana (meaning American Peace) is not only good for
the US, but also good for the globe (Donnelly, Kagan, and Schmitt, 2000, p. 1a). In this
Pax Americana frame, Creonic and Antigonal discourses are being presented in an
interesting way. As discussed above, apropos of Marcus Aurelius’ Rome, the Creonic
discourse of nationalism can be disguised to resemble an Antigonal discourse of
universalism where national values are promoted as ostensibly universal values. In the
Pax Americana frame, Creonic discourse of American values is distorted into a pseudo-
118
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Antigonal discourse in order to gain global acceptance. This Americanized Creonic
discourse and the corresponding effort to promote American interests as universal
interests can be understood by looking at the neoconservative movement, a political
movement born in reaction to and sustained by neoliberal discourse.
119
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Promoting Pax Americana as an Antigonal Project
In “American Nightmare: Neoliberalism, Neoconservatism, and De-
Democratization” (2006), Brown rightly argues that the neoconservative movement in
America developed out of a reaction to, and is sustained by neoliberal discourse,
because the “de-democratizing effects of neoliberalism . . . prepare the ground for the
authoritarian features of neoconservative governance” (p. 705). Although the pseudo-
Antigonal frame of neoliberalism often clashes with the Creonic frame of
neoconservatism, especially in how the two view the role of the state, these two frames
also rely on each other “symbiotically to produce a subject relatively indifferent to
veracity and accountability in government and to political freedom and equality among
the citizenry” (p. 690). In order to understand the relationship between these two frames
and how this relationship works to extend the Creonic frame of American values into a
pseudo-Antigonal frame of universal values, it is helpful to examine the characteristic
aspects of neoliberalism that support neoconservative political philosophy.
In “The Class Consciousness of Frequent Travellers,” Calhoun (2003) observes
that today’s variant of cosmopolitanism reflects an effort to spread neoliberalism, a
renewed effort that began with the fall of the Soviet bloc. Fundamental to this "latest”
liberal creed is the corresponding effort to globally impose a capitalist universalism,
neoliberalism, as the normative rule for global capital. As briefly discussed in Episode
Two above, economic globalization is not new, and if trade has been seen as spreading
a cosmopolitan culture, capitalism has been viewed as a way to universalize normative
120
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. baselines for economics, politics, culture, ethics and societal structure. This narrow
universal frame of neoliberalism has mostly been a project linked to nation-states and,
even as it appears universal in scope, capitalism has not been able to derail a Creonic
frame of “reactionary nationalism” (Calhoun, p. 106). Nevertheless, since the 1980s,
neoliberal economic policies were actively pursued jointly by Margaret Thatcher and
Ronald Reagan. When the balance of power between communism and capitalism
disappeared with the fall of the Soviet bloc in the late 1980s, the US emerged as the
world’s sole hegemonic power and decided, along with her allies, that neoliberalism
equated to global progress (Pianta, 2003, p. 236).
As Barnett and Duvall (2005) point out in “Power in Global Governance,” those
who supported Thatcher and Reagan’s policies believed that neoliberalism was the
philosophy that would transform global politics. By combining the concepts of
democracy with free-market economic logic, and by creating institutions to facilitate
these ideals, global challenges could be better managed, peace could be secured and
“universal values” promoted (p. 5). Fundamental to this neoliberal view is the idea that
free-market logic can democratize the world, creating a liberal economic democracy or
free-market democracy, while positively restructuring local and international social,
political and economic institutions for the good. Susan George (1999/2003) states this
ideal eloquently in her satiric work The Lugano Report, where she suggests that the
free-market logic of capitalism can be said to “possess an ontology, an essence,” that
“like God" can “create good from evil”: “From destruction it draws the betterment of
humankind and the highest possible equilibrium of the whole” (p. 61). In this logic,
capitalism is a living entity, even a god, whose main concern is for the betterment of
humanity. This betterment of humanity works through the ideal of free movement of
money that, in the end, frees people: Thus, free movement of money equals free
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Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. movement of ideas, culture, and peoples, which, in turn, facilitates, promotes, and even
creates democracy as “the highest possible equilibrium of the whole” (p. 61). As Laffey
and Weldes (2005) explain in “Policing and Global Governance,” this neoliberal
discourse “contributes directly to contemporary efforts both to intensify capitalist logics
and to extend this logic to ever more social domains” (p. 60). By suggesting that
capitalist logic can promote democracy, indeed that the two go hand-in-hand, neoliberal
economics and discourse work to control social and political spaces so that they are
constructed to uphold and perpetuate free-market economics. Democracy can exist in
this formula only insofar as citizens vote to uphold the free-market structure. As such,
democracy must be presented in a narrow master frame where its parameters are
controlled and directed to only benefit a specific master frame, that of neolibera!
economic policies. Therefore, a market democracy transforms the deliberative and
discursive aspects of democracy into a commodity that emphasizes voting.
Neoliberalism then, far from promoting democracy, de-democratizes society and creates
an environment where rule is determined by commodified experts rather than the
demos, the people.
As Brown (2006) argues, neoliberalism works to de-democratize society by
transforming political problems into individual problems insofar as neoliberalism converts
public concerns into private concerns. On an everyday level, for example, bottled water
is now seen as a private solution to the contaminated water table used by the public
commons (p. 704). Situated in individualism, neoliberalism also devaluates political
autonomy since true political participation (the deliberative, discursive and public rule
aspects of democracy) is transformed into the act of voting for experts who, in turn, rule
society. The state, as run by experts, is then altered from a democratic state into the
“model of the firm” where experts wield administrative authority (p. 703). This
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Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. transformation of the state is vital because just as democracy must be redefined and its
scope narrowed to accommodate neoliberalism, so too must the state be altered in order
to redirect political and public issues into private and economic issues. An example can
be seen in the current G.W. Bush’s administration’s effort to privatize social security—
encouraging individual citizens to open savings accounts and to invest in the stock
market in order to increase retirement funds. Importantly, the de-democratizing aspects
of neoliberalism do not work to erode a nation-state, but rather to transform a nation
state as well as all functions of civil society. It is the “attempt to define a private sphere
independent of the state and thus to redefine the state itself, i.e., the freeing of civil
society—personal, family and business life—from political interference and the
simultanedus delimitation of the state’s authority” (D. Held, 1983, p. 3). Even as
neoliberalism works to limit state’s authority over economic markets, it must also
promote a process of state centralization of administrative power, which allows the state
to forcibly promote (and direct) deregulation, privatization and the freeing of markets.
Neoliberalism as an economic and political rationale relies on the discourse of
individualism that promotes the individual as self-reliant, responsible for his or her
successes or failures outside of the state, and where democracy is reduced to the act of
choosing between this or that commodity. Democratic choice, here, can be seen
through our purchasing power where we choose between this or that brand of bottled
water or, through the act of voting, we choose between this or that expert as leader. This
self-reliant individualism, and democracy as limited choice, is partially accomplished
through economic privatization, a process that transforms public commons into private
spaces that, again, place responsibility for actions and needs onto the individual as a
rational consumer who, it is assumed, will act in his or her own best interests. The
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Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. promotion of the individual as being self-reliant is part and parcel of the neoconservative
philosophy.
The neoconservative philosophy is grounded in what George Lakoff (2004) calls
the “strict father model” (p. 40). The strict father model, as a guiding philosophy, sees
the father as the “moral authority” who teaches his children right from wrong, and who
raises them to be self-reliant. Once grown, children must become independent and
“disciplined,” and the father must not “meddle” in his children’s lives (p. 41). This
paradigm is not only compatible with neoliberal discourse, it depends on the neoliberal
frame which promotes a private citizen as individual who relies on his or herself rather
than on the state. The intersection or bridge between the neoliberal and
neoconservative philosophies can be seen in how the neoconservatives view welfare
programs. For many neoconservatives, a welfare state is problematic because it
promotes not self-reliance, but dependence upon the state. Thus, like neoliberal
discourse, neoconservatives suggest that we must not look to the state for support, but
to ourselves. In this light, the neoconservative Irving Kristol (2004a) divides mothers
who rely on the welfare system into two categories: “Mothers on welfare,” and “Welfare
mothers.” “Mothers on welfare” are women who have children and, through no fault of
their own, were divorced, abandoned or widowed. These women do not see welfare as
an “opportunity,” but as a necessary, and as a short-lived reality. “Welfare mothers,” on
the other hand, view welfare as an opportunity and normally “end up on welfare as a
result of their own actions” (p. 147). Such women “permit themselves” to get pregnant
out of wedlock. They believe that welfare is not only a right, but an obligation the state
must extend to its citizens. In order to promote self-reliance, the state should not cater
to these women and should act as a strict moral authority by, for example, not offering
housing allowances because “having your own apartment, in which you can raise your
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Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. child, can be seen as ‘fun’” (p. 147). In this welfare rationale, proponents of both
neoconservatism and neoliberalism believe that the state should not be responsible for
the individual. However, whereas neoliberalism works to dismantle welfare programs
offered by the state in order to encourage privatization which will, in turn, promote
economic competition and the freeing of markets, neoconservatism views this
dismantling of welfare programs as an act of moral authority which promotes moral self-
reliant citizens. In the neoliberal frame, the purpose of the state must be reorganized in
such a way as to accommodate and promote economic freedom and competition. In the
neoconservative frame, the purpose of the state must be reorganized to promote and
direct the moral center of its citizens through various political and economic policies.
Since neoiiberalism is lacking any moral compass, that is, neoliberalism is not
concerned about the moral reasons for creating a self-reliant citizen, it does not care
which moral platform it supports as long as the end result is the same—-individualism,
privatization, and the free movement of monies. The clash between neoiiberalism and
neoconservatism occurs in differing views of how the state should function, as either an
administrative entity working for neoliberal policies or as a moral authority which directs
all policies toward a specific, neoconservative philosophy. The neoconservative political
principles attempt to direct neoliberal discourse and economic polices in such a way as
to serve the state as a moral authority. Furthermore, like neoiiberalism, which promotes
its agenda in a pseudo-Antigonal frame, neoconservatives believe that their decidedly
American frame is good for the world, and they attempt to extend this Creonic Pax
Americana frame internationally. I argue that this Creonic frame extension relies on
neoliberal discourse in order to justify its claim to be a universal authority, by suggesting
that the universal good of a global capitalist economy is best accomplished and
promoted by the US and an Americanized democracy.
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Crucial to the question of spreading liberalism globally is who will take the lead
and how. Since the end of the Cold War, there has been a great debate as to how
power among nations should be restructured to ensure peace. Should the world return
to and endorse multilateralism (multipolarity) where a balance of power is maintained
between several states? Should we look to the European Union (EU) for a blueprint,
where sovereignty and citizenship are being redefined? Or should we endorse, as many
modern neoconservatives do, a Pax Americana hegemony that works to maintain peace
among nations, while spreading ideas of free-market democracy, liberty and freedom?
The neoconservative Robert Kagan (2004) in Of Paradise and Power sees the current
debate as a simple either/or frame around a cosmopolitical space (such as is being
developed by the EU) demanding adherence to an international rule-of-law that is faulty
and utopic. What we need, Kagan says, is a strong Creonic leader, the US, who is
willing to do what must be done for the benefit of the world:
Europe is turning away from power, or to put it a little differently, it is moving
beyond power into a self-contained world of laws and rules and transnational
negotiation and cooperation. It is entering a post-historical paradise of peace
and relative prosperity, the realization of Immanuel Kant’s ‘perpetual peace.’
Meanwhile, the United States remains mired in history, exercising power in an
anarchic Hobbesian world where international laws and rules are unreliable, and
where true security and the defense and promotion of a liberal order still depend
on the possession and use of military might, (emphasis added, p. 1)
Kagan’s argument is simple. America, as the world’s preeminent power, with its
willingness to enforce democratic liberalism, order, and peace through military might, if
need be, offers the world a benevolent hegemony. This view entails a Creonic
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laws and values can ostensibly be developed only through a reductive American aegis.
He argues that Europe objected to the United States’ unilateral action of invading Iraq, in
2003, because Europe objects to the US taking action without the approval of the UN
Security Council, and thereby of the international community. However, Kagan argues
that previously both Europe and the US intervened in Kosovo without the blessing of the
Council and so-called established international law, and therefore Europe’s rule-of-law
complaint holds little weight. Rather, the problem is that Europeans fear they can no
longer control the US or have any influence in the “new unipolar system” of Pax
Americana (p. 119). Reacting to a loss of power, Europe calls for legitimacy of action in
order to have some control over international considerations. However, according to
Kagan, legitimation of action cannot really be found in current international law, in the
UN, or in multilateral agreements, because these frames are ambiguous, and lack any
real international agreement regarding meaning or action. The concept of legitimacy is a
“genuinely elusive and mobile concept” (p. 132), and so is the concept of “unity” (p. 146)
and, with it, cosmopolitanism.
Kagan’s argument reflects the new Creonic discourse that has surpassed the
confines of nation-state to extend itself into a project of empire-building, where American
interests and ideals are seen as being good for global peace. This Creonic discourse
morphs into a pseudo-Antigonal universal discourse insofar as universal values such as
freedom, liberty, and free-market democracy are seen only through the American master
frame. Because this neoconservative approach has directed much of the current US
domestic and foreign policy, it is helpful to understand how it developed, gained power,
and is being currently presented.
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The modern neoconservative (neocon) movement can be linked back to Irving
Kristol and other liberal intellectuals from the 1970s, and is considered by those involved
in this political group as a “persuasion” rather than a movement (Kristol, 2004b, p. 33).
Irving Kristol (2004b), considered the godfather of the neocons, in his essay “The
Neoconservative Persuasion,” states that the historical and political task of
neoconservatives is to “convert the Republican Party, and American conservatism in
general, against their respective wills, into a new kind of conservative politics suitable to
govern a modern democracy” (p. 33). The economist and neocon Irwin Stelzer (2004),
in “Neoconservatives and Their Critics” states that neoconservatism can trace its roots to
early American leaders including John Quincy Adams and his policies on pre-emption,
as well as Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson, who “like today’s neocons .. .
sought to remake the world, or substantial portions of it, in America’s democratic image"
(p. 9). Attempting to build a historical and American precedent for neoconservative
policies, Stelzer tells the reader that President G.W. Bush’s policy regarding pre-emptive
war is no different than Theodore Roosevelt’s insistence that “uncivilized” places in the
world would “require intervention by some civilized nation” in order to establish
international order (Roosevelt as cited in Stelzer, p. 9). To this end, the US would have
to “exercise” its power as an international police force. Further, reflecting back to Irving
Kristol’s statement quoted above regarding converting conservatism, the US intervention
in “uncivilized” states can be understood as being done for the good of the global
community, even if it is also done “against their [the uncivilized state’s] respective wills”
(Kristol, 2004b, p. 33).
Other neocons and their liberal critics point to the influence of Leo Strauss and
his work, Natural Right and History (1953). Gregory Bruce Smith (1997) in “Leo Strauss
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Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. and the Strausseans: An Anti-Democratic Cult?” says that although Strauss was
impressed with liberal democracy and the early writings of the American founders and
statesmen, “he concluded that the modern philosophical premises of Liberal Democracy
were inadequate and, if not transcended, would weaken attachment to a fundamentally
just and decent way of life” (p. 180 b-c). Concerned with nihilism and relativistic
philosophies (like those of Friedrich Nietzsche and Martin Heidegger), Strauss felt that
“modern political philosophy could lead to such radically different offspring as Liberal
Democracy, Fascism, and Marxist Communism,” all of which threatened traditional
American republicanism (p. 180 c). The neoconservative Kenneth R. Weinstein (2004),
Chief Executive Officer of the conservative Hudson Institute, states, in “Philosophic
Roots: The Role of Leo Strauss, and the War in Iraq,” that neocons relate to Strauss’
belief that “liberalism threatened theoretically by the philosophically informed belief,
developed in modernity, that unaided human reason could not find permanent principles”
(p. 208). Thus, like Strauss, many neocons believe that the concept of reason cannot be
separated from the spiritual, the moral, or from “revelation” (p. 208). Another
controversial philosophy attributed to the neocon Strausseans, but also rejected by
others such as Weinstein, is Strauss’ notion of the “noble lie.” Drawing on Plato’s
Republic and Machiavelli’s Prince. Strauss suggests that for the good of the public, it is
often important for the few elite intellectual leaders to lie to the mass public who would
not be able to understand the intricate and important reasons for certain acts committed
by the ruling class. Quoting Mary Wakefield’s (2004) opinion piece, “I Don’t Lie,
Whoops, There I Go Again,” for the London Daily Telegraph, Weinstein takes issue with
Wakefield when she accused Blair, as well as other American neoconservatives, as
being supporters of a “Straussean” noble lie theory:
129
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the political philosopher Leo Strauss. Strauss was a champion of the "noble
lie"—the idea that it is practically a duty to lie to the masses because only a small
elite is intellectually fit to know the truth. Politicians must conceal their views,
said Strauss, for two reasons: to spare the people's feelings and to protect the
elite from possible reprisals.27 (Wakefield, para. 5-6)
Critics of neoconservatism claim that it is the neoconservative connection to the “noble
lie” theory that links the neoconservative persuasion to Strauss.28 Yet many neocons
deny any connection to the noble lie theory, calling such suggestons “the Neocon Cabal”
theory.29
According to The Project For the New American Century (PNAC) and Irwin
Stelzer (2004) in his essay “Neoconservatives and their Critics,” the modern neocon
“persuasion” was shaped by the 1992 Defense Planning Guidance (DPG) which was
prepared by Paul Wolfowitz, who was then the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy in
the Pentagon, under the direction of Dick Cheney who was then the Secretary of
Defense. The DPG is a publication produced every two years by the Defense
Department to offer the White House and Congress advice on military funding, spending,
and tactics. Eventually, after being leaked to the press and widely criticized, the 1992
27 A copy of the full article by Wakefield (2004) can be found online at:
28 It is difficult to suggest outright that neocons’ adhere to the noble lie philosophy. Certainly their politics take on an elitist stance, relying on a ffom-above approach and conducted behind closed doors. However, they have not been shy about declaring their aims publicly. In fact, they are very transparent and forthcoming about goals, aims, and procedures— all of which are published widely. Yet on the Iraq war it does seem as if the neocons in power employed the noble lie, while working to gain public or popular support for the war.
29 See David Brooks’ essay “The Neocon Cabal and Other Fantasies.” In The Neocon Reader. Ed. Irwin Stelzer. New York: Grove Press. 2004. 39-42.
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suggested that the US should prevent any rival interests from challenging its dominance
and should actively look to spread democracy and use pre-emptive methods, including
military force, if needed. It also suggested that reliance on the United Nations should be
abandoned and unilateral action utilized to protect America’s interest (Stelzer, p. 18-19).
The DPG was later adopted by the Project for a New American Century in their defining
document Rebuilding America’s Defenses (2000). The primary message of both the
DPG and Rebuilding America's Defenses can be summed up in PNAC’s (1997)
Statement of Principles: “That American leadership is good both for America and for the
world; and that such leadership requires military strength, diplomatic energy and
commitment to moral principle” (para. 1). Accordingly, Irwin Stelzer points to several
core political principles that most neoconservatives promote: (1) regime change followed
by nation building should be launched when dealing with uncooperative and
undemocratic governments and leaders (pp. 8-9); (2) preemptive action should be
utilized to protect American interests (pp. 8-9); (3) reliance on “coalitions of the willing,”
rather than on the United Nations, should be developed, and unilateral action should be
used when a “coalition of the willing” does not look promising (pp. 9-10);31 (4) democracy
should be spread because “democratic nations don’t start wars” (p. 10); (5) Western
values (including neoliberal economics, and concepts of liberty and democracy) should
be spread and encouraged around the world (p. 10); (6) military resources must be
30 The original 1992 DPG draft and the rewritten version have both been classified. As a result, the best public records regarding the original and rewritten DPG comes from theNew York Time’s printed excerpts of the original as well as two follow-up articles written by Patrick Tyler: (1) Newthe York Time’s “Excerpts from the Pentagon’s Plan: ‘Prevent the Re-Emergence of a New Rival’” (8 March, 1992). (2) Patrick Tyler’sNew York Times article “Pentagon Imagines New Enemies to Fight in Post-Cold-War Era” (17 February, 1992). (3) Patrick Tyler’sNew York Times article “Pentagon Drops Goal of Blocking New Superpowers” (24 May, 1992).
31 It is interesting to note that the phrase “coalition of the willing” offers the illusion of a choral effort, while actively suppressing differences. Thus, the “willing” are only those who agree to and fully support a Pax Americana project. 131
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. expanded and maintained (p. 11); (7) the welfare state should only benefit the
“deserving poor” (p. 19); (8) quality of life issues should include the right not to have to
be subjected to “obscenities”, and; (9) with regard to national budgets, a balanced
budget means little and deficits are of little concern, thus “we should figure out what we
want before we calculate what we can afford, not the reverse" (Kristol as cited in Stelzer,
p. 21).
Finally, neoconservatives are often connected to, and supportive of, neoliberal
economic policies. There are many people who support neoliberal economic policies,
however, who do not support political policies promoted by the neoconservatives. Thus,
the two are not exclusive, yet, as discussed above, neoliberal and neoconservative
discursive frames both, importantly, stress individualism and self-reliance. Pierre
Bourdieu (1998) in Acts of Resistance Against the Tyranny links the concept of
individualism with neoliberal rhetoric, stating how the linkage works against collective
action and the welfare state:
I’m thinking of what has been called the ‘return of individualism’, a kind of self-
fulfilling prophecy which tends to destroy the philosophical foundations of the
welfare state and in particular the notion of collective responsibility . . . which has
been a fundamental achievement of social (and sociological) thought. The return
to the individual is also what makes it possible to ‘blame the victim', who is
entirely responsible for his or her own misfortune, and to preach the gospel of
self-help, all of this being justified by the endlessly repeated need to reduce costs
for companies, (pp. 6-7)
This thinking is also found in modern neoconservative thought that emphasizes self-
reliance, unilateral action, as well as a limited concept of welfare, all of which are pointed
to in Stelzer’s (2004) essay “Neoconservatives and Their Critics,” as well as other
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neoiiberalism and neoconservatism work to create a “naturalized” effect to their rhetoric,
by emphasizing their historical roots—suggesting that evolution towards these ideas is
inevitable. When bridged, the neoconservative and neoliberal frames present a Creonic
discourse that is presented to the international community in terms of a pseudo-
Antigonal discourse and frame. As George Lakoff (2004) explains, a great deal of this
bridge building between the two frames was developed and crystallized within
conservative think-tanks (p. 27), such as the Project for a New American Century
(PNAC), in order to strength the US nation-state as the sole hegemonic global power, as
well as to extend neoiiberalism globally.
The Project for a New American Century
The Project for the New American Century was established in the spring of 1997
and is still located in Washington, D.C. On the introductory page of their defining
publication, Rebuilding America's Defenses: Strategy. Sources and Resources for a
New Century (Donnelly, Kagan, and Schmitt, 2000), they state that they are an
organization “whose goal is to promote American global leadership.” Listing prominent
members, the publication states that William Kristol, also editor for the Weekly Standard,
is the chairman of the project, Gary Schmitt was the original executive director (see
below), and other directors include Robert Kagan, Devon Gaffney Cross, and Bruce R.
Jackson.
PNAC developed out of the New Citizen Project (NCP), a conservative think tank
that has the same address and suite number as PNAC: 1150 17th St. NW, Suite 510,
Washington, DC 20036 (New Citizenship Project, para. 1; Source Watch, 2003).
Founded in 1994, NCP is considered, along with PNAC, one of the key “behind-the-
scenes architects of the Bush administration's foreign policy” (New Citizenship Project,
133
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group that traces funding provided to conservative media organizations, both projects
receive major funding from the Carthage Foundation, the Earhart Foundation, the Lynde
and Harry Bradley Foundation, the Randolph Foundation, the Sarah Scaife Foundation,
the Scaife Family Foundation, the John M. Olin Foundation, the William H. Donner
Foundation, and the JM Foundation.32 Not only is PNAC well connected with these
conservative foundations, it is important to note that many prominent PNAC members
were placed in high-level positions in G.W. Bush’s administration, as well as other
strategic international organizations, including: Dick Cheney, Vice President: Paul
Wolfowitz, president of the World Bank; Donald Rumsfeld, former Secretary of Defense;
Lewis Libby, former Chief of Staff for Vice President Dick Cheney; Zalmay Khalilzad, US
Ambassador to Iraq who has been nominated to replace John R. Bolton, also associated
with PNAC, as US Ambassador to the United Nations. Furthermore, as the members
have become fairly well publicized, there has been a great deal of general interest
surrounding PNAC and its connection not only to the White House, but to the media as
well. Web sites such as Mediawatch.org, Clearinghouse.org, PNAC.info33 have all put
considerable effort into understanding the intimate connections between great wealth,
our current administration, and PNAC.
Even with the amount of influence the members of PNAC have within the current
administration, however, and the amount of funding behind this organization, there are
now rumors that PNAC might be closing its doors. Al Kamen (2006) from the
Washington Post in his 12 June article, “The Democrats, Keeping a Civil Tongue,”
32 According to mediatransparency.org, PNAC has received 18 grants (from 1997-2004) totaling $995,000.00. For a full list of grants awarded see
33 See PNAC.info’s new Web site at:
134
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. reports that the “doors may be closing shortly on the nine-year-old Project for a New
American Century” (para. 6). Noting that PNAC was short on staff (para. 7), Kamen
states that an anonymous source disclosed to him that PNAC believes that their goal
has been accomplished and “it looks to be heading toward closing” (para. 13). Former
executive PNAC director Gary J. Schmitt, who was also the executive director for Ronald
Reagan’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board, has left PNAC for a new job with the
American Enterprise Institute (para. 12). But as Kamen also notes, “not a big move.
Actually, only five floors up from PNAC. Still, seems like a short century” (para. 12).
However, the news of their closing might be premature since their Web site continues to
be updated and there is no message suggesting that it has disbanded.34
As discussed above, PNAC links their philosophy to the Pentagon’s classified
1992 Defense Guidance Planning Draft (GPG) publication. When it was rewritten under
the direction and guidance of Dick Cheney, Defense Secretary, and General Colin
Powell, it stressed the themes shared by both the original 1992 GPG and PNAC’s
Statement of Principles (1997), as well as their other neocon publications: American
global dominance, insistence on extending and supporting American military might, and
preventing other rivals from removing the US from seats of power. Since promoting
American global leadership is PNAC’s central aim, in a Creonic master frame promoted
as a pseudo-Antigonal universal frame, it is helpful to quote at length from their
Statement of Principles (1997):35
As the 20th century draws to a close, the United States stands as the world’s
most preeminent power. Having led the West to victory in the Cold War, America
faces an opportunity and a challenge:.. . Does the United States have the
34 See PNAC Web site at:
35 Statement of principles can be found at:
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. resolve to shape a new century favorable to American principles and interests? .
. . [What we require is] a military that is strong and ready to meet both present
and future challenges; a foreign policy that boldly and purposefully promotes
American principles abroad; and national leadership that accepts the United
States’ global responsibilities. Of course, the United States must be prudent in
how it exercises its power. But we cannot safely avoid the responsibilities of
global leadership or the costs that are associated with its exercise. America has
• a vital role in maintaining peace and security in Europe, Asia, and the Middle
East. If we shirk our responsibilities, we invite challenges to our fundamental
interests. The history of the 20th century should have taught us that it is important
to shape circumstances before crises emerge, and to meet threats before they
become dire. The history of the past century should have taught us to embrace
the cause of American leadership. (Para. 3-6)
PNAC’s statement of principles promotes the US as a moral authority figure, one that
resembles Sophocles’ Creon in the Antigone. As an authority figure, America has the
moral responsibly for protecting both its citizens and the state’s interests. In a globalized
world, however, the best way to protect American interests, as well as her citizens, is by
making sure that the rest of the world conform to American values. We must, then,
“shape circumstances” so that they are favorable to America’s interests. Here, American
values and policies are promoted as universal, because, according to PNAC, American
peace, Pax Americana, is not only good for America, but good for the world as well.
