The way I read the op, the incivility that is in contention is a product of the discourse being advocated , which takes subjectivity to be a product of sociallly constituted dynamics. Thus terms like privilege, hegemony, oppression and colonization are deemed appropriate to describe behaviors and thoughts which are otherwise assumed to be the product of individual understanding. So the ‘ ‘ ‘incivility’ is to dare to accuse the individual
of unknowingly being in thrall to dominating powers

The culture wars in a nutshell.

I’ll say

I think of civility as akin to table manners. — tim wood

You think there's a civil way to talk to the person robbing or raping you?

And that if they remind you that you ought to be civil to them, they are fully justified to do so, and you, as a proponent of civility, should oblige?

You think there's a civil way to talk to the person robbing or raping you?

And that if they remind you that you ought to be civil to them, they are fully justified to do so, and you, as a proponent of civility, should oblige? — baker

Well, certainly that's what he means by "I think of civility as akin to table manners" you gibbering, drooling, fatuous, miserable, pompous, self-righteous, preening, inane cretin. What else would he mean?

Well, certainly that's what he means by "I think of civility as akin to table manners" you gibbering, drooling, fatuous, miserable, pompous, self-righteous, preening, inane cretin. What else would he mean? — Ciceronianus the White

Upvote for best use of a thesaurus, although I'm sure you didn't need one.

Don't get civil on me, now.

This is the sort of pap that comes from Ivy League schools these days, radical only in its demand for conformity and groupthink and identity politics, that is to say, not radical at all.

Civility is a standard for behaviour that generates a particular type of discourse that can be valued in itself. It prevents situations from breaking down into avoidable conflict, it's a practical consideration as well as the extension of moral tenets like treating others as you'd like to be treated yourself. In politics, civility is giving someone the benefit of the doubt or acting like you are, that they came to their opinion without some major character deficit nor to make their opinion a major character deficit. Thus, yes, some words can't be considered civil, they unleash the full brunt of your discontent and invite conflict. I don't see the value of your distinction.


I am rarely interested in coming to a conclusion on somebody else's intelligence or goodness. I hold a relativistic outlook, and I see my positions as being products of my psychology, personality, experiences, education, culture and so on. So I am more interested in understanding how someone came to a conclusion, and why I didn't come to that conclusion, which helps me to learn about myself and others. I also value the product of an idea in relation to its impact on a person, rather than thinking ideas have intrinsic merit. But I do think we draw a line, that regardless of experiences or product, certain things are not okay. I think where the radical left is militant is that where they draw a line is incredibly assertive and disruptive. Which they take pride in. I absolutely will go in on somebody for being overtly racist in my presence, I go from wanting an interesting dialogue to fulfilling a moral obligation if that makes sense. I sympathise with that element of the radical left, I just think sometimes it's ridiculous how little it takes. Simply hearing someone supports Trump is enough to deserve disdain and disgust on a level that truly shocks me, one dumb comment on Twitter sends people into a frenzy, it's too much. There's no mitigation either, it doesn't matter if someone has a good heart and good intentions, I don't agree with that. I end up asking for civility because I don't agree with why they say civility is no longer appropriate.

I hold a relativistic outlook, and I see my positions as being products of my psychology, personality, experiences, education, culture and so on. — Judaka

I don't agree with why they say civility is no longer appropriate. — Judaka

As I suggested earlier in this thread, I suspect that it may not be possible to locate the way in which incivility is being intended in the op unless one connects it with a series of discourses that run through neo-Marxism, critical theory and post-structuralist writing. Put differently, it would be a question of differentiating between your brand of relativism and understanding of the role of social influence , and what I suspect is a more radical shift away from individualism toward a thoroughgoing socially constructed notion of subjectivity that the op is pointing to.

Translation: it pisses people off when their good intentions are being attacked and condemned on the basis of accusations of agendas of hegemony , privilege, domination and bias that is supposedly hidden and implicit in the idea of individualistic civility.

Couple this with the fact that 'civility' is always the privilege of those who are not affected by issues - or at least are comfortable with them - it basically puts the ball in their court and keeps it there. — StreetlightX

Agree 100% and I want to re-post this for visibility.

I am rarely interested in coming to a conclusion on somebody else's intelligence or goodness. — Judaka

It's interesting you say that - I always try to gauge these things from people. I just won't engage someone in conversation seriously if I judge them to be low intelligence.

I also find goodness important to gauge and my judgment on someone's core decency will affect how I interact with them.

Couple this with the fact that 'civility' is always the privilege of those who are not affected by issues - or at least are comfortable with them - it basically puts the ball in their court and keeps it there. — StreetlightX

Civility is the privilege of those who would be civil, when it is appropriate to be civil. When it is appropriate to not be civil, then it is the privilege of those who would otherwise be civil, to be uncivil.

