Fighting Without Hatred: Hannah Arendt's Agonistic Rhetoric

Author(s): Patricia Roberts-Miller

Source: JAC, Vol. 22, No. 3 (Summer 2002), pp. 585-601
Published by: JAC
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20866511
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 Fighting Without Hatred:
Hannah Arendt's Agonistic Rhetoric

Patricia Roberts-Miller

In the field of political theory,Hannah Arendt has recentlybeen

receiving considerable interest,and this is potentiallygood news for
as she isone of fewpolitical theoristsfavorablydisposed to
rhetoricians,
rhetoric. In contrast to someone like JiirgenHabermas, forwhom rhetoric
is a kind of less desirable alternative to communicative action, Arendt
describes rhetoric as the ideal form of discourse, a goal to which we
shouldaspiredespite thedifficulties. Arendtmeansagonistic
By rhetoric,
rhetoric, or what is sometimes called pro-con thinking?confrontational,
combative, and adversarial. For some theorists of rhetoric, agonism is
rhetoric (Walter Ong, James Kastely, Thomas Sloane, and, arguably,
Kenneth Burke), but a more popular approach is to distinguish between
adversarial and collaborative rhetoric, dismissing the former. As John
Gage has remarked with some irony, it is a convention in discussions of
argument to set out a division between some version of argument-as-fight
and a kind of argument that ismore collaborative and less confronta
tional. As soon as someone sets up that dichotomy, Gage says, you can bet
that they will go on to argue for the kind that is collaborative ("Rea
soned"). Dennis Lynch, Diana George, and Marilyn Cooper similarly
note that the rhetorical turnhas been one that emphasizes collaboration,
and Susan Jarratthas bemoaned the prevalence of the assumption that one
must avoid classroom conflict.
Jarrattis rightto say that
mistrustof agonism is reflectedinmuch
classroom practice. John Ramage and John Bean, for instance, title one
of the sections of their textbook on argumentation, "Argument IsNot Pro
Con Debate," and they say, "Although debate is an excellent activity for
developing critical thinking, itsweakness is that it can turn argument
into a game of winners and losers rather than a process of cooperative

jac 22.3 (2002)

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 586 jac

inquiry" (4). Thomas Sloane says that "no recent book on rhetoric and
composition, not one written within the last fifty years, has urged a
restoration of debate, of pro and con argumentation" (75). This aversion
toadversarialargumentis likelytobe simplythereflectionof thelarger
cultural assumptions about agonism: Deborah Tannen's enormously
popular The Argument Culture both asserts and assumes that agonistic
argument is bad; the phrase "from conflict to community" serves as the
title for numerous books, reports, and articles; and a children's book from
the Conflict Resolution Library distinguishes between an argument and
a discussion, saying about the former, "Arguing doesn't usually change
theway another person thinks.Most arguments leave people feeling even

angrier than before" (Adams 6).

is good reason to be hostile to agonistic argument. Perhaps its
There
most famous vice is that it encourages wrangling. Lynch, George, and
Cooper describe this frustrating but common result when trying to teach
argument:

In theirwritings, our students fall easily into one of two camps: for or
against. They cling to theiroriginal positions as if those were sacred to
home, country, and spiritual identity.Too frequently absent from these
debates is any real knowledge of the issue at hand as anythingmore than
a pointless argument among people who do not care verymuch about the
outcome?except that it is always better, in the classroom as inmany
other arenas, to be on thewinning rather than the losing side. (61)

This is an old complaint; for example, John Locke, inhis discussion of the
role of rhetoric and logic in the education of gentlemen, recommends that
one ensure that one's son not learn the art of disputing:

Is thereanythingmore inconsistentwith civil conversation and the end of

all debate thannot to take an answer, though ever so full and satisfactory,
but still to go on with thedispute as long as equivocal sounds can furnish
... a term to
wrangle with on the one side, or a distinction on the other?
Whether pertinent or impertinent, sense or nonsense, agreeing with or
contrary towhat he had said before, itmatters not. For this in short is the
way and perfection of logical disputes: that the opponent never take any
answer, nor the respondent ever yield to any argument. (140-41)

What, then, is the case for agonism? This is the place where Arendt is so
helpful. Possibly because Arendt's affection for agonistic rhetoric is part
and parcel of her theories about totalitarianism, the pressure to conform,

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 Patricia Roberts-Miller 587

me as
and thepolitical consequences of thought,shemakes what strikes
the strongest argument, if not for agonism, then at least for replacing
much of our dislike of conflict with a mistrust of consensus.