PNAC and its members employ a Creonic master frame of American
predominance and leadership, which is extended to resemble a pseudo-Antigonal
universal frame. This feint is accomplished by suggesting that what is good for America
is good for the world, thus attempting to make American interests and ideals valid as
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Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. universal ones. This process is accomplished on two levels. First, the Creonic master
frame of America and American values is promoted within the nation-state through the
rhetoric of patriotism, protection of Americans from terrorists, and moralistic images to
gain popular support for extending this Americanized Creonic frame outwards to the
international arena. This internal frame development works to create a collective-action
frame whereby Americans and American civil society actively promote US values and
interests both nationally and internationally.36 Second, in order for the Creonic American
frame to extend internationally, it must assume universal dimensions or Antigonal
aspects—recreating the world in its own image. To this end, American-specific values,
ideographs of democracy, free-market democracy, liberty, freedom, and rule-of-law,
must cease to appear culturally specific, while still remaining very “American.” This has
been accomplished on a hegemonic level, rather than through military force, where
international consent for American rule was granted.37 As Andrew Hurrell (2005) states
in “Power, Institutions, and Production of Inequality,” although the US has used methods
of coercion and military might, it relied more on “the mutual construction of collaborative
liaisons in which weaker states and state elites came to see themselves as having a
stake in the hegemonic project, and on the diffusion of dominant economic and political
ideas” (pp. 51-52).
However, since the late 1990s there has been global dissatisfaction with
American economic and political policies, which has resulted in the decline of American
hegemony. Thus, force without consent has been promoted by neocons and PNAC, to
361 use the term “civil society” in the sense that Antonio Gramsci (1971/2005) used the term to characterize the multitude of state and non-governmental organizations (including organizations such as private think tanks, the PTA, the educational system, churches and the like) that perpetuate predominant ideals held by the society.
37 Hegemony is defined here through a Gramsci lens as force plus consent.
137
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. suggest that for the good of the world, America will use military might to spread free-
market democracy, liberty and freedom. The world is welcome to join in this effort and
create a “coalition of the willing,” but even if active consent for the project is not freely
given, America will not be deterred and, like Lakoff’s (2004) “strict father,” will do what is
best for the world whether the world agrees or not (p. 40).
To clarify the amplification of this Americanized Creonic into a pseudo-Antigonal
frame, the remainder of this chapter will examine prominent themes displayed in key
documents produced by PNAC and its members from 1992-2005.38 Although PNAC
was not established until 1997, many of its members were also key figures in the first
Bush administration, which produced the 1992 DPG. Thus, it is helpful to examine
documents that helped define both modern neoconservative and PNAC’s political
principles.
Creating a Creonic Master Frame—Patriotism and Moral Authority
As discussed above, PNAC members believe that in order for a Pax Americana
to succeed, as the Americanized Creonic master frame, popular national support must
be developed and sustained.39 According to several authors (Khalilzad, 1995; Kagan
and Kristol, 1996; Donnelly et al., 2000; and Perle et at., 1996) the American public and
some elites, especially liberal elites, do not support or understand the need for either a
38 The documents selected are: (1) the New York Time’s “Excerpts from the Pentagon’s Plan: ‘Prevent the Re-Emergence o f a New Rival”’ (8 March, 1992). (2) Patrick Tyler’sNew York Times article “Pentagon Imagines New Enemies to Fight in Post-Cold-War Era” (17 February, 1992). (3) Patrick Tyler’sNew York Times article “Pentagon Drops Goal of Blocking New Superpowers” (24 May, 1992). (4) Zalmay Khalilzad’s From Containment to Global Leadership? America and the World after the Cold War (1995). (5) Robert Perle, et al. “A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm” (1996). (6) Robert Kagan and William Kristol’s “Toward a Neo-Reaganite Foreign Policy” (1996). (7) Project for a New American Century’s “Open Letter to William J. Clinton” (3 June, 1997). (8) Thomas Donnelly, et al. Rebuilding America’s Defenses: Strategy. Forces, and Resources for a New Century (2000). (9) Charles Krauthammer’s “The Bush Doctrine: A BM , Kyoto, and the New American Unilateralism” (21 June, 2001). (10) The United States’ Defense Department’s The National Security Strategy of the United States of America (2002).
39 Many phrases are used to express aPax Americana including an American Benevolent (or humble) Hegemony, a US hegemony, an American “zone of peace” or “zone of democracy.” 138
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Pax Americana or for an increase of military spending to support such a project. Writing
before the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, the authors suggest that this lack of
support is a result of a lack of perceived threat since the end of the Cold War. As Kagan
and Kristol state, “the most difficult thing to preserve is that which does not appear to
need preserving” (para. 13). To Kagan and Kristol, Khalilzad, and PNAC, there are two
major ways in which public support for a Pax Americana project can be gained. First,
the appearance of a “monster” or a “new Pearl Harbor,” which will justify, in the public’s
mind, a change in foreign policy as well as military buildup. Second, an appeal must be
made to American’s sense of justice, patriotism, and moral values. Kagan and Kristol
touch on all of these mobilization themes, suggesting that the appearance of a new
monster, or monsters already present, can help (para. 35). However, they also stress
the need to tap into American patriotism (para. 33-35), which will help create moral
clarity (para. 26). By contrast, PNAC’s Rebuilding America's Defenses (Donnelly et al.,
2000) simply states that “further, the process of transformation, even if it brings
revolutionary change, is likely to be a long one, absent some catastrophic and catalyzing
event - like a new Pearl Harbor” (p. 63a).
At this point, it is vital to note that within a few years, both a “monster” and a “new
Pearl Harbor” appeared and were rhetorically developed, in the terrorist attacks of 2001.
G.W. Bush’s administration used the attacks not only to gain popular and political
support for invading Iraq in 2003, but to increase military spending as well. As America’s
defense rhetorically transformed into a “war on terror” articulation, further national
support was gained for an American-led peace—justifying forcible regime change in Iraq
as well as utilizing unilateral action, that is to say, military force without the consent of
the UN Security Council. However, a “monster” is not enough to sustain justification for
pursuing a Pax Americana especially when, as is currently being demonstrated, the
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Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. concept of a “war on terror” is so vague, lacking any specific geographic location, and
thus leaving people to wonder how to fight a war on terror and whether such a war can
be won. As a result, American idealism and patriotism must be continually revitalized to
sustain the Creonic project. Moreover, Khalilzad (1995) insists, citing several polls on
“American public attitudes,” that in the face of war and global unrest, “a majority of
Americans support peace ‘through military strength’” (p. 36).
Universalizing Americana—Perverting the Antigonal Frame
Khalilzad's (1995) comment leads us to the next phase in recent rhetorical history
when a Creonic Pax Americana was extended internationally through the use of pseudo-
Antigonal discourse. As I have shown, an Antigonal discourse relies on the ambiguous
and ideographic use of universal/spiritual rule-of-law arguments and corresponding
values. In this case, Americanized ideographic ideas such as rule-of-law, liberty,
freedom, and democracy (often expressed in these documents as either a free-market
democracy or economic democracy) are rhetorically presented as universal values
which the world should, and does want to embrace. It then seems that only through
Americanized universal values that world peace can emerge. In the 1992 DPG
("Excerpts from Pentagon's Plan: 'Prevent the Re-Emergence of a New Rival,"' 1992),
the pseudo-Antigonal frame is applied when the draft states the need for America to lead
the effort of spreading democracy in order to maintain global peace. Likewise, “A Neo-
Reaganite Foreign Policy” (Kagan and Kristol, 1996) states: “American Hegemony is the
only reliable defense against a breakdown of peace and international order” (para. 14).
Khalilzad (1995) actually warns against mutipolarity because it is too difficult to sustain,
and such a system will find it “too difficult to behave according to its rules” (p. viii);
therefore, a US-led world is safer since “a world in which the United States exercises
leadership would be more peaceful and more open to values of liberal democracy, free-
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Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. markets, and the rule of law” (p. viii). Further, PNAC’s 2000 Rebuilding America’s
Defenses report says that “The American peace has proven itself peaceful, stable and
durable. It has, over the past decade, provided the geopolitical framework for
widespread economic growth and the spread of American principles of liberty and
democracy” (Donnelly et al., p. 1a). By linking free-market neoliberalism with
Americanized democracy and peace, these publications extend the American Creonic
master frame internationally, stating that rule-of-law is best attained under American
leadership.
It is also argued that these Americanized universal values and leadership are
already accepted, welcomed, and sought. America, because of its core values of
freedom, liberty, and democracy, will not abuse its place as the prominent superpower
and, therefore, others realize it offers the best “benevolent” leadership. Kagan and
Kristol (1996) state this specifically when they say that even the leaders of Russia and
China understand that the world is better off under US leadership:
At their April summit meeting, Boris Yeltsin and Jiang Zemin joined in
denouncing ‘hegemonism’ in the post-Cold War world. They meant this as a
compliment about the United States. It should be taken as a compliment and a
guide to action. (Kagan and Kristol, 1996, para. 8)
Although questioning China’s support of US hegemony (Khalilzad, 1995, p. 29),
Khalilzad says that not only does most of the world appreciate the predominance of US
power; they rely on it and may take advantage of it if we do not insist that they too do
their share (p. 38). Finally, Krauthammer (2001) proclaims that “this is not mere self-
congratulation: it is a fact manifested in the way others welcome our power” (para. 34).
Of course, not all the world welcomes the power of the US, no matter how
“universal” its values appear to be. There are some “undemocratic zones of conflict”
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Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. (Khalilzad, 1995, p. 7), some “terrorists” (Donnelly et al., 2000, p. 17; The White House,
2002, p. 4) and, as the authors of "Excerpts from Pentagon's Plan: 'Prevent the Re-
Emergence of a New Rival,"' (1992) state, “hostile powers” that are not interested in
peace but are consumed with simple self-interest (para. 2). Thus it is suggested that if
members of the international community are not working democracies with free-market
economies, or showing progress in these areas, then they are somehow against not only
the US but any project of world peace, and they must be changed or reformed. In this
light, the 2002 National Security Strategy reads:
We [the world] are also increasingly united by common values. Russia is in the
midst of a hopeful transition, reaching for its democratic future and a partner in
the war on terror. Chinese leaders are discovering that economic freedom is the
only source of national wealth. In time, they will find that social and political
freedom is the only source of national greatness. America will encourage the
advancement of democracy and economic openness in both nations, because
these are the best foundations for domestic stability and international order. We
will strongly resist aggression from other great powers—even as we welcome
their peaceful pursuit of prosperity, trade, and cultural advancement. (The White
House, p. 4)
This “peaceful pursuit of prosperity, trade, and cultural advancement” can only be
achieved by foreign entities if they utilize processes approved by a Pax Americana rule-
of-law program. Sounding a lot like Creon when he suggests that only his laws can sail
the ship of state safely (Sophocles, 2001, line 191), such a program, it is proclaimed, is
only concerned with what is right and just: “I believe that if anyone tries to run a city/ On
the basis of bad policies and holds his tongue/ Because he’s afraid to say what is right/
That man is terrible” (lines 178-181). Again sounding like Creon, those who do not
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Antigonal frame of American values as universal values. The US must actively prevent
these enemies, the rival superpowers occupying undemocratic zones of peace, from
arising:
First, the US must show the leadership necessary to establish and protect a new
order that holds the promise of convincing potential competitors that they need
not aspire to a greater goal or pursue a more aggressive posture to protect their
legitimate interests. Second, in the non-defense areas, we must account
sufficiently for the interests of the advanced industrial nations to discourage them
from challenging our leadership or seek to overturn the established political and
economic order. Finally, we must maintain the mechanisms for deterring
potential competitors from even aspiring to a larger regional or global role.
("Excerpts from Pentagon's Plan: 'Prevent the Re-Emergence of a New Rival,"'
1992, para. 4)
It is interesting to note, however, that after this draft was leaked to the press and
heavily criticized, this main goal was immediately changed to emphasize collective
international action whenever possible, relying on the idea of “the willing,” while still
insisting that unilateral action was preferable (See Tyler’s, 1992c, article “Pentagon
Drops Goal of Blocking New Superpowers”). Although the main goal of deterring any
other powers from challenging the US was first articulated by officials and thinkers inside
and outside US government channels, this goal was decidedly absent from official
governmental documents after the rewrite of the 1992 Defense Planning Guidance40
As Tyler (1992c) points out, language referring to US dominance and to eliminating rival
40 The one exception is Khalilzad’s (1995) From Containment to Global Leadership?, which was written with federal funding (p. iii), although associated with a nonprofit institution, the R AND Corporation.
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Security Strategy (The White House, 2002) report also avoids any suggestion of the
United States’ maintaining its strength and power by deterring “rival interests.” It is in
such ways that “American interests” are distorted into an Americanized Antigonal frame,
as “American interests” transform into “democratic zones of peace” where America must
act to deter undemocratic zones from threatening world peace.41 This shift is seen
between the original and rewritten DPG version. Although at first a military buildup is
called for in order to deter any rivals to the US, the revised DPG stresses the need for a
military buildup in order to stop dangerous hegemonies, which might have weapons of
mass destruction (WMDs), from coming into power. To this end, Tyler (1992c), in
“Pentagon Drops Goal of Blocking New Superpowers,” quotes the rewritten draft as
stating that the US must prevent “any hostile power from dominating a region critical to
our interests" because “consolidated, non-democratic control of the resources . . . could
generate a significant threat to our security” (para. 24). Although the focus is still on
“American Interest,” interest itself is rhetorically presented as not only American
interests, but the interests of our allies: ‘“One of the primary tasks we face today in
shaping the future is carrying longstanding alliances into the new era, and turning old
enmities into new cooperative relationships’” (para. 11). Documents from outside the
official US government, however, continue to stress a strict Creonic theme of deterring
rival interests. For example, in “A Neo-Reaganite Foreign Policy,” Kagan and Kristol
(1996) state: “The first objective of US foreign policy should be to preserve and enhance
that predominance by strengthening America’s security, supporting its friends, advancing
its interests, and standing up for its principles around the world” (para. 7).
41 As the concept of democracy is almost always referred to in these publications as “ffee-market democracy,” the “undemocratic zones” can be read as “zones” that reject free-market economic policies. 144
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. The active work of discouraging rival powers, as well as an American established
political and economic order, can be realized not only through military might (a theme
shared by all documents), but by actively spreading liberalism or a free-market
democracy:
Based on the understanding that its moral goals and its fundamental national
interests are almost always in harmony . . . the United States achieved its
present position of strength not by practicing a foreign policy of live and let live,
nor by passively waiting for threats to arise but by actively promoting American
principles of governance abroad —democracy, free markets, respect of liberty.
(emphasis added, Kagan and Kristol, 1996, para. 26).
The agenda of installing and encouraging a liberal economic democracy appears in most
of these documents, which all take on a pseudo-Antigonal frame when American
economic ideals are universalized. The “Excerpts” (1992) of the DPG lists a second
objective of encouraging nations to spread democracy and respect international law,
while limiting violence and spreading open economic systems (para. 5). Here, the
second objective of spreading democracy and law is linked to the promotion of neoliberal
economic policies. It is through the use of economic measures and the opening of other
global economies that an Americanized democracy will arise globally. Thus, the revised
DPG (P.E. Tyler, 1992c) states that vital American tools “include political and economic
measures and others such as security assistance, military-to-military contacts,
humanitarian aid and intelligence assistance, as well as security measures to prevent
the emergence of a non-democratic aggressor in critical regions” (para. 30). In “A Clean
Break" (Perle et al., 1996), the authors stress the point that Israel must adopt western
values (para. 6), liberalize their economy (para. 32) and get rid of all socialist
foundations (para. 36). Krauthammer also states that the US must “extend the peace by
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Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. spreading democracy and free institutions” because “the zone of democracy is almost
invariably a zone of peace” (para. 38), while Rebuilding America's Defenses (Donnelly et
al., 2000), on its first page, proclaims that American peace has “provided the geopolitical
framework for widespread economic growth and the spread of American principles of
liberty and democracy” (p. 1a). This theme is particularly enhanced in the National
Security Strategy (The White House, 2002), which utilizes terms such as “free-market
democracy” (p. 30a) in saying that “America will encourage the advancement of
democracy and economic openness .. . because these are the best foundations for
domestic stability and international order" (p. v). In From Containment to Global
Leadership? (Khalilzad, 1995), Khalilzad stresses economic stability and democratic
principles at home and internationally. Internationally, the US must “maintain and
strengthen the democratic ‘zone of peace’ and incrementally extend it,” while
“Maintain[ing] U.S. economic strength and an open international economic system” (p.
22). At home, he suggests that US economic strength must be enhanced because “the
United States is unlikely to preserve its military and technological dominance if its
economy declines seriously” (p. 35).
What is interesting about the above articulations is that somehow, free-market
mentality, or neoliberalism, is tacitly equated with democracy. Nothing could be further
from the fact. As Susan George (1999) pointed out in a paper delivered at the
“Conference on Economic Sovereignty in a Globalising World,” Bangkok 1999, “A Short
History of Neoliberalism,” unlike democracy, neoliberalism is a from-the-top program that
often needs to be forced upon communities. Further, neoliberalism lacks transparency:
“It claims that the economy should dictate its rules to society, not the other way around.
Democracy is an encumbrance, [and] neoliberalism is designed for winners, not for
voters who necessarily encompass the categories of both winners and losers” (para. 31).
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Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Indeed, people often reject a neoliberal persuasion that would privatize commons such
as shared water sources and other, normally state-controlled functions. Laffey and
Weldes (2005), in “Policing and Global Governance,” recount a striking story
demonstrating this rejection: the Bolivian Water War. In 2000, because of economic
restructuring programs instilled through the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the
World Bank (WB), and Inter-American Development Bank, Bolivia was required to
privatize its water works. As a result, Cochabama’s city water system was sold to Aguas
del Tunari, “which was operated in part by International Waters Limited, a British
subsidiary of San Francisco-based Bechtel Enterprises” (p. 72). With the sale of the
public works, water prices soared, up to 60 percent in some cases, resulting is mass
protests, “which were brutally policed by the military and riot police, lasting for four days”
(p. 72). Eventually the protesters were successful and privatization of the water works
was repealed. However, under the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS),
Bechtel was able to sue Bolivia for lost profits in the amount of $25 million dollars, a suit
they eventually lost due to global pressure of protests.42 However, as Laffey and
Weldes point out, both GATS and the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) routinely
work to “override local democratic preferences. This, it seems, is global governance” (p.
73). Furthermore, the Bolivia Water War is not an isolated example but one of several
instances in which neoliberal policies had to be forced upon a population in a most
undemocratic fashion.43
Taken together, the programs of economic neoliberalism and a Pax Americana
work against a democratic cosmopolitical project: both programs work to bureaucratize
42 The Democracy Center (2005), http://www.democracyctr.org/bechtel-vs-bolivia.htm, reports that on “January 19th 2006, Aguas del Tunari’s main shareholders Bechtel and Abengoa agreed to drop their case in ICSID for a token payment of 2 bolivianos (.30 USD)” (para. 12).
43 Laffey and Weldes (2005) point out that the privatization of water works alone has created great public protests around the world, as in Peru, Indonesia, South Africa, and Poland (p. 71). 147
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. the ideal, the imaginative, transforming particular, ideographic values to resemble
universals embedded within material workings. By utilizing concepts such as liberty,
freedom, and above all, democracy, both programs seem to suggest that difference is
respected: Neoliberalism proclaims difference valid within free competition, while Pax
Americana proclaims difference as seen in identity politics; that is, difference can exist
within culturally specific spaces as long as it does not interfere with political and
economic master structures. However, in reality both programs work to erase difference
through a pseudo-Antigonal frame of universalism. Further, because this perverted
Antigonal frame is often advertised under the mask of cosmopolitanism, we must
reenvision a new articulation of cosmopolitanism, one that embraces universality plus
difference.
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Envisioning Cosmopolitical Democracy
Supporting a cosmopolitical from-below democracy project that rejects an
either/or Antigonal/Creonic articulation, I find myself admiring Falk and Strauss’ (2003)
conception of a General People’s Assembly, yet that project cannot succeed until there
is popular world support for it. This support cannot be created or forced, but is best
promoted by individuals and networks of social movements seeking to democratize local
and world politics, as well as economic policies. As I conceive it, cosmopolitical
democracy contains four main ideas, as planks of an agenda:
(1) Rooted Citizens of the World. Echoing the Stoics and, more recently
Nussbaum (1996/2002), we should consider ourselves citizens of the world. However,
this phrase should not be taken literally to mean that ‘I’ am an official card-carrying
member of a world-nation. Rather, it is a guiding metaphor to suggest that we have an
obligation to think about and consider our fellow human beings even if we have never
actually associated with most of them. It is a reminder that how I live affects not only
myself and those close around me, but other peoples of the world. But, as many critics
of cosmopolitanism point out, we do not live in the “world,” we live in a local space.
Thus, the concept of rooted cosmopolitanism, or as Appiah (1996/2002) phrases it,
“cosmopolitan patriots,” is helpful in conjunction with the idea that we are world citizens.
Rooted cosmopolitans are those who are aware of the wider world around them,
including the joys and problems that exist, but are still rooted to their local space (p. 22).
As Tarrow (2005) explains, “cosmopolitans move physically and cognitively outside their
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and to the resources, experiences, and opportunities that place provides them with” (p.
42).
(2) A Participatory Democracy. As many supporters of cosmopolitanism suggests,
they must actively discard the either/or world-view (Falk, 1996/2002, p. 53; Falk and
Strauss, 2003, p. 203; H. Putnam, 1996/2002, p. 9; Taylor, 1996/2002, p. 119).
Cosmopolitical democracy should reject an either/or articulation between a Creonic
nationalism and an Antigonal universalism. It should thereby promote Appiah’s concept
of universality plus difference. This calls for continuous negotiation and translation of
universal values, such as freedom, liberty, and equality, into particular international laws
that also work to respect difference. This continual negotiation process is best served by
a democratic frame (Held, 2003; Archibugi, 2003a; and Falk, 1996/2002). Thus, this
project supports a participatory democracy frame which promotes popular, state, and
international deliberations.
(3) Pragmatic Idealism as Idea and Process. I agree with Kant (1784/1798;
1795/1798) that ideas motivate us and the idea for a cosmopolitical democracy is vital
(1784/1798, p. 249-432). However, unlike Kant, I find that a cosmopolitical democratic
vision cannot be viewed as an absolute end in itself, with preset perimeters determining
how such a cosmopolitical democracy will specifically look or function. Rather, it is the
process, the continual translation, negotiation, and articulation between the universal
and the particular that must constitute any real cosmopolitanism. To predetermine an
absolute end-product is to presuppose a truth, which calls for a form of absolutism.
There may be an end-product, but it is the process that must prevail. By focusing on the
process rather than a pre-determined product, we will better be able to adjust to
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particular material laws that govern such values.
(4) Globalization-From-Below. From-below indicates that cosmopolitical democracy
should not pursue globalization from-above where most people find that decisions are
made for them and that, like Ismene, they must simply accept the so-called experts’
declarations. Rather, a from-below project promotes participation among individuals and
groups, social movements and NGOs, to help them rearticulate a new global society
(Falk and Strauss, 2003, p. 210).
Rooted Citizens of the World
One of the fundamental criticisms regarding Nussbaum’s (1996/2002) vision for
cosmopolitanism is her support for the concept of world citizens. Central to such
criticisms are questions such as: What constitutes world citizenship? How can world
citizenship be created and supported as an independent entity outside states, yet still
have the support from states? As Walzer (1996/2002) humorously declares in “Spheres
of Affection”: “No one has ever offered me citizenship, or described the naturalization
process, or enlisted me in the world’s institutional structures, or given me an account of
its decision procedures (I hope they are democratic)” (p. 125). Critics such as Walzer
have a point—namely, how can we endorse world citizenship without first knowing the
institutions that this ‘citizenship’ will be associated with and negotiated through (Calhoun,
2003, p.90)? Next, what type of institution, or institutions, should the world endorse,
and how can we create a global governmental space in which states agree to lose some
of their governing rights, while adhering, consistently not selectively, to an international
rule-of-law? As Urbinati (2003) points out, much of democratic cosmopolitical theory
relies on the European Union (EU) model for its delineation of world citizenship, as well
as institutional organization (p. 70). However inspirational the EU paradigm is, we must
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For example, in the effort to establish a constitution for the EU, ratification occurred
mostly by parliamentary action, a from-above approach. When subjected to popular
vote in France and the Netherlands in 2005, the constitution was rejected. This outcome
suggests that even in the EU there is still a need for extensive discussion and
negotiation regarding a cosmopolitical democracy. As world citizenship at this point in
time seems presumptive and unlikely, I argue, along with Nussbaum, that what is
needed is an educational effort which will help reorient a population’s thinking from a
narrow local/nationalistic frame to a rooted cosmopolitical frame where individuals can
learn how to relate local concerns and issues to international ones and back again. In
this frame, “rooted citizens of the world” becomes a metaphor that guides our material
and cognitive processes, allowing us to understand those issues and practices that bind
us globally and affect us locally.
As Nussbaum states: “By looking at ourselves through the lens of the other, we
come to see what in our practices is local and nonessential, what is more broadly or
deeply shared” (p. 11). Such an educational process cannot occur overnight, nor should
it be a forced process where patriotism is immediately squashed in order to make room
for cosmopolitanism. Forcing a cosmopolitical democracy, of course, would be anti
democratic and against the spirit of a cosmopolitical democracy. Rather, such ideas
should be encouraged aesthetically in everyday life, with everyday conversations around
the dinner table, in front of the TV, or the workplace water cooler. Such a pragmatic
approach (which will be discussed in the next chapter) will encourage everyday people
to connect their local concerns to the global level and, eventually, encourage them to
see the interconnections of these issues. Fundamental to this approach, however, will
be cultivating the ability to, as Nussbaum suggested, imagine ourselves “through the
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questioned by scholars who suggest that it is impossible to imagine the other.
Imagining the Other
As we saw apropos of Elaine Scarry’s (1996/2002) essay, “The Difficulty of
Imagining Other People,” one fundamental objection to cosmopolitanism is that it is
impossible to imagine the “other,” and so when we do attempt it, we invariably impose
our voice on the “other”—thereby speaking for the other (p. 106). It is implied here that I,
as the imaginer, assume that I and the Other are one and the same, and speak from the
same voice and experience. But it is impossible for Me to be You and You to be Me
since we are distinct individuals whose experiences have made us thus. Being distinct
individuals, I cannot imagine myself as You, from the inside, because I have not had
Your specific experiences. This is the argument that Jay Mclnerney (1984) presents in
his well known novel Bright Lights. Big City. Mclnerney writes in the second person,
suggesting that the reader is the main protagonist of the story. In this way, the author
acts as a guide directing a story wherein You, the reader, experience and imagine the
events described: “You are not the kind of guy who would be at a place like this at this
time of the morning. But here you are . . (p. 1). Halfway through the book occurs the
realization that Mclnerney does not intend this second-person device as a strategy for
our imagining the other, but, rather, as a demonstration that it is impossible to imagine
the other:44
They’re trying to imagine themselves in your shoes, but it would be a tough thing
to do. Last night Vicky was talking about the ineffability of inner experience. She
44 This second-person device, rare but not unknown, was also used by Sam Shepard (1979) in his play Suicide in b Flat and, as in Mclnerney, the use o f the second person actually works to create a distance from “you” as the reader and the work being imagined. Thus as Reynolds’ (1989) claims, imagining and beliefs must be in the first person as it is through the first person perspective that we can see ourselves existing (p. 627). 153
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. told you to imagine what it was like to be a bat. Even if you knew what sonar
was and how it worked, you could never know what it feels like to have it, or what
it feels like to be a small, furry creature hanging upside down from the roof of a
cave. She said that certain facts are accessible only from one point of view—the
point of view of the creature who experiences them. You think she meant that
the only shoes we can ever wear are our own. Meg can’t imagine what it’s like
for you to be you, she can only imagine herself being you. (p. 101).
Mclnerney seems to suggest that even through guided imagination you cannot imagine
yourself as the other, but only the other as an aspect of yourself. If this is correct, then
to imagine yourself as another is to impose your voice on the other’s voice, and thus, to
assume a “from-the-top” position from which you force yourself, your ideas, experiences,
thoughts and emotions, on another. This process would then be contrary to democratic
relations and also contrary to a cosmopolitical insistence of universaiism, plus difference.
