The Democratic Character

The concept of the democratic character is new to me. Rather than the ideal or most legitimate person to participate in democracy, the term democratic character refers to the type of person or groups that democracy produces. Surprisingly, the philosophers assigned for readings (Plato, Aristotle, Nietzsche, Mill) gave a rather negative account off the democratic character. Plato and Nietzsche seem to suggest that democracy produces a People without any values; a striving for banality for the former and an indulgent, directionless apathy for the latter. Mill lays out a framework for societal intervention into an individual's autonomous life precisely because democracy tends towards might equalling right and the imposition of a universal morality upon the varied individual.

Regarding fat acceptance, i don't have much to say this time (or rather, too much to say and not enough space or coherence or directness to say it). I would like to share an interesting take on the person that democracy produces. Basing his argument on the writing of Alexis de Tocqueville in Democracy in America ('the tyranny of the majority' from week 3) Eric Sutter suggests that democracy lends itself to a mindset that produces obesity. "Democracy, Tocqueville argued, conditions men to love equality more than freedom" which Sutter equates to loving the equality of the instant positive effects of food over the immediately negative effects of freedom as health habits (ie gyms, restricting food intake). It was an interesting take on the democratic character, although Sutter thinks that democracy and obesity is a uniquely American problem: "parallels between Tocqueville’s discussion of equality and freedom and the typical American mindset toward food. These parallels offered a partial explanation as to why there is an obesity problem in America and not, for example, in England".

Sutter, E 2013 "Is Democracy the Cause of Obesity", in Res Publicas, Ashbrook Centre viewed April 20 2014 < http://ashbrook.org/publications/respub-2013-sutter2/>

("The Ashbrook Center, an independent center at Ashland University, restores and strengthens the capacities of the American people for constitutional self-government. The Center teaches students and teachers across our country what America is and what America represents in the long history of the world.  Ashbrook creates informed patriots." http://ashbrook.org/about/ )

Readings this week:

J. S. Mill “On Liberty’ in D. Ravitch and A. Thernstrom (eds) The Democracy Reader: Classic and Modern Speeches, Essay, Poems, Declarations and Documents on Freedom and Human Rigths Worldwide, New York, Harper Perennial, 1992, pp. 65-70.

Plato, excerpt from The Republic in D. Ravitch and A. Thernstrom (eds) The Democracy Reader: Classic and Modern Speeches, Essay, Poems, Declarations and Documents on Freedom and Human Rights Worldwide, New York, Harper Perennial, 1992,pp. 5-8.

Aristotle, excerpt from The Politics in D. Ravitch and A. Thernstrom (eds) The Democracy Reader: Classic and Modern Speeches, Essay, Poems, Declarations and Documents on Freedom and Human Rigths Worldwide, New York, Harper Perennial, 1992, pp. 9-12.

F. Nietzsche, from Beyond Good and Evil, in D. Ravitch and A. Thernstrom (eds) The Democracy Reader: Classic and Modern Speeches, Essay, Poems, Declarations and Documents on Freedom and Human Rights Worldwide, New York, Harper Perennial, 1992, pp. 77-79.

W. Brown, “Wounded Attachments” in States of Injury, Princeton, New Jersey, Princeton University Press, 1995, pp. 52-76.

The Public Screen

Jurgen Habermas’s deploring of the demise of the public sphere, as he saw it, is one we see echoed in, well, the public sphere. How often have we heard the cries of despair and exasperation: technology has ruined communication and human connections! no-one cares anymore, all they do is click to sign petitions and share on Facebook!

The public screen of DeLuca and Peeples is fantastic for showcasing online and alternative media activism. Fat acceptance,  while not a new phenomenon (its roots are in the new social movements of the 60's and 70's - the National (American) Association to Advance Fat Acceptance being founded in 1969) it is largely organised and disseminated online, particularly via tumblr, personal blogs, and even the online Fat Studies Journal . Face to face participation, such as fat clothing swaps, academic conventions, and activities focused on public embodiment (Aquaporko, fat synchronised swimming; fat dance flash mobs; and Chunky Dunks, group beach- or pool- going) are mediated through the Internet or other forms of the public screen eg. Flyers, fat zines, films (side note: Aquaporko the documentary has been doing to rounds of queer short film festivals and cleaning up the awards section).

