A Discursive Experiment

An illustration of what I consider to be a successful feminist discursive experiment can be found in the practices and procedures adopted by the Women’s Encampment for a Future of Peace and Justice established at the Seneca Army Depot. The Seneca Peace Camp began its life in the summer of 1983 and was inspired by the Women’s Peace Camp at Greenham Common, which, two years earlier; had captured the attention of the international press and feminist activists from around the world. Women from all walks of life, ideological perspectives, and feminist orientations came together under the banner “a future of peace and justice.” The ambition of the orga­nizers went far beyond testing discursive procedures: it was visualized as a “bold experiment in a communal life of non-violence where women cooper­ate and share decision-making through consensus.” The Peace Camp was to provide “a place where women gain strength and courage from one another; where women continue their commitment to non-violence and feminism.”2 All aspects of the Camp were organized in such a way as to avoid hierarchies and leadership/non-leadership stratification. The highly communal, egali­tarian, and consensual nature of the Camp as a whole was itself the product of consensual will-formation. This highlights the two separate roles that discourse played at the Peace Camp: 1) a foundational role legitimizing the organizational structure and decision procedures to be adopted; and 2) an ongoing conflict resolution and decision procedure.

While the Camp was being conceived and set up, a discourse began about how it would be organized and how decisions would be made.3 In these initial “foundational” meetings, the focus was on discussing, airing,

and collectively evaluating options. It was accepted as unproblematic that the goal of these meetings was to construct a consensus. However, it became evident that an initial and widespread commitment to consensus formation did not necessarily mean a commitment to adopting procedures of consensual will-formation for the Camp itself. A general agreement that the Camp should be run in a highly democratic way was already in place but there was no agreement as to the form that democracy should take. In addition to consensus formation, administrative decision-making, and simple majority rule, Robert’s Rules of Order were discussed.4

Many women were hesitant about adopting discursive procedures. They argued that women would be more familiar with “mainstream” proce­dures, that consensus formation was a very demanding form of decision­making, and finally that discourse would involve an extensive preliminary learning process to prepare women for a constraint-free format.5 Whereas the arguments in favor of mainstream procedures focused on questions of efficiency, practicality, and expediency, the arguments in favor of consensus formation focused on which decision-procedure would embody and further the goals of personal growth, solidarity, and individual and collective empowerment. In the end, the internal goods gained through the experi­ence of discourse were deemed more important and—despite the initial misgivings on the part of many participants—a consensus was reached that decisions should be reached by consensus. It is important to note here that the women at the Seneca Peace Camp could have come to a consensus that some form of majority rule would better suit their needs and interests.

Once the women decided that consensus was to be their decision — procedure, they set about constructing guidelines for actual implementa­tion. These were published in a fifty page pamphlet entitled Resource Handbook for the Women’s Encampment for a Future of Peace and Justice. In addition to principles of consensus formation, the Resource Handbook also included a great deal of information and history about the Seneca Army Depot itself and feminist antimilitary activity. With regard to consen­sus, the Resource Handbook defended “the fundamental right of… all people to be able to express themselves in their own words and of their own free will.” It went on to state that “the fundamental responsibility of consensus is to assure others of their right to speak and be heard. Coercion and trade-offs are replaced with creative alternatives and compromise with synthesis.”6

The similarities between this view of consensus formation and Habermas’s are striking: the conditions of practical discourse are designed precisely to guarantee that all participants have the right to speak and be heard. The most important conditions are as follows: every actor affected by the norm may enter discourse; each participant must be allowed an equal opportunity to speak and be heard; anything may be questioned, challenged, and defended; no one may use force or deception to sway participants.7 Under these conditions and motivated by a desire to reach agreement, participants attempt to build a consensus. The consensus legit­imizes the norm because in being “immunized in a special way against repression and inequality,” the outcome represents what all want.8

The picture, then, is of a constraint-free dialogue in which closure cannot be enforced unilaterally. However, unilateral blockage is possible because in trying to reach an agreement which represents what all want, each individual has a veto power. This in turn implies that successful discourse will only take place when participants are sincerely committed to the process and the search for common ground. A strategic as opposed to discursive actor can hold up proceedings indefinitely. In a world where negotiation, instrumental trade-offs, and strategic bargaining are the most common routes to reaching collective “agreement,” it is not surprising that the women of Seneca Peace Camp understood that discourse was going to require an extensive learning process. What they set out to do was to describe what this learning process would involve, and from it, we can learn a great deal. They did not simply lay out rules of discourse which should not be broken, but attempted to specify the concrete attitudes, senti­ments, and modes of talk that are necessary to be a discursive as opposed to a strategic actor.

These concrete attitudes, sentiments, and modes of talk were drawn from female communicative experiences. Despite many similarities between the Peace Camp’s idea of discursive will-formation and Habermas’s, these women were not influenced or inspired by Habermas and the philosophy of discourse ethics. Instead, their inspiration came from the tradition of cultural feminism. As one commentator put it “the same values that Gilligan identified as ‘female’ were considered the basis of the alternative world toward which the encampment was striving.”9 The organizers themselves put it this way:

Feminism is a value system which affirms qualities that have tradition­ally been considered female: nurturance of life, putting others’ well­being before one’s own, cooperation, emotional and intuitive sensitivity, attention to detail, the ability to adapt, perseverance. These traits have been discounted by societies which teach competition, violent conflict resolution, and materialism.10

Many of the above-mentioned qualities are necessary for productive discourse. An ethic of care, which places communication, a reaching out to make connections, and mutual and sympathetic understanding at the center of moral problem solving, can give content to the abstract and formal rules of discourse.11 This, of course, does not mean that only women are capable of productive discourse. It does mean that female moral experience has an important contribution to make in giving content to the abstract formalism of discourse ethics.12

Updated: 07.11.2015 — 10:41