Think of civility as the conventions of sheet music and the ability to read it, enabling ideas to be presented, understood, and appreciated across even centuries never mind across just the stage. Or we could tear up the music and go without it, or even just trash the instruments.

:up:

The way I read the op, the incivility that is in contention is a product of the discourse being advocated , which takes subjectivity to be a product of sociallly constituted dynamics — Joshs

In the article, incivility is firstly defined as anger, as an act of outrage. https://socialtextjournal.org/eleven-theses-on-civility/
"Incivility is anger directed at unjust civil ordering. It is a rage directed at political structures that triggers a negating response that labels it “personal.” But incivility is radically different from the disinhibited expression of anger and the incitement of violence in the service of a white settler order, such as we daily experience around us. Left incivility is the strategic outward direction of rage–out-rage. If you aren’t outraged, you haven’t been paying attention. If you are outraged, we need your anger as an energy. Don’t be fooled or misdirected. a radical incivility makes space for the fullness of the presence of pain and anger, as well as a diversity of styles through which both pain and anger emerge to be heard as objections to the crisis ordinary. Far from giving in to individuation, radical incivility turns us from individual pain to structural analysis; it is a with-ness that turns us toward each other. In this sense we understand radical to be a term that undoes the arkhe of subjectivity."

The incivility is represented as the response to the urgent situation of a crisis, the means of collective mobilization and action-in-concert. It is well known that crowd-like collective subjectivity can be created and remained united just for a short time. The discursive and ideological constitutive components are less important than the affective factors, such as anger or rage. Also, crowd subjectivity is critically dependent on the people’s physical proximity. It is an emergent, evolving, singular and unpredictable event. By contrast, the contemporary leftist solidarity depends less on a direct and first-handed communal experience. The collective affective mobilizing constituents are continuously maintained and reinforced by the arrangements of digital and ideological apparatuses.

Translation: it pisses people off when their good intentions are being attacked and condemned on the basis of accusations of agendas of hegemony , privilege, domination and bias that is supposedly hidden and implicit in the idea of individualistic civility. — Joshs

Yes, some of us have gone on a riff about etiquette.

I guess a key point for me in this from the third theses:

Calls for civility seek to evade our calls for change. The accusation of incivility is a technique of depoliticization aimed at undoing collectivity. We do not need to debate civility; we need to clarify, expand, and intensify our demands.

I'd like some more examples from mainstream political discourse.

In the article, incivility is firstly defined as anger, as an act of outrage. https://socialtextjournal.org/eleven-theses-on-civility/
"Incivility is anger directed at unjust civil ordering. — Number2018

Where do you think blame and moralism fit into this act of ‘outrage’ against ‘ injustice’?

Specifically , do you think it is what Ken Gergen is critiquing as the moralistic blamefulness and indignation of identity politics? Would anger, outrage and condemnation apply if one throughly rejects the ethical foundationalism on which rightness and justice are grounded?

Why can’t we follow Gergen’s lead and jettison the outrage in favor of a throughly relativistic approach to societal transformation?

“By and large identity politics has depended on a rhetoric of blame, the illocutionary effects of which are designed to chastise the target (for being unjust, prejudiced, inhumane, selfish, oppressive, and/or violent). In western culture we essentially inherit two conversational responses to such forms of chastisement - incorporation or antagonism. The incorporative mode ("Yes, now I see the error of my ways") requires an extended forestructure of understandings (i.e. a history which legitimates the critic's authority and judgment, and which renders the target of critique answerable). However, because in the case of identity politics, there is no preestablished context to situate the target in just these ways, the invited response to critique is more typically one of hostility, defense and counter-charge.

In its critical moment, social constructionism is a means of bracketing or suspending any pronouncement of the real, the reasonable, or the right. In its generative moment, constructionism offers an orientation toward creating new futures, an impetus to societal transformation. Constructionist thought militates against the claims to ethical foundations implicit in much identity politics - that higher ground from which others can so confidently be condemned as inhumane, self-serving, prejudiced, and unjust. Constructionist thought painfully reminds us that we have no transcendent rationale upon which to rest such accusations, and that our sense of moral indignation is itself a product of historically and culturally situated traditions. And the constructionist intones, is it not possible that those we excoriate are but living also within traditions that are, for them, suffused with a sense of ethical primacy? As we find, then, social constructionism is a two edged sword in the political arena, potentially as damaging to the wielding hand as to the opposition.”(Social Construction and the Transformation of Identity Politics)

Translation: it pisses people off when their good intentions are being attacked and condemned on the basis of accusations of agendas of hegemony , privilege, domination and bias that is supposedly hidden and implicit in the idea of individualistic civility. — Joshs

Upvote for providing the translation and for it's content.

