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The lost art of conversation
A new book indirectly suggests a reason for why speech codes have such uncontested traction at so many American colleges and universities: American culture does not value, and hence does not really comprehend, the importance of conversation. In his New York Times review of Stephen Miller's Conversation: A History of a Declining Art, Edward Rothstein explains:
Conversation is one of those acts that require subtle forms of social imagination: an ability to listen and interpret and imagine, an attentiveness to someone whose perspective is always essentially different, a responsiveness that both makes oneself known and allows the other to feel known -- or else does none of this, but just keeps up appearances. It may be, then, one of the most fundamental political and social acts, indispensable to negotiating allegiances, establishing common ground, clearing tangled paths. Conversation may reflect not just the state of our selves, but the state of society.O.K. But listen to "talk" radio, with its combative recruitment of allies; or "talk" shows in which guests are promoting themselves or their products and hosts are prepared with leading questions; or "talk" news shows in which conversation becomes a form of shouting. Look at our isolating iPods, at text messaging with its prepackaged formulas, or instant messaging with its iconic smilies, so necessary to make sure the telegraphic prose is not misunderstood.
This state of affairs helped inspire Stephen Miller's new book, "Conversation: A History of a Declining Art" (Yale, $27.50). Mr. Miller, who is a contributing editor to The Wilson Quarterly, finds countertrends, as well -- Internet communities that lead to new forms of conversation, diverse gatherings in which disagreements become an expected aspect of conversation. But, he writes, the "forces sapping conversation seem stronger than the forces nourishing it." So Mr. Miller, in response, is recounting another kind of conversation that has taken place over the centuries, one whose subject is conversation itself.
Cicero gave advice about conversation (It ought "to be gentle and without a trace of intransigence; it should also be witty"). Montaigne hailed its pleasures ("I find the practice of it the most delightful activity in our lives"). Henry Fielding praised it ("This grand Business of our Lives, the Foundation of every Thing, either useful or pleasant"). Adam Smith prescribed it (calling it one of "the most powerful remedies for restoring the mind to its tranquillity").
There were also those who opposed it, or at least strongly declared other preferences. Rousseau sneered at the chatter in French salons. Wordsworth preferred nature and solitude. The writers of Romanticism shifted the emphasis, preferring to share feelings and perceptions rather than honor conversation for its own sake. Conversation became confessional -- which in many ways, it still is. "Modern writers," Mr. Miller suggests, "tend to dwell on the emotional rewards that come from conversation."
In fact, in Mr. Miller's account, the United States may have played an important role in the evolution of the mode of non-conversation now developing. During the 19th century many European writers scorned American conversation, perhaps too much, Mr. Miller suggests, accusing it of excessive focus on money and commerce. There may have also been an American suspicion of conversation altogether: Thoreau couldn't be bothered with it, and Melville was wary.
Mr. Miller points out that in the 20th century, literary figures were also admired for being laconic. Was this an extension of early Romantic suspicions? A democratic rebellion against the artifice and artfulness of 18th-century conversation? Did it even lead, perhaps, to the self-absorbed focus on self-fulfillment and self-expression that have, in Mr. Miller's view, extended from the years of the counterculture into the present?
Like a well-mannered host, Mr. Miller presents some hypotheses, but also leads the conversation along. For him, the powers and possibilities of conversation were most clearly revealed in the 18th century. Samuel Johnson praised the two key journals of the age, The Spectator and The Tattler; they were being published at a time, he said, "when two parties, loud, restless, and violent, each with plausible declarations, and each perhaps without any distinct termination of its views, were agitating the nation."
The journals, Johnson said, "adjusted" conversation with their "propriety and politeness." That character also helped define London coffeehouses, in which political debate and conversation between varied classes took place. Andrew Marvell wrote: "It is wine and strong drinks make tumults increase/ Choc'late, tea, and coffee are liquors of peace."
But Hume may be the patron saint of conversation here, for though he noted that politeness "runs often into affectation and foppery, disguise and insincerity," he also saw a necessary connection between politeness and freedom. Hume suggested that politeness was not, in fact, "natural to the human mind," but "presumption and arrogance" were. Society depends on artifice. Conversation is an art.