However, imagining another is not the same as speaking for, or assuming a
public voice for, the other. As Reynolds (1989) states in “Imagining Oneself To Be
Another,” when I imagine myself as another, I do not imagine that the other is me. In
Reynolds’ example, if he imagines himself as Napoleon, he does not imagine that
Napoleon is Reynolds: “But in imagining Napoleon from the inside I do not imagine that I
am experiencing Napoleon’s conscious state. I merely imagine Napoleon having those
states by representing them to myself in a certain way" (p. 627). To imagine that
Napoleon is Reynolds would be to insist that Reynolds can publicly speak for Napoleon
since they are then one and the same, but this is not the case. Through the act of
transference imagining, the imaginer is not insisting that he or she is aware of the
targets’ (the imagined other’s) specific emotions or experiences. What is implied
through the act of imagining the other is a general understanding of those particular
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Imagination, concerning Hume’s account of imagination, Hume theorized that it is
through our imagination that we are able to relate a particular thing to a general
category. In this way, Warnock is able to imagine her cat Simpkin not only as a
particular cat, but as a general representation for all domestic cats (p. 18). It is through
the use of our imagination that we are able to make the leap from the specific to the
general, from ourselves to the other. For example, if a friend told me about a horrible
experience on the freeway where a car cut her off just as she was approaching the off
ramp, I might say: “I know what you mean. Two weeks ago I was getting off I-5 and a
trucker just pushed me off the road.” In this particular instance, I am not suggesting that
I know, absolutely, her experience of panic as she was being cut off by the other car.
What I am suggesting by offering her my parallel experience is that I have a general
understanding of how it feels to be cut off in traffic. If we could not generally relate to
someone’s particular emotions or situations, we could not relate or communicate with
each other, or enjoy a night at the theatre, movies, television shows, or a good book.
Because we can imagine, we can relate and, therefore, extend ourselves out of our
specific life into another’s.
The above example seems to support Mclnerney’s (1984) insistence that we can
only imagine the other as an aspect of our self. That is, I imagine my friend’s traffic
panic as the panic I had when I was cut off by a driver. Thus, Mclnerney is right when
he suggests that we also imagine the other as an aspect of our self. However, this is not
always the case and we often imagine aspects quite distinct from ourselves or our
specific beliefs (Reynolds, 1989, p. 627). For example, for most of my life I have been a
professional actress and this profession has required me to actively imagine myself as
other people. Often this process allows me to draw upon experiences particular to
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Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. myself and then to transfer the emotions I had from those experiences onto my dramatic
character. More often, however, I am portraying characters whose experiences,
emotions, and life are foreign to me on many levels. When I played Jessie from Marsha
Norman’s (1983) play 'night. Mother. I was required to transform myself into a person
who thinks that she has experienced the best that life has to offer and, because life
cannot get any better (thus can only get worse), that she should kill herself to avoid any
more pain. In Jessie’s mind, the act of committing suicide is not only logical, but right.
This line of thinking, this belief set, is foreign to me—the actress wishing to imagine
myself as Jessie. Unlike the character Jessie, I believe that life is unexpected and
experience has taught me that just when I think things cannot get worse, they do.
However, the reverse has proven true as well. As good as I feel now, there is a chance
that I will feel even better two minutes from now. For me, there is no absolute end
because I focus on the process. Jessie focuses on the end. Since Jessie’s beliefs do
not lend themselves to mine, indeed are alien to me, it can be suggested that it is
impossible for me to imagine myself as her and, so, to portray her realistically.
However, I did portray her and at least convincingly enough for one person to ask
me at what time in my life I had wanted to kill myself. I had not known, from myself or
my life experiences, what it felt like to want to commit suicide. However, I have known
people who were suicidal and could generally relate to their state of mind. They felt
great pain and I knew, at least, the feeling of deep pain. Further, I had seen in plays, in
the movies, and on television, characters who were suicidal. In this way, I recognized
physical body movements, breathing patterns, and cognitive patterns of thinking that
conveyed both depression and suicidal tendencies. Building upon these observations, I
could stipulate, generally, what it means to be suicidal and then take the general notion,
and emotion, and translate it into a particular—Jessie’s need to die. When I portrayed
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Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Jessie in performance, i was decidedly not myself, nor did I feel as if I inhabited my skin
but the skin of another—Jessie. However, even as an actress, while I imagined myself
as Jessie, I did not believe that Jessie was me (should Jessie have been a real person
and not a fictional character). Nevertheless, through the act of imagining the other, I
could first generally relate to the other and then translate that general articulation into a
particular instance.45 The reverse is also true where we start from a particular (local)
and translate it into a general (global). Both acts require imagination and both acts can
free us from spaces of isolation where we cannot relate to or imagine the joys and
tribulations of the other. In this sense, as Warnock (1976/1978) points out while
discussing Sartre, imagination allows us to “detach ourselves from our actual situation,
and envision situations which are non-actuaf' (p. 197).
Extending our perception in this way, we can envision a cosmopolitical space by
relating our local concerns and habits to the global level. In other words, when I
purchase a shirt from Wal-Mart, I can cultivate a habit where I imagine myself as the
other creating the shirt in either good or poor conditions. This act of imagination will help
guide me as to whether I should purchase that particular shirt or not—allowing me to
make ethical decisions that support a world community. Better yet, this act of imagining
might prompt me to investigate the working conditions at the factory that made the shirt
or, at least, investigate the general working conditions promoted by Wal-Mart
internationally. Either way, I actively connect my local practices to wider ones and back
again.
45 It is noteworthy, and relevant to my argument, that part of my desire to play the role of Jessie stemmed from the fact that someone I cared about deeply was, at the time, contemplating suicide. I did not and could not relate to this person’s desire. By taking on the role of Jessie, I allowed myself to imagine what it would be like to want to die. This process required me to take a leap outside of myself in order to understand another and, in doing so, I could not only relate better to my friend, but could offer better support and possible guidance. Without this leap of imagination, I had little to offer. 157
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Cosmopolitical Democracy
If we can forego absolute Creonic and Antigonal frames, is there a role for choral
discourse? What type of democratic choral framework is pertinent to progressive
cosmopolitical democracy? How is democracy defined, and is it possible to have a
world democratic framework?
Concepts of democracy take many forms, as suggested above, and the term
itself has changed over the centuries. There are a variety of ways to view democracy.
Starting from the classical standpoint, Plato (1968) in his Republic saw democracy as a
form of government that protected the people from tyranny (lines 338d-e). Athenian
democracy was a far cry from being an inclusive form of government, however, since the
majority of the population could not participate. Nevertheless, this is the core idea of
democracy that emerged out of Athens. It is now considered utopic, as Hauser (2004)
suggests in “Rhetorical Democracy and Civic Engagement,” where he defines
democracy as a rhetorical mode of government where the “citizens are equal, everyone
has a say, everyone has a vote, and the decisions are based on the most compelling
arguments" (p. 1). Likewise, William Rehg (2002) in “The Argumentation Theorists in
Deliberative Democracy,” states that “democratic lawmaking [should] flow from the
public, reasonable deliberation [by] informed citizens” (p. 18). These definitions are
themselves utopic because in reality all the citizens do not always have an opportunity to
equally participate, a fact that critics of participatory democracy often point to.
Furthermore, citizens are not always reasonable or informed. Because of such issues,
many theorists recommend a representative democracy over a participatory democracy,
in a debate that still continues.
Looking back to the Enlightenment, Frans H. Van Eemeren (2002) in his essay
“Democracy and Argumentation,” briefly examines the historical ideal of democracy as
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and John Stuart Mill, Bentham and James Mill were concerned mostly with the structural
arrangements of the institution and held a narrow view of popular participation, which
was a “purely protective function of it ensuring that the private interests of each citizen
were protected” (p. 74). Rousseau and John Stuart Mill, on the other hand, endorsed a
wider kind of citizen participation because, in their view, it was “central to the
establishment and maintenance of a democratic polity, not only at the national level, but
also at the ‘lower’ [local] levels” (p. 74). Furthermore, John Stuart Mill, while writing
about the engaged citizen, stated that such a citizen must “weigh interests not of his
own” and must be “guided, in case of conflicting claims, by another rule [other] than his
private partialities”: “He is made to feel himself one of the public, and whatever is for
their benefit to be for his benefit” (John Stuart Mill as quoted in Putnam, 1996/2002, p.
337). Similarly, Thomas Jefferson also considered a wider scope of participation
essential to the American democracy project: “making every citizen an acting member of
the government, and in the offices nearest and most interesting to him, will attach him by
his strongest feelings to the independence of his country, and its republican constitution”
(Thomas Jefferson as quoted in Putnam, p. 336). Such scholars as Robert Putnam
(1996/2002) in his work Bowling Alone, suggest that a participatory government with
engaged citizens was the preferred mode of operation until the middle of the twentieth
century when “some political theorists [began] to assert that good citizenship requires
simply choosing among competing teams of politicians at the ballot box, as one might
choose among competing brands of toothpaste” (p. 336). William Rehg (2002) looks to
Fascism in Europe for promoting this change of attitude and adds that “skepticism about
the possibility of a common good in pluralistic societies, and discouraging sociological
findings about the political ignorance and apathy of the public led political theorists . . . to
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such political theorist who held such a “dim view” was Joseph Schumpeter.
Schumpeter (1944), skeptical of popular democratic participation, defined
democracy in Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy not as a political system which
endorses inclusion for all citizens, but rather as a representative political system which
would place power in the hands of the elites or leaders. Thus, democracy is:
[A] political method . . . a certain type of institutional arrangement for arriving at
political—legislative and administrative—decisions . . . The democratic element
in this method is the periodic competition of leaders (elites) for the votes of the
electorate in free election. This competition for leadership is the distinctive
feature of the modern political method: That institutional arrangement for arriving
at political decisions in which individuals acquire the power to decide by means
of a competitive struggle for the people’s vote. (Schumpeter as quoted in
Eemeren, 2002, p. 72-73).
In Schumpeter’s democracy, the system is divided into leaders and followers and
therefore does not expect, rely upon, or require equal participation from its citizens.
Similarly, Rehg (2002) points to “elitists and economic theorists of democracy” such as
Schumpeter, who apply what he calls the rational choice theory: “As an economic
approach to democracy, they apply rational choice theory to the political process; for
example, they liken voters to consumers who make rational choices among political
programs according to individual or group preferences" (p. 19). Although a
representative democracy has prevailed as the ideal form of democracy in the west for
many years, communications and political theorists are now moving away from this
representative frame and re-embracing a participatory-democratic frame.
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have engaged the concept of democracy extensively, as is seen in the work of Eemeren
(2002), Rehg (2002), Williams and Young (2002), Hauser (2004), and Murphy (2004), to
name but a few. For them, the key phrases and concepts concerning democracy are
deliberation, communication, argumentation, dialectic, and rhetoric. If democracy is
ideally a governmental form which encourages participation of all its citizens, then
democracy must involve active argumentation and deliberation where competing views
within the political process have an opportunity to be expressed, explored,
acknowledged and, finally, debated until there can be an agreed upon outcome that, in
Burkean terms, transcends differences. Because democracy as promoted here involves
argumentation and deliberation, democracy can be understood as “institutionalized
uncertainty” (Eemeren, 2002, p. 82), sustained by controversy, and organized distrust
(Williams and Young, 2002, p. 2). Although participatory democracy is “uncertain,” since
it relies on the process of deliberation and argumentation among members, this view of
democracy is decidedly counter to the narrow understanding of democracy offered by
neoliberalism, or neoconservative organizations such as the PANC, or individuals such
as President G.W. Bush, all of whom prefer a top-down approach to decision-making.46
Participatory democracy counters this Creonic frame of top-down politics, which does
not encourage deliberation among members of a community and, instead, promotes
Ismenism. Rather in participatory democracy, members of a community are encouraged
to actively participate in public matters, and to challenge leaders when they create
misguided rules-of-law. As Rehg (2002) would suggest, public participation works
46 On December 18, CNN (2000) posted a transcript of President G.W. Bush’s meeting with congressional leaders on Capital Hill. The transcript quoted Bush as stating that sometimes there would be disagreement among members; however, “if this were a dictatorship, it’d be a heck of a lot easier, just so long as I ’m the dictator” (para. 7).
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Furthermore, a participatory democracy which promotes deliberation among citizen
members helps to create community and, as a result, a choral frame that disrupts
individualism. The emphasis on individualism and “self-reliance,” as discussed in the
last chapter, attempts to make public issues private, thereby discouraging both
community and deliberation among community members. Once an issue is defined as
private, concerns regarding that issue must be privately debated, rather than publicly
debated. A participatory democracy works against the effort to make public issues
private, because it works against privatizing issues that, in actuality, affect a community.
However, realizing a cosmopolitical participatory democracy will not happen
overnight, nor will it happen through Antigone’s vague universal laws or through force as
maintained and revered within a Creonic framework. A participatory democracy should
start locally with civic, social organizations and movements which will also work to
spread the process to the wider population and, finally, to the world at large by creating
pragmatic, transcendent frames.
Pragmatic Idealism-Promoting Process over Ends
As Kant (1784/1798) rightly suggested about cosmopolitanism, the idea behind
cosmopolitanism is vital since it is the idea, indeed the ideal, that helps propel humanity
toward change: “ideas can buoy us up, hence the market for tracts on ‘the power of
positive thinking’” (Burke, 1961/1970, p. 17). In fact, grand ideas such as airplanes, the
internet, or cell phones would not exist without the power of an idea—a realization that is
relearned every time we look at one of Da Vinci’s notebooks or watch a Star Trek
episode.
However, we must be careful not to mistake a projected end (a proposed end
inspired by an idea) for an absolute end (a finished end that does not allow for changes
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employ terministic screens, which limit experience, in order to achieve that end, because
an absolute end must dictate both process and experience in order to remain
unbendable and absolute. For this reason, a cosmopolitical democracy is better situated
within a pragmatic frame, where material contingencies and issues challenge ends,
which is propelled by idealism rather than the philosophical modes of rationalism—a
topic that will be explored fully in the next chapter. For the present, it is enough to
remember that rationalism assumes we are reasonable creatures who act in our own
best interests. However, as G. Lakoff (2004) correctly points out, decisions are more
often made through our values and identity rather than rational self-interest. Therefore,
decisions we make do not necessarily “coincide” with our self-interest or rationality (p.
33). This is a lesson that everyday living teaches us, whether we find ourselves eating
foods that we know are bad for us, consuming too much alcohol, smoking cigarettes, or
voting for issues that will, in the end, be counter to our self-interests as individuals or as
members of a community. Pragmatic idealism, as I see it, rests instead on the
philosophy that material reality affects our cognitive reality, and our cognitive reality also
shapes our perception of the material world. Since real life contingencies can challenge
and reform our ideals and truths, cognitive ideals and perceived truths are better viewed
as projected or proposed ends rather than ends that are “set” or absolute. To conceive
an idea or an ideal as a proposed end, is to encouraged process over product. Further,
as Rescher (1994) theorizes in “Precis of A System of Pragmatic Idealism," although we
can deliberate about “ends,” an end as an unmoving perfection is “unattainable” (p. 384),
because when exposed to contingencies and the evolving reality in everyday life, ends
are constantly challenged. As William James (1907/1981) points out, an ideal or a truth
as a perfected end means that the ideal or truth can no longer be altered by additional
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complete experience” (p. 100). Because ideals or truths, like projected universals, are
often challenged once they become immersed in the particulars of life, we must
approach our projected ends and ideals with the understanding that in order for them to
survive, they must be flexible enough to be reconceived or reformed to meet everyday
challenges. Therefore, our energies are better spent on the process of realizing the
ideal we seek. Further, as Tarrow (2005) concluded while examining global civil
societies’ effort to translate the local to the international and back again, there is not a
single process, no absolute end-product that leads to a global civil society or, for that
matter, a cosmopolitical democracy (p. 9).
Because pragmatic idealism places an emphasis on the process, it insists on a
continual negotiation between the ideal (the general and the universal) and the particular
(the material and the specific). When people negotiate about the meaning of an ideal
(such as cosmopolitanism) and how it can be realized as a particular (such as rules-of-
law that govern a cosmopolitical ideal), they often employ what Burke (1961/1970) calls
a “double process” where words and practices conceived on the general and ideological
level are made specific on the material level. However, once made specific, ideals and
ideographic sentiments often become too narrow and end up excluding members of a
population, as we saw in the evolution of St. Paul’s Christianity into a form of
universalism. Once this occurs, the ideal must be reevaluated, reformed, and again
made general in order to maintain the integrity of the concept. The ideal, though, does
not return to the general realm unaffected or unchanged; rather, because of the process
of being made specific, the ideal is reformed in such a way as to better accommodate
everyday life. This continual double process of negotiation between the general and the
specific helps refine our ideals, constantly working the ideal or the end, like molding a
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(1961/1970) and Tarrow (2005) demonstrate, this double process of negotiation between
the general and the specific occurs in both language and praxis.
In Burke’s (1961/1970) essay, “On Words and the Word,” he theorized that words
used to describe truths or universals are taken from our everyday life and assigned a
“supernatural” quality (p. 15). However, once we reintroduce the “supernatural” word
back to the particulars of everyday life, the definition of that word is transformed in order
to meet the new challenges it encounters. For Burke, this is a “double process” where
terms, and ideas, experience an “upward” and “downward” motion that affects
meaning—suggesting not an end to meaning, but a process of reestablishing meaning
(p. 10). For example, Burke looks at the term “spirit”: “having moved analogically from
its natural meaning, as ‘breath,’ to connotations that flowered in its usage as a term for
the supernatural, it could then be analogically borrowed back as a secular term for
temper, temperament and the like” (p. 8). In this light, upward and downward articulation
of a term or idea becomes a process of negotiation where people reinterpret such
concepts, reforming the meaning and clarity of that term in order to meet new and
evolving challenges in everyday life.
Like Burke (1961/1970), Tarrow (2005), in The New Transnational Activism,
describes similar “upward” and “downward,” praxis-oriented “scale shifts” experienced by
social movements during their course of interacting with other movements or agencies:
“Upward, in which case local actions spread outward from its origins; or downward,
when a generalized practice is adopted at a lower level” (p. 121). For example, Bob
(2005) in The Marketing of Rebellion describes how in 1994 the Zapatistas, after gaining
international attention and contacts, actively shifted both their initial claims and targets,
redefining the specific in an upward scale shift to the general. As Bob explains, before
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the Zapatistas saw “themselves not as a social movement but as an army of national
liberation in the tradition of Mexico’s revolutionary past” (p. 140). After the cease-fire,
and after drawing international attention, the Zapatistas realized that in order to sustain
international support, they needed to shift their claims from a military stance to a non
violent civil one “championing a broadly defined ‘civil society’ as the vessel of democratic
reform in Mexico” (p. 141). In turn, this civil society extension reoriented the Zapatistas’
target from a narrow space of the Mexican government to a wider orientation of
neoliberalism in general (p. 143). Further, they redirected the general civil society
stance to specifically address their public by walking away from a top-down
implementation of change, “[they] no longer claimed a centra! role for themselves,” and
instead the Zapatistas promoted a from-below project where “a creative ‘space’ marked
by open speech, debate, and deliberation [was encouraged] from which a new politics
would emerge” (p. 142). Thus, by using the double process of upward and downward
scale shifts, the Zapatistas were able to adjust their ideals and ends to changing
circumstances, which helped not only to sustain the social movement, but to strengthen
it. Furthermore, scale shifts such as what the Zapatistas’ experienced, like Burke’s
image of the “double movement,” can create an ongoing cycle wherein upward and
downward processes result in continuous articulation and negotiation of ideas and ends,
which work to maintain and improve both our ideals as well as our projected ends.
However, as Nussbaum (1996/2002) demonstrates, it is tempting to view the
upward and downward process, or the double movement, within the visual orientation of
concentric circles (as described in Episode Two), as was originally conceived by the
Greek philosopher Hierocles, where we move from the local (particular) in incremental
steps outward toward the international (the general or universal) and then draw back into
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(p. 121), is that it offers the illusion of simply reproducing ideas on both the local and
cosmopolitical levels. However, the double-movement process endorsed here is not an
uncomplicated process of grafting unmoving ideals at different levels, but a chaotic, yet
productive method of reformation that actively shuns an either/or, Antigonal or Creonic,
ends. Additionally, this double-movement process can actively challenge Urbinati’s
(2003) fear that cosmopolitical democracy simply seeks to graft a state-like sovereign
model onto the international realm (p. 73). Rather, as conceived here, the double
movement process seeks to negotiate a new model of democracy that can bridge the
state-sovereign level with that of the international, by encouraging the democratic
process to evolve away from the simple act of voting into a more participatory form that
nurtures choral spaces of participation and deliberation. However, as Archibugi (2003a)
and Kagan (2004) both suggest, states are reluctant to give up their power and so will
actively work against a cosmopolitical democracy project which threatens this “bottom
line.” To this end, the cosmopolitical project will be best developed through a from-
below choral frame where social movements and individual actors work to redefine the
international space, slowly reorienting society in another direction.
Reorientation From-Below
Why should a cosmopolitical democracy be implemented from-below rather than
from-above? After all, as we saw with Schumpeter above, there are legitimate questions
regarding whether people can be knowledgeable enough to use a popular vote well.
And, as G. Lakoff (2004) states, if people are not always rationalists and do not always
vote their self-interest, what are they voting for, and how can non-rational voting help
develop a cosmopolitical space? Next, who are all these people, as Calhoun (2003)
rightly asked, that I am imagining myself to be, and am I imagining them correctly in their
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many people that experts, in international law or international economics or relations, will
do a better job at knowing how to vote on a particular issue. After all, what do most of us
know about the real social, civil, and economic situation in India or in China? Moreover,
who is to say that members of a global civil society will have my best interest at heart as
they work to democratize the international space? Certainly they are not immune to the
same non-democratic practices that they accuse members of the G-8 or the World
Economic Forum (WEF) of practicing. Some organizations are better at transparency
and democratic practices than others, but all tend to think and feel that they are right and
that their rightness should be implemented. These are just some of the problems
plaguing a from-below implementation, and if these problems seem insurmountable,
they should. We cannot and should not underestimate the multitude of problems that
such a program faces, nor should we ignore these issues for a utopic cosmopolitical
ideal. Pragmatism teaches us that real material circumstances will often derail the
ideal—destroying the dream.
However, this does not mean that the ideal is not worth fighting for; it simply
means that we must be practical about the problems and realize that a cosmopolitical
democracy will not arise naturally among the populists. As Scholte (2005) states in “Civil
Society and Democracy in Global Governance,” “the democratic benefits of civil society
engagement of global governance do not flow automatically: they must be actively
nurtured” (p. 322). They must be nurtured because when striving for an ideal or an end,
we often forgo the difficult road of true participatory democratic procedures of decision
making for a top-down approach of imposing our ideals because it seems easier.
Further, unlike Marx’s vision, the workers will not spontaneously rise and organize, and
there will not be a sudden development of mass consciousness globally that insists that
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Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. we dismantle neoliberal economic programs or that we force nation-states to truly
engage in cooperation. In fact, most people in their everyday lives will be happy to
continue to live as they are doing now. Short of a catastrophe or mass inconvenience to
their everyday lives, most people will not mobilize—a fact, I am sad to say, that the
Project for the New American Century (Donnelly, Kagan, and Schmitt, 2000) was correct
about when they said that a “new Pearl Harbor” was needed to mobilize popular support
for a military buildup and program (p. 51a). Next, we must account for despair. Many
people do not and cannot see a way out of their personal problems or the problems
facing the greater world today. We throw our hands up when we see a homeless person
on the street. Do we give them money? What will they do with that money? Will they
buy food or drugs? If the homeless person buys drugs and overdoses, will I be
responsible for that death because I gave that person money? Because of such
realities, if we are going to ask people to change their personal and world views, we
must actively “nurture” that change. Nurturing, in this sense, does not require a from-
above approach, where new ideals and frames are forced upon people—creating an
Ismene syndrome—but a from-below approach, where such concepts are nurtured
among family members, friends, and local organizations that have the ability to translate
those new frames to the international level for a global civil society. This is a dual
process where continual transmission of ideas from the local to the global level and back
again will help create a space of global democracy.
As Archibugi (2003a) suggested, democracy cannot be forced from-above (p. 8).
Besides being against the spirit of democracy, demos meaning the people, the top-down
approach rarely works. Certainly the current situation in Iraq, where the US and its allies
have imposed a narrowly defined democracy, is a glaring example of how democracy
must be nurtured among the people rather than imposed from above by, no less, a
169
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. foreign country. Further, voting does not equate with democracy, and while many in the
US continue to celebrate the act of voting in Iraq, the country itself is enmeshed in a civil
war over power, the control over the people. Democracy does not come easily, either on
a state level or a global level, but must evolve through nurturing and constant
deliberation. This is a long process, but a process that is underway. The building blocks
for a cosmopolitical democracy are being laid by social and political actors, as well as
social movements and the development of a Chorus-like global civil society, which Falk
and Strauss (2003) roughly define as a mostly decentralized “politically organized
citizenry” which is “broken down into non-profit organizations and voluntary associations
dedicated to a wide variety of mostly liberal, humanitarian and social causes” (Falk and
Strauss, 2003, p. 210).
As Falk and Strauss (2003) point out, with the imposition of globalization-from-
above, by business and financial elites who work to determine global economics, there
has been a parallel development of globalization-from-below consisting of social actors
and movements that are slowly organizing into a global civil society (p. 209-210). As
globalization-from-above or, as Mario Pianta (2003) calls it, “neo-liberai globalization” (p.
235), becomes more visible through the use of global summits, such as the G-8 or the
WEF, global civil society has launched counter (Tarrow, 2005, p. 129) and parallel
summits (Pianta, p. 241) to challenge the from-above orientation. Of particular interest
to me is the World Social Forum (WSF), which held its first counter and parallel summit,
parallel to the WEF summit, in Porto Alegre, Brazil, from January 25 to 30, 2001, and
describes itself, on its Web page (World Social Forum, Aug 22, 2002), as an open
meeting space to facilitate a globalization-from-below program:47
47 See
170
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. The World Social Forum is an open meeting place where social movements,
networks, NGOs and other civil society organizations opposed to neo-liberalism
and a world dominated by capital or by any form of imperialism come together to
pursue their thinking, to debate ideas democratically, formulate proposals, share
their experiences freely and network for effective action.
The World Social Forum is also characterized by plurality and diversity, is
non-confessional, non-governmental and non-party. It proposes to facilitate
decentralized coordination and networking among organizations engaged in
concrete action towards building another world, at any level from the local to the
international, but it does not intend to be a body representing world civil society.
The World Social Forum is not a group [or] an organization, (para. 1-2)
From the first meeting in 2001 to the 2007 meeting in Nairobi, Kenya, the WSF
has grown immensely (according to Frank Joyce [2007] at Alternet.org, the 2007 WSF
had 66,000 registered participants from around the world48) and has nurtured a continual
upward and downward shift. As Tarrow (2005) explains, the WSF developed out of an
upward scale shift when, during the WEF in Davos, 1999, social organizations involved
in the global justice movement organized a countersummit (p. 130). During this
countersummit, Christophe Aguiton, a founding member of the Association for the
Taxation of Financial Transactions for the Aid of Citizens (ATTAC), suggested that local
organizations from differing regions should come together to discuss building a network,
as well as creating a space to understand local and regional needs and problems (p.
130-131). This coordination effort was followed up with a brokerage49 effort in which
48 See Joyce’s 2/17/2007 article, “The Most Important Conference You Never Heard About” at:
49 Tarrow defines brokerage as the: “linking of two or more previously unconnected social actors by a unit that mediates their relations with one another and/or with yet other sites” (p. 190). 171
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Oded Grajew and Francisco Whitaker, two Brazilian businessmen, attempted to get the
WEF to include discussions of social issues (p. 131). When the WEF rejected their
proposal, Grajew and Whitaker contacted Bernard Cassen, another founder of ATTAC,
“who helped to create an organizing committee for a countersummit and suggested
holding it in Brazil” (p. 131). These coordination and brokerage events, with added
support from other trade unions and organizations, led to the formation of the World
Social Forum.50 After the first and second WSF meetings in Porto Alegre (2001-2002),
participants who attended the Forum started to take this international model back to the
local level, creating local adaptations of the Social Forum around the world (p. 132). As
identified by the WSF (World Social Forum, Feb 27, 2007), this downward shift occurs in
a “regional or thematic” environment where the WSF Charter of Principles, methodology,
and “political criteria” are being reproduced in the “macro-regional level”:
They follow the methodology and political criteria that the WSF Charter of
Principles [has] set and they aim to make World Social Forum closer to the reality
of social movements and entities around different regions worldwide and vice-
versa. For instance, there are European, Pan-Amazonian and Americas Social
Forums, (para. 3).