Totalitarianism and the Competitive Space of Agonism

Arendt is probably most famous for her analysis of totalitarianism
(especially her The Origins of Totalitarianism and Eichmann inJerusa
on her criticism of mass culture
lem), but the recent attention has been
(The Human Condition). Arendt's main criticism of the current human
condition is that the commonworld of deliberate and joint action is
into solipsistic and unreflective behavior. In an especially
fragmented
lovely passage, she says that inmass society people

are all imprisoned in the subjectivity of their own singular experience,

which does not cease to be singular if the same experience ismultiplied
innumerable times. The end of the common world has come when it is
seen only under one aspect and is permitted to present itself in only one
perspective. (Human 58)

What Arendt so beautifullydescribes is thatisolationand individualism

are not corollaries, and may even be antithetical because obsession with
one's own self and the particularities of one's life prevents one from

engaging in conscious, deliberate, collective action. Individuality, unlike

isolation, depends upon a collective with whom one argues in order to
direct the common life. Self-obsession, even (especially?) when coupled
with isolation from one's community is far from apolitical; ithas political
consequences. Perhaps a better way to put it is that it is political precisely
because it aspires to be apolitical. This fragmented world inwhich many
people live simultaneously and even similarly but not exactly together is
what Arendt calls the "social."
Arendt does not mean that group behavior is impossible in the realm
of the social, but that social behavior consists "in some way of isolated
individuals, incapable of solidarityor mutuality,who abdicate their
human capacities and responsibilities to a projected 'they' or 'it,' with
disastrous consequences, both for other people and eventually for them
selves" (Pitkin 79). One can behave, but not act. For someone likeArendt,
a German-assimilated Jew, one of the most frightening aspects of the
Holocaust was the ease with which a people who had not been extraordi
narily anti-Semitic could be put towork industriously and efficiently on
the genocide of the Jews. And what was striking about the perpetrators of

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the genocide, ranging from minor functionaries who facilitated the

murder transports up tomajor figures on trial at Nuremberg, was their
constant and apparently sincere insistence that theywere not responsible.
For Arendt, this was not a peculiarity of the German people, but of the
current human and heavily bureaucratic condition of twentieth-century
culture: we do not consciously choose to engage in life's activities; we
drift into them, or we do them out of a desire to conform. Even while we
do them,we do not acknowledge an active,willed choice to do them;
instead, we attribute our behavior tonecessity, and we perceive ourselves
as determined?determined by circumstance, by accident, by what "they"
tellus todo.We do something fromwithin theanonymityof amob that
we would never do as an individual;we do thingsforwhich we will not
take responsibility. Yet, whether or not people acknowledge responsibil
ity for the consequences of their actions, those consequences exist.
Refusing to accept responsibility can even make those consequences
worse, in that the people who enact the actions in question, because they
do not admit their own agency, cannot be persuaded to stop those actions.

They are simply doing their jobs. In a totalitarian system, however,

everyone is simply doing his or her job; there never seems to be anyone
who can explain, defend, and change the policies. Thus, it is, as Arendt
says, rule by nobody.
It is illustrative to contrast Arendt's attitude toward discourse to
Habermas'. While both are critical ofmodern bureaucratic and totalitar
ian systems, Arendt's solution is the playful and competitive space of
agonism; it is not the rational-critical public sphere. The "actual content
ofpolitical life" is "thejoy and thegratificationthatarise out ofbeing in
company with our peers, out of acting together and appearing in public,
out of inserting ourselves into theworld by word and deed, thus acquiring
and sustainingour personal identityand beginning somethingentirely
new" ("Truth" 263). According to SeylaBenhabib, Arendt's public realm

