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YOUNG, Iris Marion. Inclusion and democracy. New York: Oxford University Press, 2002.
2
INCLUSIVE POLITICAL COMMUNICATION
[pp. 52-80]

Inclusion increases the chances that those who make proposals will transform their
positions from an initial selfregarding stance to a more objective appeal to justice,
because they must listen to others with differing positions to whom they are also
answerable. (p. 52)

The most obvious forms of exclusion are those that keep some individuals or groups
out of the fora of debate or processes of decision-making, or which allow some
individuals or groups dominative control over what happens in them. I call this
external exclusion. (p. 52) Exclusin externa.

Less noticed are those forms of exclusion that sometimes occur even when
individuals and groups are nominally included in the discussion and decision-making
process. In the previous chapter I referred to several of these forms of internal
exclusion: the terms of discourse make assumptions some do not share, the interaction
privileges specific styles of expression, the participation of some people is dismissed
as out of order. (p. 53) Exclusin interna.

3 modos de comunicacin que mitigan la exclusin interna: greeting, rhetoric,

narrative.
o Greeting, or in political contexts public acknowledgement, is a form of
communication where a subject directly recognizes the subjectivity of others,
thereby fostering trust. (p. 53)
o Rhetoric, the ways that political assertions and arguments are expressed, has
several functions that contribute to inclusive and persuasive political
communication, including calling attention to points and situating speakers and
audience in relation to one another. (p. 53)
o Narrative also has several functions that counter exclusive tendencies and
further argument. Among other functions, narrative empowers relatively
disfranchised groups to assert themselves publicly; it also offers means by
which people whose experiences and beliefs differ so much that they do not
share enough premisses to engage in fruitful debate can nevertheless reach
dialogical understanding. (p. 53)

1. External and Internal Exclusion

Perhaps the most pervasive and insidious form of external exclusion in modern
democracies is what I referred to in the previous chapters as the ability for
economically or socially powerful actors also to exercise political domination. If some
citizens are able to buy sufficient media time to dominate public discussion of an

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issue, others are effectively excluded. When industrialists or financiers threaten to
disinvest in a region unless political decisions go the way they wish, they exercise
exclusive tyranny. When political candidates must depend on huge contributions from
particular individuals or organizations to win elections, then political influence is
wrongly unequal. (p. 54)

theory of democratic inclusion requires an expanded conception of political

communication, both in order to identify modes of internal inclusion and to provide an
account of more inclusive possibilities of attending to one another in order to reach
understanding. (p. 56)

2. Greeting, or Public Acknowledgement

situations of political communication, in which participants explicitly acknowledge

the other participants, are more substantively inclusive than those that do not. What I
call greeting, or public acknowledgement, is thus a specific communicative gesture
with important and not sufficiently noticed functions for democratic practice. (p. 57)

Levinas describes the most primordial moment of an ethical relation between one
person and another as a condition of being hostage. To recognize another person is to
find oneself already claimed upon by the other persons potential neediness. The
sensual, material proximity of the other person in his or her bodily need and
possibility for suffering makes an unavoidable claim on me, to which I am hostage.
(p. 58)

In the moment of communication I call greeting, a speaker announces her presence as

ready to listen and take responsibility for her relationship to her interlocutors, at the
same time that it announces her distance from the others, their irreducible particularity.
Greetings in this broad sense are a constant aspect of everyday communicative
interaction. (p. 59)

Greeting, which I shall also call public acknowledgement, names communicative

political gestures through which those who have conflicts aim to solve problems,
recognize others as included in the discussion, especially those with whom they differ
in opinion, interest, or social location. (p. 61)

3. Affirmative Uses of Rhetoric

Some theorists of deliberative democracy maintain a Platonic distinction between

rational speech and mere rhetoric, and in doing so they often denigrate emotion,
figurative language, or unusual or playful forms of expression. (p. 63)

rhetoric has a place in any thorough theory of communicative democracy. Because

rhetoric is an aspect of all discourse, the temptation should be resisted to base a theory
of deliberative democracy on a notion of non-rhetorical speech that is coolly and
purely argumentative. (p. 64)

La retrica incluye al menos los siguientes aspectos de la comunicacin, que se

pueden dar simultneamente:

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o the emotional tone of the discourse, whether its content is uttered with fear,
hope, anger, joy, and other expressions of passion that move through discourse.
No discourse lacks emotional tone. (p. 65)
o The use in discourse of figures of speech, such as simile, metaphor, puns,
synecdoche, etc., along with the styles or attitudes such figures producethat
is, to be playful, humorous, ironic, deadpan, mocking, grave, or majestic.
(p.65)
o Forms of making a point that do not only involve speech, such as visual
media, signs and banners, street demonstration, guerrilla theatre, and the use of
symbols in all these contexts. (p. 65)
o All these affective, embodied, and stylistic aspects of communication, finally,
involve attention to the particular audience of ones communication, and
orienting ones claims and arguments to the particular assumptions, history,
and idioms of that audience. (p. 65)