Furthermore, the downward and upward scale shifts also experienced a horizontal shift
in 2006 when the WSF held its annual meeting not in a single, centra! location but in
several locations simultaneously. The WSF labels this occurrence “polycentric,” which
50 Tarrow highlights the support offered by the Brazilian Trade-Union Confederation, theCentral Unica dos Trabalhadores (the United Workers’ Center or CUT in Brazil), and the Movement of Landless Farm Workers (MST) (p. 131).
172
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world” (para. 2).51
Along with scale shifts which help to facilitate the process of defining and
implementing general ideas in the local and the global arenas, what is important is that
the WSF and its corresponding “regional and thematic" spaces are actively nurturing the
program that I am articulating: a cosmopolitical democracy realized through process. In
their Charter of Principles (World Social Forum, Jun 8, 2002),52 the WSF proclaims that
they are not a decision-making body, but “a process that encourages its participant
organizations and movements to situate their actions, from the local level to the national
level,” and to encourage those participants to seek “active participation in international
contexts,” which will “introduce onto the global agenda the change-inducing practices
that [participants] are experimenting [with] in building a new world in solidarity”
(emphasis added, para. 15). As process is emphasized by the WSF, they actively reject
finding an “end,” stating that “no-one, therefore, will be authorized, on behalf of any of
the editions of the Forum, to express positions claiming to be those of all its participants”
(para. 7). The overall hope is that by rejecting “totalitarian” and “reductionist views,” that
is, a Creonic or Antigonal frame, the WSF can help facilitate a nurturing process of
global and local redefinition. Such a nurturing process can also be helped by developing
corresponding communication methods that work to seriously, but comically, debunk a
tragic frame of reference, challenge an either/or Creonic/Antigonal articulation, and
encourage a choral space of deliberation where a polyphonic conversation develops
globally between the spaces of “I” as an individual and “we” as a local and global
51 To read about the Social Forums around the world, go to:
52 The WSF Charter of Principles can be found at:
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. community. Part Three below will lay out such a communication paradigm, drawing from
aesthetic pragmatism as well as literary criticism, communication/rhetorical theory,
theatre practices and comedy. As this communication paradigm is laid out, I will be
illustrating how certain aspects of this communication effort are already being
implemented by social movements, such as Reverend Billy and the Church of Stop
Shopping, AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power (ACT-UP), and The Clandestine Insurgent
Rebel Clown Army (CIRCA).
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Embracing Interpersonal Processes through Pragmatic Aesthetics
The final section of this work seeks to lay out a unified communication paradigm,
bridging pragmatic aesthetic theory (The Third Stasimon), praxis (Episode Four), and
choral configuration (The Fourth Stasimon) with the aim of providing a strategic roadmap
for individuals and social movements working toward a cosmopolitical democracy.
Three social movements—Reverend Billy and the Church of Stop Shopping, AIDS
Coalition to Unleash Power (ACT-UP), and the Clandestine Insurgent Rebel Clown Army
(CIRCA)—already embody elements of the proposed communication paradigm, and will
serve to illustrate how this paradigm can be applied practically.
The present chapter will lay out the philosophical groundwork in which a
neoliberal, consumerist main frame can be redirected toward a frame emphasizing
interpersonal relationships. The interpersonal frame engages people on the local,
community level, while encouraging them to imagine interpersonal relations in the global
arena. This process can be encouraged and realized through pragmatic aesthetics (as
proposed by John Dewey, 1934/1980) and pragmatic rhetoric that shuns either/or,
Antigonal/Creonic frames, as well as the doldrums of Ismenism. This philosophical
groundwork will be explored through the principles of and actions performed by
Reverend Billy and the Church of Stop Shopping. The next chapter, Episode Four, will
focus on praxis—how can individuals and social movements create a directed
perspective by incongruity? How can they prepare for, produce, and engage an
audience in actions that promote a cosmopolitical democracy? Utilizing Burke’s theories
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theory, Episode Four will draw on ACT-UP’s history and actions to demonstrate how
comical improvisational dramatism can promote communal perception rather than an
Ismene space of sheer motion or reception. Finally, The Fourth Stasimon will unite
process and praxis in a choral configuration. Exploring the antics of CIRCA, this final
chapter will demonstrate the power of practical, comic, deliberative choral configuration.
Although this final section is divided between process (theory), praxis, and choral
configuration, each element necessarily interacts and interconnects with the others.
Further, by examining these three social movements in relation to the proposed
communication paradigm, it is my hope that we will be able to glimpse the possible in the
everyday.
Shifting Main Frames—From Consumerism to Interpersonal Relationships
For a cosmopolitical democracy to be realized, popular support must be nurtured
not only among social movements, but also among everyday people. This process is
difficult however, since many people are not even involved with their own local
communities, let alone ready to connect the local to the global arena. At the heart of this
problem is a neoliberal economic policy that promotes consumerism on the local and
cosmopolitical level (Calhoun, 2003. p. 108, 111). Consumerism, defined here as the
process of replacing interpersonal relationships with products, promotes complacency
with interpersonal relations because the pursuit of a thing, a commodity, disguises itself
as the process of living. When not buying, or working to earn the money to buy more,
we consume not community but, often, our TV sets, lounging in our La-Z-Boy recliner
chairs, watching American Idol, while being presented with the illusion that we are
democratically participating in the program by picking up our cell phones and voting for
our favorite contestant. It has been suggested that one solution is to “kill our TV,” and in
176
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. this way we would be forced out into the community once again.53 Yet the television is
just one commodity, one thing, in the grand scheme of many things. Killing the TV will
not solve the larger problem of consumerism. We will still be bombarded with ads as we
go to work, on every street, on our public transportation where IPod advertisements
show people dancing for us on the side of buses that run up the avenue. Coca-Cola will
still be promoted as “the real thing,” the only thing that will put a smile on our face, and
we will still be offered the illusion of choice through consumerism.
This illusion of democratic participation through consumerism relies on an
either/or frame of logic where either the Mazda Miata will fulfill a need for us—translating
our edgy and daring selves —or the Hummer will fulfill that need—letting the world know
that we sit in an elevated seat of power, able to roll over any obstacle in our way. A
current commercial for Sunsilk Color-Boost shampoo that extends the life of hair color
demonstrates this either/or frame beautifully. We are given the choice between being a
blond or a brunette.54 Relying on the typical stereotypes of hair color as personality, the
blond and brunette women are seen fighting it out. The blondes, a bit ditzy but having
more fun, flaunt their full dating schedules and party attendance, whereas the brunettes
are seen reading books, ones without pictures, while climbing the corporate ladder. The
end of the commercial shows two cartoon women, one outlined in yellow and the other in
brown, with their fists out ready to rumble. Selecting a shampoo, we are told, is a
choice—a choice that will determine our life and interpersonal relations. For true
531 would support not the killing of TV, which is a utopic fantasy at best, but high-jacking the TV waves and creating more public access channels, along with compelling and direct incongruous programming. Such are the aims of D IV A TV , associated with ACT-UP in New York, which will be discussed in the next chapter.
54 One wonders about the red head, or the graying head, or the person with hair loss in this equation. But there are solutions for these realities, as all we need to do is to reach forRogaine, or a box of hair dye to fit in. That is part of the power of consumerism, where all of life’s dilemmas can be solved through the purchase. 177
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. interpersonal and community interaction to occur at the local level, however, with the aim
of next connecting it to the global arena, there needs to be a master frame change
where interpersonal relationships are encouraged over this type of consumerism. As
Calhoun (2003) states, “people’s identities and understandings of the world are changed
by participation in public discourse. Groups are created not just found and the forces of
group life are at least potentially open to choice” (p. 98). However, choice here must be
real choice—not an illusional selection between products. This choice, and the
corresponding frame change to interpersonal relations, can be achieved through the
philosophy of pragmatism and pragmatic aesthetics, which promote interpersonal
relations and everyday experience over illusional ends—a project that Reverend Billy
and the Church of Stop Shopping are actively pursuing.
Rediscovering Life’s Processes: Reverend Billy and the Church of Stop Shopping
Like the World Social Forum, Reverend Billy and the Church of Stop Shopping
(an activist group based in New York) want us to rediscover process. For Billy and the
Church of Stop Shopping, the artificial end, that is consumer products disguised as
processes of living, induce Ismenism:
The shopping gods try to tell us that there would be no world without products, no
economy, no sex, and nothing to do. In this way they have persuaded us to give
up on the control of our livesand the direction of our country. Do we believe in
product life so much that we can never change? (emphasis added, Talen, 2003,
p. 84)
Living in a consumerist world globalized by multinational corporations, a world where
G.W. Bush links democracy and nationalism with consumerism (p. 134)55, Reverend
55 In Talen’s essay regarding community events after 9/11, “The Serious Circus,” he reflects on how the nation was asked to fight the Terrorists by continuing to shop: “Two airliners had cut us off from the ritual 178
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Billy and his followers work to disrupt a sleep-walking Ismene syndrome by encouraging
Godsightings—everyday aesthetic moments in life that are not connected to a product,
an illusional truth, but to a contingent process of living: “Godsightings change your face.
You become your extreme self. After all, not participating in the commodified life can be
a full-time job” (p. 84). In order to reengage everyday people with the process of living
and connecting with one another, while connecting local concerns to the global level,
Reverend Billy and the Church of Stop Shopping utilize street theatre infused with
comedy, song, dancing and, importantly, planned incongruity directed towards
distancing a consumer from a product: “[Reverend Billy] conducts comic church services
featuring clownish deacons, obscene exorcisms, propagandistic canonizations, and a
gender-bent choir, usually leading his audience out of the theatre afterward to commit a
political action on the theme of the evening” (Kalb, 2001, p. 162).
Reverend Billy and the Church of Stop Shopping evolved when Bill Talen, an
actor who had moved to New York from San Francisco in the 1990s, was living at and
working as a house manager for St. Clement's Episcopal Church on West 46th Street in
Hell’s Kitchen (Talen, 2003, p. 28). St. Clement’s Episcopal Church rented out its stage
to theatre companies in order to help support the small congregation—an arrangement
linked to the Church’s history, one that interested Talen. In 1963, St. Clement became
the home to Reverend Sidney Lanier, cousin to Tennessee Williams and a lover of
theatre and improvisation, after Lanier was quickly relocated from St. Thomas’s
Episcopalian Church on Fifth Avenue, on the Upper East Side of New York. This
relocation resulted from an incongruous, yet pragmatic sermon offered by Lanier at St.
Thomas where he suggested that the kingdom of God could be found anywhere,
including a pool hall: “Why, think of this—if we were a few blocks to the west, we’d be in
of making the purchase. For the first time in history, it became necessary for the president himself to ask us to start shopping again” (p. 134). 179
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Times Square. The Theatre District. Then perhaps we’d be worshiping in a pool hall full
of hustlers and unemployed Method actors and pimps!” (Lanier as cited in Talen, pp. 36-
37). After taking possession of St. Clement, Rev. Lanier quickly altered the Church to
house a theatre, creating the hybrid space that Talen later found himself living and
working in.56 St. Clement Episcopal Church and its history inspired Talen. As he
observed while reflecting on a series of actions to save Edger Allen Poe’s house from
destruction by New York University, places have a strong relationship to imagination (p.
95). In a sense, the inside affects the outside and both are dependent on each other. It
is this realization that, according to Kalb (2001), in “The Gospel According to Billy,” sets
Reverend Billy apart from other “theatrical prophets of capitalist excess”: “his
understanding that effective critique must point inward and outward at the same time”
(165). Talen sees his approach to activism, communication and interpersonal
relationships as being rooted in the body, where the body is nurtured both inside and
outside (B. Talen, 2001, p. 170). This is why Talen was dismayed to see how the
redevelopment of Times Square affected the city and its citizens:
And what was New York City showing me? I came to Broadway, what I thought
was the center of any actor’s world, and I was crushed to discover that theatre no
longer existed there. I had moved across the country with all the expectations
that can be assigned to New York City. Okay, here I am—now where’s the
show? I’ve put my last $70 down on a great seat at a Broadway opening night.
The curtain rises and there, center stage, in hat and tails, tonight’s celebrity host:
MICKEY FUCKING MOUSE, (p. 30)
Talen was reacting to Mayor Rudolph Giuliani’s so-called beautification plan for Times
Square, by which the square was ‘purified’ to make way for Disney, consumers, and
56 As Talen also recounts, the character of T. Lawrence Shannon in Tennessee Williams’ play Night of the Iguana, was based on Reverend Lanier (p. 38). 180
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. tourists. Askew (2005) describes Talen’s dismay at the death of Broadway: “Bill Talen
had a front row seat for the tidal wave of gentrification that swept through Times Square
in the ‘90s [and] what he saw infuriated him” (para. 1). Contemplating the death of his
neighborhood, public spaces, and a historic commons, while sitting in a smelly red chair
in St. Clement’s Chruch, Talen felt that Rev. Sidney Lanier was communing with him:
“Sidney thought I should cast myself as a preacher who begins comically and then gets
serious” (Talen, p. 41). Arming himself with a portable pulpit,57 a preacher’s collar, and
the new persona of Reverend Billy, Talen joined the other preachers in Times Square.
His message: save the commons, rediscover life outside of the product, and fight
multinational corporations, which hegemonically work to replace real processes with
illusional ends—products of plastic, steel, fluff, and fantasy. Talen’s god became the
“god odd” (p. 16) and the devil became exemplified by Mickey Mouse and Starbucks.
Soon, with the help of his wife Savitri Darkee (B. Talen and Askew, para. 1), Reverend
Billy became more than a single voice preaching in Times Square, but part of a Chorus
in the Church of Stop Shopping.
Fundamental to the ideology behind Reverend Billy and the Church of Stop
Stopping is the belief that consumerist products misrepresent themselves as ends, as
Truths with a capital 7, meant to replace everyday relations. Their Statement of Beliefs,
found on their “About Us” Web page reads:58
Reverend Billy and the Stop Shopping Gospel Choir believe that Consumerism is
overwhelming our lives. The corporations want us to have experiences only
through their products. Our neighborhoods, "commons" places like stoops and
57 It is interesting to note that Reverend Billy’s pulpit, when he is performing in theatres and not on the street, is “a red Village Voice distribution box stolen from a street comer, with his own picture displayed in the window” (Kalb, 2001, p. 161).
58 For the full Statement of Beliefs, visit:
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. parks and streets and libraries, are disappearing into the corporatized world of
big boxes and chain stores. But if we "back away from the product"—even a little
bit, we’ll then Put The Odd Back In God! The supermodels fly away and we're left
with our original sensuality. (Talen, para. 1)
The principles and methods that Reverend Billy and the Church of Stop Shopping
embody is a pragmatic, aesthetic approach to both life and action. Since they focus on
process as well as redirecting relations from “a” experience found through products, to
an experience as gained though interpersonal relations (see below), they best embody
the idealism and pragmatic aesthetic philosophy this project proposes.
Bureaucratizing the Commodity as a Truth and an End
To present a thing, a commodity, as an end and thereby as a truth, is an extreme
example of bureaucratization of the imaginative or the ideal. Recurring to Antigone, both
Creon and Antigone bureaucratized the ideal by narrowly defining the concept “rule-of-
law,” and then working to translate that concept into material, legalistic realities. The
same process was rediscovered when we examined St. Paul’s formula for universalism,
when truth as found in the event of the resurrection was bureaucratized through the
creation of a manmade spiritual rule-of-law that required faith in the event for entrance
into the Christian circle. With capitalism and consumerism, the idea or the imaginative is
said to manifest itself in a “thing,” a commodity: Transcendent beauty can be found in a
shade of lipstick; sex can be had through a cool looking car; and love can be nurtured
through a diamond ring or a Mickey Mouse doll. This commodity rule-of-thumb states
that a commodity becomes an end. However, this end is really a perverted truth far
distant from the real process of living and everyday life. This commodity end also blurs
the connection between the local and the global insofar as we seek our ends in the form
of a commodity and thus accept an Ismene position where decisions are made for us. It
182
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. does not matter where or how the thing was made as long as we have access to
purchase the thing itself. If truth can be found in the commodity because it is said to
provide an answer and an end to our problems, there is no need to seek further, and so
our process is narrowed—it involves locating the thing that represents the ideal we need
or crave, and then buying it. This is a tragic frame wherein the process of living is
narrowly defined by our connection to things rather than our connections with people.
When we define an absolute end, whether it is an end found in a commodity, or an end
found in a universal or nationalist truth, we are limiting the possibilities of imagination
and process, and thereby curtailing opinion and democratic processes, because an
absolute end suggests that the creation of an idea or a truth is complete. Once an idea
or truth is complete, it promotes Ismenism by directing peoples’ actions to reaffirm that
truth or idea. Here, truth takes on a Burkean scenic quality where the scene ends up
controlling our actions. This is maybe why Burke (1937/1959) views bureaucratization of
the imaginative as a naming process for dying (p. 225). Since Burke (1950/1969)
wishes to redirect our focus towards conscious action, an end for him, the
bureaucratization of the imaginative, becomes a scenic device where the scene, the
end, works to control our action, creating a type of Ismenism. Opinion, what the ancient
Greeks termed doxa, is rather the space of action (pp. 54-55), of process, and the realm
of democratic deliberations because opinion and process encourage active and
conscious action. This is also why Reverend Billy and the Church of Stop Shopping
want people to rediscover the process of everyday life, shunning the absolute end/truth
of products, for engagement with the contingent. This is a pragmatic reframing, that has
its roots in early Greece with rhetoric and the Sophists.
183
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Central to the classical Greek debate, and indeed to the same debate today,
about process and ends, truth and opinion, was the term doxa, which Poulakos (2004)
loosely translates in his essay “Isocrates’ Civic Education and the Question of Doxa,’’ as
meaning belief, opinion, conjecture, and judgment (p. 45). In ancient Greece, doxa
became a word to describe ambiguity in a political world where knowledge was
imprecise and where change and contingency ruled (p. 46). When applied to the
question of true knowledge versus probable knowledge, doxa represented the realm of
probable knowledge and therefore related to the art of rhetoric rather than philosophy,
which sought transcendent truth. Between the Sophists, Plato, and Isocrates, the
central argument or question was whether doxa was a corruptive element or, when
harnessed, could be a practical device for making the best decision under contingent
circumstances.
For the Sophists and Isocrates, truth was relative and may not even exist.
Because only probable knowledge was available to humans, it was important to rein in
doxa in order to control ambiguity and false opinion. The Sophist Gorgias (480-380
B.C.E) did not believe in absolute, transcendent truth but, rather, in probable knowledge.
Holding that the best knowledge we could have was probable knowledge, Gorgias felt
that doxa, that is opinion in need of constant questioning, could be best handled by
initiating a strong tie between opinion, persuasion, and the “linguistic conventions of the
community (Poulakos, 2004, p. 49). Therefore, the linguistic, rhetorical element must
be adapted to a particular community, thus limiting the effect of a harmful or false doxa.
By creating a strong link between doxa and the “linguistic conventions of the
community," Gorgias and especially Isocrates wished to unite a community through the
art of speech. As Dewey (1934/1980) much later pointed out in Art as Experience, “the
184
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. expressions that constitute art are communication in its pure and undefiled form. Art
breaks through barriers that divide human beings, which are impermeable in ordinary
association” (p. 270).59 Plato, however, criticized the Sophists and their views on doxa
because he felt that they endorsed the “manipulative aspects of how humans acquired
knowledge” and were not concerned with whether the knowledge being put forth was
true or not (Poulakos, 2004, p. 23).60 This argument between the Sophists and Plato is
reminiscent of debates between the pragmatists and the rationalists and, today, the
modernist and the postmodernists. James (1907/1981), in “What Pragmatism Means,”
eloquently states the difference between the two philosophies:
Rationalism is comfortable only in the presence of abstractions. This pragmatist
talks about truth in the plural, about their unity and satisfactoriness, about the
success with which they ‘work,’ etc., suggests to the typical intellectualist mind a
sort of coarse lame second-rate makeshift article of truth. Such truths are not
real truth. Such tests are merely subjective. As against this, objective truth must
59 It is important to note that for Dewey (1934/1980), speech alone did not constitute communication: “We hear speech, but it is almost as if we were listening to a babble of tongues. Meaning and value do not come home to us. There is in such cases no communication and none of the result of community of experience that issues only when language in its full import breaks down physical isolation and external contract” (p. 335). What is needed is communication as art, which creates “an experience.” As an art, an aesthetic experience, communication works to break down the isolation experienced by many within a community; thus, “art is a more universal mode of language than is the speech that exists in a multitude of mutually unintelligible forms” (p. 335).
60 According to Plato (2001a), humans could transcend towards truth; therefore, reliable truth could be found, or more precisely rediscovered, through the process of dialectics and not the process of rhetoric, which Plato labels, in his work Gorgias. flattery. Unlike rhetoric, which is only concerned with persuasion and therefore endorses adoxa of opinion, dialectics allowed two voices to work together with the aim of discovering truths and dismissing untruths. Hence, dialectics worked to move the philosopher toward (rediscovering) truth and knowledge. In Plato’s (2001b) work the Phaedrus. Socrates associates dialecticians with the ability to dismantle and synthesize ideas in search for truth: “Now I myself, Phaedrus, am a lover of these processes of division and bringing together, as aids to speech and thought; and if I think any other man is able to see things that can naturally be collected into one and divided into many, him 1 follow after and ‘walk in his footsteps as if he were a god’” (p. 160b). However, Plato’s Phaedrus does not entirely dismiss rhetoric, as in his Gorgias. Rather, Plato suggests that rhetoric has a place as long as it is employed as ameans to convey truth to the ignorant, if the rhetor is already in possession of truth or knowledge, or if it was used within the dialectic process as a means to discover truth, as demonstrated in the Phaedrus.
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Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. be something non-utilitarian, haughty, refined, remote, august, exalted. It must
be absolute correspondence of our thoughts with an equal absolute reality. It
must be what we ought to think unconditionally. The conditioned ways in which
we do think are so much irrelevance and matter for psychology. Down with
psychology, up with logic, in all this question! (pp. 33-34)
Like James, the classical Greek teacher Isocrates (2001a) avoided the “abstractions”
sought by Plato and instead insisted upon truths in the plural as experience in everyday
life—this is essentially what is now considered a pragmatist’s view.
Just as Plato was concerned with the “abstract” philosophical search for Truth, so
Isocrates (2001a) may be said to be concerned with the “concrete” pursuit of practical
matters in life, state, and community. To emphasize this point, Isocrates, in “Against the
Sophists,” pointed to the fact that even the gods did not seem to have foreknowledge of
further events, and therefore certainty (p. 72). Since absolute knowledge, an unmoving
end or a truth was impossible; practical knowledge needed to be dealt with in such a
way so to avoid false doxa which would lead people towards negative acts. This could
be accomplished through education directed towards training men—women were sadly
ignored by the classical Greeks—to “become ethical and effective political leaders
(Bizzell and Herzberg, 2001, p. 25). Philosophy for Isocrates (2001b), in his essay
“Antidosis,” should train individuals towards action, not contemplation and abstraction (p.
78).61 In training men to deal with practical problems in a political and contingent world,
Isocrates insisted on educating students in practical wisdom ( phronesis) which would
61 It is interesting to note that between opinion (action) and abstract truth (which takes on a scenic quality) Isocrates and the much later Kenneth Burke (1950/1969) seem to echo each otherDoxa as becomes the realm of action and abstract truth takes on a scenic space of contemplation rather than action. O f course, this same argument is offered by Karl Marx (1845/1978), in his “Theses on Feuerbach,” where he states in his third thesis: “The materialist doctrine that men are products of circumstances and upbringing, and that, therefore, changed men are products of other circumstances and changed upbringing, forgets that it is men who change circumstances and it is essential to educate the educator himself’ (p. 144). 186
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. work to curb the unpredictable nature of doxa. As Bruner (2003) explains, phronesis as
practical wisdom, separate from sophia or theoretical wisdom, “deals with ethics (actions
which result in a virtuous life) and politics (actions which result in a well-ordered state),
and is principally concerned with wise deliberation, right action, and virtuous character”
(pp. 86-87). To navigate the uncertain, the use of phronesis or practical wisdom, rather
than transcendent truth, is vital to the process of everyday living. Practical wisdom,
then, relies on process, which focuses on action and deliberation—the realm of
language. Thus, Poulakos (1983/2001), in “Toward a Sophistic Definition of Rhetoric,”
points out, rhetoric functions in a world filled with contingencies: “rhetoric is the art which
seeks to capture in opportune moments that which is appropriate and attempts to
suggest that which is possible” (p. 26). Fundamental to this definition are Poulakos’
references to the key concepts of “ kairos (the opportune moment), prepon (the
appropriate), and dynaton (the possible)” (p. 26). As Poulakos explains, situations exist
in time and space and so both a situation and a response to a situation are contingent
(p. 27). Active speech, or symbolic action as Burke terms it, must engage the opportune
moment, kairos, in order to be effective. Next, symbolic action must be appropriate, or
prepon, since “prescribing that what is said must conform to both audience and
occasion” (p. 29). But most importantly, symbolic action must point to the possible, or
dynaton:
The possible is the opposite of the actual. . . . it rejects permanence and favors
change; it privileges becoming over being. Unlike the actual, the possible is not
a given which can be known or verified; it exists in the future as something
incomplete and dormant, something awaiting the proper conditions to be
realized, (p. 31)
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pragmatic idealism that exists within symbolic action. In essence, the possible (the
ideal) has a fundamental relationship to the contingent and the process (the pragmatic)
because for the possible to occur, certain contingencies agreed upon by the rhetor and
her audience must be met before fruition of the possible occurs. The possible is also the
space of artistic creation, the space of destruction and pure creativity where we shun the
actual—a scenic end, Ismenism, or that which has already been created—for the
possible, that which is yet to be created. This circular motion of creation and
destruction, a process related to what was deemed the double process in the last
chapter (Burke, 1961/1970; Tarrow, 2005), should be tempered by phronesis—wisdom
that is gained and refined through the process of everyday living and continual
translation and redefinition of what is considered truth or an end. This double process,
and the circular motion of creation and destruction of truths and ends, is not only a
process but a creative, aesthetic journey wherein engagement with life and people is
promoted over simple reception or Ismenism. Thus it is pragmatic aesthetics propelled
by idealism that helps refine phronesis, while reestablishing interpersonal relations within
communities.
Pragmatic Aesthetics
Although Charles S. Pierce (1839-1914) is considered the first pragmatist,
William James (1842-1910) is credited with concretely defining pragmatism. In
November and December of 1906 and January of 1907, James delivered a series of
speeches at the Lowell Institute in Boston. In these lectures, he detailed the philosophy
of pragmatism, describing how, in opposition to rationalism and extreme idealism,
pragmatism offers a better philosophic mode for real life. Central to the pragmatist’s
point of view is the question of “Truth.” In James’ view, absolute situated truth (a
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Antigone and Creon, reductive philosophies of universalism, or consumerism) is
problematic since it does not allow for lived contingency or an evolution of knowledge.
For James, truth comes in the plural not the singular (James, 1907/1981, p. 34). The
problem that James points to, when considering truth as an absolute entity, is that
absolutes cannot and will not bend. They must remain unmoving and unresponsive in
the face of an ever changing world. Thus, like the early Greek Sophists, James views
the world as doxa (opinion), a place where opinions must meet and compete and,
eventually, conjoin to form a better, more workable reality (p. 31).
