Ramsey - Experiences Between Philosophy and Communication: Engaging the Philosophical Contributions of Calvin O. Schrag

Experiences between

Philosophy and

Communication

SUNY series in the Philosophy of the Social Sciences Lenore Langsdorf, editor

Experiences between

Philosophy and

Communication

Engaging the Philosophical Contributions

of Calvin O. Schrag

Edited by

Ramsey Eric Ramsey

and

David James Miller

STATE UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORK PRESS

Published by

State University of New York Press, Albany

2003 State University of New York

All rights reserved

Printed in the United States of America

No part of this book may be used or reproduced

in any manner whatsoever without written permission.

No part of this book may be stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means including electronic, electrostatic, magnetic tape, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without the prior permission in writing of the publisher.

For information, address State University of New York Press, 90 State Street, Suite 700, Albany, NY 12207

Production by Diane Ganeles

Marketing by Jennifer Giovani

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Experiences between philosophy and communication : engaging the philosophical contributions of Calvin O. Schrag / edited by Ramsey Eric Ramsey and David James Miller.

p. cm. (SUNY series in the philosophy of the social sciences) Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 0-7914-5875-X (alk. paper) ISBN 0-7914-5876-8 (pbk. : alk. paper) 1. Schrag, Calvin O. 2. CommunicationPhilosophy. I. Ramsey, Ramsey Eric, 1960

II. Miller, David James, 1957 III. Series.

B945.S3264 E96 2003

191dc21

2002042643

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Contents

Introduction: In-between Philosophy and

Communication Studies

vii

Ramsey Eric Ramsey

Part I. Conversation as Invitation to Dialogue

From the Loving Struggle to the Struggle to Love:

A Conversation with Calvin O. Schrag

Ramsey Eric Ramsey and David James Miller

Part II. Publics and Their Problems

Communicative Praxis and Collective Decision Making: From Phenomenology to the Politics of Experience to Dialogic Constitutive Practices

Stanley Deetz, Amy Grim, and Alexander Lyon

Limitations of the Public Sphere: The Repressive Voice of Modernity

Raymie McKerrow

Transversing Dualisms and Situating the Embodied Self in Organizational Theory and Practice

Majia Holmer Nadesan

Part III. On Giving and Suffering

The Gift of Acknowledgment

Michael J. Hyde

v

vi Contents

Awaiting the Year of the Donkey

Stephen Pluhck

On Hearing the Call: From the Pain of Affliction

toward Healing

David James Miller and Michael J. Millington

Part IV. Philosophizing the In-between

Feminism after Postmodernity: Some Places of

Narrative in Communicative Praxis

Dennis K. Mumby

Epistemology, Tropology, Hermeneutics, and the

Essence of Language

Lenore Langsdorf

Procreation in a Beautiful Medium: Eroticizing the Vectors of Communicative Praxis

Ramsey Eric Ramsey

Selected Publications by Calvin O. Schrag

Contributors

Index

Introduction

In-between Philosophy and

Communication Studies

RAMSEY ERIC RAMSEY

If not in Gorgias, then at least by Phaedrus, Plato understands that he would have to think in-between rhetoric and philosophy if he was going to be able to get at things. As Calvin O. Schrag argued in the article that announced his then-forthcoming book Communicative Praxis and theSpace of Subjectivity, today rhetoric and communication need to be resituated at the end of philosophy. With that and subsequent work, Schrag has helped make this resituating possible in unique and profound ways.

Those of us who have learned from Professor Schragwhether as participants in his seminars, readers of his published works, or bothand who teach in departments of communication studies and who work there to philosophize the consequences of this practice, find ourselves having incurred many debts to him. For those as yet unfamiliar with his work, so much remains to be gathered and put to work to assist our thinking about the consequences of communicative praxis across a variety of life-world contexts.

I, along with my co-editor David James Miller, have brought together nine essays by leading scholars whose work has engaged and benefited from Schrags many contributions and will act in various ways as extensions, explications, and provocations to those studying communicative phenomena. In lieu of a lengthy introduction, we have been given the gift of a full-length interview with Schrag conducted by the editors.

The only such interview ever granted, it covers the wide spectrum of issues with which Schrag has dealt in his many scholarly works. Although each contributor to this collection wrote without access to the interview vii

viii Ramsey

(with the exception of the editors), it is amazing to note the ways in which each produced essays that explore the issues raised in this conversation.

The work by the contributors shows how widely and deeply influential Schrags philosophy is and how much it gives to the future of dialogues concerning theory in the philosophical study of communication.

Recently Schrags philosophical positions were engaged by Roger Mourad, a philosopher of education, to argue for a postdisciplinary world. Along with my co-editor and all the contributors, I am grateful to be able to make public the following interview and collection of insightful essays of this, if not postdisciplinary, then at least interdisciplinary volume responding to Schrags philosophical positions from those of us who philosophize elsewhere.

Part I Conversation as Invitation

to Dialogue

This page intentionally left blank.

From the Loving Struggle

to the Struggle to Love

A Conversation with Calvin O. Schrag

RAMSEY ERIC RAMSEY AND

DAVID JAMES MILLER

INTRODUCTORY REMARKS

RER/DJM: Professor Schrag, we are immensely grateful for the opportunity to reflect here on the richness of the work that marks your distinguished career. We hope that, in some small way, we can offer something here that acknowledges the time, encouragement, and support you so selflessly and graciously give those who are working in philosophy and communication.

It is our intention to conduct this conversation in such a way that it will prove to be useful both to those who are familiar with your work and to those as yet unfamiliar with it. We hope to offer those already familiar with the work, not only further contextualization, but a new perspective on the work as well. We have always believed that the radical implications of your work, implications that have become obvious to us in our many conversations with you, have too often been overlooked, and we hope that in this conversation we can bring some of these implications to the fore. For those unfamiliar with your work, we hope to offer a consolidated, if not a comprehensive, introduction to your thought.

In discussing your work, it will become evident that we have a particular interest in your reflections on the phenomenon of communicative praxis. We are scholars trained in both the disciplines of philosophy and communication and have been dedicated from the first to an elaboration of the philosophy of communication. It is our hope that in the course of 3