(the) American (Novel of)

On Being Becoming
William Fenton writes, “There is a principle that students of the Iroquois
must inevitably learn: the way a thing is done is often more important
than the issue at stake.” 4 Who says what, in what order? On some
occasions, such protocol makes all of the difference. Who gets served
first and last? Men? Women? Children? These are questions that really
matter, sometimes maybe even more than proper moral issues, as
Thorstein Veblen intimated when he wrote, “A breach of faith may be
condoned, but a breach of decorum can not. ‘Manners maketh man.’ ” 5
Of course, there is also the utter indeterminacy and disorientation
of those moments lost beyond meaning precisely because etiquette can
find no purchase, moments when the architectonic of cordiality, civility,
and consideration are rendered inoperative, that is, when people just
don’t care. It is perhaps only at times of such absence, of such lack, that
etiquette is understood in its full social and political, that is to say,
material merit (just like Heidegger’s broken hammer).
Some, therefore, might want to consider etiquette as ritual—ritual
that binds, ritual that heals, ritual that sustains human interactions locally
and globally. Tempting as this thought may be, we want to resist
the desire to restrict etiquette to a question of formulaic or enforced
codes. As Aristotle understood, good habits—and thus good manners—
are gestures of grace beyond measure rather than of conformity to law
as such, something truly fine. The practice of etiquette is not, finally,
about mere compliance to external rules or static imperatives.
As the chapters in this volume suggest, etiquette is about the execution
and performance of those opportunities for consideration of the
other, whether stranger or friend, that emerge in everyday lived experience.
Etiquette duly acknowledges the existence and necessity of boundaries
while negotiating, respectfully traversing, and even transforming the
conditions that allow one to become presentable, and thus allow one to
extend oneself to the world, as we extend ourselves to you.
Notes
1. Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, ed. and trans. C. R. Haines (Cambridge:
Harvard University Press, 1994), p. 11.
2. Mary Wollstonecraft, Vindication of the Rights of Woman (New York:
Norton, 1988), p. 4.
3. Alphonso Lingis, The Imperative (Bloomington: Indiana University
Press, 1998), p. 2.
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