tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6331292467452860795.post604018840212373200..comments2024-03-27T04:05:15.220-07:00Comments on The Sooty Empiric: Incivility Is The Master's Tool (But Michelle Wolf Was Fine And People Saying Otherwise Are Lying)Last Positivisthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11677699402952932577noreply@blogger.comBlogger1125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6331292467452860795.post-941790361305598892018-05-02T11:59:27.693-07:002018-05-02T11:59:27.693-07:00So, Liam suggested I might come add my 2 cents, ba...So, Liam suggested I might come add my 2 cents, based on my work on civility. A few years ago, in an article called "Asking Too Much?...", I wrestled with part of what Liam is focused on here. My concern was how we can both value civility and think carefully about when incivility might be justified. In a morally diverse society, civility gives us the tools to deal with each other. But civility is also used as a hammer to quash serious criticisms. I argued that exceptionless civility traps us in a functional relativism where we must respond to extraordinarily immoral acts in the same way that we must respond to those acts that are compatible with the human good in a pluralist society. Can we ever make exceptions? Can we ever “go low”? I proposed that we shouldn’t think of civility as a stabilizing force for society's preservation, but rather as grounded in respect for persons. Generally, obeying the norms of civility leads us to be respectful to those with whom we disagree. BUT there are kinds of behaviors we must critique, and when civil criticism does not do the job, I think there are circumstances in which INcivility is justified. I came up with a rule for Accepted Exceptions to Civility (yes, ha ha, young Reiheld): <br />Violations of formal civility are acceptable if and only if they are required to preserve the substantive ground of civility qua respect for persons. When this is the case, they are not only acceptable, but necessary. <br />I think it a merit of my position that it uses the very reason we generally follow the norms of civility--respect for persons--is the reason it is sometimes acceptable to violate them. It is a variant moral particularist approach where a clear defeasibility condition is described. <br />In my paper, I used righteous anger as an example of when acceptable incivility. While Myisha Cherry's work on anger (see her edited volume rel. Jan ’18) is far better developed than mine, I continue to think on this. One focal point I am developing right now is directly relevant to the reaction to Wolf's WHCD gig: how taking structural critiques personally, or moral critiques as ad hominems, is a derailing and silencing technique. Lots of folks have addressed this. See Kristie Dotson's work on how a key feature of silencing is to refuse to recognize another's speech either at all or, if at all, as it is meant to be taken. I, myself, am particularly interested in how civility is abused to enforce these responses. If white students walk out of a lecture on structural racism and claim that they did so because their professor was attacking them personally, they are in part making a civility claim. If attendees at or observers of the WHCD claim that Wolf was attacking SHS because of her appearance rather than her moral choices when in fact it was the latter, they are in part making a civility claim. Why?<br />Accusations and grave insults are often considered violations of civility, so personalizing systemic or moral critiques is, like a dismissive reaction to angry speech, a mode of silencing employed to quash criticism. If you angrily critique a form of privilege from which I benefit, intending to reveal systemic power relations within which I am embedded, but instead I take this as a personal attack, I am silencing you as surely as if I flatly ignore you for indeed I ignore what you are actually saying.<br />Personalization works in tandem with an impoverished civility to affect not only what is said, but what is heard to be said. It preserves order under the status quo and so preserves power. But it does not preserve respect for persons. This is what happened with reaction to Wolf and the WHCD gig.<br />I agree with Liam that civility isn't just "the master's tool" (and really appreciate his elucidation of how Lorde's words are so often misinterpreted). But it can be. I hope the Acceptable Exceptions Rule can help us figure out when it is being used that way and when we should stop deploying it or allowing it to be used against us.<br />A Reiheldhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13856597974619892816noreply@blogger.com