James’ formula is not unlike the double process described by Burke (1961/1970)
and Tarrow (2005). For James (1907/1981), a truth is simply a belief, an idea, that we
currently hold and which helps us to live (p. 37). When a truth no longer aids us in living,
that truth is reformulated, but not erased, by newer truths: “A new opinion counts as
‘true’ just in proportion as it gratifies the individual’s desire to assimilate the novel in his
experience to his beliefs in stock. It must both lean on old truth and grasp new fact” (p.
32). Thus, a double process occurs wherein we retranslate the old belief by adding a
new belief and, thereby, arrive at a new ‘truth.’ However, this new truth is not an
unmoving end or product, but an evolving process (p. 99). The question remains, could
this evolving process produce a true end? Maybe . . . someday. As James suggests,
that is certainly possible and cannot be ruled out: “Can we treat the absolute edition of
the world as a legitimate hypothesis? It is certainly legitimate, for it is thinkable, whether
we take it in its abstract or in its concrete shape” (p. 118). The thinkable is possible, and
it is here that James makes room for a pragmatic idealism.
Kenneth Burke (1945/1969) while discussing the pragmatists in his Grammar of
Motives, states that pragmatists view ends as but a “means for man’s social and
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process, a pragmatist views the process as a type of end. However, it would be more
accurate to state that pragmatists hold the ideal, the possible or dynaton, as a valid aim
insofar as that ideal is not bureaucratized. Indeed, the ideal is important. Further,
James (1907/1981) does not rule out the ideal, but actually views it as being
fundamental to the pragmatic process. Pointing to the pragmatic philosophies of Dewey
and Schiller, James states: “ideas (which themselves are but parts of our experience)
become true just in so far as they help us to get into satisfactory relations with other
parts of our experience” (emphasis in original, p. 30). Here, the ideal propels us, cheers
us on and encourages us to continue the process of evolving beliefs:
Any idea upon which we can ride, so to speak; any idea that will carry us
prosperously from any one part of our experience to any other part, linking things
satisfactorily, working securely, simplifying, saving labor; is true for just so much,
true in so far.. . true instrumentally. (p. 30)
An idea or an ideal is a part of our everyday experience, the process of reaching for an
ideal becomes an aesthetic one.
Building on this pragmatic philosophy, John Dewey (1934/1980), in Art as
Experience, works to bridge the gap between aesthetic theories of beauty and
pragmatism. Dewey defines the aesthetic in conjunction with having an experience.
Having an experience occurs when an individual or collective undergoes continuous
interaction with others and with the material conditions involved in “the process of living”
(p. 35). Rejecting aesthetic theories which would situate truth and construct absolute
perimeters for what defines beauty, Dewey insists that beauty and aesthetic values must
be situated in the lived experience of everyday life, making the aesthetic pragmatic.
Inspired by William James’ work on pragmatism, Dewey rejects aesthetic theories put
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remote space away from true lived experience (p. 253). Just as the ideal, for Kant,
existed in a realm far removed from everyday life (Warnock, 1976/1978, p. 42), so too
does beauty (Dewey, p. 253). Furthermore, Dewey also examines the problems inherent
in individualism and abstract, ideographic discourse where speech becomes nothing but
the “babel of voices,” inhibiting communication (p. 335). By including the aesthetic
experience in communication, the “babel of voices” transforms into a community of
communication. Nathan Crick (2004), in “John Dewey’s Aesthetics of Communication,”
agrees that Dewey’s aesthetic theories have great potential for communication and
rhetoric. He further suggests that Dewey’s views on aesthetic communication offer a
distinction between passive communication that only encourages reception, Ismenism or
Kenneth Burke’s conception of “sheer motion,” and active communication, Burke’s
concept of symbolic action, that promotes perception (p. 315). Accordingly, reception
implies a passive mode of communication where the receiver is being acting upon, and
perception implies an active participatory form of communication where the receiver is
participating in the act and, thus, having an aesthetic experience. By constructing
communication that allows for what Dewey calls “an experience,” an active space of
interpersonal participation is created where people become actively engaged with
process and with each other. This active space is also the cornerstone of a pragmatic
aesthetic rhetoric that aims to induce an experience, as is seen in the political actions of
Reverend Billy and the Church of Stop Stopping.
Reverend Billy and the Church of Stop Shopping’s Cell Phone Opera
The “Cell Phone Opera” was an action created by Reverend Billy and the Church
of Stop Shopping, to aesthetically engage Disney store shoppers and to alienate them
from a product while, at the same time, inviting them into a new process of having an
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redirect the master frame of consumerism and experience linked to a product, to a new
master frame of human to human interaction, as well as a global justice instance—
linking the local to the global.
Unlike other actions performed by Reverend Billy at the Disney Store in Times
Square, Billy did not inform the store that they were there to protest; rather the
actors/protesters disguised themselves as ordinary shoppers in order to “better reveal
Disney to its customers” (Talen, 2003, p. 71). The idea was simple: Dress the
protesters up like average tourists or shoppers who have been requested by a close
friend or relative to buy a toy for that person’s child. Each of the actors was armed with
$4 toy cell phones, and was instructed to have a discussion/argument with a friend or
loved one on why they should not buy a Disney toy:
We asked our volunteer actors to imagine that they had promised to buy a gift for
a daughter or son, a niece or nephew or godchild—a little one that they loved.
That was easy, and soon everyone had a child firmly in mind. Next we told each
actor that they were buying the gift for someone else to give to the child. We
asked the actors to form a mental picture of this person. We suggested that the
choice be someone with whom the actors had a particularly charged relationship,
someone they had argued with in the past, because the essence of this play
required that each actor would change their mind about the errand and call their
person back on the cell phone and argue that the gift selection was a mistake, a
terrible mistake, (p. 72)
Once in the Disney store, the actors/protesters would be directed by one of the
Reverend’s “Deacons,” activist directors, on when to start their phone conversations. As
each actor was signaled, they started their imaginary conversation and slowly built up
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arguments:
“Do you really believe that Tiffany is this stupid? An Eeyore fanny pack? Puh-
leeze!” [and] “I believe that Simba the cub did kill his father, Grandmother! This is
patricide, and I don’t see why Carter should be exposed to such things at the age
of five and a half! Do you want Carter to kill your son? Have you ever
considered the consequence of toys?” [or] “Jiminy Cricket is not Bobby Darin,
okay? Listen, Uncle Mort, you have your preoccupation and you can go to
Delray Beach with it, but children need another kind of MC, not Jiminy Cricket,
not Bert Parks, not Mickey Mouse. Ask yourself why there’s a fetish for toys in
tuxes. You read the papers—you know where they sew these things.” (pp. 74-75)
As the cell phone arguments clashed and merged, customers, Disney workers,
and guards were baffled by what was going on (p. 75). In the ensuing confusion, the
Deacons took the opportunity to strategically hide inexpensive tape recorders that had
been prerecorded with quotes from Bangladeshi women who worked in Disney
sweatshops (p. 77). Once the Disney employees caught on to what was happening, the
guards tried to escort the actors from the establishment: “He was running up to people
and saying, and this is a direct quote: ‘If you are not shopping, I can have you arrested’”
(p. 76). At this moment, Reverend Billy took off his decoy shopper’s costume and
exposed who he was. He offered a sermon to the hidden cameras in the store, and to
the real Disney shoppers, while his Deacons turned on the hidden recorders. As
Reverend Billy and the actors left the store, the recorders started telling the story of the
Bangladeshi women who worked in Disney sweatshops: “My name is Nasrin Akther. For
the last three years I have worked in the Shah Makhdum factory, where we sewed
mostly Disney garments. I’m a senior sewing operator. My salary is one thousand
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cited in Talen, p. 78). Many of the recorders were well hidden and it took a great deal of
searching for the Disney employees and guards to find them: “The store employees
looked like Keystone Kops as they scrambled to get at the words of the sweatshop
woman. But the comedy of the situation was quickly no longer funny" (Talen, pp. 78-79).
Not surprisingly, many of the real shoppers left the building and followed the Reverend
out into the streets.
Action as Process
What Reverend Billy and the Church of Stop Shopping were able to accomplish
was to create a pragmatic aesthetic experience that redirected a consumerist master
frame to an interpersonal frame that further encouraged people to extend their
imagination to the global level by linking their buying habits to Disney’s global labor
practices. The creation of an experience, as well as a redirection of framing was
accomplished through an artistic and comedic act that provided a perspective by
incongruity.
If consumerism encourages a bureaucratization of the imaginative where the
ideal or the imaginative is materialized within a commodity, then, as Burke suggests, a
different yet similar process is needed to disrupt that master frame—a perspective by
incongruity:
Our formula, ‘perspective by incongruity,’ is a parallel 'methodology of invention’
in the purely conceptual sphere. It ‘bureaucratizes’ the ‘mass production’ of
perspectives. It ‘democratizes’ a resource once confined to a choice few of our
most 'royal' thinkers. It makes perspectives cheap and easy. (Burke, 1937/1959,
pp. 228-229)
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by creating a comic space where the real Disney shoppers were abruptly disengaged
from a scenic space of sheer shopping motion (Ismenism). A distancing effect,
discussed in Episode One in relation to the Chorus in Antigone, was accomplished
through lyric cell phone interruptions. As Talen (2003) declared to the hidden cameras
in the Disney store: “The tourists are waking up out of their hypnotic trance, and the
people who sew together your toys are rising toward your satellites from their sweatshop
tables. Just wait—you will hear their voices” (p. 77). However, the distancing or
alienation did not transpire simply because of the interruption that Billy and his actors
promoted, but because they offered an artistic performance, a play (p. 77). The real
shoppers were reengaged and encouraged to have an experience outside of the
product.
The “Cell Phone Opera” was an aesthetic, lyrical device where words rose and
settled, where the audience’s attention was directed here and there, to this phone call
and then to the next phone call. When the phone arguments reached a crescendo, and
when the guards and Disney employees realized that something out of the ordinary was
happening, the audience was also directed to a sort of a dance where the guards
struggled to create shopping order among the actors. Further, by dressing up as
shoppers, the protesters/actors created a bond of solidarity with the real shoppers by
looking like them. Once the “play” was up and running, and once the guards confronted
the protesters/actors, the other “real" shoppers most likely felt confronted as well. Thus,
an experience for all was promoted by the action, where, as with Billy’s other actions, the
audience was encouraged to join in. In other actions, Reverend Billy and the Church of
Stop Shopping use music (their Stop Shopping Gospel Choir) to encourage the
audience to have an experience: “The call-and-response is led by the choir, which,
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protesting the destruction of Edward Allen Poe’s house, the Stop Shopping Chorus took
center stage, creating spectacle and excitement: “When the house lights finally went
down, the choir was breathtaking. They tore into the first song. ‘Stop Shopping! Stop
Shopping!’ They were jumping . . . Here was spectacle. A cracking gospel singing
group, twenty-five strong, dancing in perfect syncopation” (Talen, 2003, pp. 98-99).
Other engagement techniques include the confessing of Godsightings (as mentioned
above) where an audience is invited to participate by sharing their Godsightings,
because “social change will come when we value our own stories more than the media’s
special effects” (p. 89).62 Billy also composes portable play scripts, which can be
performed by anyone. Kalb (2001), for example, recounts his favorite portable Billy
script, “The Neoliberal and the Happy Fetus,” which is part of “The Starbucks invasion
Kit,” designed for two people to perform while sitting in a Starbucks:
NL: The music at Starbucks is just perfect.
HF: I don’t care about perfect—the music could be Barry Manilow.
NL: Understated. A selection from early Miles, old Cuban music, world music . . .
HF: I’m just happy to have Starbucks wrapped around me like a prophylactic. I
don’t have to deal with New York craziness.
NL: It’s a script for me, Starbucks, they’ve given me a soundtrack and a drug to
make my heart race and now I’m the romantic lead in some kind of movie
. . . some vague movie . . . don’t you feel that? I’m just waiting to start the
scene of a movie, sitting here. It’s a nice wait. A nice moment, just
before the moment where I stand up and enter the action.
62 Reverend Billy also encourages people to report Godsightings or their shopping sins online at:
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. HF: But we don’t have to start. I’m not starting any action in my life right now. I
don’t want to be born. IT’S LIKE I’M A HAPPY FETUS INSIDE MY
MOMMA MERMAID!! I’M FLOATING IN MY PLACENTA!
The dialogue continues in this vein for five minutes or so, until the Happy Fetus is
thrust into life after the mermaid’s water breaks (“I’M SLIDING INTO THE
PUBLIC SPACE . . . STARBUCKS IS CLOSING AND I’M BECOMING A
CITIZEN AGAIN”), (p. 166-167)
Each of these audience engagement techniques, the encouragement of process, offers
a form of alienation where our attention is turned away from a commodity. At the Disney
store, once the real shoppers were alienated from the product, an opening was created
which allowed the protesters to suggest a frame change.
As stated above, Reverend Billy and the Church of Stop Shopping seek to
change the master frame of consumerism to a master frame of lived human relations.
But they also encourage people to extend their imagination out to the global arena by
having people connect their local buying habits with global economics and the social
justice movement. Once the real shoppers were alienated from the Disney product, and
after the protesters were forced and pushed out of the store, the tape recorders left
behind by the protesters offered a frame redirection as well as local-to-global
interconnection. By listening to the Bangladeshi women who worked in Disney
sweatshops, the shoppers left in the Disney store were encouraged to engage in frame-
building techniques where they could link their buying habits with global economics. In
this way, the recordings encouraged the shoppers to imagine themselves as the other
while, at the same time, imagining how their actions inadvertently affect another—one of
the Bangladeshi women. When the guards “scrambled to get at the words of the
sweatshop women” (Talen, 2003, pp. 78-79), the Disney shoppers could imagine how
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off the tape recorders. This is not to suggest that the action, alienation, and frame
redirection worked on all the shoppers present at Billy’s action. Nevertheless, the
techniques involved did affect some of the shoppers—creating the possibility for a
different story.
From Process to Praxis
As the “Cell Phone Opera” action suggests, theory and practice must be
combined in order to create change. The ability to create a planned incongruity, within
an improvisational comic space, requires a great deal of organizational effort and work
that shuns ambiguous language, while forming directed rhetoric needed to evoke new
frames, such as a cosmopolitical frame. In order to induce an experience with an
audience, the actor as rhetor must be equipped with tools that allow for immediate
response to any given situation or circumstance. Although, ideally, a rhetor has the
ability to prepare an act of rhetoric ahead of time, and to have some control over the
conditions under which the speech is offered, this is not necessarily the norm. We live in
a world of immediacy and change that will not always wait for the rhetor or the politically
wise to leisurely prepare to address the issues at hand. Rather, we live in a world where
technology can change overnight, where war can break out swiftly, and where
contingency is the norm. From a practical point of view, then, the rhetor must be
prepared at a moment’s notice to perform her role and to create an aesthetically
persuasive space where she can respond to critics, adjust to changes while promoting a
democratic cosmopolitical frame that links the local with the global.
To this end, the next chapter will lay out a performative rhetoric inspired by
Kenneth Burke’s method of dramatism, as well as Jacques Lecoq’s theories of
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seeking to promote cosmopolitical change.
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Improvisational Dramatism: ACT-UP in the Face of Contingency
How can social movements promote an experience between themselves and an
audience? What is an effective way to disrupt either/or master frames and redirect
them? Specifically, what practical tools can be used by social movements to accomplish
these goals in such a way that their message and aims do not get lost in the attempt?
This project not only supports aesthetic pragmatic idealism that promotes process and
engagement over ends. It suggests that an effective way of accomplishing this task is
through the use of chorally based, non-violent theatrical and comedic direct-action
tactics.63 Such techniques would benefit from improvisational dramatism, an approach
that helps create a perspective by incongruity. When social movements thus step into
the role of actor, they evoke engagement on an everyday level with an audience.64 Just
as the Third Stasimon above examined how we can promote an aesthetic pragmatic
idealism to encourage process, this chapter will examine the concept of improvisational
dramatism: by combining theatrical improvisation techniques with elements derived from
and inspired by Burke’s dramatism (which is a tool for analyzing texts), social
movements will be able to create aesthetic and comical, directed incongruity.65
63 Non-violent direct-action is here defined as taking direct action against perceived problems in a non violent manner, as opposed to indirect efforts such as voting.
64 The term “actor,” asI use it, is interchangeable with Burke’s concept of “agent.” Although actors are normally limited in their ability to freely act (that is, having free choice of action) because they must adhere to a script, improvisational actors, like Burke’s agents, are not limited by a script and therefore are free to choose and direct action.
65 Although I use Burke’s term “dramatism” throughout this chapter, 1 significantly alter his critical method, which is meant to uncover motivation behind action in a text, in order to create and refine a critical 200
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Direct-action techniques work to engage a live audience, inviting them to
participate, as well as to create incongruity. Such techniques encourage not only
theatrical action, but also improvisational action that relies on audience participation and
allows the actors space to adjust to a multitude of contingencies that might arise during
the action. As a result, it is vital that social movements as actor have tools to help them
create, engage in, and promote direct theatrical actions. In many ways, this proposal is
not entirely new insofar as the social movement AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power (ACT-
UP) has, since 1987 used many of the aspects I will be proposing, techniques that have
inspired other social movements such as Reverend Billy and the Church of Stop
Stopping and the Rebel Clowns (CIRCA), who will be discussed in the next chapter.66
Both ACT-UP’s methods and direct-action techniques, however, were haphazardly
developed out of trial and error, often causing chaos within the group.67 ACT-UP’s
theatrical and comic direct-actions have, nevertheless, been successful on many
occasions and can serve as an example of how improvisational dramatism can work. To
and performative heuristic method for directing motivation and action. I maintain Burke’s term “dramatism” not only because his critical technique has inspired my own heuristic application, but because agents and social movements as actors work to direct drama.
66 ACT-UP became a leading social movement, as Kauffman observes: “The single most important organization, without question, was ACT UP, which introduced a vibrancy and flair to street politics that the left had lost, and created a new ethos of activism that was at once profoundly radical and pragmatic” (Kauffman, 2002, p. 36).
67 Many sources consulted for this project, including Christiansen and Hanson (1996), Kramer (1981/1994), and Watney (1981/1994), link the origins of ACT-UP not only to the AIDS crisis and gay rights, but to the dissatisfaction of Larry Kramer, activist and playwright, with the Gay Men’s Health Clinic (GMHC) and his insistence that what was needed to make people wake-up and to force the government to act, was directed action and civil disobedience: “So in 1987 [Kramer] called an open meeting at the New York Lesbian and Gay Community Center, from which the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power (ACT UP) was bom” (Watney, p. xix). However, the story of Kramer as the originator of AC'T-UP is disputed by ACT-UP members who rather suggest that the organization organically developed out of need. ACT-UP’s Capsule History Page for 1987 states: “Outraged by the government’s mismanagement of the AIDS crisis, concerned individuals unite to form the AIDS Coalition of Unleash Power” (para. 1). In Kramer’s chapter “Something Rotten” (pp. 322-329), in Reports from the Holocaust. Kramer states: “This business about ACT UP hurt me. A few people believed that ACT UP was founded by nobody and that it had sprung full- grown from the head of Zeus” (p. 328). This dispute regarding the founding of ACT-UP will be discussed in the last chapter in conjunction with the role of the intellectual. 201
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. this end, I will first describe a local direct-action performed by ACT-UP, their famous
“Stop the Church” action held at St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York, on 10 December
1989. Next, while pointing out how this direct-action enacts improvisational dramatism, I
will explain how Burke’s concept of dramatism can be altered by theatre and
improvisational theory, and how this hybrid improvisational dramatism can be used by
social movements to aid them in creating direct comedic incongruity.
ACT-UP’s “Stop the Church"
On December 10, 1989, ACT-UP and the Women’s Health Action and
Mobilization (WHAM!) co-sponsored the “Stop the Church” demonstration at St. Patrick’s
Cathedral in New York City. As described by ACT-UP on their Web page detailing the
capsule history of the organization’s actions in 1989, “4,500 protesters gather outside St.
Patrick's Cathedral to decry the Church's opposition to safer sex education, violent
homophobia, and attempts to block access to safe and legal abortions. 111 people are
arrested” (para. 21). As further described by Christiansen and Hanson (1996), the
demonstration was directed towards the Catholic Church and Cardinal John O’Connor’s
spiritual-rule-of-law frame that condemns homosexuality, birth control, and abortion.
Between lack of state action regarding AIDS and gay rights, and a corresponding lack of
spiritual support, ACT-UP members felt that they were sandwiched between an either/or,
Creonic/Antigonal frame that left no room for them. Indeed, this feeling was articulated
through a chant created for the “Stop the Church” action: “Not the church, not the state,
only I decide my fate” (New York Times, Sep. 24, 1990, B.5).
Presented as an Antigonal universal argument, the Church frame supported a
widespread myth that AIDS was a “gay disease” perpetuated by immoral sexual
practices. When AIDS emerged as a serious epidemic in the 1980s, “Americans ignored
evidence that in other countries AIDS was transmitted primarily through heterosexual
202
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. intercourse, and, instead, focused on gay men’s culpability for the spread of the HIV
virus in this country” (Christiansen and Hanson, 1996, p. 160). By connecting gay men
exclusively with the spread of AIDS, segments in society who agreed with the Catholic
Church worked to reinforce this Antigonal frame while, reminiscent of Creonic
techniques, framing the gay community as scapegoats for the disease. As Christiansen
and Hanson explain, articles, music, and new terminology were created to enforce this
ideology and reinforce the gay male as the scapegoat (p. 161).
In an effort to reframe the debate and to debunk the status of scapegoat, ACT-
UP and WHAM! protested at St. Patrick’s Cathedral. Christiansen and Hanson describe
what occurred:
The demonstration was a carnival-like performance of guerrilla theatre, irreverent
parody, and angry chants. Protesters held mock tombstones while hundreds of
other lay down in the street, enacting one of ACT UP’s . . . trademark ‘die-ins.’
The bodies were outlined in paint and chalk to emphasize the deadly effects of
social indifference to AIDS. A handful of male protesters dressed as clowns,
Catholic bishops, and nuns cavorted in the street. A male ‘virgin Mary’ carried a
baby doll and a sign, This Mary believes in safe sex education.’ A mock condom
the size of a giant torpedo was labeled ‘CARDINAL O’CONDOM.’ Throughout
the crowd, signs declared: ‘Curb your Dogma,’ ‘Papal Bull,’ and ‘Danger: Narrow
Minded Church Ahead.’ Churchgoers expressed disgust at the protest’s carnival
atmosphere: ‘look at th a t. . . They’re making a party out of this, like they’re
having fun. How can anybody take them seriously?’ . . . Most offensive to those
attending services were the professional posters that humorously juxtaposed a
photo of Cardinal O’Connor with an enlarged photo of an unrolled condom. The
similarity between the shape of the condom and the miter on the Cardinal’s head
203
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. suggested an obscene comparison that the accompanying text utilized: ‘KNOW
YOUR SCUMBAGS.’68
Protesters staged another die-in inside the Cathedra! during the service.
They lay down in the aisles, blew whistles, and threw hundreds of condoms into
the air like human fountains. One activist yelled ‘Bigot’ and ‘Stop the Murder’
over Cardinal O’Connor’s sermon, and other protesters soon joined in.
Parishioners responded by praying the rosary aloud to drown them out. (p. 157)
After the action, the press, Catholic members of the gay and lesbian community, and
many others, including then New York Mayor Ed Koch, criticized the action. However,
even though several segments of the community were angry, this action created an
experience, engaging many members within the community, while, at the same time,
bringing AIDS, Queer and Women’s Rights, and other issues into the public arena for
debate.69 As Jay Blotcher (2004), an ACT-UP member and part of the team that
publicized the event, said: “You have to go back to that old maxim that any publicity is
good publicity, because even though we were public enemy number one. . ., after this
demonstration, people were more willing, conversely, or ironically, to listen to us” (p. 42).
Like many of ACT-UP’s actions, “Stop the Church” was an act of comedic, carnival-like
improvisation specifically planned. Further, it demonstrates many attributes of
improvisational dramatism.70
68 The “Know your scumbag” sign was made by Richard Deagle and another ACT-UP member, Victor (last name unknown). As Described by Deagle in his oral interview, under the condom picture it said “This One Fights Aids” (Deagle and Schulman, 2003, p. 52).
69 It is interesting to note that this direct-action did not simply gain local media coverage, but international coverage. As several ACT-UP members remember, the “Stop the Church” action commanded media coverage for several days and even talk shows, such as Phil Donahue’s, invited activists to discuss the action (Blotcher and Schulman, 2004, pp. 40-42).
70 In order to demonstrate how the “Stop the Church” action reflects improvisational dramatism, this project relies on the oral histories of ACT-UP members who participated in the action. Taken from the ACT-UP Oral History Project, a program of MIX-The New York Lesbian and Gay Experimental Film Festival, this 204
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Dramatism
Kenneth Burke’s (1966a) theory of dramatism entails a “technique of analysis of
language and thought as basically modes of action rather than means of conveying
information” (Burke, 1966a, p. 125). In his essay “Questions and Answers about the
Pentad” (1978b), he calls his theory “‘dramatistic’ because [it views] language primarily
as a mode of action rather than as a mode of knowledge, though the two emphases are
by no means mutually exclusive” (p. 330). Central to Burke’s theory are the terms action
and motion (which was discussed in Chapter One above). For Burke, people act.
Consequently, as he describes in his definition of man, humans are “symbol-using,
symbol-making, and symbol-misusing animal[s]” (Burke, 1966a, p. 6). Motion, on the
other hand, is devoid of conscious action. To this end, any theory of dramatism must
also be a theory regarding action. Dramatism can therefore be considered as a broad
category of praxis (Anderson, 2004, p. 255).
In order to determine the motivations and conditions of an actor, or in his term
agent, Burke’s dramatism analyzes human relations through what he terms the pentad:
act, agent, scene, agency and purpose.71 An act is “what was done” in “thought or deed”
and is produced by the agent or actor, “who did it.” This act is accomplished through
agency, the means or instrument, “how [the actor] did it,” while purpose examines the
motivation for the act, the why of the act. All of this takes place in an overall scene or
place of action, the when and where of the act (Burke, 1945/1969, p. xv). Accordingly,
project uses 11 of the 61 oral histories posted on the Web site (http://www.actuporalhistory.org), that specifically discuss the “Stop the Church” action: Those of Peter Cramer (2002), Gregg Bordowitz (2002), Sarah Schulman (2003), Jamie Leo (2003), Michael Petrelis (2003), Michelangelo Signorile (2003), Alexandra Juhasz (2003), Dudley Saunders (2003), Ann Northrop (2003), Jay Blotcher (2004), and Steve Quester (2004).
71 Burke’s pentad later becomes a hexad once the term attitude is added. Attitude is a “kind of incipient or future action, [and] it must be by some means grounded in the set of the body” (Burke, 1978a, p. 816).
205
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Burke in his 1968 article “Dramatism," states: “For there to be an act, there must be an
agent. Similarly, there must be a scene in which the agent acts. To act in a scene, the
agent must employ some means, or agency. And it can be called an act in the full sense
of the term if it involves a purpose” (446a). The overall scene, however, can be viewed
in varying scope or “circumferences.” For example, a scene can be of a narrow
practical scope, such as a scene in a park, or it can be narrowed to “naturalistic limits, as
in Darwinism.” A widening circumference of a scene can include ideas such as all of
“Western Civilization,” “Elizabethanism,” “Capitalism," and so on (446a).
For Burke, the simplified grammar of these five terms becomes “ principles” for
later complicated philosophies or “ casuistries which demonstrate how the terms
interact in a given situation (Burke, 1945/1969, p. xvi). For example, the grammar term
or principle scene can be understood as a general or “blanked” term, which considers
the “background or setting in general” (p. xvi). The scene becomes a philosophy or
casuistry once it is viewed in relation to how the scene relates to an act (p. xvi).
Casuistry can be understood in terms of ratios, and so each part Of the grammar can be
combined into a ratio which reveals the tensions between each concept. When
considering the terms scene and act, the scene/act ratio entails the “container [scene]
and the thing contained [act]” (p. 3). For example, the scene/act ratio can be viewed in
terms of ACT-UP’s “Stop the Church” action.
