Demands for mannerliness and propriety are increasingly being replaced by demands that those in conflict just tolerate their disagreements. The civility of politeness, in other words, is being supplanted by what I term an āagree-to-disagree civility.ā This emergent civility, I argue, legitimizes reactionary stances and valorizes the status quo.
Such agree-to-disagree civility is on clear display in the seemingly cordialĀ statementĀ issued by all the US Presidential Foundations and Centers in anticipation of the acrimony of the recent election cycle. The leaders of the Obama Foundation, the George W. Bush Presidential Center, and 11 other similar organizations admit that they hold āa wide range of views across a breadth of issues.ā Still, they insist that āthese views can exist peaceably side by side.ā The statement goes on to affirm that ādebate and disagreement are central features in a healthy democracy,ā and that ācivility and respect in political discourse, whether in an election year or otherwise, are essential.ā One might be moved, perhaps, to see politicians of different parties standing together against the violent bigotry of the Trump campaign. But look closer. To be sure, the civility of this statement is more productive than repressive, more interested in prompting speech than foreclosing it. Yet while the centers valorize the clash of countervailing perspectives, theyāre also conspicuously silent regardingĀ how such disagreements might be resolved. Basically, the Centersā statement suggests, we should all just agree to disagree.
Itās easy to see the appeal of this agree-to-disagree civility, because the tolerance it calls for is often taken as a transcendentally good ideal. As the political theoristĀ Wendy Brown reminds us, though, thereās reason to look upon tolerance talk with a more ambivalent eye. For Brown, toleration is less a political ideal than a āpractice of governmentality,ā a body of commentary and rhetoric that sets the terms for political discussions, and not always in salutary ways. āThere are,ā she notes, āmobilizations of tolerance that do not simply alleviate but rather circulate racism, homophobia, and ethnic hatreds.ā
Agree-to-disagree civility, I argue, circulates and sustains such malign paradigms by neutralizing critique and forestalling social change. This civility robs us of our ability to say āxĀ is wrongā: Its principles make racism, homophobia, misogyny, and the like perspectives to be respected, not paradigms to be defeated. Endlessly tolerating divergent outlooks on social inequities is categorically different than working to discern and pursue the most ethical and efficacious modes of redress. In short, this civility allows nothing to happen.