emphasizes the assumption of competition, and it "represents that space

of appearances in which moral and political greatness, heroism, and

preeminence are revealed, displayed, shared with others. This is a

competitive space inwhich one competes for recognition, precedence,

and acclaim" (78). These qualities are displayed,but not entirelyfor
purposes of acclamation; they are not displays of one's self, but of ideas
and arguments, of one's thought. When Arendt discusses Socrates'
in
thinking public, she emphasizes his performance: "Heperformed in the

marketplace theway the flute-player performed at a banquet. It is sheer

sheer activity"; nevertheless, itwas thinking: "What he
performance,

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 Patricia Roberts-Miller 589

actually did was tomake public, in discourse, the thinkingprocess"

(Lectures 37). Pitkin summarizes this point: "Arendt says that the
heroismassociatedwith politics isnot themythicalmachismo of ancient
Greece but somethingmore liketheexistentialleap intoactionandpublic
exposure" (175-76). Just as it is not machismo, although it does have
considerable ego involved, so it is not instrumental rationality; Arendt's
discussion of thekinds of discourse involved inpublic action include
myths, stories, and personal narratives.
Furthermore, the competition is not ruthless; it does not imply a
willingness to triumph at all costs. Instead, it involves something like

having such a passion for ideas and politics thatone iswilling to take
risks. One tries to articulate the best argument, propose the best policy,
design the best laws, make the best response. This is a risk in that one
might lose; advancing an argument means that one must be open to the
criticismsotherswillmake of it.The situationisagonisticnotbecause the
participants manufacture or seek conflict, but because conflict is a
necessary consequence of difference. This attitude is reminiscent of
Kenneth Burke, who did not tryto find a language free of domination but
who instead theorized a way that the very tendency toward hierarchy in

language might be used against itself (for more on this argument, see
Kastely). Similarly, Arendt does not propose a public realm of neutral,
rational beings who escape differences to live in the discourse of
universals; she envisions one of different people who argue with passion,
vehemence, and integrity.
This point about thenecessary presence of difference is important, as
there is a tradition of seeing Arendt as antifeminist and of assuming that
her theories are necessarily antagonistic towomen and feminism. This
criticism, made most cogently by Adrienne Rich, is not ungrounded; it
results from Arendt's dividing labor from action and putting traditional
women's workin the less valued category of labor. But, as Bonnie
Honig
has shown, Arendt's agonism can be useful to feminist critiques of
identity because it assumes that difference is inherent; it tends to desta
bilize categories, including the categories "man" and "woman." For
Arendt, the common world is up for argument because it is created by
argument, and part of what gets created is our own identity.
Yet, Arendt's comments concerning labor should still raise concern;
theypoint towhat strikesme as one of themost troublingaspects of
agonism: thepossibilitythatit is fundamentally
elitist.
While everyone
may engage in labor that is seen by others, Arendt argues, not everyone
engages in public action. Although Arendt is clearly not advocating a

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return to classical GreeceorRome, it is still troubling that the cultures that

seem to have gotten the notion of action right are ones thathave a leisured
class precisely because there are entire categories of people (women,
slaves, noncitizens) who spend their time doing the labor thatpermits the
elite to engage in action.
I should emphasize that this concern comes not from anything that
Arendt says directly, but from the potential implications of Arendt's
distinctions and analogies. The impulse behind the labor/action distinc
tion is certainly not to denigrate women' swork (as both Honig and Pitkin
have argued, the equation of "social" and "feminine" is problematic),
but to describe the lack of genuinelypublic life inmodern political
culture.Pitkin explains thatthe goal of TheHuman Condition is "to
articulatea general theoryof free citizenshipthatwould recapturethe
principledbut tough-minded realismof thewartimeResistancewithout
the dreadful, unacceptable costs that those years had entailed and
without the external constraints on freedom that the occupation had

imposed" (112).