The difference between the public sphere of Habermas and the public sphere of Hannah Arendt provides frisson and a way of articulating the dissemination (as opposed to dialogue) of Derrida and the public screen of DeLuca and Peeples. The rational, deliberative public sphere of Habermas requires the bracketing of social inequalities, a focus on consensus and civility become normative in a way that Arendt's sphere does not, with its appreciation of social location and partial perspectives. I think this is important in the concept of the public screen: that dialogue is really dissemination; that 'appropriate political activity' is bollocks and inaccessible;  that anger and privileging of marginalised voices is valid. Recent examples include the 'controversy' of projects and hashtags like thisisthinpriviledge and fuckcispeople. A lot of backlash occurred, arguing that anger and antagonism (of the systems that are oppressive and supposed allies) is counter-productive and outside the bounds of acceptable political activity and rationality and civility. To that end, I leave you with a poem:

I once told a joke about a straight person.

They came after me in droves.

Each one singing the same:

Don’t fight fire with fire.

*

What they mean is: Don’t fight fire with anything.

Do not fight fire with water.

Do not fight fire with foam.

Do not evacuate the people.

Do not sound the alarms.

Do not crawl coughing and choking and spluttering to safety.

Do not barricade the door with damp towels.

Do not wave a white flag out of the window.

Do not take the plunge from several storeys up.

Do not shed a tear for your lover trapped behind a wall of flame.

Do not curse the combination of fuel, heat, and oxygen.

Do not ask why the fire fighters are not coming.

*

When they say: Don’t fight fire with fire.

What they mean is: Stand and burn.

Stand and Burn by Claudia Boleyn.

Sources:

K. M. DeLuca and J. Peeples, “From Public Sphere to Public Screen: Democracy, Activism, and the ‘Violence’ of Seattle” in Critical Studies in Media Communication, Vol. 19, No. 2, June 2002, pp. 123-151.

H. Arendt, ‘The Public Realm” from the Human condition in B. R. Barber and R. M. Battistoni (eds) Education for Democracy: A Sourcebook for Students and Teachers, Iowa, Kendall/Hunt Publishing Company, 2007, pp. 67-73.

New Year, New Class, New Assessment

I fully intended to keep up the blogging. Nevermind. Here's my first piece for the subject Diversity, Democracy and Dissent (GSD3DDD). Originally posted on the uni LMS, but my posts are always too long for 200 word limit so here it is in full:

Task One: nominate a topic and explain why.

I’ve chosen to spend the semester relating the readings and discussions to one of the newer social movements: fat acceptance.

Why? Several reasons.

Firstly, although I know this is an academic exercise I believe the intellectual is restored and improved by the personal, by the emotional. The personal is political, yes? I’ve copped a lot of hatred this past month for having a fat body, for draping my fat body is things deemed “unflattering” or “unnecessary”. And I am F@!$ing angry about it. So I want to get in people’s faces; I want to make people question their comfort zone, their beliefs and the way they view the world. If you’re taking a class like DDD and you don’t feel uncomfortable, you’re doing it wrong.

Secondly, because this topic, this social movement, makes people uncomfortable. Intellectually, emotionally, socially uncomfortable. It pisses people off. People deride it, don’t believe it’s necessary, don’t think it should exist, don’t think it’s relevant. So I want to show just how necessary and relevant it is. People accept the validity of traditional social movements: women’s liberation, GLBT rights (although maybe not so much the T - people are awful), race and/or minority rights, class struggle. I’m a GSDS major, and this is my pet topic, one that I want to write on academically til I’ve exhausted myself.

Thirdly, because it IS relevant to the course. Democracy, diversity and dissent right? Isobelle Carmondy (2010) writes of the liberal market-based democratic project; the conversion of savages on the periphery into good liberal subjects. The post- WWII order; “civilising mission, mark II”. She speaks of finding the new enemies that fester away within us, the dangerous practices that will destroy the nation unless they are caught, liberated and remade. Carmondy is of course talking of Islam and the spectral threat of terrorism; of the veil and its hidden women, complicit in their oppression because they know no better. I am talking of fatness and the threat to both the polity (oh the medical bills! the economic burden! the softening of security and borders as our bodies become softer) and the person (poverty, greed, uglyness and lazyness, the loss of control as bodies break out of containment). If democracy is truly about freedom, the freedom to participate in the market, then the fat body is not free, it does not belong. Indeed, the only section of the market in which fat people are actively encouraged to engage in is the diet industry. A multi-billion dollar industry predicated upon the undesirability of the very thing it’s marketed to; dedicated to transforming the wayward fat body into a controlled, moral and deserving body that finally engage in the marketplace fully. In the buying and selling of goods; in the trading of affections; in the economy of freedom.
Oh, and the gross academic market place that treats fat bodies as dismembered fodder.


And yes, I only recently discovered tumblr.