Monthly Archives: January 2014

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Here are five brief studies of people who made heavy use of clichés: Francesca da Rimini, Madame Bovary, Adolf Eichmann, W.H. Auden, and Don Gately from David Foster Wallace’s novel Infinite Jest. I offer these portraits to explore the moral pitfalls of cliché and to investigate how our postmodern situation differs from the medieval, Romantic, and high-modern contexts of the first four examples. I end with the suggestion that in our time, the desire to shun cliché can also be a moral hazard.

In the days of moveable type, printers cast common phrases as single units of type to save laying them out one letter at a time. In France, typesetters called those units clichés. When we assign a phrase to a word processor’s keyboard command because we use it frequently, that is a modern version of the original printer’s cliché.

There is nothing wrong with repeating functional phrases: “To whom it may concern”; “On the other hand.” We skim over these formulas without cost. But the word “cliché” now has a pejorative sense, implying a fault in writing. A cliché is an expression that has been used so often that it has lost its impact. Using a recycled phrase can undermine the aesthetic value of a work. It can also be a moral failure, if the writer or speaker uses it to avoid a serious issue or problem.

Francesca da Rimini

Francesca is a favorite character from Dante’s Inferno, represented countless times in Romantic and modern literature and art. A particularly famous example is Rodin’s sculpture of “The Kiss,” which shows Francesca embracing her lover Paolo. In Romantic versions, she is depicted as a heroine who suffers because her authentic and natural impulse to love outside of her marriage is forbidden by artificial and conventional rules. As a character in his own book, Dante is so moved by her plight that he faints.

But Dante (the author) put her in hell. A careful reading of her two short speeches reveals, first, that she talks entirely in quotations or summaries of previous writing about love, and, second, that all of her references contain errors. Indeed, Barbara Vinken has claimed that every quote by a damned soul in the whole Inferno is in error.

For example, Francesca says (in my translation)

When we read that ‘the desired
Smile then was kissed by the ardent lover,’
he who ‘can never be torn away’ kissed
me, all atremble. A Gallehaut was the author
of that book, and seductive was his fancy.
On that day, we read no farther.
(Inf., v, 130-136)

Francesca is quoting here from the French prose romance Lancelot. But in the known versions of the roman, Lancelot never initiates the kiss. He is bashful and passive to the point of foolishness, and Queen Guinevere makes all the advances. Yet the ardent lover in Francesca’s quotation is male. She has confused this text with other episodes from the courtly love tradition, such as the one in which Tristan kisses Iseult while they play chess together. The details of the Lancelot story fade in her mind, to be replaced with a generic formula: damsel taken by ardent knight. Perhaps this is because she wants to shift the blame from Guinivere (the woman) to Lancelot (the man). Or perhaps it is because she reads literature as a set of clichés.

A cliché is that it is portable and recyclable—a ready-made scenario or sentiment that shows up in many contexts. When we employ clichés, we often commit what Alfred North Whitehead called the “fallacy of misplaced concreteness.” This is the fallacy of taking something specific that belongs in one context and applying it elsewhere. Francesca treats the love scene between Lancelot and Guinivere that way, and to do so, she must ignore its peculiarities.

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this blog turns 11

reflections on AmericaSpeaks on its last day

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I was proud to serve on the board of AmericaSpeaks from June 2006 until today, when the organization had to close its doors–despite valiant efforts. In essence, the people and organizations that really care about nonpartisan, open-ended citizen deliberation don’t have a lot of money to pay for it, and that is a problem that affects more than AmericaSpeaks.

For those who don’t know the organization, AmericaSpeaks invented the 21st Century Town Meeting, a very large, representative gathering of citizens who discuss a public issue at separate tables within a large room while communicating and making collective choices electronically. AmericaSpeaks organized and ran more than 100 of these Town Meetings, in all 50 states. The formats varied. For instance, the 21st Century Town Meetings that strongly informed the rebuilding plan for New Orleans after Katrina were held concurrently in three cities and online, to accommodate people forced to leave the city.

The purpose of the organization was never simply intellectual–to learn about public deliberation. AmericaSpeaks aimed to change America by providing deliberative events frequently and widely. Considering that it was highly active for 19 years, it must be accounted a success, even on those terms. Yet the ultimate failure of the business model raises serious questions about elites’ support for civic engagement in America.

In addition to facing financial obstacles, AmericaSpeaks frequently encountered ideological skepticism. For instance, its national deliberations on “Our Budget/Our Economy” were attacked from the left for identifying the budget deficit as a central problem. But the deliberating citizens chose budget options far to the left of what Congress has seriously entertained. In any case, I was struck that ideological writers on the left missed any merit in the deliberative process itself. They didn’t recognize public discussion as a strategy for strengthening our democracy. Instead, their only question was whether the problem had been framed as they would frame it.

Nevertheless, despite opposition and indifference in some quarters, AmericaSpeaks ran a series of experiments from which much has been learned. Other deliberative processes–e.g., Study Circles and National Issues Forums–may sometimes do more to build local civil society, although AmericaSpeaks’ work in DC strengthened civic capacity there. And certain other processes can, like 21st Century Town Meetings, provide policymakers with excellent public input. (I am thinking of Deliberative Polls and Citizens’ Juries). But AmericaSpeaks was very unusual in its ability to turn public voices into political power. It was hard for policymakers in New Orleans after Katrina or in Manhattan after 9/11 to ignore the results of mass public deliberations. Thus these events were politically potent interventions, even though AmericaSpeaks was neutral about the outcomes.

Ghazala Mansuri and Vijayendra Rao of the World Bank write about “organic participation” (created by advocates) and “induced participation” (invited and supported by elites). In some ways, the 21st Century Town Meeting is a skillful blend of the two, with AmericaSpeaks playing an essential role in raising resources from various elites to put on events that allow citizens to influence the government.*

AmericaSpeaks leaves an inspiring legacy of examples and knowledge. But on its last day, I am worried that the demand for public deliberation is so weak.

Peter Levine

A Blog for Civic Renewal

Monthly Archives: January 2014

great job openings in civic renewal

the Times’ poverty map

on the moral dangers of cliché

this blog turns 11

reflections on AmericaSpeaks on its last day