Three Performatives of Civility

My weekend at the Better Angels Convention prompted me to think more broadly about some of the basic gestures that diffuse enmity and affective polarization. What can we do in contexts of deep intergroup disagreement, antagonism, and outrage that de-escalate these states? How do we make intractable conflicts at least a little bit better?

Of course, entire disciplines and organizations devote themselves to studying the network of factors, agents, and actions that transform conflicts into something other than deadlock. Amateur that I am here, I focus on three actions (there are likely more) that seem implicated in long-term depolarization and reconciliation processes: listening, apologizing, and forgiving.

It strikes me that each of these gestures has a performative element to them. As philosopher J.L. Austin famously put it, a performative utterance is one in which saying is doing. Austin describes most statements as constative. They describe some reality and may conceivably be judged true or false via comparison with that reality. The dog is barking. Jishon has a blue dress on. The Ancient Egyptians built pyramids. The sky is neon green. God exists, and she's pissed. All of these are constative. They're either true or false (even if, as in the case of the last sentence, discovering whether it's one or the other seems difficult).

Yet other statements, Austin suggests, don't conform to the true-or-false criterion. When a judge, at the conclusion of a case, says to the defendant, "I hereby sentence you to three months in prison," the literal statement is the act of sentencing. When someone christens a boat, they do it by the statement, "I christen this boat Nostalgia for Infinity." When an officiant at a heterosexual wedding declares, "I now pronounce you husband and wife," the declaration is the act of wedding them.

Such statements don't describe some outside reality; they bring into being a reality. The unsentenced person becomes sentenced. The boat acquires a new name. Bride and groom become spouses. In this sense, Austin offers, the utterances aren't constative but performative.

If I were to boil the performative forces of listening, apologizing, and forgiving into utterances, the resulting statements might run something like this:

• I hear you. (listening)
• I apologize. (apologizing)
• I forgive you. (forgiving)

At their best, such gestures of listening, apologizing, and forgiving carry power beyond conveying the speaker's state of being. I hear you, in the best case, establishes that the speaker has lowered their defenses, suspended their need to criticize, and has opened themselves to maximum receptivity--and that this receptivity has enabled them to hear, absorb, and understand the full message being communicated to them.

The ideal I apologize carries within it a host of other actions: as a full admission of wrongdoing, an unselfish taking of responsibility for the consequences, a sincere regret, a promise not to repeat the wrongdoing, and a commitment to engage in restorative acts.

An especially effective I forgive you might involve relinquishing the right to (or need for) retribution, letting go of "the hope for a better yesterday," and moving past all-consuming hatred or bitterness at a wrongdoer. (Forgiveness may or may not also lead to reconciliation or a "reset" on a relationship.)


But these gestures are rarely realized at their best.

Where constative utterances can be false, performative utterances can fail or misfire. They can be, in Austin's coinage, "infelicitous" or "unhappy." Austin is fascinated by the different ways that such utterances can misfire.

If some imposter dresses up as a judge or wedding officiant, that imposter's "I find you guilty" or "I now declare you married" are bogus. They don't work. Their performative force fizzles. Similarly, I can't go smashing wine bottles against random boats to rechristen them after the Game of Thrones dragons. Or, rather, I can do the smashing and say the words, but the words have no effect. Performatives rely on very specific circumstances to work. A judge can't go grocery shopping and sentence the person in front of them to jail for having sixteen items in a ten-items-or-less lane. Without the proper context or convention, a performative utterance languishes unhappily.

More subtly, some contexts might render a performative insincere or dishonestly uttered. A judge's verdict would get overturned or vacated were it discovered that the judge was bribed or blackmailed into delivering it. I might say I promise to love, honor, and obey my spouse while knowing full well that I intended to do no such thing. I have promised, to be sure. But the force of my promise goes awry. It's like firing a blank; it makes the proper noise but results in no projectile.

I cover this ground to get to my main point: listening, apologizing, and forgiving all fail when enacted in contexts of obligation. The more I feel pressured to listen, apologize, or forgive, the less likely I'll be able to pull them off. Enforced listening inspires boredom and other resistances. Coerced apologies drown in insincerity and/or defensiveness. Obligatory forgiveness sounds and feels as hollow as it is. Civility performatives require the free option not to perform them. No one has to listen, apologize, or forgive. To work, these gestures must be granted freely, not elicited by force or guilt.

This reality vexes calls to civility. A call to be more civil can all too easily come across as a series of shoulds: you should listen, you should apologize, you should forgive. Such imperatives are kryptonite to realizing civility.

More tomorrow,

JF