A Philosophy prof from the U of Oklahoma, Olberding has been on my radar for a few months thanks to some posts she's made on her blog and elsewhere regarding incivility in online spaces. I've quoted her in this blog before. Her book, The Wrong of Rudeness, is just now out from Oxford UP. As part of the push for the book, she's produced some gems of wisdom about civility and incivility.
Of course, by "gems of wisdom," I should cop to the fact that I mean that her thoughts on the matter run in concert with some of the concerns I've been having of late regarding conversations about civility. To boil it down, Olberding is generally in favor of civility, but with a number of caveats. Inversely, she's decidedly wary of incivility as a necessarily good or righteous mode.
I fear that, put that way, my description threatens to turn Olberding into a wishy-washy, have-cake-and-eat-it-too liberal squish. Yet a nuanced take on civility, especially from someone apt to be aligned with left-progressive causes, really does seem bold at this point in history.
Anger is in. Both the right and the left in the US and elsewhere appear to have decided that the time for bridge-building overtures has passed. The other side, whomever they may be, has just gone too far. For many on the left, Trump's election--and, even more, his seemingly unshakeable bedrock of support by 30-40% of the voting public--signals the end of any meaningful future for pro- and anti-Trumpers to coexist. Many on the right point to other litmus-test events (the Kavanaugh hearings, for instance) that to them demonstrate conclusively how hopelessly radical those on the left have become.
One can track similar conversations in right- and left-leaning spaces, especially during pile-on conversations where the community focuses its contempt on the latest outrage from the other side. In such conversations, nuance or moderation get interpreted as betrayal, a kind of sick apology for the worst kinds of injustice. Celebrations of outrage and anger abound, defensively arrayed against the perceived forces of civility (forces construed as simultaneously flimsy--weak-willed, fainthearted, snowflakey--and authoritarian--capable of violent repression and damaging reprisal).
I'm not neutral in this debate. Although I'm averse to tension and conflict myself, I recognize that civility as a social ideal regularly plays out on a uneven terrain. Some segments of society--usually the weaker or more marginalized segments--feel the constraints of civility more than others. Civility has too often centered the comforts of the privileged classes rather than the well-being of all. As a mostly privileged person, then, it's not surprising that I find my sentiments pro-civility.
True enough, Olberding allows. But the fact that civility can be used as a cudgel of the oppressed by the oppressors, she argues, does not mean that civility is only a cudgel. Nor, she writes, is incivility necessarily any better. For one thing, she notes, it's not like oppressors refrain from incivility. Indeed, various uncivil modes are some of the primary tools of oppression and injustice. Olberding also punctures the all-too-frequent equation of incivility with bravery. From her Thesis 15:
Popular rhetoric likes to identify civility with spineless acquiescence and incivility with courageous truth-telling. These associations are farcical. Context matters. Sometimes, civility is the far harder, and braver, approach to interaction in disagreement. There simply is no way to draw a decontextualized straight association between incivility and bravery, between civility and cowardice. (Also: implicitly associating incivility with bravery explains why seemingly everyone being rude nowadays hurls utterly tedious charges of snowflakery at any who don’t like it.)
This is one of those "well, duh" statements that, for numerous reasons, has acquired provocative status. I expect she'll get some fierce pushback soon.
I especially like her critique of righteous indignation-fueled incivility. But I'll get to that tomorrow.
JF
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