Calls for civility seek to evade our calls for change. The accusation of incivility is a technique of depoliticization aimed at undoing collectivity. We do not need to debate civility; we need to clarify, expand, and intensify our demands.

I'd like some more examples from mainstream political discourse. — Tom Storm

Here’s my take. There are two routes to follow in countering this ‘incivility as radicalism’ thinking. The first is to reject it and simply stick with traditional individualism. I don’t think this is a good choice for two reasons. First, there are certain valuable insights about the limits of individualism imbedded within wokeness perspectives. Second, it is not going to go away by itself and will instead eventually become assimilated widely within the culture. The best way to counter it is to go beyond it , to take what is valuable in it and move further.
It is still too closely tied to the Marxist critique of individualist moralism , which manages to replicate it by substituting for it a collectivist moralism( implicit bias, privilege, etc). To move beyond it is to no longer accept either individualist imperialism or the tyranny of dominating (economic) social structures. Instead one can recognize that we all are shaped by social structures but interpret these influences via a point of view.

What I see from the radical left is an urgency and importance that creates impatience and frustration and that's where the anger and incivility come from. There are civil ways of conveying radical leftist ideas and quite a few posters on this forum demonstrate it. Some of us take offence to the insinuations of how their race, class, gender, experience have implications on them that undermine their individuality, which colour their actions or imbue them with often insidious meaning. But there is a way to convey it which minimises the offence but many such as streetlightx don't ever go for it. I think that's because, as I said, the line for unacceptable behaviour is aggressive, to the extent that honest interpretation or inaction are tantamount to supporting inherently racist or sexist structures and defend unequal structures and oppression.

The second thing is uncharitable perceptions and an interpretative emphasis on insidious, hidden motivations. Such as a white person voting for Trump, no matter their reasons, the thought of possible underlying racist motivations is is often way beyond what I could ever consider reasonable. The singular voter for Trump carries the weight of all Trump's sins, the obstacle to morally paramount social, economic and environmental changes. Which is very characteristic of their brand of identity politics, and ideas of group responsibility.

The article says the opposite of civility is militancy and I think that sums up my views as well. A zero-tolerance policy, take-no-prisoners, maximum accountability for offenders, aggressive attitude that goes against what it means to be civil in discourse. This could be done with any non-mainstream view, the alt-right could do this, theoretically. Probably you're right and OP is talking about incivility as opinions with unpleasant consequences but at least, I think the political polarisation comes down to the culture of political expression as much as it is the views themselves. Which is impacted by internet anonymity, for example, which just makes people less civil period. The diversification of news media sources, the influence of social media, the ability for fewer people to project a louder voice. Cultural and technological factors have helped to make things less civil, but politics gets all the blame. I see the exact same thing with anti-SJW, anti-radical left approach of insults, mockery, condemnation, memes etc. Probably liberals like myself unwittingly bemoan changes caused by technological advances that can't be reversed, like conservatives doomed to be dissatisfied. We call for civility but it's futile. Everyone will have to adapt.

What I see from the radical left is an urgency and importance that creates impatience and frustration and that's where the anger and incivility come from. There are civil ways of conveying radical leftist ideas and quite a few posters on this forum demonstrate it. — Judaka

However understandable an angry rejection of civility may be, the real issue is effectiveness. Black Lives Matter and other similar movements will not achieve their desired results by insulting and demeaning almost half of all Americans. Whether they like it or not, they need the support of those people to get what they want. Left wing activists and traditional liberals by themselves cannot make this a hospitable country for black people, hispanics, or gay and transgender people. They need to get the other guys on board too. In order to do that, they need to show some respect. That's what civility is about - showing respect.

Whether they like it or not, they need the support of those people to get what they want — T Clark

No, they need their compliance. Until black lives do actually matter as much as white lives, there is no civility because civility is a mutual relation.

they need to show some respect. — T Clark

You cannot show respect to someone who shows you no respect; it is meaningless. Not civility, but mere servility.

No, they need their compliance. Until black lives do actually matter as much as white lives, there is no civility because civility is a mutual relation. — unenlightened

For better or worse, that's not how it works, no matter how many times you say it before you stomp your feet and hold your breath.

You cannot show respect to someone who shows you no respect; it is meaningless. Not civility, but mere servility. — unenlightened

Yes, you're right. That fool Martin Luther King got it all wrong.

