ABSTRACT
That impasses and stand-offs characterize the ways many people think about navigating disagreement indicates that we are facing a deep crisis of imagination in the ways we think about argument and public life. Our (in)ability to imagine, to take seriously, and to some degree share and navigate the interests and experiences of others across deep differences limits not only how we understand domestic and global citizenship, but also how we enact that citizenship with others. In talk and in practice, the inability to take seriously the interests and experiences of others leads Americans-in English Language Arts classrooms and in public life-to cast those who disagree as deeply fl awed in character. As we’ve seen on the Senate fl oor or in presidential campaigns, casting disagreement as morally wrong brings democratic deliberation to a screeching halt. More disturbing, the suicides of gay youth across the nation (Erdely, 2012), the criminalization of Black bodies (Alexander, 2010), and the proposed expulsion of immigrants (Leopold, 2015) remind us that casting disagreement as immoral is a kind of annihilation that makes difference-and anyone who embodies difference-an enemy to be squashed. This chapter takes up these concerns in three sections: Part I focuses on limitations of current models of argument instruction, including more expansive models; Part II theorizes how contemporary theories of genres as ecologies of recurring social action offer ways of thinking about argument and power relations as distributed; and Part III looks at distributed arguments affecting youth and threatening and re-writing contemporary public life.