According to several members of ACT-UP (Petrelis and Schulman, 2003, p. 40;
Leo and Schulman, 2003, p. 44; Cramer and Schulman, 2002, p. 13; Nahmanson and
Schulman, 2003, p. 13; Signorile and Schulman, 2003, p. 31) the direct-action protest
was called into existence because of a larger scene—suggesting a scene/act ratio: the
Catholic Church and Cardinal O’Connor’s spiritual rule-of-law stance regarding
206
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. homosexuality, sex and abortion.72 Further, ACT-UP members believe that the Church
was getting into politics in order to lobby against homosexuals: “The Catholic Church
was using its non-profit status to lobby against gay rights—equal rights for us" (Petrelis
and Schulman, 2003, p. 40). Michelangelo Signorile (2003) also pointed to the political
involvement of the Church, stating that the public would support their protest: “I think the
public was very open to the message that we were putting forth, about the Church
meddling in government, and using its power and affecting the epidemic in extraordinary
ways” (p. 31). Some members, like Emily Nahmanson (2003), did not view the Church
as being political, but simply as being evil in their noninvolvement: “The reason for the
Stop the Church was that the Catholic Church as an institution was just horribly evil and
really had . . . all this power for use for good in the world, but was doing nothing” (p. 13).
Nevertheless, most members located the reason for their act within the larger,
ambiguous scene of the Catholic Church’s moral stances on sex and homosexuality, as
well as Cardinal O’Connor’s public voice on the matter. In this case, the scene was
ambiguous because the Catholic Church and O’Connor ended up representing many
things to different ACT-UP members. This ambiguity allowed the activists to unite
against a common cause without specifically stating how that cause should be viewed
for each individual. This sense of ambiguity is central to Burke’s dramatism.
According to Burke (1945/1969), the grammar terms are purposely kept
ambiguous because relations between these terms are ambiguous in nature, and so
“what we want is not terms that avoid ambiguity, but terms that clearly reveal the
strategic spots at which ambiguities necessarily arise” (emphasis in original, p. xviii).
72 A few ACT-UP members interviewed by the Oral History Project did not support the “Stop the Church” action because they believed that, being a religious organization, the Catholic Church was not political. This sentiment is represented in Gregg Bordowize’s Oral History Interview (2002): “The Church is not a governmental institution. The Church has some contracts to do service work, but the Church by and large is not a body that makes policy about AIDS that I have to live under” (p. 58). 207
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Depending on how a critic approaches a given scene, that critic might place more
importance upon the act or, rather, more importance on the scene that contains the act.
Depending on what the critic chooses to emphasize, the overali motivation for an act will
change. As stated above, some ACT-UP members were motivated to act because of
their perception that the Catholic Church was involved with local politics. Other
members felt that the Church, because of its place in the community and its vast
resources, did not do enough to help the community. In any case, because the “Church”
as a scene was ambiguous, different members could bring to the action different
motivations, for committing the protest act. In fact, some members could even view the
scene and the act of protest as a way to purge their own personal demons. For
example, several members (Nahmanson and Schulman, 2003, p. 12; Blotcher and
Schulman, 2004, pp. 40; Leo and Schulman, 2003, p. 40; Quester and Schulman, 2004,
p. 38) emphasize Tom Keane’s protest act inside the Church of throwing down or
breaking the wafer given at communion: “And I don’t believe he told anyone he was
going to do that. And I remember after the fact, totally supporting what he had done. He
is an ex-Catholic. He was responding to his own tradition” (p. 38).73
Just as the scene/act ratio helps to describe the motivation behind ACT-UP’s
“Stop the Church” action, different ratios could be used to analyze other aspects of the
action, such as the motivation behind the extensive criticism regarding the protest after
the act. Different ratios uncover different modes of motivation, as Burke says; scene-
73 Within the ratio of agent/act, one could interpret Tom Keane’s protest act o f breaking the host as personally motivated. Further, because a great deal of the media coverage o f the event focused on Keane’s act (Blotcher and Schulman, 2004, p. 40), Keane felt the need to justify his actions not only to the press, but also to fellow ACT-UP members. As Petrelis recounts regarding a press conference held by ACT-UP after the protest, Keane pleaded his case: “M y Mom taught Sunday School, and I knew what I was doing and where I was coming from on this. And I really feel that [we] weren’t standing up just for AIDS patients - or people at risk ofH IV . We were standing up for a lot of gay people, and yes, oppressed people, who had problems with this church” (Petrelis and Schulman, 2003, p. 39).
208
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. act, scene-agent, scene-agency, scene-purpose, act-purpose, act-agent, act-agency,
agent-purpose, agent-agency and agency-purpose. Each ratio can be reversed to
produce an additional set often ratios for motivation discovery within symbolic action,
and when attitude is added, there are even more ratios in which symbolic action and
motive can be analyzed. When analyzing a rhetorical situation, the critic should identify
each of the five pentad terms and then proceed to analyze them in relation to each
other, within the several ratios, in order to determine the most logical motivation for the
symbolic action. Although Burke’s typology of dramatism is a useful tool for critics, I
would suggest that in order to transform it to accommodate activists and social
movements who step into the role of actor, two fundamental elements are missing: the
obstacle (that which gets in the way of the act) and the application of theory to actor
practice. Thus, it will be helpful to consider Burke’s concept of dramatism in light of
acting theory and practice.
Placing the Obstacle in Dramatism
Burke, to be sure, recognizes the importance of the obstacle in relation to conflict
or “conflicting stimuli.” In Permanence and Change (1954/1984), he states: “Such facts
all converge to indicate that our introspective words for motives are rough, shorthand
descriptions for certain typical patterns of discrepant and conflicting stimuli” (p. 30).
Likewise, while explaining dramatism, in Language as Symbolic Action. Burkes states: “If
action is to be our key term, then drama; for drama is the culmination form of action. . .
But if drama, then conflict. And if conflict, then victimage. Dramatism is always on the
edge of this vexing problem, that comes to a culmination in tragedy, the song of the
scapegoat” (Burke, 1966a, pp. 54-55). When recognizing conflict, conflicting stimuli can
be constituted not only as conflict, but as a type of obstacle—that which stands in our
way of getting what we want (motive or purpose). As Hagen (1973) rightly points out in
209
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Respect for Acting, the conflict “is at the root”: “Consequently, finding the obstacles to
my objectives becomes imperative. I have to look for the crisis, the conflict, the clash of
wills—the drama” (p. 180). Whether you are analyzing symbolic action after the fact or
preparing for an act of symbolic action in the space of Burke’s attitude, the obstacle(s)
must be identified and factored into the motive equation because obstacles change
motives. Certainly, when considering attitude, or the “kind of incipient or future action”
(Burke, 1978a, p. 816), obstacles become central, because the more obstacles there are
between you and your future action, the more intense your motivation for achieving that
action will become. As Lloyd Bitzer (1968/1999) suggests in “The Rhetorical Situation,”
an exigency is “an imperfection marked by urgency; it is a defect, an obstacle,
something waiting to be done, a thing which is other than it should be” (p. 221). Thus,
fundamental to exigency within any rhetorical situation are the obstacles that an agent
faces in attaining his or her goal or purpose—as encountered by ACT-UP.
Before the direct-action, ACT-UP members had to face a series of obstacles
including conflict between ACT-UP members regarding the event, and whether the event
should take place only outside the Church or also inside the Church during mass. First,
although most members supported the action, several felt that it was inappropriate. For
example, Ann Northrop (2003) explains that some people feared that taking action
against the Catholic Church would only generate negative publicity and, therefore, hurt
the movement:
There are people who to this day think it was a very big mistake for us to do
because they think it was very negative publicity. And certainly, for years
afterwards, when I would, say, go into a classroom to do AIDS education and, for
some reason, mention having done this, people would yell at me. And there are
people who still—almost 15 years later—will talk about this as a horrible thing.
210
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Or, Rosie O’Donnell said, ‘I don’t think people ought to be going into churches
and doing demonstrations.’ (p. 28).
Jay Blotcher (2004) reports that several ACT-UP members felt uncomfortable about the
action because they were Catholic: “During meetings for the demonstration—leading up
to it—people demurred and people stammered, and people thought, maybe we shouldn’t
do this. It was like they were standing up against their father or their mother” (p. 39). As
Blotcher suggests, some ACT-UP members felt alienated because of the action itself.
Gregg Bordowitz (2002) did not feel that anything could be gained by protesting the
Church since it was not a political institution (p. 58). Michael Petrelis (2003) felt
alienated not because of his religious background, or because he was against the
action, but because he could not find acceptance into an affinity group :u
People felt I was too angry, too over the top . . . we broke up into affinity groups
and people were planning things and I just felt really close to Gerry and I thought
it would be good to work with her on that action, and she was just kind in saying,
'well, no, I don’t think so, not on this action.’ So, I just dealt with it. (p. 35)
Each of these obstacles required different responses, while affecting individual
motivation to different degrees. In order to deal with the fear of negative publicity that
might result from the action, members such as Jay Blotcher were highly motivated to get
the word out and worked for a month in advance to inform the media and the Church
about what they planned to do, and why they were doing it (p. 39). In order to
74 Most mass actions and social movements now utilize affinity groups to organize and plan direct-actions. Affinity groups contain anywhere from five to fifteen people and serve not only as an organizational space, but as a support network, as well as a place where consensus decision-making is accomplished. As Kauffman (2002) explains, affinity groups were first “adopted as the building blocks for nonviolent direction action in 1971, during a stunningly ambitious and almost totally forgotten attempt by a group called the Mayday Tribe to blockade Washington D.C. in protest against the Vietnam W a r.. . The Mayday Tribe’s game plan also completely departed from the organizing style that had existed in the antiwar movement, and most radical activism, up until that point. There was no national leadership that called the shots, instead, planning for the action was decentralized, with affinity groups from around the country choosing their blockade targets and their tactical approach” (p. 36). ACT-UP is credited with bringing back the concept of affinity groups to the current activist culture. 211
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. accommodate personal reservations about the type of protest that was to happen, ACT-
UP used affinity groups and allowed each group to determine how they were going to
protest according to the group’s specific needs (Petrelis and Schulman, 2003, p. 39).
And other members, such as Petrelis, who were not involved with an affinity group, were
able to attend the event anyway, while justifying their involvement through personal
exigencies (pp. 35-36). Indeed, Petrelis recounts how he almost did not attend the
action, but because of the obstacles he had to face, he felt even more motivated to be
heard (p. 37).
Another crucial obstacle faced by ACT-UP was whether the protest should take
place only outside the Church, or also inside during mass. This obstacle was linked not
only to the fears of negative publicity, but also to each individual’s personal and spiritual
beliefs regarding the Catholic Church, and, importantly, a Court order that barred the
protestors from “disrupting services at St. Patrick’s Cathedral” (New York Times, Dec. 9,
1990, A.42). Some members felt that it was wrong to protest inside the Church, while
other members saw it as vital: “I thought it was really important politically—since
O’Connor had made the sanctuary of St. Patrick’s a political platform through his
homilies, that we use that space as our political platform” (Quester and Schulman, 2004,
pp. 36-37). This particular obstacle was also dealt with through the use of affinity
groups. Each group, depending on their personal feelings regarding the issue, decided
to either enter the Church or remain outside. For those who protested outside, their
affinity groups created protest themes. For example, Emily Nahmanson’s (2003) affinity
group dressed as clowns and called themselves “Operation Ridiculous,” which was
conceived in order to counter “Operation Rescue People,” an anti-abortion group
counter-protesting the protesters at the demonstration (p. 11). Those affinity groups who
protested inside the Church, dressed to fit in with the rest of the parishioners (some
212
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. costumed as nuns or priests) and waited for the agreed-upon moment to start the
protest:
At this point. . . ACT UP started the action . . . different members of different
affinity groups stood up, [and read] statements about what was wrong with the
Church, [its] attitudes towards gays and lesbians, its attitudes towards AIDS and
HIV prevention. (Petrelis and Schulman, 2003, p. 39)
After the direct-action, the biggest obstacle that ACT-UP needed to deal with was
the resulting negative press coverage, in order to face this obstacle, to try to fix the
negative publicity and get their message out, ACT-UP held their own press conference:
So, we finally had a chance to talk about all the issues that I had already framed
in fax after fax, about enumerating the church’s overtly political stand in
staunching AIDS education in schools, in staunching condom distribution, in
lobbying energetically against homosexuals . . . We got a chance to say it [all]
again, because they weren’t listening the first time, or they’d rather cover the
drama and color of the demonstration. (Blotcher and Schulman, 2004, p. 41)
As the above examples demonstrate, obstacles do not exist simply as a meta
unit, but are often made up of a network of smaller obstacles that help define the overall
conflict in any given scene. These obstacles build on each other, each one impacting
the next, each one heightening the exigency of a scene, until a climactic conflict grows—
creating drama. Only acknowledging the climactic conflict misses the elements involved
in creating that ultimate moment of exigency.
Dramatism as Praxis
Finally, Burke’s theory of dramatism seems incomplete for this current project,
insofar as it does not address how the theory could be used by social movements in
their role as actor or composer. Charles Kneupper (1985) in his essay “The Relation of
213
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Agency to Act in Dramatism: A comment on 'Burke’s Act”’ states: “Indeed one might go
so far as to say that Burke has a ‘trained incapacity’ to developing the potentials for
composition of his theory. As a result, Dramatism as a rhetorical theory . . . is at best
half developed” (p. 306a). Kneupper, responding to Lewis' (1984) belief that
“composition theorists . .. lose Burke’s emphasis on act and overprivilege agency” (p.
305a), offers the excellent observation that dramatism “can function as a heuristic"
device for the composer or, as in our case, the social movement as actor: “For instance,
if one is planning to induce social cooperation through motivational justification in
support of some policy, then the pentad may be heuristically employed to insure the
consideration of multiplicity of perspectives" (Kneupper, p. 306b). Ultimately, what is
perplexing is that Burke himself did not also pursue the full potential of dramatism; but,
as Burke (1978b) suggested in his “Questions and Answers about the Pentad,” his
concern was mainly with literary theory, not composition or performance:
Maybe my concern with matters of literary theory might be of some suggestive
value to persons concerned with the teaching of literary composition. But what
should I say? . . . For my relation to the [grammar] terms differs somewhat from
their role in the Irmscher handbook [The Hold Guide to English], yet there would
be nothing invidious in the distinction. Both uses have their place, (p. 330a)
In the end, Burke’s theory of dramatism is a helpful tool for literary critics wishing to
uncover motivation within symbolic action. However, dramatism is also intimately
connected to acting theory, since both apply similar terms and methods75 However,
although acting theory looks for the relation between Burke’s grammar terms, often the
75 Actors consider questions similar to those found in Burke’s grammar. As Hagen (1973) details through her “object exercises,” these questions include: Who am I? (agent); What time is it? (scene); Where amI? (scene); What surrounds me? (scene); What are the given circumstances? (scene); What is my relationship? (scene); What do I want? (act); What is in my way? (obstacle); What do I do to get what I want? (agency) (p. 82). The question of “why do I want? (purpose)” is not included in Hagen’s object exercise, but should be. 214
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. actor does not specifically examine those relations in terms of ratios, a technique that
could be very useful to a performer or the social movement as actor. As a result,
Burke’s theory has great potential for the social movement as actor, because as an
actor, social movements must play both the critic and performer and, therefore, must
consider motivation in relation to both roles. ACT-UP essentially, but not consciously,
utilized Burke’s grammar when they prepared for their demonstration. As will be
explained below, in order for the demonstration to create directed incongruity, ACT-UP
had to consider the ratio tensions between grammar terms in order to ask and answer a
series of relevant questions regarding the action. Each tension provided information on
how ACT-UP needed to approach different exigencies.
Dramatism for the Social Movement as Actor
Kneupper (1985) offers excellent starting places for adjusting Burke’s pentad to
serve the social movement as actor/composer. First, he suggests utilizing the pentad
from a heuristic point of view, which would allow social movements to consider the many
perspectives of their audience, motivation, justification, as well as vital questions
concerning the policy being put forth. In this light, the pentadic ratio “functions similarly
to the Aristotelian topi as places to look for justification” (p. 307). Thus, vital questions
emerge to help the social movement as actor address an audience:
How appropriate is the policy to the scene? What in the scene calls for policy?
How will the policy change the scene? Who will implement the policy? Are they
capable of effectively implementing the policy? What must be done to implement
the policy? After implementation, what will the policy require by way of
continuing action? Are resources to implement and act on the policy available,
and are they operational? Why is the policy desirable? (p. 306)
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Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. From a pragmatic point of view, a heuristic approach to Burke’s pentad not only helps
one consider contingent obstacles, but it supports and connects the key rhetorical
considerations observed by M. Lane Bruner (2003) and Poulakos (1983/2001): “kairos
(the opportune moment), prepon (the appropriate), and dynaton (the possible)”
(Poulakos, p 26) and, of course, phronesis (practical wisdom) (Burner, p. 86-87). The
chart below details ACT-UP’s protest and the corresponding questions they needed to
address, showing how this heuristic method addresses the practical questions the social
movement as actor must consider:
Questions Pentad Kairos ACT-UP’s “Stop the Grammar- To Prepon Church” Action potentials for To Dynation ratios: Phronesis How appropriate is Act/Scene Kairos Should the protest be the policy to the (opportune moment) held inside the Church, scene? or outside the Church, or in both locations? What in the scene Scene/Purpose Prepon Which protest actions calls for policy? (the appropriate) will promote the best publicity? Does the type of publicity matter? What will create engagement between audience and actors? How will the policy Act/Scene Phronesis Will the protest against change the scene? (practical wisdom) St. Patrick’s Church change policies supported by the Catholic Church?76 Who will Agent/Act Prepon Which affinity groups will implement the (the appropriate) protest inside and which policy? groups will protest outside the Church? Are they capable Agent/Act Phronesis How many police will be of effectively (practical wisdom) present at the action? implementing the How can protesters policy? avoid arrest, while still remaining nonviolent?
76 It is interesting to note that approximately a month after the demonstration, on 10 January 1990,New the York Times reported that “New York State and the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of New York, which operates the only AIDS nursing home in New York City, announced plans . . . to increase by nearly five fold the number of AIDS beds there and in nursing homes elsewhere” (Lambert, p. 3). 216
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. What must be Agency/Act Prepon When should the media done to implement (the appropriate) be contacted? How do the policy? we frame our message? What type of posters should be created? What type of costumes should be worn? How can protesters gain access to the interior of the Church? After Act/Agency Dynaton How do we fight the implementation, (the possible) negative publicity? How what will the policy can we follow up on our require by way of demands? How will our continuing action? next action be different from what was learned from the Church action? Are resources to Agency/Act Phronesis Can we rely on the implement and act (practical wisdom) media to accurately on the policy cover the event? Do we available, and are have access to printing they operational? materials? Can we rely on established networks to organize attendance? Why is the policy Purpose/Act Dynaton What can we desirable? (the possible) accomplish? Will it increase awareness? Membership? Or create division among ACT-UP members?
When we add the concept of the obstacle to Burke’s pentad, further important questions
arise for the social movement as actor, including: (1) What is in the way of implementing
the act? (2) Which aspects of the act will the audience object to? (3) Who is in
opposition to the proposed policy? (4) What might make the policy fail after
implementation? (5) Which aspects in the scene resist the proposal of the act?
The pentad also has potential, as Kneupper (1985) points out, for “adapting
discourse to a particular audience” (p. 307). Should you approach the audience from the
rationale of agency, act, agent, purpose, obstacle, scene, or, even, attitude? Which
approach will provide the best prepon, persuasion for situation, kairos. If we concur with
Bitzer (1968/1999) that “rhetoric is situational” (p. 218), and that “the presence of 217
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. rhetorical discourse obviously indicates the presence of a rhetorical situation” (p. 217),
then the social movement as actor must address an audience from the grammar of the
scene.77 If the audience is weary of the purpose, but maintains strong support for the
agent, or rhetor, it would be wise to construct rhetoric focusing on the agent’s ability and
her belief in the purpose, and therefore to assure the audience that the agent, as
technical expert, supports the purpose of the action proposed. In each case, the pentad
with the addition of the “obstacle” can help social movements determine the best course
of persuasion for the situation/audience at hand.
Furthermore, in using the pentad to determine justification for an act or using it to
determine the best means of persuasion, the social movement as actor works first as a
critic and second as a performer. Yet this latter mode of working is not necessarily the
norm, because the social movement as actor does not always have the leisure to
construct and plan for an act of rhetoric—their role as critic. Social movements will often
be in situations that demand immediate action, and so they must be able to adjust
quickly in a timely way to capture kairos (opportune moment), prepon (the appropriate),
and dynaton (the possible). In order to offer social movements the proper tools for such
situations, I propose improvisational techniques that aim to reform action, allowing social
movements to use their talents in any circumstance or situation.
Social Movement as Improvisational Actor
What is theatrical improvisation (improv)? Why recommend improvisation for
social movements? How can improvisation help social movements?
771 question Bitzer’s insistence that rhetoric is only called into being through the rhetorical situation, since the rhetor can also call a situation into being through choosing what situations we should place our focus on. Here, I agree with the assessment of Richard E. Vatz (1973/1999) his article “The Myth of the Rhetorical Situation” when he states: “The very choice of what facts or events are relevant is a matter of pure arbitration” (p. 228).
218
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. On the first question, Frost and Yarrow (1989) in their text Improvisation in
Drama, state that improvisation is:
The skill of using bodies, space, all human resources, to generate a coherent
physical expression of an idea, a situation, a character (even, perhaps, a text); to
do this spontaneously, in response to the immediate stimuli of one’s
environment, and to do it a I'improviste: as through taken by surprise, without
preconceptions, (p. 1)
Concerning improv and its relation to a script or a text, Paul Zumthor in Oral Poetry: An
Introduction states that improv is:
A coincidence between the production and transmission of a text—the text being
composed within the performance, as opposed to those that were composed for
the performance. In fact, improvisation is never total: the text, produced on the
spot, is so by virtue of cultural norms, even re-estabiished rules, (emphasis in
original, Zumthor as cited in Smith and Dean, 1997, p. 25)
Most definitions, however, stress spontaneity, the lack of pre-conceived notions in
reacting spontaneously to ambient conditions, and active perception between actor and
audience. However, as Smith and Dean suggest in Improvisation Hypermedia and the
Arts since 1945. improvisation has acquired “romantic notions” emphasizing ideas such
as pure “spontaneity” and “simplicity,” as well as clouding improvisation with an ideology
that shrouds “it in notions of intuition, mysticism, and unconscious activity” (p. 25). Their
critique is significant because these notions pervade perceptions of improvisation and,
although it appears to the audience as a form of entertainment and a technique of pure
creative spontaneity and invention, the truth quite different: to be successful at
improvisation, the actor must be completely prepared before entering the stage. She
has with her an arsenal of trained techniques and bits of theatrical action. She is
219
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. prepared for the contingent, the unexpected, and she is so comfortable in a world of flux
that she can adjust herself to meet these demands. She is not rigid in this sense, but
absolutely prepared—a neutral living space filled with active potential. To understand
this paradoxical relationship between the spontaneous and the prepared, in relation to a
neutral living space of potential, it is helpful to review the techniques developed by the
improvisational and commedia master Jacques Lecoq (1921-1999).
The Lecoq Technique
Lecoq was born in France and started acting after World War II. He discovered
improvisation while working with Claude Martin, and later with the Compagrtie des
Comediens he became interested in commedia theatre and the physicality of the actor—
a discovery that would later propel him to combine movement with improvisation and
commedia techniques. In 1956, Lecoq opened his influential school, The Ecole
Internationale de Mime et de Theatre, which is still in operation today (Frost and Yarrow,
1989, pp. 61-62).78 Basic to the Lecoq technique are four overall principles:
(a) the establishment of the ‘neutral body’, including use of the neutral mask; (b)
the concept of ‘play’; (c) observation and research, both of ‘realistic’ detail and of
rhythm and movement; (d) the auto-cours or ‘do-it-yourself work in teams or
groups [aimed at] producing various kinds of performance, (p. 63).
The most important notions, in what is termed the Lecoq technique are the
concepts of neutrality and “observation and research.” First, it is important to
understand that the term neutral does not imply a middle place of opinion, nor is it a
space of Ismenism or of sheer motion where forces act upon you. Rather, it is a space
of pure potentiality where all possibilities reside at rest until called upon. As Frost and
78 For more information onEcole Internationale de Mime et de Theatre, visit their Web site at
220
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Yarrow (1989) explain, the neutral space “is highly charged. The body has a wide range
of available resources; neutrality engenders a state in which they are ready to go into
play, but not programmed to operate in a predetermined way” (p. 65). Neutrality is
dependent both upon absolute preparedness, as well as the ability to not predetermine,
necessarily, how one will utilize the prepared resources: “Performance cannot afford to
be approximate, even though it may respond to the demands of the moment or adapt to
the feedback messages it is receiving from the audience” (p. 65). Next, preparedness
requires “observation and research.” For the actor this means that you must observe
yourself as a person, as well as others in order to assume different personalities and
physicalities. For the social movement as critic, this means that you must understand all
aspects regarding the program you are promoting. It is the space of the critic and
researcher who prepares before composition. Furthermore, the critic must be a student
of human nature, because she must learn how to understand people, their reactions,
concerns, and behaviors. Without having an understanding of her potential audience,
she cannot make a proper connection with them and will, therefore, mistake the best
means of persuasion suitable to a certain audience or circumstance. Thus, neutrality,
research, and observation work together to create the active space of possibility or
dynaton.
For example, ACT-UP used observation and research well, although, some
members found it difficult to utilize a neutral energy—hindering their ability to react in a
way that promoted their ultimate aim of exposing and criticizing the Catholic Church’s
policies. ACT-UP was well prepared for the protest, effectively coordinating the
attendance of activists from both ACT-UP as well as WHAM!. Media consideration was
also taken care of, because Blotcher (2004), along with others, sent out faxes and letters
a month before the protest to explain ACT-UP and WHAMI’s aims, demands and
221
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. concerns. Richard Deagle (2003) and others created professional posters (including the
“Know Your Scumbags” poster that juxtaposed photos of Cardinal O'Connor and a
condom). Affinity groups were formed and each group planned exactly what they
wanted to do. However, because ACT-UP members were divided between individuals
and affinity groups, and because coordination between these groups and individuals was
minimal, a great deal of the protest resembled Dewey’s Babel of voices. Furthermore,
some members, such as Michael Petrelis (2003), found it difficult to use neutral energy
and, therefore, difficult to adjust their protests in such a way as to redirect attention,
create directed incongruity, while promoting an experience.
As Petrelis explained, concerning the protest taking place inside the Church,
when it came time for the protesters to reveal themselves, they did so all at once,
competing with each other, and the church-goers:
Some people were going into the aisles . . . And, I remember I wanted to be
heard. . . So, I sat up on the pew . . . and started screaming. . . And I couldn’t
hear myself, because there's this cacophony of competing voices from the
parishioners. . . [and] ACT UP demonstrators trying to read their. .. statements,
trying to be heard, (p. 37)
Because Petrelis wanted to be heard, he attempted the top-down approach of imposing
himself onto the space by standing on a pew and yelling: “O’Connor, you’re killing us!
Just stop it, stop it!” (p. 37). Although incongruous within a church scene, since he could
not use a neutral space that would have allow him to adjust his protest in order to create
an experience for those present, Petrelis’s action became a random incongruous act
instead of a directed incongruous one, which in the end worked against him.79 Were
79 Petrelis was immediately removed from the church by a police officer (p. 37) and later, after the protest, ACT-UP members were angry at him for standing on the pew and yelling: “A number of people in ACT- 222
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Petrelis able to use the energy of neutrality, he might have been able to adjust his
protest to work better within that particular environment. This is what Jamie Leo (2003)
was able to accomplish. Dressed as a priest, Leo was sat in the front of the Church and,
instead of yelling out his protest, Leo presented his protest in the form of a prayer—
quieting the parishioners, promoting an experience, as well as direct incongruity:
And you know, Catholic in recovery—I started with a prayer. And I said,
‘Heavenly father, let us pray that we will use love and not cruelty to guide us here
today, and that we will be true to family values . . .’ -well, what happened is
silence came over the room, because you don’t interrupt a prayer in a Catholic
get-together. And I said something about, ‘and may people who would take
advantage of this epidemic for their own benefit—-may they find compassion . . .”