Thought and the Social

Arendt's primary intention in The Human Condition, as inmany of her
works, is to argue for the special nature of thought. This goal became
especiallypressingaftersheobserved thetrialofAdolf Eichmann forhis
part intheattemptedgenocideof theJews.InTheLife ofthe Mind, Arendt
describes her reaction to Eichmann. Having been taught that evil results
from arrogance, envy, hatred, or covetousness, she expected to see some
monster who would exemplify such vices:

However, what I was confronted with was utterly different and still
undeniably factual. Iwas struckby amanifest shallowness in thedoer that
made it impossible to trace the uncontestable evil of his deeds to any
deeper level of roots or motives. The deeds were monstrous, but the
doer?at least the very effective one now on trial?was quite ordinary,
commonplace, and neither demonic normonstrous. There was no sign in
him of firm ideological convictions or of specific evil motives, and the
only notable characteristic one could detect inhis past behavior as well
as in his behavior during the trial and throughout the pre-trial police
examination was something entirely negative: itwas not stupidity but
thoughtlessness. (4)

Eichmann perfectly exemplified what Arendt famously called the "banal

of as thebureaucratizationof
mightbe betterthought
ityof evil" but that

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 Patricia Roberts-Miller 591

evil (or,as a friendonce aptlyput it,theevil ofbanality).That is,hewas

able to engage inmass murder because he was able not to think about it,
especially not fromtheperspectiveof thevictims,and he was able to
exempt himself frompersonal responsibilityby tellinghimself (and
anyone else who would listen) that he was just following orders. Itwas
the bureaucratic system that enabled him to do both. He was not exactly
passive; he was, on the contrary, very aggressive in trying to do his duty.
He behaved with the "ruthless, competitive exploitation" and "inauthen
tic, self-disparaging conformism" that characterizes those who people
totalitariansystems(Pitkin87).
Arendt' s theorizing of totalitarianism has been justly noted as one of
her strongest contributions to philosophy. She saw that a situation like
Nazi Germany is different from the conventional understanding of a
tyranny. Pitkin writes,

Totalitarianism cannot be understood, like earlier forms of domination,

as the ruthless exploitation of some people by others,whether themotive
be selfish calculation, irrational passion, or devotion to some cause.
Understanding totalitarianism's essential nature requires solving the
central mystery of the holocaust?the objectively useless and indeed
dysfunctional, fanatical pursuit of a purely ideological policy, a pointless
process towhich thepeople enacting ithave fallen captive. (87)

Totalitarianism is closely connected to bureaucracy; it is oppression by

rules, rather than by people who have willfully chosen to establish certain
rules. It is the triumph of the social.
Critics (bothfriendly
andhostile)have paid considerableattentionto
Arendt's category of the "social," largely because, despite spending so
much time on the notion, Arendt remains vague on certain aspects of it.
Pitkin appropriately compares Arendt's concept of the social to theBlob,
the type ofmonster that figured in somany post-war horror movies. That
Blob was "an evil monster from outer space, entirely external to and
separate from us [that] had fallen upon us intent on debilitating, absorb
ing,and ultimatelydestroyingus, gobblingup our distinctindividuality
and turning us into robots thatmechanically serve its purposes" (4).
Pitkin is criticalof thisversion of the "social" and suggests that
Arendt meant (or perhaps should have meant) something much more
complicated. The simplistic version of the social-as-Blob can itself
be an instance of Blob thinking; Pitkin's criticism is thatArendt talks at
times as though the social comes from outside of us and has fallen
upon

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us, turning us into robots. Yet, Arendt's major criticism of the social is
that it involves seeing ourselves as victimized by something that comes
from outside our own behavior. I agree with Pitkin that Arendt's most
powerful descriptions of the social (and the other concepts similar to it,
such as her discussion of totalitarianism, imperialism, Eichmann, and
parvenus) emphasize that these processes are not entirely out of our
control but that they happen to us when, and because, we keep refusing
tomake create the social through negligence.
active choices. We It is not
a
the sort of force in Sorcerer's Apprentice, which once let loose cannot
be stopped; on the contrary, it continues to exist because we structure our
world to reward social behavior.Pitkin writes, "From childhood on, in
virtually all our institutions, we reward euphemism, salesmanship, slo
gans, and we punish and suppress truth-telling, originality, thoughtful
ness. So we continually cultivate ways of (not) thinking that induce the
social" (274). Iwant toemphasize thispoint,as itis important
forthinking
about criticisms of some forms of the social construction of knowledge:

denying our own agency is what enables the social to thrive. To put it
another way, theories of powerlessness are self-fulfilling prophecies.
Arendtgrantsthattherearepeoplewho willed theHolocaust, but she
insists that totalitarian systems result not so much from the Hitlers or
Stalins as from the bureaucrats who may or may not agree with the
established ideology but who enforce the rules for no stronger motive
than a desire to avoid trouble with their superiors (see Eichmann and
Life). They do not thinkaboutwhat theydo. One might prevent such
occurrences?or, at least, resist themodern tendency toward totalitarian
ism?by thought: "critical thought is in principle anti-authoritarian"
(Lectures38).
By "thought" Arendt does not mean eremitic contemplation; in fact,
she has great contempt for what she calls "professional thinkers,"
refusingherselftobecome a philosopheror tocall herwork philosophy.
Young-Bruehl, Benhabib, and Pitkin have each said thatHeidegger
represented just such a professional thinker forArendt, and his embrace
ofNazism epitomized the genuine dangers such "thinking" can pose (see
Arendt's "Heidegger"). "Thinking" isnot typifiedby the isolatedcon
templation of philosophers; it requires the arguments of others and close
attention to the truth. It is easy to overstate either part of that harmony.
One must consider carefully the arguments and viewpoints of others:

Political thought is representative. I form an opinion by considering a

given issue from differentviewpoints, bymaking present tomy mind the

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 Patricia Roberts-Miller 593

standpoints of thosewho are absent; that is, I represent them.This process

of representation does not blindly adopt the actual views of those who
stand somewhere else, and hence look upon theworld from a different
perspective; this is a question neither of empathy, as though I tried to be
or to feel like somebody else, nor of counting noses and joining amajority
but of being and thinking inmy own identitywhere actually I am not. The
more people's standpoints I have present inmy mind while I am ponder
ing a given issue, and thebetter I can imagine how Iwould feel and think
if I were in theirplace, the strongerwill be my capacity for represen
tative thinking and themore valid my final conclusions, my opinion.
("Truth" 241)

There are two points to emphasize in thiswonderful passage. First, one

does not get thesestandpointsinone' smind throughimaginingthem,but
throughlisteningto them;thus,good thinkingrequires thatone hear
the arguments of other people. Hence, as Arendt says, "critical
while stilla solitarybusiness, does not cut itselfofffrom 'all
thinking,
others.'" Thinking is, in this view, necessarily public discourse:
critical thinkingispossible "onlywhere the standpointsof all others
are open to inspection" (Lectures 43). Yet, it is not a discourse in
which one simply announces one's stance; participants are interlocu
tors and not just speakers: they must listen. Unlike many current
versions of public discourse, this view presumes that speech matters.
It is not asymmetric manipulation of others, nor merely an economic

exchange; itmust be a world into which one enters and by which one
might be changed.
Second, passages like the above make some readers think thatArendt
puts toomuch faith indiscourse and too little in truth (see Habermas). But
Arendt is no crude relativist; she believes in truth, and she believes that
there are facts that can be more or less distorted. She does not believe that
reality is constructed by discourse, or that truth is indistinguishable from
falsehood. She insists that the truth has a different pull on us and,

consequently,thatithas a difficultplace in theworld of thepolitical.

Facts are different from falsehood because, while they can be distorted or
denied, especially when they are inconvenient for the powerful, they also
have a certain positive force that falsehood lacks:
"Truth, though
powerless and always defeated in a head-on
clash with the powers that
be, possesses a strength of its own: whatever those in power may
contrive, they are unable to discover or invent a viable substitute for
it. Persuasion and violence can destroy truth, but they cannot replace
it" ("Truth" 259).

