Agenda for the Seminar
"Agenda" is not quite the right word. We plan to follow the basic session "labels" but will move
through material each session as the seminar flows. Topics listed under each session are possible
topics, generated from the reading of the papers by your leaders. In addition, topics will be added
by late papers not yet received. You may want to suggest additional topics under each session.
Session 1: Orientation
Thursday, May 9, 5-6 PM, Klumpp, convener
- Introductions
- Discussion of agenda and procedures
- Oral reports by seminarists from whom we have no papers
Session 2: Diagnosing the Problems of American
Democracy
Friday, May 10, 1:30-3:00 PM, Balthrop, convener
- Is the failure of our democracy "a Burkean problem"?
- What is "the public"? Counter-publics versus identification strategies
- The quality of discourse
- Do we have the sort of discourse exemplified in "Rhetoric of Hitler's Battle"?
- Looking at Burke looking at the 1930s, what sort of critique would we make the
1990s?
- Problems of socialization
- Have we lost the quality of memory in our discourse?
- Have we failed to attend to legitimacy?
- How do we distribute blame? Scope and circumference
- Politicians
- The political system
- Practices
- The economic system
- Failures of teaching
Session 3: Burkean Possibilities for Improving
Democracy and Democratic Social Change
Saturday, May 11, 10:30-12:00, Klumpp, convener
- Burkean Strategies to enhance democracy
- The comic frame
- The poetic motive
- Metaphors of democracy
- Substance and Constitution in democratic process
- The Place and Role of the Citizen-Critic
- "Ethical Philosopher of Being"
- The "doctor" of "Rhetoric of Hitler's Battle"
- Burkean Definitions of Rhetoric and Democratic Discourse
- "Inducing cooperation in beings that by nature respond to symbols"
- Identification versus persuasion
Session 4: Toward a Burkean Report on Democracy
and Democratic Change
Sunday, May 12, 9-10 AM, Balthrop Convener
We will attempt to draw our discussion together in a report for the Newsletter
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