Agent of Democracy - Society for College and University Planning

Agent of Democracy
of perspectives that can be integrated into a better understanding
of the whole. In fact, coming to deliberation with partial perspectives
is detrimental, Habermas thinks, to deliberation aimed at
reaching understanding and agreement. Habermas’ model of the
deliberative forum is more like a logic class; where the Derridean,
and I’d add Deweyan, one is more like a literature class. English
professor Peggy Prenshaw described her own experiment in bringing
deliberation to literary studies in an article she wrote for the
1998 issue of the Higher Education Exchange. Through a project on
the humanities and public deliberation, she thought through the
relationship between understanding literature and deliberating
on public policy:
The comparison I am pursuing here is that of the empirical
undecidability of the questions raised by the
text and a similar undecidability of public policy
questions raised in citizens’ forums. Resolution is
reached by persuasion, by enlisting empathetic agreement,
by noting facts, recalling historical precedents,
reporting relevant personal experience, raising questions
about the language and actions manifest in the
text. An interpretation of a literary text, like a group’s
response to discussion of a public issue, is an act of
judgment, an act that is language-bound, culturebound.
It is contingent on the disposition of a group
of individuals in a given place at a given moment. 18
In both forums and literature classes, the conversation can
ramble, it will tarry on particular cases and focus on odd details.
But most important in both kinds of conversation is a kind of
“work of ascertaining the meaning of the data and texts.” 19
Prenshaw’s observation is vital to understanding the gulf
between deliberations aimed at universal answers and deliberations
that can give rise to a public and public judgment. The former
try to strip themselves of particularity; the latter try to unearth the
richness of particularity. This richness has two sides: there are the
18 Peggy W. Prenshaw, “Humanities Study and Public Deliberation,” Higher Education
Exchange (1998): 67.
19 Ibid.
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