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Facts have a strangely resilient quality partially because a lie "tears,

as itwere, a hole in the fabric of factuality. As every historian knows, one
can spot a lie by noticing incongruities, holes, or the j unctures of patched

up places" ("Truth" 253). While she is sometimes discouraging about our

ability to see the tears in thefabric,citing thecapacity of totalitarian
governments to create thewhole cloth (see "Truth" 252-54), she is also
sometimes optimistic. InEichmann inJerusalem, she repeats the story of
Anton Schmidt?a man who saved the lives of Jews?and concludes that
such stories cannot be silenced (230-32). For facts to exert power in the
common world, however, these stories must be told. Rational truth (such
as principles ofmathematics)might be perceptible and demonstrable
through individual contemplation, but "factual truth, on the contrary, is
always related to other people: it concerns events and circumstances in
whichmany are involved;itisestablishedbywitnesses anddependsupon
testimony;itexists only to theextentthatit is spoken about, even if it
occurs inthedomainofprivacy.It ispoliticalbynature" (23 8).Arendt is
neither a positivist posits an autonomous
who individual who can

correctly perceive truth, nor a relativist who positively asserts the

inherent relativism of all perception. Her description of how truth
functions does not fall anywhere in the three-part expeditio so prevalent
inbothrhetoricandphilosophy: itisnot expressivist,positivist,or social
constructivist. Good thinking depends upon good public argument, and
good public argument depends upon access to facts: "Freedom of opinion
is a farce unless factual information is guaranteed" (238).
The sortof thinkingthatArendtpropounds takes theformof action
only when it is public argument, and, as such, it is particularly precious:
"For ifno other test but the experience of being active, no other measure
but the extent of sheer activity were to be applied to the various activities
as suchwould surpass
mightwell be thatthinking
within thevitaactiva, it
them all" (Human 325). Arendt insists that it is "the same general rule?
Do not contradictyourself (notyour selfbut your thinkingego)?that
and acting"(Lectures37). Inplace of the
determinesboth thinking mildly
resentful conformism that fuels totalitarianism, Arendt proposes what
Pitkin calls "a tough-minded, open-eyed readiness to perceive and judge

reality for oneself, in terms of concrete experience and independent,

critical theorizing" (274). The paradoxical nature of agonism (that it
must involveboth individualityand commonality)makes itdifficult
to maintain, as the temptation is great either to think one's own
thoughts without reference to anyone else or to let others do one's
thinking.

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 Patricia Roberts-Miller 595

Arendt's Polemical Agonism

As I said, agonism does have its advocates within rhetoric?Burke, Ong,
Sloane, Gage, and Jarratt, for instance?but while each of these theorists

proposes a form of conflictual argument, not one of these is as adversarial

as Arendt's. Agonism can emphasize persuasion, as does John Gage's
textbookThe Shape ofReason orWilliam Brandt et al.'s The Craft of
Writing. That is, the goal of the argument is to identify the disagreement
and then construct a text that gains the assent of the audience. This is not
the same as what Gage (citing Thomas Conley) calls "asymmetrical
theories of rhetoric": theories that "presuppose an active speaker and a

passive audience, a speaker whose rhetorical task is therefore to do

something to that audience" ("Reasoned" 6). Asymmetric rhetoric is not

and cannot be agonistic. Persuasive agonism still values conflict, dis
agreement, and equality among interlocutors, but it has the goal of
reaching agreement, as when Gage says that the process of argument
should enable one's reasons to be "understood and believed" by others
{Shape 5; emphasisadded).
Arendt's iswhat one might call polemical agonism: itputs
version
less emphasis on gaining assent, and it is exemplified both inArendt's
own writing and inDonald Lazere's "Ground Rules for Polemicists" and

"Teaching the Political Conflicts." Both forms of agonism (persuasive

and polemical) require substantive debate at two points in a long and
recursive process. First, one engages in debate in order to invent one's
argument; even silent thinking is a "dialogue of myself with myself
{Lectures 40). The difference between the two approaches to agonism is
clearest when one presents an argument to an audience assumed to be an
opposition. In persuasive agonism, one plays down conflict and moves
through reasons to tryto persuade one' s audience. In polemical agonism,
however, one's intention is not necessarily to prove one's case, but to
make public one' s thought in order to test it. In thisway, communicability
serves the same function in philosophy that replicability serves in the
sciences; it is how one tests the validity of one's thought. In persuasive

agonism, success is achieved through persuasion; inpolemical agonism,

success may be marked through the quality of subsequent controversy.
Arendt quotes from a letterKant wrote on this point:

You know thatI do not approach reasonable objections with the intention
merely of refuting them,but that in thinking them over I always weave
them intomy judgments, and afford them the opportunity of overturning
all my most cherished beliefs. I entertain thehope thatby thus viewing

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596 jac

my judgments impartially from the standpoint of others some third

view thatwill improve upon my previous insightmay be obtainable.
(Lectures 42)

Kant's use of "impartial" here is interesting: he is not a stance

describing
thatis freeof all perspective; it is impartialonly in thesense thatitisnot
his own view. This is the same way thatArendt uses the term; she does
not advocate any kind of positivistic rationality, but instead a "universal
interdependence"("Truth"242). She does not place theoriginof the
"disinterested pursuit of truth" in science, but at "the moment when
Homer chose to sing thedeeds of theTrojans no less thanthoseof the
Achaeans, and to praise the glory ofHector, the foe and the defeated man,
no less thanthegloryofAchilles, thehero ofhis kinfolk"("Truth"262
63). It is useful to note thatArendt tends not to use the term "universal,"
opting more often for "common," by which shemeans both what is shared
and what is ordinary, a usage that evades many of theproblems associated
with universalismwhile preservingitsvirtues(fora briefbutprovocative
application of Arendt's notion of common, see Hauser 100-03).
In polemical agonism, there is a sense inwhich one' smain goal is not
to persuade one's readers; persuading one's readers, if thismeans that

they fail to see errors and flaws in one' s argument, might actually be a sort
of failure. Itmeans that one wishes to put forward an argument thatmakes
clear what one's stance is and why one holds
it,but with the intention of
provoking critique and counterargument. Arendt describes Kant's "hope"
forhiswritingsnot thatthenumberof peoplewho agreewith himwould
increase but "that the circle of his examiners would gradually be en
larged" (Lectures 39); he wanted interlocutors, not acolytes.
This is not consensus-based argument, nor is itwhat is sometimes
called "consociational argument," nor is this argument as mediation or
conflict resolution. Arendt (and her commentators) use the term "fight,"
and theymean it.When Arendt describes the values that are necessary in
our world, she says, "They are a sense of honor, desire for fame and glory,
the spiritof fighting
withouthatredand 'withoutthe spiritof revenge,'
and indifference tomaterial advantages" (Crises 167). Pitkin summarizes
Arendt's argument: "Free citizenship presupposes the ability to fight?

openly, seriously, with commitment, and about things that really mat
ter?without fanaticism, without seeking to exterminate one's oppo
nents" (266). My point here is two-fold: first, there is not a simple binary
opposition between persuasive discourse and eristic discourse, the
conflictual versus the collaborative, or argument as opposed to debate.

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 Patricia Roberts-Miller 597

Second, while polemical agonismrequires diversity among interlocutors,

and thus seems an extraordinarily appropriate notion, and while itmay be
a useful corrective to too much emphasis on persuasion, it seems tome
thatpolemical agonismcould easily slide intothekindofwrangling that
Arendtdoes notdescribejusthow one is tokeep the
is simplyfrustrating.
conflictuseful.Although she rejects thenotion thatpolitics is "nomore
thana battlefieldofpartial,conflictinginterests,
where nothingcount[s]
but pleasure and profit, partisanship, and the lust for dominion," she does
not say exactly how we are to know when we are engaging in the
existential leap of argument versus when we are lusting for dominion

