It is commonly understood that an important ingredient to a functioning democracy is literacy. In order for a people to govern themselves,they must be educated and informed on the relevant issues. I would add that a functioning democracy also involves conversations. Certainly having conversations is one aspect of acquiring knowledge and being informed. Also, being able to have conversation can transform the social ethos of a society. As anyone who has been married for a long time knows, being able to talk through differences is itself an issue. Likewise, in a democracy, being able to talk through issues is important, and sometimes more important than the actual issues needing to be discussed. In this section, I would like to discuss the transformative importance of discussion in a democracy by outlining the difference between talking about someone and talking with someone.
There are two types of discourses – objectifying and connective. A discourse is objectifying when it is about someone. For instance, spreading a rumor or reinforcing stereotypes are objectifying discourses. A discourse is connective when it is with someone and is primarily a genuine interaction. When someone is speaking with someone, discourse is connective when guided by an attitude of learning. In the context of disagreement, this attitude is countering the attitude of judgment and self-protection. Of course, someone can speak with someone about someone else –discourses can be both objectifying and connective.
Consider in protestant theology an example of objectifying, disconnective discourse. Protestant theology emerged as a reaction against legalism in the Catholic Church. The letters of Paul were being read by early protestant theologians in light of those medieval debates,thus interpreting Paul's contemporary Judaism in terms of the same legalism. Mark Mattison summerizes:
Traditional Protestant soteriology, focused as it is on the plight of the conscience-smitten individual before a holy God, must be carved out of the rock of human pretentiousness in order to be cogent. Thus it is no accident that the Reformers interpreted the burning issues of Paul’s day in light of their struggle against legalism. “The Reformers’ interpretation of Paul,” writes Krister Stendahl,“rests on an analogism when Pauline statements about Faith and Works, Law and Gospel, Jews and Gentiles are read in the framework of late medieval piety. The Law, the Torah, with its specific requirements of circumcision and food restrictions becomes a general principle of ‘legalism’ in religious matters.”
This caricature of Judaism was buttressed by such scholars as Ferdinand Weber, who arranged a systematic presentation of rabbinic literature.Weber’s book provided a wealth of Jewish source material neatly arranged to show Judaism as a religion of legalism. Emil Schürer, Wilhelm Bousset, and others were deeply influenced by Weber’s work.These scholars in turn have been immensely influential. Rudolf Bultmann, for instance, relied on Schürer and Bousset for his understanding of first-century Judaism.25
Protestant theology is built on a tradition of talking about Judaism without giving voice to (that is, having a dialogue with) the Jewish tradition. Hence protestant theology is an objectifying discourse. Of course, this is one aspect of the long history of deep misunderstanding between Christianity and Judaism. We can even say it participates in the larger discourse of Western anti-semitism. Ido want to point out that it becomes relevant for inter-religiousdialogue between Jews and Christians to attend to history and rethinkbiblical interpretation. Again, dialogue involves self reflection. This is why dialogue is transformative.
Objectifying discourse informs Hollywood and popular culture in it's recycling derogatory stereotypes about Arabic people. Consider, for instance,the movie Aladdin. In the opening song, we hear: “I come from a land from a very far place, where the caravan camels roam. Where they cut off your ear if they don't like your face. It's barbaric, but hey it’s home.” There is a scene where a merchant is about to cut off princess Jasmine's hand for steeling. Jack Shaheen comments:
The merchants are unfriendly, they’re mischievous and brutal. One merchant tries to chop the hand of the princess because she takes an apple. Which goes against Islam. In Islam, you are obliged to feed someone when they are hungry, over and over again. And that's what devout Muslims do. And that's what devout good merchants do. And only in Saudi Arabia, if you are a thief, a real thief, and after 3 warnings and 3 convictions, if you steal something, is the hand removed. In one country, with a population of a few million. And yet they opted to use that scene. It took us six months to get a meeting, just to talk about the film.26
The point of this discussion is that the content of the movie Aladdin participates in a wider discourse of racism towards Arabs.27 Arabic people do not participate in their own depiction, hence it is an objectifying discourse.
Objectifying discourse is based in assumption and prejudice. So, knowing about someone is different than knowing someone. It's qualitatively a different kind of knowing. This kind of knowing, met within a connective discourse, is not an “objectifying” sort of knowledge but one that transforms persons within relationship. Remember,humans are relational and are shaped by relationship. This is why, I think, conversation is an important element of a democracy. Literacy should not be confined to objectifying discourse that talks about the world, but it should participate in connective discourse that transforms the world.
One relevant example, I think, can be found in the politics of gay marriage. This is one example where many people can vote on an issue without understanding how it effects others. Many people who vote against gay marriage do so with ideas about gays and lesbians, and indeed about human sexuality in general, without engaging in dialogue with gays and lesbians.28 In this way, people's voting power is arguably not properly informed. It is based upon an objectifying discourse and hence,despite the good intentions involved, results in a form of discrimination. The objectifying discourse relies heavily on myths about gays and lesbians and excludes alternative perspectives on those myths. Of course, putting aside the political power emphasized in voting, objectifying discourse against gays and lesbians are based on layers of assumptions about sexuality that we have inherited in our present patriarchal context which already ideologically shapes how persons relate to each other in general. Beneath the issue of gay marriage, I believe, there are deeper, more central issues regarding our attitudes and assumptions about sexuality that enables discrimination.
This leads to another point. In a democratic society, we want to be informed. But a lot of our discourse is objectifying on a number of levels, and thereby shaping the political ethos. People not only have ideas and assumptions about different people groups, but also have ideas and assumptions about humanity as a whole. They also have ideas and assumptions about how people relate to each other. It is interesting to me that in a democracy, we carry so many assumptions about each other both in our ethical philosophies and our inherited ideologies. It therefore seems important that conversation be an important part of democratic life in that it not only informs our assumptions about others, but also about people in general and how we can relate to each other. Again, in this way dialogue can transform a political ethos.
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