Hannah Arendt: Dialectical Communicative Labor

Arnett, R. (2007).  Hannah Arendt: Dialectical Communicative Labor. In P. Arneson (Ed). Perspectives on Philosophy of Communication. West Layfayette: Purdue University Press.

An examination of Hannah Arendt’s work.

Will use Dialectical Communicative Labor (DCL) as a conceptual key.

DCL is contrasted with

-       Alienated Communicative work.

-       Puts content over process.

How one does communication, work or labor, and where – Private, Public or Social.

-       Situates Communicative Life.

DCL is a term used by the writer, not the Arendt.

Premise: Collapse of modernity as a failed social experiment.

-       The use of public and private life to create false hope.

Optimism and progress live on a gradual upward slope of increased expectations:

-       They are vulnerable to setbacks.

-       Unclear or ill conceived ventures.

-       False paths.

Concerned with conformity within the social sphere shaped by those who willingly and unwillingly were limited by consensus.

Post-modernity opened the door to re-engagement with public and political life.

The Third Reich was a public call to conformity within the social domain.

-       Did not tolerate differentiation.

Though an extreme example of the limits of conformity, Arendt was aware of more subtler forms of conformity that hold power.

Enlared mentality:

-       Ability to consider other views.

-       Enriches ones insights.

-       Encourages reflection of the other.

-       Increases ability to see, judge and implement with attentiveness to differences and particulars.

-       Encourages increased narratives and interpretive skills.

-       Liberates thinking from just private perspectives.

DCL is the reflection of others using enlarged mentalities.

Pariah – Cast aside, marginalized.

Parvenu – Dominate, accepted.

Social spheres captures Parvenus.

-       They demand conformity.

-       Destroy uniqueness.

Differentiation between public and private life must be reconstituted to temper social spheres.

On works to enter certain social spheres that are off limits without conformity.

Social sphere is also exclusionary.

Arendt: We must think to live together.

-       Moral decision making by emotivism or personal preference misses engagement with situated existence.

Modernity’s Race

-       enlightenment, Reformation and Industrial Revolution were optimism through progress – in place of tradition.

-       Without tradition the self is left to fend for itself.

Modernity: Progress – social lack of reflection

Post Modern: Tradition

By attacking the social on opens a space to challenge convention.

A tension:

-       The social becomes the collapse of the individual.

-       It is formed with the collapse of public and private spheres and forms through universal agreements of progress.

-       The social then serves as the foundation for the individual.

Modernity: Progress acts as the meta narrative with the self open to development and changes.

-       Taken for granted: commitment to progress.

-       Offers assurance

-       People are marshaled into implementers of progress.

Individuality is then considered different and then marginalized.

Knowledege nourished by Public and Private is not relevant when people hold unbridled confidence in universals and pay unlimited attention to the self.

We develop through traditions in the post-modern age.

DCL: suggests the necessity of differenation that allows for balance with the social sphere.

Differentiation is at the core.

-       Remove oneself from the social sphere.

Communicative life without dialectical questioning puts us in extreme commonness.

For Arnedt:  Courage lies in the everyday life that illuminate people differently and uniquely.

Creative Labor: Meaningful engagement and thoughtful ideas happen outside the social sphere.