("Truth"263).
Like other proponents of agonism, Arendt argues that rhetoric does
not lead individuals or communities to ultimate Truth; it leads to deci
sions that will necessarily have to be reconsidered. Even Arendt, who
tends to express a greater faith thanmany agonists (such as Burke, Sloane,
orKastely) in theabilityof individualstoperceive truth,insiststhatself
deception is always a danger, so public discourse is necessary as a form
of testing(see especiallyLectures and "Truth").She remarksthatit is
difficult to think beyond one's
self-interest and that "nothing, indeed, is
more common, even among highly sophisticated people, than the blind
obstinacy that becomes manifest in lack of imagination and failure to
judge" ("Truth"242).
Agonism demandsthat one simultaneously trust and doubt one' s own

perceptions, rely on one's own judgment and consider the judgments of

others, think for oneself and imagine how others think. The question
remains whether this is a kind of thought inwhich everyone can engage.
Is theagonisticpublic sphere(whetherpolitical,academic,or scientific)
only available to thefew?Benhabib puts thiscriticismin theformof a
question: "That is, is the 'recovery of the public space' under conditions
of modernity necessarily an elitist and antidemocratic project that can
hardly be reconciled with the demand for universal political emancipa
tion and the universal extension of citizenship rights that have accompa
niedmodernitysince theAmerican andFrenchRevolutions?" (75). This
is an especially troubling question not only because Arendt's examples
of agonistic rhetoric are from elitist cultures, but also because of com
ments she makes, such as this one from The Human Condition: "As a
living experience, thought has always been assumed, perhaps wrongly, to
be known only to the few. Itmaynotbe presumptuous tobelieve thatthese
few have not become fewer in our time" (Human 324).
Yet, there are important positive political consequences of agonism.

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598 jac

Arendt's own promotion of the agonistic sphere helps to explain how the

system could be actively moral. It is not an overstatement to say that a

central theme inArendt' swork is the evil of conformity?the fact that the
modern bureaucratic statemakes possible extraordinary evil carried out
by people who do not evenhave any illwill towardtheirvictims. Itdoes
so by "imposing innumerable and various rules, all of which tend to
'normalize' itsmembers, tomake them behave, to exclude spontaneous
action or outstanding achievement" {Human 40). It keeps people from
thinking, and itkeeps them behaving. The agonistic model's celebration
of achievement and verbal skill undermines the political force of confor
mity, so itis a forceagainstthebureaucratizingof evil. Ifpeople thinkfor
themselves, theywill resistdogma; ifpeople thinkof themselvesas
one ofmany, theywill empathize; ifpeople can do both, theywill
resist totalitarianism. And if they talk about what they see, tell their
stories, argue about their perceptions, and listen to one another?that
is, engage in rhetoric?then they are engaging in antitotalitarian
action.
In post-Ramistic rhetoric, it is a convention to have a thesis, and one
might well wonder just what mine is?whether I am arguing for or against
Arendt's agonism. Arendt does not lay out a pedagogy for us to follow

(althoughonemightarguethat,ifshehad, itwould lookmuch liketheone

Lazere describes in "Teaching"), so I am not claiming that greater
attention to Arendt would untangle various pedagogical problems that
teachers of writing face. Nor am I claiming that applying Arendt's views
will resolve theoretical arguments that occupy scholarly journals. I am
saying, on the one hand, that Arendt's connection of argument and

thinking, as well as her perception that both serve to thwart totalitarian

ism, suggest that agonal rhetoric (despite the current preference for
collaborative rhetoric) is the best discourse for a diverse and inclusive

public sphere. On the other hand, Arendt's advocacy of agonal rhetoric

is troubling(and, given her own admirationforKant, thismay be
intentional), especially in regard to its potential elitism, masculinism,
failure to describe just how to keep argumentfrom collapsing into
wrangling, and apparently cheerful acceptance of hierarchy. Even with
these flaws, Arendt describes something we would do well to consider
thoughtfully: a fact-based but not positivist, communally grounded but
not relativist, adversarial but not violent, independent but not expressivist
rhetoric.
University of Texas
Austin, Texas

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 Patricia Roberts-Miller 599

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Nominations Solicited

The W. Ross Winterowd Award is given for themost

outstanding scholarly book published in composition
theoryeach year. The award was generously endowed
by ProfessorWinterowd, who has presented it to each
year's recipient at the annual CCCC Convention since
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awardwas generously endowed by ProfessorKinneavy,
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sityof Texas. Professor Kinneavy endowed the award
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