As Mr. Miller suggests, American conversation now prides itself on angry authenticity or on being kind and "nonjudgmental"; it is meant to be "natural" and full of "self-expression." This does not make for great conversation or a vital political life.
I quote at length to show how the review--and ostensibly the book it assesses--connects the history of conversation to the evolving values of modern Western culture; the suggestion here appears to be that while the English have historically understood and appreciated the importance of robust, public, impassioned debate, Americans have, in at least some quarters, valued quite the opposite: a taciturn pose that is associated with unspoken and unspeakable depth of character. As a result, the argument appears to go, Americans have gradually lost the art of actually interacting. We can pose, we can argue, we can confess and attack, but we cannot, as a people, claim to know how to converse.
Historians will have to adjudicate the fairness of Miller's claim (and of Rothstein's portrayal of Miller's claim). But in the meantime, the claims themselves offer an intriguing context for the paradoxical and troubling fact that the vast majority of American colleges and universities seek to regulate student expression in ways that are not consonant with either their institutional purpose (to educate) or with the Bill of Rights. Arguments against campus speech codes always invoke the importance of free inquiry and robust debate, both to the educations of individuals and to the perpetuation of democracy. But those arguments fall on deaf ears with depressing frequency--the proponents of speech codes are unmoved by that argument, so much so that they are typically able to defend their positions out of both sides of their mouths. "Hate speech is not free speech," they say; "I'm all for free speech, but we should not defend speech that attacks and offends others, especially when those others have been historically oppressed." And so on. We tend to see these stalemates as political--the left tends to argue one way, the right the other. But what if we saw the entire phenomenon as cultural? And what if we worked from there toward a historical understanding of how that cultural phenomenon came to be?
Miller's book would appear to offer the beginnings of a cultural-historical explanation for why it has become so possible to discount free speech on campus. If the art of exchanging ideas through conversation is not something our culture truly values--is not something we can even claim, collectively, to comprehend--then nothing is lost, or nothing seems to be lost, when higher education administrators make policies that chill and even punish expression they find offensive. Perhaps the blind spot higher education has about the importance of free speech tells us something about a larger blind spot in our culture; perhaps Miller's book can help explain where that blind spot came from, and, in so doing, can help us begin to think more pointedly about what can be done to counter it.
Posted by acta online at March 21, 2006 09:05 AM
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Comments
"Miller's book would appear to offer the beginnings of a cultural-historical explanation for why it has become so possible to discount free speech on campus."
Ah. But to draw this conclusion at the end, in which you link the lost art of conversation up with a devaluation of "free speech," is exactly the opposite point the review (and perhaps the book) makes about the art of conversation: that the art of conversation has nothing to do with "free" speech, there are rules governing it all over the place about, not what you say, but HOW you say it. In fact, what the review suggests is that there are dozens of rules governing every micro-moment in conversation, far far more than simple and reasonable proposals like the basic ones at universities in which you can't use racial slurs in the classroom or sexually harass your students in your free-speech-filled emails. In a classroom setting that's perfectly legit.
In fact, what this article suggests that if instructors and students were better at conversation, more learning would take place and then the impasses and head-butting which get labelled "free speech issues" would be utterly avoided. My Plato seminar TA, a guy who I like and who I can tell is really smart, can't evoke a conversation from his students and is good at shutting them down in various ways to talk about what he wants to talk about (and yet lacks the skill to complete his thoughts). So he tries to provoke the class by saying "politically incorrect" things which just ends up provoking tedious wastes of seminar time or shutting conversations down further.
The cultural production of this "laconic American" has a cultural counter-production "endlessly self-expressive" talker. (I think few people embody the ideal, but what I'm talking about is a model that we're supposed to emulate.) What would be a worthy avenue of exploration is how much "freedom of speech" has become conflated with the priorities of this ideal self-expression (ie. you get to say whatever you want, how you want, when you want), and that in itself causes a loss of "freedom"-- freedom to have a brilliant connection with a friend or a book or a student or a stranger, because self-expression may have evolved into its own "tyranny of structurelessness." Not to say that self-expression isn't an absolute human necessity, but there's perfectly good reasons why you want to shape it in various settings.
Posted by: Rob Butz at December 1, 2007 02:29 PM