(p. 45)
Another person who was able to use the energy of neutrality, promoting a moment of
alienation or directed incongruity, was Tom Keane. By seizing the host and breaking it,
Keane was able to fashion a moment of congruous improvisation in order to create
directed incongruity. Thus, utilizing the neutral space is a form of phronesis, since
practical wisdom is used to select and initiate appropriate action, as was done by both
Keane and Leo. If social movements or actors are rigid, they are not able to adjust
quickly to exigencies that may present themselves and, therefore, may not take action
appropriate for the particular circumstance being faced. In order to inhabit neutrality,
Lecoq’s second notion of “play” is vital.
Lecoq’s concept of play entails the “energy that is shared between performers on
stage and in rehearsal—the ball that the game is played with” (Frost and Yarrow, 1989,
p. 64). It is a type of perception (action) rather than reception (sheer motion) that occurs
UP were mad at me for having been so loud . . . standing on the pew. It was like well, that’s what I wanted to do. And, I think it was later that night [I was told] that the Church was upset” (p. 38). 223
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. between actors, and between actors and an audience. It is an effective way to create an
experience, as Dewey insists. The term itself also suggests both the “idea of verbal play
and inventiveness” and the “sense of 'possible movement or scope’ as in the degree of
play in a bicycle chain” (pp. 64-5). As in Burke’s concept of the pentad, play is the
tension that holds the dialectical ratios together, creating an energy between the terms
and notions that actively creates "inter-play . .. emphasizing the relationships which
spark off or create new combinations: people, movements, moods or styles meet and
collide, giving rise to different possibilities” (p. 64).80 Play is what helps identification, in
the Burkean sense. For the social movement who steps into the role of actor, play is
vital to the relationship with an audience, because an actor must promote active energy
which engages the audience and invites the audience to have a shared experience with
the activist performer. When an actor addresses an audience in a mono-static space,
where she refuses to share herself with them and instead only “addresses” the
audience, her ability to persuade falters. For example, returning to ACT-UP, Jamie Leo
(2003), by choosing to offer up a prayer as a way to protest, was able to "play” with the
real parishioners, inviting them to pray with him. This is the difference between speaking
at someone (as Petrelis [2003, p. 37] did when yelling, “O’Connor, you are killing us”)
and speaking to or with someone, as Leo did with his prayer. Again, it is the difference
between seeing your audience as an entity of sheer motion or as one of action and
reaction. Social movements must invite the audience to play along with them.
This sense of play is also close to Lecoq’s notion of “do-it-yourself work in teams
or groups, because an actor is not an isolated being working in a vacuum. She is an
active force of potential action/energy, engaging and working with other actors, including
80 In this sense, play is what aids a double process (Burke, 1961/1970; Tarrow, 2005) of negotiation and process between the particular and the general, the universal and the national, and other such polar concepts. 224
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. counter-agents, as well as her audience. It is not a mono-project, but a space of plurality
that must be creatively and actively navigated. Of course, ACT-UP uses “do-it-yourself
work extensively, not only with the organization as a whole, but also through the use of
affinity groups and consensus decision-making, as is explained in their online “Civil
Disobedience Training Manual”:
Affinity groups are self-sufficient support systems of about 5 to 15 people. A
number of affinity groups may work together toward a common goal in a large
action, or one affinity group might conceive of and carry out an action on its own.
Sometimes, affinity groups remain together over a long period of time, existing as
political support and/or study groups, and only occasionally participating in
actions. . . Affinity groups form the basic decision-making bodies of mass actions.
As long as they remain within the nonviolence guidelines, affinity groups are
generally encouraged to develop any form of participation they choose, (para. 1-
3) The Lecoq technique, particularly as it activates the concept of play, has great potential
for the social movement as actor when combined with the tools of the critic such as
Burke’s dramatism.
One might rightly ask the reasons behind suggesting acting techniques for social
movements or even suggesting that social movements become a type of actor, Burke’s
“agent,” since actors today are often seen as only a source of entertainment. After all,
as Perez-Rivas and Yuh pointed out, the carnival atmosphere produced by ACT-UP and
WHAMI’s protests promoted confusion among church-goers regarding the protesters’
aims: “Churchgoers expressed disgust at the protest’s carnival atmosphere: 'look at that
.. . They’re making a party out of this, like they’re having fun. How can anybody take
them seriously?”’ (Perez-Rivas and Yuh, 1989, as cited in Christiansen and Hanson,
225
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 1996, p. 157). I am not suggesting that social movements be reduced to the role of
entertainer. I am suggesting however, that social movements utilize theatrical direct-
action techniques or acts as Burke so eloquently suggests. Historically, like artists and
rhetors, actors and plays have been demoted from a place where change could be
effected in society through art, to a place of sheer entertainment equated with the
rhetorical act of ceremonial oratory. As Schechner (2004) laments in “The Big Issues
and The Happy Few,” “we can hardly imagine such a display of [activist] fervor without
suspecting it of total manipulation and bad faith. The closest we come to it is the ironic
and parodic preaching of Reverend Billy in his Church of Stop Shopping” (p. 7). Still,
social movements as actors are not simply chess pieces to be moved and directed to
speak on cue as entertainment, or manipulated in bad faith, since they function as both a
critic and an actor. Thus there should be no ultimate mover, but a collective, choral
space of creativity.
To this end, Peter Brook (1968) recounts an insightful story. As director of his
first professional play Love's Labour’s Lost in 1945, he came to rehearsals with a pre
planned map of action, including how the actors should move on the stage, speak their
lines, and what mannerism each actor should endow him or herself with. Once at the
rehearsal space and working with the actors, Brook’s plan of attack failed miserably,
because he was trying to impose a rigid set of constraints on contingent realities:
I stopped, and walked away from my book [of stage directions], in amongst the
actors, and I have never looked at a written plan since. I recognized once and
for all the presumption and the folly of thinking that an inanimate model can stand
for a man. (p. 107)
What Brook also realized was that a choral configuration (as I am calling it) was needed
in order to create cohesion between him, his actors, and the play itself. By attempting to
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Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. control the play with a from-the-top approach, Brook was creating an artificial space that
was incapable of true creativity or cohesion. When supporting cosmopolitical
democracy, it is vital that we take this cue from Brook and promote comic choral
configuration, the theme for the final chapter in this project.
227
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. The Fourth Stasimon
Comic Choral Configuration—Clowning Around for Cosmopolitical Democracy
The scene for the direct-action was a military recruitment hub in the city center of
Leeds in the U.K. in June of 2004. The agents were fifteen “clownbatants" from the
Clandestine Insurgent Rebel Clown Army (CIRCA). The act was a joy of clowning
buffoonery, and specified ridicule aimed at a military recruiting office in Leeds. The
purpose of this action was, as the clowns themselves now say, “rubbish”; but more
specifically, the clownbatants’ purpose was to create a directed comical incongruity to
help amplify the local habits of military recruiting to the global consequences of war and
war profiteering in Iraq and elsewhere.81 Described by Kolonel Klepto (2004), a member
of CIRCA, in his article “Making War with Love,” the fifteen clownbatants were dressed in
combat gear that was brightened with pink and green fuzzy-fur. For helmets they wore
shiny colanders on their heads, ready for any spaghetti dinner that might have been
spontaneously offered to them. Armed with toys and a sense of the silly, the
clownbatants went into the recruitment center ostensibly to see if they could join the
army: “In high pitched clown voices we told them about our previous experience in the
clown army, displaying skills such as silly salutes, showing subversive slapstick drills” (p.
81 This particular direct-action resulted from the unofficial CIRCA clown headquarters’ “Anti-Official Communique # 3” regarding the “so-called handover of Iraq, June 2004” (Klepto, 2004, p. 405). The Communique detailed that CIRCA members felt that the handover of Iraq to the Iraqi people was a joke that had them rolling “around the floor in fits of laughter,” the handover was little more than a publicity stunt. They detailed how out of $18 billion dollars allotted by the US government for Iraqi reconstruction, only $3 billion had been spent. Further, they pointed out that the Iraqi interim government was forbidden to revise “any of the laws passed by the USA since it has occupied Iraq.” Finally, they referred to a newspaper article from the Telegraph (4/1/04) which detailed how the US was creating a secret police force which “would allow America to maintain control over the direction of the country” (p. 405). This Communique was read aloud to the military recruiters and to other people at the action who simply walked by and witnessed the event (p. 404b). 228
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 404a). When the military recruiters did not take the clowns’ desire to join up seriously,
they sent out an “un-amused commando from the Royal Marines" to throw the
clownbatants out (p. 404a). But clowns do not like to be tossed out of places without at
least having thrown a pie in someone’s face, or performing a gag that puts food to good
comical use:
But it’s hard to move a rebel clown, they don’t resist in a conventional sense, but
tend to slip out of the clutches of authority like wobbly jelly and distract them from
their duties with loud gaffaws and stinging mockery. The more our pleas to join
the army fell on deaf ears—‘Please teach us how to liberate people!’ 'Where are
the application forms?’ ‘Why can’t we have really really big guns like yours?’ -
the more chaotic the scene in the recruitment office became. Very long sausage
balloons started screaming across the space sounding like ammunition about to
explode, sherbet-filled toy aeroplanes did manic loops over the RAF desks, one
clown crawled around the floor polishing soldiers’ boots with his feather duster
while another read out loud the latest communique from CIRCA . , . which
detailed the absurdity of the so called ‘hand-over’ of power in Iraq and
announced the occupation of Leeds by CIRCA and the establishment of the
Clown Provisional Authority. (404a-b)
As soon as the clowns could be gathered up, not an easy task with so many
shoes to shine and sausage balloons to pop (404a), the police and the recruitment
officers escorted the clowns out and closed the office for the day. The clowns had won;
they had occupied Leeds and created a “Clown Provisional Authority.” But their work
was far from over. It seemed a shame to have the recruitment office closed—after all,
where would people go to sign up? So, they opened their own recruitment stand outside
of the military office and handed out clown recruitment bills that said “Be Rubbish, Join
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Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. the Clandestine Insurgent Rebel Clown Army” (403b). Other recruitment bills are also
used in similar direct-actions, such as a bill handed out by CIRCA San Francisco on 7
June, 2006 (Mischief, 2006), that contrasts the concept of an “Army of One" to that of
Clown choral configuration or an “Army of Fun”:
US Army Clown Army Squashes individual expression and Breeds creative goofiness and goofy free speech. creativity.
Demands conformity and servitude. Liberates the imagination and imagines liberty.
Lies about money for college. We don’t lie.
Lies about job training and Train to be a clown for free, today! employment.
Lies about gender and racial We’re all clowns, and a clown is a clown equality. is a clown.
Number of countries invaded pre Number of pre-emptive hugs given to emptively for no good reason: strangers, daily, for no good reason: sooooo many. more.
Fight in a war. Tug-o-war.
Yer officer yells orders in your face. Everybody yells with you and not at you.
Drop bombs on kids. Kids love us.
“Army of One.” “Army of fun.”
Lots of gas-guzzling hummers. Long-winded bike advocacy.
8 Year commitment. What?
Boring uniform. Excellent gear: have you ever worn a red nose? Red hot noses, hot pink, hot uniforms, so hot we’re sweating.
Core Values: Kill, Rape, Plunder. Core Values: Fun, Friendship, Freedom.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. The description of this comical choral configuration, and other signature direct-
actions taken by CIRCA, best represents the spirit and the proposed process this project
supports. When trapped between an Antigonal/Creonic polarity that promotes
Ismenism, drastic action is needed to disrupt this tragic frame and promote
reengagement with life. By using directed incongruity, and directed comical chaos, the
either/or frame is disrupted and an opening is created for actors and audience to unite
chorally, and create new stories, new possibilities, and new master frames. Such a
choral configuration may last years or it may last only moments, but, the length of time
hardly matters. What matters is that a new act of practice is promoted in order to offer
an opportunity to develop new habits of choral participation, shunning the either/or
dialectic while at the same time supplanting Ismenism with participation. One purpose of
improvisational dramatism is to help social movements as actors create a directed
perspective by incongruity, so that the audience’s attentions can be specifically
redirected towards a new choral master frame. But in such conditions or circumstances,
what is a choral master frame? What is the individual’s and the intellectual’s (such as
Reverend Billy’s) relationship to a choral frame? Why is comedy essentia! to this
configuration? And can comic choral configuration bridge the conventional, and very
persistent Creonic/Antigonal master frame? This chapter wiil examine the concept of
choral configuration, as well as the place of the individual and the intellectual within a
choral frame: how the use of comedy engages participants, while breaking the stock
either/or tragic frame, and how comic choral configuration can be used to amplify the
local to the cosmopolitical, thereby promoting the vision of a cosmopolitical democracy.
Choral Configurations
It is noteworthy that like the Chorus in ancient Greek tragedy, the concept of the
Chorus in everyday life, especially in the West, has gone the way of the horse-and-
231
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. buggy. Just as Thespis of Icaria separated himself from the Chorus and, instead, sought
the singular space of the individual alone (Durant, 1939/1966, p. 232), so too does
modern life insist on the singular power of the individual, as Kierkegaard (1843/1959)
explored in his Either/Or. This is remarkably true in the US where the American Dream
is associated with the determination of the individual “to become all that you can be,"
that is, “an army of one" against the world. Individualism is ingrained in us and the
thought of losing that individual uniqueness is frightening. Yet being an individual still
requires us to act not in isolation, but within a community of sorts, whether that
community be a family, an office, a club, or a city. The relationship between a choral
configuration and individualism is a difficult space to negotiate because there is a
consistent possibility that an either/or insistence will develop: the group over the
individual, or the individual over the group.
This delicate balance between the individual and a group is dramatically
demonstrated in the science fiction TV show, Star Trek Vovaaer. A character named
Seven of Nine, a humanoid female, was once part of the Borg Collective—a race of
beings that assimilates uniqueness, and once assimilated, a person stops being an
individual, becoming mentally rewired and physically hardwired to think collectively, like
a hive of bees. Once severed from the Borg Collective by the crew of the Starship
Voyager, Seven of Nine is encouraged to explore her uniqueness, her individuality. This
process is difficult for her, but with the support of her new captain, Captain Janeway,
Seven (as she is affectionately referred to) explores what it means to be an individual.
However, in one episode, “Pray” (Braga, Eastman, Biller, and Menosky, 1995), Seven
finds out that her freedom as an individual is not limitless, because she must also adjust
her individual needs and wants to those of the crew. At the end of the episode, after
232
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Seven has disobeyed a direct order given to her by Captain Janeway, Seven and the
Captain debate the role of the individual within a larger group space:
JANEWAY: When you first came to Voyager, I decided to grant you the same
liberties and freedoms of any crew member, because I wanted you to be
a part of this family. And I’ve been willing to accommodate your unique
ways of doing things . . . but this time I can’t accommodate you. . .
SEVEN: It is puzzling.
JANEWAY: What’s that?
SEVEN: You made me into an individual. You encouraged me to stop thinking
like a member of the collective, to cultivate my independence . . . But
when I try to assert that independence, i am punished.
JANEWAY: Even individuality has its limits. Especially on a starship where there
is a command structure.
SEVEN: I believe you are punishing me because I don’t think the way that you
do, because I am not becoming more like you. You claim to respect my
individuality, but in fact you are frightened by it.
JANEWAY: As you were.82
However fantastic, this dramatic example illustrates several problems inherent in a
choral configuration project: Where and how does the individual fit within a group, and
must choral structures be hierarchal? If not, what becomes of the role of the
intellectual?
The “I” and the “We”
This project supports a choral process where an active space of learning is
promoted (M.C. Nussbaum, 1986/2001, p. 69), and where reflection on material realities
82 Dialogue transcribed from the broadcast by the author. 233
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. is valued over ideological absolutes. Yet this choral space is not a space of
homogenization, but a space where plurality can exist among members who are united
because of a common concern or circumstance. In such a configuration, the individual
and the choral space articulate and rearticulate each other. In Hauser's (1999) work
Vernacular Voices, he suggests that communities and publics are constituted through
conversations. To participate in these conversations, we must “acquire its vernacular
language in order to share rhetorically salient meanings” (p. 67). Such vernacular
language also requires us to determine the meaning behind the individual, or the “I,” and
the community, or the “we,” as well as the space of interaction between these two states.
As Hauser rightly suggests, the “I” and the “we” are mutually constructive since “the I
must continually grasp the intersubjective meaning that is always and exclusively a part
of the we" (p. 67). In this sense, each master frame is reliant upon the other, since
neither can exist without the other. However, as we saw apropos of Antigonal and
Creonic master frames, the polar distance between the two can create an either/or
space where negotiation between terms and ideas is frozen by an unmoving end—
creating potential for tragedy. As was suggested regarding the give-and-take between
the local and the cosmopolitical, in the double process promoted by Burke (1961/1970)
and Tarrow (2005), the space between the choral and the individual must be similarly
navigated. However, such negotiation should not occur in a hierarchal space wherein
the “I” dictates to the “we,” or the “we” dictates to the “I.” Rather, choral configuration
requires a flexible relationship where hierarchies are avoided in hopes of evading, or at
least continually disrupting, an either/or polarity.
Both Burke (1961/1970) and Tarrow (2005) promote an upward and downward
process where terms and ideas are constantly being reassessed and redefined between
two distinct realms, the general, or global, and the specific, or local. Although this
234
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. image is helpful when conceptualizing how we can bridge the local and the
cosmopolitical, it suggests a hierarchal relationship where one realm can dominate the
other. For Burke, such a hierarchal arrangement is part of human life. In the fourth
clause of his definition of man, Burke states that humanity is “goaded by the spirit of
hierarchy” (p. 40). Hierarchy is, for Burke, the “motive of the sociopolitical order, made
possible and necessary by social differentiations and stratifications due to the division of
labor and to corresponding distinctions in the possession of property” (p. 40-41). Burke
is most likely correct. However, as he also suggests in various theoretical constructs,
such as perspective by incongruity, hierarchal structures must always be kept in flux.
Thus, hierarchal structures must be constantly challenged in order to disrupt
bureaucratization of the imaginative. Similarly, this project recommends the continuous
effort of disrupting hierarchal arrangements, by use of a double process which will
transform interpersonal relations from a strict space of hierarchy, to a choral space of
learning. By using a double process that encourages continuous negotiations between
the placement and power of the individual in relation to a collective, a hierarchal
structure can be challenged. This transformative process can be better understood
through M.M. Bakhtin’s (2004) linguistic theories of heteroglossia and dialogism, as
presented in the “Discourse of the Novel.”
In many ways, heteroglossia for Bakhtin (2004) represents the dual state of a
language system being both fixed and in flux. On one level, language appears
centralized like a fixed, unified force:
We are talking [about] language not as a system of abstract grammatical
categories, but rather language conceived as ideologically saturated, language
as a world view, even as a concrete opinion, insuring a maximum of mutual
understanding in all spheres of ideological life. Thus a unitary language gives
235
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. expression to forces working toward concrete verbal and ideological unification
and centralization, which develop in vital connection with the process of
sociopolitical and cultural centralization, (p. 271)
Bakhtin’s unification suggests a “Borg” like space, as dramatized on the TV show
Voyager discussed above, where members are homogenized, erasing individual identity.
However, such unification is not a given, but is “posited," since it must always contend
with heteroglossia or language in flux. In addition to having ostensibly fixed forms, all
language is also simultaneously heteroglossic, containing:
Diversity of social speech types (sometimes even diversity of languages) and a
diversity of individual voices . . . [and] the internal stratification of any single
national language into social dialects, characteristic group behavior, professional
jargons, generic languages, languages of generations and age groups,
tendentious languages of the authorities, of various circles and of passing
fashions, languages that serve the specific sociopolitical purposes of the day,
even of the hour (each day has its own slogan, its own vocabulary, its own
emphases), (p. 262-263).
The two modes of language work together and define each other. The monologic,
unitary language or the individual’s voice, works amid heteroglossia, as language
experiences both a centralization and a decentralization of its unitary force: “The
utterance only answers the requirements of its own language as an individualized
embodiment of a speech act, but it answers the requirements of heteroglossia as well; it
is in fact an active participant in such speech diversity” (pp. 271-272). This intermingling
of participation is the process of heteroglossia being dialogized.
For Bakhtin (2004), the dialogic nature of language is not the tension between
individual wills, but between “social-linguistic points of view” (p. 273). These live in a
236
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. space of flux where they are joined, disrupted and rejoined (p. 274). Unlike a
monologue, which “presumes only passive listeners beyond its boundaries,” the style of
dialogue is determined by many voices and by the interrelationship with language and
the voices as “rejoinders” (p. 274). In this sense, language, words, and relationships
between people are being continuously redefined because they mutually participate and
interact.
The same type of process occurs within a choral configuration. As Hauser
(1999) said, the individual and the collective are dependent upon each other for
definition and reorientation (p. 67). Each individual within the choral configuration brings
to the chorus a multi-directional and multi-temporal history of truths, ideas, sociopolitical
backgrounds, languages, slang or jargon, and the like. While interacting with each other
in a choral space, like a singing choir, at times the voices merge to resemble unification,
and at other times singular voices rise and then fall back into the choir. This is not unlike
William James' (1907/1981) description of the reformation process that truth goes
through, because we are introduced to new voices, words, and sociopolitical thoughts,
and our own “individual” voice is adjusted to hear and address new voices—transforming
itself but not losing itself: “The unfolding of social heteroglossia surrounding the object,
the Tower-of-Babel mixing of languages that goes on around any object; the dialectics of
the object are interwoven with the social dialogue surrounding it” (Bakhtin, 2004, p. 278).
In this configuration, monologues exist, but they cannot be sustained or bureaucratized
as unmoving ends because they do not live in a vacuum, where dialogue is absent. This
space of transformative choral configuration allows for new stories to be told beyond the
monologue, the singular end or truth.
237
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. CIRCA’s Choral Configuration
CIRCA nurtures choral configuration in their philosophy and decision-making
process. On a structural level, CIRCA utilizes a consensus decision-making process in
affinity groups, a process they call “gaggles,” which support a deliberative, democratic
choral configuration. Inspired by ACT-UP, many non-violent groups in the Global Justice
Movement, or what has been dubbed the “Movement of Movements” (B. Shepard, 2004,
p. 594), utilize consensus decision-making to encourage deliberation and participation of
all members in any decision. As described by ACT-UP in their Civii Disobedience
Training Manual, consensus decision-making is:
A method by which an entire group of people can come to an agreement. The
input and ideas of all participants are gathered and synthesized to arrive at a final
decision acceptable to all. Through consensus, we are not only working to
achieve better solutions, but also to promote the growth of community and trust,
(para. 1)
Unlike a voting process, “a win or lose model,” consensus endeavors to work through
differences in such a way as to allow all members to have their opinion heard:
Consensus does not mean that everyone thinks that the decision made is
necessarily the best one possible, or even that they are sure it will work. What it
does mean is that in coming to that decision, no one felt that his/her position on
the matter was misunderstood or that it wasn’t given a proper hearing, (para. 6).
The key to consensus is deliberation and group synthesis that does not silence or
exclude the individual’s opinion or bar the individual from disagreeing with the outcome
(para. 11). CIRCA employs this decision-making process before, during, and after
direct-actions. It is first used to arrange and decide upon direct-action tactics. Next,
during the action, there are often times when a change of tactic is needed, and so the
238
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. gaggle will come together to discuss and debate what they will do. For example, in the
“Army of One vs. the Army of Fun” action taken by CIRCA San Francisco (Mischief,
2006), the group was protesting at a recruiting office, in one of CIRCA’s trademark
actions. During the action, decisions needed to be made and so the SF gaggle of
clowns sat down and deliberated in front of the recruitment officers during the action
itself. This consensus work also became an act of resistance to monologic rule, insofar
as it ridiculed the military’s hierarchal decision-making structure and, interestingly
enough, provoked smiles on the recruiters’ faces.83 As used by CIRCA, consensus
decision-making processes are not only a practical way to get things done chorally, but
also integral to their overall philosophy, as reflected in their name.
The title CIRCA, or Clandestine Insurgent Rebel Clown Army, connotes the
philosophy of choral configuration as embodied in this gaggle of rebel clowns. As
explained on their "About the Army" Web page, they call their community Clandestine
because they “refuse the spectacle of celebrity and we are everyone. Because without
real names, faces, or noses, we show that our words, dreams, and desires are more
important than our biographies” (para. 2). There are no official leaders and followers, no
official end, but a process in which, as a group, they work to relate to and imagine the
other. Further, they characterize themselves as organically rising together as a
collective out of need rather than any singular or unified vision: “We are insurgent
because we have risen up from nowhere and are everywhere. Because ideas can be
ignored but not suppressed and an insurrection of the imagination is irresistible” (para.
3). Imagination here is a process and not an end project because “nothing is final.
Because history doesn’t move in straight lines but surges like water, sometimes swirling,
sometimes dripping, flowing, flooding—always unknowable, unexpected, uncertain”
83 For pictures detailing CIRCA SF’s action, see
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. (para. 3). If insurgency is a choral process, so is the role of Rebel and the act of
rebellion, which “continues forever. Because we will dismantle the ghost-machine of
abstraction with means that are indistinguishable from ends” (para. 4). Means becomes
indistinguishable from ends because Clowns work to both unify and destroy, to
centralize and disperse: “Because nothing undermines authority like holding it up to
ridicule. Because since the beginning of time tricksters have embraced life’s
contradictions, creating coherence through confusion” (para. 5). Finally, they chose the
image of an Army because they live in a world at “permanent war,” and because solitary
clowns are “pathetic,” powerless figures:
Only an army can declare absurd war on absurd war. Because combat requires
solidarity, discipline and commitment. Because alone clowns are pathetic
figures, but in groups and gaggles, brigades and battalions, they are extremely
dangerous. We are an army because we are angry and where bombs fail we
might succeed with mocking laughter. And laughter needs an echo. (para. 6)
The final line, “and laughter needs an echo," is particularly revealing of their philosophy.
A unified presence or solitary entity often directs laughter rather than promoting a
spontaneous echo of collective laughter. Such an echo can only be encouraged in a
choral configuration, where the individual and the choir are in dialogue with each other,
actively participating.
CIRCA helps members embody this choral configuration through a mandatory
“Big Shoe” training camp. There new clowns learn not only how to be a clown, but how
to work within a choral configuration where the “I” and the “we” are constantly
renegotiated. CIRCA utilizes several specific games and theatre exercises that are often
used by actors and improvisational including “Fishing,” “Socking,” and, more related to
240
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. the art of military training, “Marching.”84 “Fishing” is an exercise game also known in
theatre circles as the “Swarm.” It helps an actor learn how to respond spontaneously to
a group’s inner energy and how a group spontaneously allows certain randomly chosen
members to take the lead when a lead is needed. In CIRCA, the clowns form a “school
of fish” by standing as close together as possible. When the “school” feels compelled to
move, the “person who finds themselves at the front in the direction of the clump initiates
a motion/gesture/sound. The clump gradually keeps changing directions, with new
people constantly finding themselves at the front on the gaggle” (para. 3-4). As used by
actors, the school not only stands close to each other, but works to synchronize their
breathing. When the urge to move is felt by one temporary leader, the group
spontaneously follows, moves, and then settles again until another urge to move is felt.
This exercise is similar to “Socking” where the gaggle of clowns “moves forward and
backward as if it is a sock being pulled inside out”:
Form a clump. Clowns at the back of the clump move to the front of the dump
(you can [go] between or around. Imagine somebody is taking a picture of the
clowns and you want to be at the front!). When you find yourself at the back
again, move to the front. When you reach a destination, reverse. Clowns at the
front move to the back. Peel off. (para. 8)
Finally, marching is used. But, unlike the marching practiced in the military, gaggle
marching involves the process of marching in a synchronized motion and then, when the
spirit to disperse takes hold of the group, breaking off in several directions, acting as the
playful and chaotic individual, only to come together again when the desire or need is
felt:
84 During Big Shoe Camps, some members o f CIRCA (including Sub lieu Tenant Latte) teach specific Lecoq techniques that utilize the concepts of play and do-it-yourself in group configurations (Latte, para. 3- 7). For a description of training influences, see
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. The contrast between the ordered, marching obedient bodies dressed in similar
uniforms—a form that reflects the form of power—and the chaotic scattering of
disobedient individual clowns in every direction, playing on and with everything in
the vicinity, is another successful tactic of confusion. (Klepto, 2004, p. 410b)
These exercises not only encourage a choral configuration, but they also promote a
rotation of leaders, rather than the insistence on a singular leader or intellectual, to help
direct when direction is needed.