Rhetorical moves often help to get an issue on the agenda for deliberation. (p. 66)

Rhetoric fashions claims and arguments in ways appropriate to a particular public in

a particular situation. (p. 67)
o Rhetoric helps situate claims and arguments that meet the universalistic
criterion of publicity within the particular context of discussion. As dialogic,
an effective contribution to public discussion engages with its audience, and
reflectively includes in its mode of expression attention to the interests,
assumptions, values, meanings, and situation of this particular audience. (p.
68)

Rhetoric motivates the move from reason to judgement. (p. 69)

o The good rhetorician is one who attempts to persuade listeners by orienting
proposals and arguments towards their collective and plural interests and
desires, inviting them to transform these in the service of making a judgement
together, but also acceding to them as the judges, rather than claiming himself
or herself to know. (p. 69)

4. Narrative and Situated Knowledge

En casos de personas que no comparten premisas o modos de justificar el discurso, la

argumentacin poco puede hacer para facilitar la comunicacin. Es entonces que la
narratividad puede jugar un papel importante.

In recent years a number of legal theorists have turned to narrative as a means of

giving voice to kinds of experience which often go unheard in legal discussions and
courtroom settings, and as a means of challenging the idea that law expresses an
impartial and neutral standpoint above all particular perspectives. Some legal theorists

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discuss the way that storytelling in the legal context functions to challenge a
hegemonic view and express the particularity of experience to which the law ought to
respond but often does not. (p. 71)

Several scholars of Latin American literature offer another variant of a theory of the
political function of storytelling, in their reflections on testimonio. Some resistance
movement leaders in Central and South America narrate their life stories as a means of
exposing to the wider literate world the oppression of their people and the repression
they suffer from their governments. (p. 71) El testimonio

Where we lack shared understandings in crucial respects, sometimes forms of

communication other than argument can speak across our differences to promote
understanding. I take the use of narrative in political communication to be one
important such mode. (p. 72)

Political narrative differs from other forms of narrative by its intent and its audience
context. I tell the story not primarily to entertain or reveal myself, but to make a point
to demonstrate, describe, explain, or justify something to others in an ongoing
political discussion. Political narrative furthers discussion across difference in several
ways. (p. 72) narrativa poltica

Response to the differend. How can a group that suffers a particular harm or
oppression move from a situation of total silencing and exclusion with respect to this
suffering to its public expression? Storytelling is often an important bridge in such
cases between the mute experience of being wronged and political arguments about
justice. (p. 72) De acuerdo

Facilitation of local publics and articulation of collective affinities. By a local

public I mean a collective of persons allied within the wider polity with respect to
particular interests, opinions, and/or social positions. Storytelling is often an important
means by which members of such collectives identify one another, and identify the
basis of their affinity. The narrative exchanges give reflective voice to situated
experiences and help affinity groupings give an account of their own individual
identities in relation to their social positioning and their affinities with others. (p. 73)

Understanding the experience of others and countering preunderstandings.

Storytelling is often the only vehicle for understanding the particular experiences of
those in particular social situations, [/] experiences not shared by those situated
differently, but which they must understand in order to do justice. (pp. 73-74)

Revealing the source of values, priorities, or cultural meanings. narrative can

serve to explain to outsiders what practices, places, or symbols mean to the people
who hold them and why they are valuable. Values, unlike norms, often cannot be
justified through argument. But neither are they arbitrary. Their basis often emerges
from the situated narrative of persons or groups. Through narrative the outsiders may
come to understand why the insiders value what they value and why they have the
priorities they have. (p. 75)

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Aid in constituting the social knowledge that enlarges thought. Stories not only
relate the experiences of the protagonists, but also present a particular interpretation of
their relationships with others. Each person and collective has an account not only of
their own life and history, but of every other position that affects their experience.
Thus listeners can learn about how their own position, actions, and values appear to
others from the stories they tell. (p. 76)
o By means of narratives expressed in public with others differently situated
who also tell their stories, speakers and listeners can develop the enlarged
thought that transforms their thinking about issues from being narrowly
selfinterested or self-regarding about an issue, to thinking about an issue in a
way that takes account of the perspectives of others. (p. 76)

5. Dangers of Manipulation and Deceit

I do not offer practices of greeting, rhetoric, and narrative as substitutes for argument.
Normative ideals of democratic communication crucially entail that participants
require reasons of one another and critically evaluate them. These modes of
communication, rather, are important additions to argument in an enlarged conception
of democratic engagement. (P. 79)

The only remedy for false or invalid arguments is criticism. Similarly, listeners to
greetings, rhetoric, and narrative should be critically vigilant, and should apply
standards of evaluation to them as well as to argument. (p. 79)

an inclusive theory and practice of communicative democracy should not privilege

specific ways of making claims and arguments. Participants in communicative
democracy should listen to all modes of expression that aim to co-operate and reach a
solution to collective problems. (p. 80)