I'm very sympathetic to this take - it's certainly how some progress has been made before, but the state we seem to be in suggests things are not working. I'm really at a loss these days about how public discourse and cultural battles can be negotiated. Joshs may have a point but it seems cerebral, I'm not sure I understand all his nuances.

I'm not crazy about head-butting with people who disagree on profound cultural matters. You get a headache and people tend to increase in their vehemence, almost as a defensive strategy.

For better or worse, that's not how it works, — T Clark

It doesn't work at all. But look perhaps at the women's suffrage movement as another example. Polite society would have it that it was unladylike for a woman to even want a vote, let alone demand one. Show some respect to the men who deny you the vote? It didn't work like that. It never works like that. It's always the squeaky wheel that gets some grease.

Clearly you don't see the foolishness of white society demanding respect from the movement demanding basic equal treatment for black folks. If only they were like us, everything would be alright.

It doesn't work at all. But look perhaps at the women's suffrage movement as another example. — unenlightened

Apologies for speaking on TC's behalf, but I don't think this is the point he made. The point is that in talking to people who would oppose a progressive cause, let's say trans rights, it isn't helpful to be overly confrontational or abusive, as the goal is to incrementally build support not further disenfranchise the naysayers.

Everyone seems to be taking this thread into different areas - all quite interesting in their own way.

I'm not crazy about head-butting with people who disagree on profound cultural matters. You get a headache and people tend to increase in their vehemence, almost as a defensive strategy. — Tom Storm

Again, for me it's all about effectiveness. We can argue whether I'm right about that, but I think any other discussion on this issue is pointless.

It's always the squeaky wheel that gets some grease. — unenlightened

Martin Luther King was a pretty squeaky wheel. [gratuitously provocative] I also don't remember that the suffragettes burned down any buildings[/gratuitously provocative].

Clearly you don't see the foolishness of white society demanding respect from the movement demanding basic equal treatment for black folks. If only they were like us, everything would be alright. — unenlightened

I don't "demand respect." I only claim that the social justice warrior's approach won't work.

Until black lives do actually matter as much as white lives, there is no civility because civility is a mutual relation. — unenlightened

Civility, as an obligation, is completely redundant if it amounts to nothing more than how you'd prefer to behave in any case. If we only act civilly to those to whom we're inclined already to so act, then it's no longer an obligation, it becomes meaningless, just a description of everyday behaviour.

The point of civility as a duty is to act that way even when initially disinclined to do so. Far from being redundant, it only matters when you feel someone has broken that mutual social relation and you no longer feel inclined to treat them civilly as a consequence, then you fall back on your duty to do so despite such an initial disinclination.

Martin Luther King was a pretty squeaky wheel. [gratuitously provocative] I also don't remember that the suffragettes burned down any buildings[/gratuitously provocative]. — T Clark

MLK’s political movement was based on enlightenment individualistic liberalism, which assumed that one must appeal to the reason of each individual, rather than assuming a socially based shaping of subjective views. But this appeal to reason only went so far. Specifically, it preached mostly to the choir and those on the fence , convincing those already inclined to be sympathetic to such values. Note that it did not convince most who were opposed to the civil rights movement , which is why it took the ‘incivility’ of the national guard to end segregation. I suppose the incivil wokists would point to this hypocrisy , appealing to individualist reason but using miltancy to enforce it.
If the success of MLK’s movement is to be judged by its popularity, then by that standard blm and crt are wildly successful , given that only 30 years ago a tiny handful of scholars were advocating its theoretical foundations and now it has become standard rhetoric in most universities and in many large corporations . I don’t think its languaged of incivility will persuade the opposition any more than MLK’s appeal to reason , but like that prior movement , it will grow. of its own accord among the like-minded. You may despise it, but your children will likely be more disposed toward it. Why? Because despite its excesses , it captures truths missing from MLK’s approach.

If we only act civilly to those to whom we're inclined already to so act, then it's no longer an obligation — Isaac

I agree, and that's why I didn't say anything about inclinations.My inclination is to be civil to you even though you are making a straw man argument, because I am just a sweet little wimp at heart, but it is my duty to resist your bullshit.

I also don't remember that the suffragettes burned down any buildings[/gratuitously provocative]. — T Clark

They certainly smashed a few windows.

it isn't helpful to be overly confrontational or abusive, — Tom Storm

Obviously, if it was helpful, it wouldn't be overly confrontational. But again, notice that the issue is the confrontational abuse of the other side. When you don't have the vote, you don't have justice, you don't have freedom, and those that have it are complaining that YOU are uncivil, that is manipulative bullshit in action. The incivility, confrontation and abuse starts with the oppressive society, not with those who resist it.