Rethinking the Role of the Intellectual
Many social movements through the centuries have been led by an intellectual,
an individual who helps articulate and define a movement’s orientation and claims. Over
the last few decades there has been a lot said about the role of the intellectual, the
decline of the intellectual, and whether intellectuals are any longer needed (Said, 1996;
Michael, 2000; Jacoby, 2000; Donatich et al., 2001). However, one of the most
important questions is whether a public intellectual can rightfully speak for a public or,
rather, by speaking for a public is the intellectual imposing, in a top-down approach, his
or her own singular opinions—creating an artificial image of unification of sociopolitical
constructs? Considering such questions, Said (1996) in Representations of the
Intellectual suggests that the intellectual should live in the space of exile (p. 53), outside
of privilege, and simply distance herself enough from politics to avoid imposing herself or
being used to impose or reaffirm dominant, status-quo values. According to Said, it is by
existing in a space of exile that an intellectual is able to universalize the issues of
concern for many groups: “For the intellectual the task, I believe, is explicitly to
universalize the crisis, to give greater human scope to what a particular race or nation
suffered, to associate that experience with the sufferings of others” (p. 44). By 2004,
however, Said had begun questioning whether a public intellectual could exile her or
242
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. himself from the messy realm of politics, insofar as the “realm of the political and public
has expanded so much as to be virtually without borders” (p. 120). Thus, Said sees a
place for both the solitary writer-intellectual (p. 121), and the collective intellectual, as
Bourdieu said:
The whole edifice of critical thought is thus in need of critical reconstruction. The
work of reconstruction cannot be done, as some thought in the past, by a single
great intellectual, a master-thinker endowed with the sole resources of his
singular thought, or by the authorized spokesperson for a group or an institution
presumed to speak in the name of those without voice, union, party, and so on.
This is where the collective intellectual. . . can play its irreplaceable role, by
helping to create the social conditions for the collective production for realist
utopias. (Bourdieu as cited in Said, 2004, p. 139).85
Bourdieu’s concept of the collective intellectual is indeed being realized by such social
movements as CIRCA. According to Bourdieu (1998), the collective intellectual works
for a common cause through what I am calling a choral configuration. As such, this
intellectual choral configuration works to disrupt and break “the appearance of unanimity
which is the greater part of the symbolic force of the dominant discourse” (vii-viii).
Bourdieu is, I believe, correct in his endorsement of the collective intellectual, as well as
in his proposal that social scientists as intellectuals should not propose a program, an
end, for a social movement, but instead offer a structure in which the social movement
as actor can operate (p. 56).
There are times of exigency, however, when one member or another is needed
to take the lead: moments when a social movement might need to address the press, or
85 Bourdieu (1998) in Acts of Resistance Against the Tyranny of the Market, suggests that a social scientist as intellectual attached to a social movement should not present a plan or a program, but offer a structure for collective research (p. 56). Similarly, Said (2004) has refused to offer an end, a solution, or program when he was asked for one (p. 124). 243
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. when specific talents are needed to create posters, Web sites, and maintain records.
Each of these moments and many more might require the special talents of one member
or another within a social movement. At such tinres, an individual might rise to take the
lead and, when the exigency is met, return back to the space of membership, foregoing
the role of permanent leader. With this in mind, it is helpful to look back to one of
CIRCA’s exercises from their Main Maneuvers: “Fishing.” In the exercise, different
members at various moments find that they need to take the lead and to direct the
“clump,” or the collective members, into a new direction or space. In this way the “clump
gradually keeps changing directions, with new people constantly finding themselves at
the front on the gaggle” (para. 3-4). These rotations of member intellectuals at moments
of exigency will not only help maintain a choral configuration, but will also guard against
the pitfall of a social movement’s being defined solely by or through one intellectual.
We saw apropos of the Antigone that solitary leadership can be fatal to a
collective project. Although many social movements employ an intellectual as leader,
absolute dependence upon a leader clearly leads to problems for the movement. As
Clifford Bob (2005) points out in The Marketing of Rebellion: Insurgences. Media, and
International Activism, groups that define themselves through the leadership of a
singular intellectual run the risk of losing solidarity once that intellectual leaves. For
example, Nigeria’s Ogoni movement began to unravel once their leader Saro-Wiwa was
killed (p. 100); however, because Mexico’s Zapatista movement does not depend on
Subcomandante Marcos for their identity (p. 144), if Marcos were to leave or die there is
a good chance that the Zapatista movement would survive intact.
One difference between these two social movements is that while the Ogoni
relied on a singular lead identity, the Zapatistas work to encourage a choral identity;
rejecting direct power for themselves, they represent “a novel and inspiring affirmation of
244
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. democracy that seem[s] likely to avoid the arrogance, errors, and repression of state
socialism” (Bob, 2005, p. 148). Indeed, when considering Bob’s thesis, one cannot help
but wonder what might happen to the Church of Stop Shopping if Reverend Billy were no
longer around. Since this social movement tends to define itself through Reverend Billy,
his sermons and his image, it is not far-fetched to suggest that if he left the business of
preaching the sins of consumerism, the Church of Stop Shopping would cease to exist.
One can also understand why ACT-UP members worked to create an image of organic
choral configuration instead of advertising the leadership of Larry Kramer. As we saw
briefly in the last chapter, Kramer (1981/1994) felt betrayed by some ACT-UP members
who did not wish to recognize his lead in forming ACT-UP: “A few people believed that
ACT UP was founded by nobody and that it had sprung full-grown from the head of
Zeus” (p. 328). There are many reasons why members of ACT-UP might wish to
separate themselves from Kramer, including his self-admitted tendency to create
turbulent and negative publicity. However, one could also argue that the myth of a
collective, organic up-rising to meet such exigencies as AIDS better informs a collective
effort—an effort that ACT-UP has striven to maintain. In this sense, to rely on an
intellectual for identification has the makings of tragedy. Further, as we saw in the
Antigone, solitary efforts at both resistance and rule can lead to tragedy. Thus, CIRCA
states, in their Web post “About the Army,” that the solitary clown is pathetic (para. 6).
Comic Frames of Resistance
Just as tragic frames tend to end a process, this project calls for a comic choral
frame of reference, on the order of Antigone’s Watchman as merged into its Chorus. In
Attitudes Towards History (1937/1959), Burke states that the comic frame is “the attitude
of attitudes,” since as it offers “the methodic view of human antics as a comedy, albeit as
a comedy ever on the verge of the most disastrous tragedy” (p. xiii). If comedy is the
245
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. attitude of attitudes, then the “process of processes,” which comedy disrupts, is the
“bureaucratization of the imaginative” (p. xiii). And, as I have attempted to demonstrate,
to bureaucratize the imaginative is to create tragedy. Burke correctly insists that art
forms such as comedy and satire are vital tools or “equipment for living” that can help
humanity break out of the tragic frame, because they help us “size up situations in
various ways and in keeping with correspondingly various attitudes” (Burke, 1941/1973.
p. 304). For Burke, both the tragic and the comic warn “us against the dangers of pride,”
but the comic takes us from the “crime” to the “stupidity” (Burke, 1937/1959, p. 41)
thereby demonstrating our human foibles—the ridiculously bureaucratized rules
(capitalism, consumerism, war, Ismenism, and Antigonal or Creonic insistences) that run
the “human barnyard” called life (Burke, 1950/1969, p. 23). As Gusfield (1989) adds in
his “Introduction” to Burke’s works, the comic frame of reference breaks the tragic frame
by turning it on its head: “It is a means for overcoming the limitations which any single
system of thought and classification places on us. It is an unsettling process in which
transformation is potentially possible” (p. 8). This “unsettling” is accomplished for Burke,
and endorsed here, through a “comic corrective” or the “perspective by incongruity,” as
demonstrated in the character of the Watchman in the Antigone, Reverend Billy and the
Church of Stop Shopping, ACT-UP and CIRCA. However, I suggest that the comic
corrective is best delivered not through a singular agent, but through a choral
configuration—uniting Sophocles’ Watchman with the Chorus.
As we saw in the first part of this project, the Chorus in the Antigone offers a
dramatic perspective by incongruity through the use of Brechtean alienation, or a
distancing effect because the audience was redirected by the choral odes to reflect on
the actions in the play and the corresponding consequences. The Watchman, however,
offers a comic corrective whereby audience distancing also occurs, but by uniting action
246
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. with reflection, the Watchman moves both the audience and the Chorus. This effect
helps the Chorus consider new frames of reference, creating an opening for the Chorus
to form a collective-action frame of justice, a frame outside the narrow “rule-of-law”
orientations offered by Antigone and Creon, one that challenges Creon's narrow vision
of law: “Yes, it is late, but you have seen where justice lies” (1270). However, although
the Watchman can criticize Creon, being a singular character he cannot truly challenge
Creon’s power and thus, he is easily bullied by Creon.
In the realm of modern comedy, a similar situation between the choral and the
stand-alone comic can be seen. In the entertainment world, it is often said that stand-up
comics have the hardest job. As solitary performers, they must slowly build their
reputation by going from comedy club to comedy club, as they fight their way up the
hierarchal comedy ladder, until a scout for a TV show or for the film industry takes
notice. They also must contend with hostile audience members. Although people attend
stand-up comedy clubs because they are hoping to laugh and have a good time, they
also attend these clubs because of the anticipation and the possibility that a comic will
fall flat on his or her face. In this sense, stand-up comedy is a lot like circus acrobatics.
Although we, as the audience, are thrilled by the flying acts at the circus, we also sit in
anticipation for when these flying marvels fall, because there is a kind of perverse
excitement in the fall. The same occurs at stand-up comedy clubs. Further, there are
always people in the audience, ever ready for the stand-up comic to fail, waiting for the
moment to “heckle” the comic, challenging that comic’s material. This is why stand-up
comics learn early how to handle hecklers, to silence them or to turn the heckler’s
comment on its head. The comic, therefore, must not only court an audience, he or she
must also defend against the audience, thus creating a guard or a barrier that does not
allow for communal relations. Here, the audience must often be kept at a distance. This
247
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. is how the stand-up comic protects him or herself and, in doing so, the stand-up comic is
virtually always alone. Such a situation does not foster having an experience, as Dewey
would say, but instead creates a singular experience that does not necessarily nurture
both the emotional “inside” of the comic’s life, or the “outside" material conditions of life.
Further, because the stand-up comic must manage the comic material as well as the
audience, he or she must also assume a from-above stance where conditions are
dictated and controlled.
The opposite occurs with improvisational comedy. Improvisational comedy is,
and must be, a choral comedic effort because unlike the world of stand-up comedy,
improvisational comedy depends on group and audience cooperation, as weli as
contingency. First, the improvisational comedic artist cannot rely on himself or herself
for success, because the success of a comic bit or act depends on all the participants,
including other improv comic performers as well as the audience. Further, the audience
in this arena is not waiting for the comic to fail, because in improvisational comedy the
comic material comes from the audience itself. That is, the comic improv artists create
and perform material suggested by the audience. Because of this, the audience has a
stake in the success or failure of a particular impromptu comic scene. In this formula,
success depends not only on the comic abilities of the performers, but on the
suggestions provided by the audience, creating a coalition between the audience and
the performers. Moreover, the material suggested by the audience and performed by
improv artists is contingent and depends upon everyday circumstances. For example,
an audience might suggest that the performers create a scene about President G.W.
Bush giving a news conference on the importance of broccoli in the setting of a
bathroom. One audience member might have suggested the news conference, because
G.W. Bush had recently held a real news conference. Another audience member might
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Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. suggest that the topic should be broccoli, because he or she remembers that Bush’s
father hates broccoli and once banned the vegetable from White House menus. Finally,
a third audience member might suggest the setting of a bathroom, because he or she
recently remodeled a bathroom or because, just hours before the comedy show, that
audience member had to unclog a toilet. All suggestions, however, are contingent not
only upon the audience, but upon everyday material realities. Further, because the
performance and comic material depends both on the audience and the performers,
improvisational comedy avoids a top-down approach, encouraging choral configurations
and having an experience. It also nurtures the inside emotional space of the performers
and the audience, because as a collective coalition the audience and the performers can
help and support each other—reaching for collective success. Improvisational comedy
also nurtures the outside of life. Further, the comic material is successful not because it
is imposed upon material conditions, but because it relies on material everyday
conditions for success. Thus, improvisational comedy unites the Chorus and the
Watchman. By uniting the two entities and making the choral comical, collective action
can be united with reflection, creating a powerful force of potential resistance. This
merging of the chorus with the comic is one of the main goals set out by CIRCA, not only
because a comic choral configuration can successfully challenge a tragic frame, but
because it nurtures the inside emotional space of individuals, encourages interpersonal
relationships and can successfully navigate contingent material, everyday realities.
As Kolonel Klepto (2004) states, clowning, comedy, and carnival are CIRCA’s
chosen tools because they offer a comic corrective for the inner life of a person, as well
as helping that person to better navigate his or her outside environment:
We aim to develop a methodology that transforms and sustains the inner
emotional life of the activists as well as being an effective technique for taking
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Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. direct action. CIRCA sees both the soul and the street as sites of struggle,
realizing that a destructive tendency within many activist movements is forgetting
the inner work of personal transformation and healing, (p. 407a)
According to Klepto, in the past the tragic frame has limited social movements and
activists because they tend to grow thick skins and become hardened by the realities of
an unjust world (p. 409a). Once an activist is restricted to this tragic frame, it is easy to
give up, forgo looking for new solutions, and sometimes to abandon non-violent tactics
for violence: “It becomes easy to turn to violence, to isolate oneself from mainstream
society and to be unable to relate well to fellow activists” (p. 409a-b). In order to break
this tragic frame of self-induced isolation, a sense of the comic and of play is needed.
This is vital because the tragic frame does not support a space of play, but only the
space of loss.
Shepard (2004) in “Movement of Movements,” states that many social groups
within the Global Justice Movement are now turning to the practice of play in order to
break activists’ internal frame of the tragic: “What is missing appears to be a spirit of
play. Thus the lesson becomes that, without a conscious appreciation for play,
movements lose these necessary elements of refreshment, energy, insight, breaks,
opening, and loosening to remain vital” (p. 601). The sense of play described by both
Shepard and Klepto is the same sense of play discussed in the last chapter, in relation
to the Lecoq technique. Play, once again, compels action and helps to bridge dialectical
poles such as the Antigonal/Creonic dichotomy that instead promotes Ismenism. Play is
improvisation, joy, delight, and fun. Play is process, and it makes life livable and
interesting. Klepto believes this use of play is vital for CIRCA because it reengages
people in life processes, shuns tragic ends, yet actively employs both the mind and the
body: “Play requires surrendering to spontaneity, losing all our expectations of success,
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activists find hard to do” (p. 408a). Once we can internally recapture play, we can
occupy that space and create comical acts of incongruity.
Just as a sense of play and the comical is crucial to disrupting the internal tragic
frame, so these equipment-for-living techniques are essential for disrupting tragedy on
the material level. CIRCA chose the act of clowning precisely because, like a comic
corrective, clowning works to turn the tragic frame on its head. For example, after 9/11,
anti-terrorist laws in the UK have made it easy for police to stop and search individuals in
public spaces. According to the “Stop and Search” Web site established by the British
government to explain the new “stop and search” laws, under Section 44 of the
Terrorism Act of 2000, police can “search people for equipment that could be used to
commit a terrorist act. Police can search anybody anywhere under this law, and they do
not need reasonable suspicion to do so” (para. 6). As a result of this new law, activists
are often stopped and searched by police during protests. CIRCA members now
anticipate this tragic frame where free expression and joyful romping are considered so
suspicious that they are equated with terrorist activities, so they now fill their pockets
with random items for the police to inspect:
We fill our pockets to the brim (which often makes CIRCA members seem more
portly than they actually are!) with stupid things - strings of sausages,
underwear, rubber ducks, pink furry stuffed pigs, sex toys, miniature garden
gnomes, old bones, small tanks, rubber ducks, plungers and more, which ail
have to be laid out on the street during searches. (Klepto, 2004, p. 410b)
The effect of all these items is to turn the tragic scene around, along with the agents who
employ the tragic frame: “Dozens of police officers searching an army of clowns is a
weird enough sight, but when members of the police see all the objects being taken out,
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the police action of searching clowns seem at all justified? How can the police avoid
laughing themselves at the absurdity of the situation, at their actions, and at a law that
places everyone under suspicion? How can one not laugh when expecting weapons or
drugs and instead finding someone harboring miniature garden gnomes? Furthermore,
because the act of directed comic incongruity was produced by a collective configuration
instead of a solitary act of clowning, the impact of the comic situation is intensified—
transforming a moment that might have simply produced a chuckle to a period of belly
laughing. It is through this space of laughter that the tragic frame is challenged, not only
on an individual level but on a collective level as well: “laugher is infectious. Where fear
constricts and closes, laughter releases. It opens the body and mind, throwing it into a
transformative chaos—it can turn humiliation into humour and a situation of terror into
revealer of truth" (Klepto, 2004, p. 410a). Further, it can help bridge the local with the
global by asking onlookers and participants whether laws, such as the search laws
discussed above, are really an effective way to curb global terrorism: Should activists,
peacefully protesting a tragic frame of war or a narrow-minded nationalism really be
treated like criminals—seen as guilty and needing to be proved innocent? As our local
laws and customs reflect and create our cosmopolitical visions, we are asked to activate
our imagination and imagine how the other is viewed—how we might be viewed in a
similar situation—What are you carrying in your pockets?
All Aboard! The Final Stop—Carnival
For many social movements within the Global Justice Movement, the joyful
technique of carnival not only creates a comic frame on a wide scale, but it also ignites a
sense of play and fun on a grand scale. This is done specifically to break a tragic frame
of reference, whether that frame be Antigonal, Creonic, or Ismenic in scope. In this
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where a tragic frame has been perpetuated and recreated: “The use of carnival as a
form of joyful resistance has become a key tactic for the global anticapitalist movement,
with ‘Carnivals against Capitalism’ taking place across the world” (Klepto, 2004, p.
407b). “Carnivals against Capitalism” are pre-organized mass direct-actions where
several social movements and activists unite in a space of play and party to protest
capitalist economic policies that perpetuate global inequality. Connecting local issues
with global issues, carnival participants protest entities such as the WTO, as Seattle in
November 1999 (Notes from Nowhere [Organization], 2003, pp. 173-174), LIFFE, The
London International Financial Futures Exchange, on 18 June, 1999 (pp. 176-177), and
summits such as the April 2001 carnival that paralleled the Free Trade Area of the
Americas summit in Quebec City (pp. 178-179). During these carnivals, social
movements and activist combine protest acts with carnival and clowning acts. During
the LIFFE protest, 10,000 protesters wearing carnival masks were able to evade the
police and gain access to the heavily guarded LIFFE district by splitting into four different
groups (p. 176b). The Seattle carnival, held parallel to the 1999 WTO conference, was
able to shut down the conference for a day, while the streets of Seattle were turned into
a spectacle without footlights:
We controlled the streets, all of them, and in every direction we looked were
more and more of us, and thousands still arriving. There were stilt walkers
dressed as butterflies, a giant inflatable whale blockading an intersection, a hip
hop crew rhyming through a mobile sound system, a stage being built to double
as a road blockade where performances would take place all day long, giant
puppets, butoh dancers, acrobats. The sounds were incredible—the sound of
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of laughter—no honking, no engines roaring, (p. 173a)
Drawing on many themes developed by Bakhtin in his studies on the social function of
medieval carnival, in Rebalais and His World and Problems of Dostoevsky's Poetics,
activists see carnival as a space of mutual creativity and destruction where hierarchal
structures can be challenged, joy can be felt, and pleasurable revolution can be had
(Notes from Nowhere [Organization], 2003, p. 174b).
As described by Vice (1997), Bakhtin in Problems of Dostoevsky's Poetics saw
the carnival as a pageant or spectacle without a stage or footlights (p. 152). Since it is
not a formal space of performance, carnival eliminates the division between performers
and spectators, while inviting all to participate on an equal footing without, as Bakhtin
would say, “hierarchical structure and all the forms of terror, reverence, piety, and
etiquette connected with it” (Bakhtin as cited in Vice, p. 152). Bakhtin contended that
during the Middle Ages everyday people inhabited a dual realm:
Bakhtin suggests that in the Middle Ages the carnival played a much more
prominent role in the life of the ordinary people, who inhabited a dual realm of
existence: one official, characterized by the authority of the church, the feudal
system, work, and one unofficial, characterized by reversal, parody, song, and
laughter. (Vice, p. 150)
When in the realm of carnival, authoritarian discourse and assigned roles could be
turned on their respective heads during, for example, the Feast of Fools, and free human
thought could be exposed and celebrated (pp. 150-151). During the Feast of Fools,
which usually took place around January 1st, an ordinary citizen would be crowned fool
or king for the day, while acts of mockery and parody would be directed towards
hierarchal structures and authority figures such as the Catholic Church and the medieval
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where so-called authority, with its economic experts, rules, and top-down politics, is
turned on its head and where true collective joy and democracy are practiced:
But carnival denies the existence of experts, or rather, insists that everyone is
one—that each person possesses something unique and essential, and success
depends on freeing that in us all. It demands interaction and flexibility, face-to-
face contact and collective decision-making, so that a dynamic and direct
democracy develops—a democracy which takes the place on the stage of
spontaneously unfolding life, not raised above the audience but at ground level,
where everyone can be involved. (Notes from Nowhere, p. 178a)
As described by Bakhtin and modern activists, carnival lives in a space of
comical collective configuration that can allow for non-violent and democratic relations
between participants, where the sacred and the profane meet in the space of mockery,
and where laughter is used in such a way as to promote a renewal of sociopolitical
relations (Vice, 1997, p. 152).
Thus, carnival echoes the spirit of this project on a grand scale. However, even
as a space of joyful and comical collective resistance for activists, carnival is also a form
of terror to authority figures. Described by the collective authorship, “Notes from
Nowhere" (2003), after the Seattle, 1999, carnival created to protest the WTO, “Carnival
Against Capital” was classified by the FBI as a terrorist group (p. 179a). Misconstruing
the concept behind carnival, the FBI viewed this action not as a process, but as an
entity. However, as “Notes from Nowhere” explains: “It is not an organization at all. It
has no cells, no leaders, no ten-point programs. It is a tactic, nothing more” (p. 179).
One wonders how carnivals, clowns, ballerinas, and other outward expressions
of creative, joyful, and celebratory collective life can be seen as acts of terror. Yet if we
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Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. look back to the Antigone (Sophocles, 2001), it is easy to see why such acts of joy can
be perceived as terror tactics in an either/or frame configuration. Whenever Creon’s
master frame of top-down authority was challenged, he reacted violently, fearing his
frame was threatened. For example, after the Watchman announces that Polyneices
has been buried against Creon’s edict, and the Chorus suggests to Creon that maybe
the gods had a hand in covering the corpse, Creon roars: “Stop right there, before I’m
gorged with rage!/ You want to prove that you’re as stupid as you are old?” (lines 280-
281). Creon reacts just as violently to the comical Watchman, when he blames him for
covering the body, without any evidence to support this claim (line 322). Antigone,
within her either/or frame of spiritual-rule-of-law, reacts violently when her sister Ismene
questions her plan to bury Polyneices: “I won’t press you any further. I wouldn’t even let/
You help me if you had a change of heart” (lines 69-70). In the end, as we have seen,
either/or frames both preclude understanding or hearing points of view outside of their
specific, narrow parameters. The only reaction respected by an either/or configuration is
an Ismenic existence where members of society allow the sheer force of the either/or
configuration to move them.
By contrast, carnival and cosmopolitical democracy looks not to Creons or
Antigones, but towards a collective configuration. When we refuse the roles of Creon,
Antigone, and Ismene, and instead take our place in a Chorus of Watchmen (that is,
Watch People), we take the side of cosmopolitical democracy. This is not an easy
position to adopt in a world that lives by Antigonal and Creonic master frames.
However, the collective-action frame of comical choral configuration in the Global Justice
Movement can help create small openings that destabilize the either/or dichotomy,
leaving an opportunity for more people to follow in the process. As CIRCA suggests: “It
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Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. is often the little disturbances in life, the right trick at the right time in the right place that
can make a big difference" (Klepto, 2004, p. 408b).
Epilogue
I believe that there is much to be gained by viewing contemporary social/political
movements through the lens of Sophocles’ ancient tragedy, Antigone. Like the
characters Antigone and Creon, we still tend to present and represent vital arguments
within narrow frames of clashing discourses. This has certainly been the case after the
terrorist events in the US on 11 September, 2001. Not only has foreign and domestic
policy changed, as Tarrow (2005) points out (p. 217 ), the discourse used to describe
our world has also changed, reinforcing an either/or master frame. For example, in the
US, G.W. Bush and his administration have painted a picture of good against evil, us
against them, a picture that is both endless and, it is implied, now inevitable: “Every
success against the terrorists is a reminder of the shoreless ambitions of this enemy.
The evil that inspired and rejoiced in 9/11 is still at work in the world. And so long as
that’s the case, America is still a nation at war” (emphasis added, Bush, 2007, para 33).
Because this enemy is, according to G.W. Bush, both the embodiment of evil and
shoreless in its ambitions, everyday people must live in fear, a state that promotes
Ismenism. Without boundaries, without a shore, the evil could seep into our homes, into
our schools, and into our lives. To survive, we must not “embolden” this enemy, as the
current administration is fond of saying, but fight this “axis of evil” by listening to and
supporting the experts, those who understand how the enemy works, as well as the
administration’s policies on war. If we question the experts or the war policies, we are
told that we are “emboldening” the enemy and not supporting our troops abroad.
This tragic mode of communication, as described above, divides a community
and encourages identity politics while silencing many within local and international
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the lessons and the model of the Chorus, as well as those of the comic, to today’s
issues, we can disrupt the tragic mode and encourage, instead, a democratic space of
communication. It was no accident that Antigone, with its potent exploration of issues
concerning the public versus the private and the workings of political and social
leadership, was first performed in ancient Athens to a new and struggling democracy.
Today these issues are just as immediate; however, the stakes are higher as they are no
longer simply narrowed to a local Athens or America, or any other state, but are now
being played out on an international stage where players are positioning themselves for
a new phase of power and world relations. As the central relationship between the rights
of citizens compared to the power of leaders widens in scope, it is more important than
ever to encourage a citizen-based choral voice on both the local and the cosmopolitical
level. This time, however, we should not wrap ourselves in images of Antigone or
Creon, nor should we accept Ismenism, but we must infuse the comic Watchman with
the Chorus, oppose the tragic discourses of the either/or, and embrace the awe-inspiring
chaos of democratic deliberations.
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Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Vita
Rebecca McCarthy received her BFA in acting, 1991, from Cornish College of
the Arts with the aim of writing, producing, and performing comically social and political
works that challenged the status-quo of power relations. In 2001 she graduated from
Rollins College with a Master of Liberal Studies, where she was awarded the program’s
Community Service Scholarship which allowed her to not only finish her graduate
studies, but to work closely with Planned Parenthood of Orlando, further HIV/AIDS
community education, create a safe-sex packet program for dance clubs in Orlando,
Florida, as well as to write and perform a one woman show, Writing the Diaphragm
Blues and Other Sexual Cacophonies, as a benefit for Planned Parenthood of Orlando.
In 2003 Rebecca entered the Public Intellectual’s Ph.D. Comparative Studies Program at
Florida Atlantic University where she focused her studies on the social sciences,
communication, philosophy, and concepts of the “state.” At FAU she was awarded the
Dr. Daniel B. Newell and Aurel B. Newell Doctoral Fellowship for Academic Excellence
and served as the Comparative Studies/Public Intellectual Student Association (PISA)
president from 2005-2006. The Public Intellectual Comparative Studies Program has
allowed Rebecca to combine her interests in the social sciences, communication,
philosophy and theatre.
279
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