(יב) וַיֹּ֤אמֶר אֱלֹהִים֙ אֶל־בִּלְעָ֔ם לֹ֥א תֵלֵ֖ךְ עִמָּהֶ֑ם לֹ֤א תָאֹר֙ אֶת־הָעָ֔ם כִּ֥י בָר֖וּךְ הֽוּא׃
Michael Warner, "Publics and Counterpublics" (2002)
In the kind of modern society that the idea of publics has enabled, the self- organization of discourse publics has immense resonance from the point of view of individuals. Speaking, writing, and thinking involve us—actively and immediately—in a public, and thus in the being of the sovereign. Imagine how power- less people would feel if their commonality and participation were simply defined by pre-given frameworks, by institutions and law, as in other social con- texts it is through kinship. What would the world look like if all ways of being public were more like applying for a driver’s license or subscribing to a professional group—if, that is, formally organized mediations replaced the self-organized public as the image of belonging and common activity? Such is the image of totalitarianism: nonkin society organized by bureaucracy and the law. Everyone’s position, function, and capacity for action are specified for her by administration. The powerlessness of the person in such a world haunts modern capitalism as well. Our lives are minutely administered and recorded to a degree unprecedented in history; we navigate a world of corporate agents that do not respond or act as people do. Our personal capacities, such as credit, turn out on reflection to be expressions of corporate agency. Without a faith—justified or not—in self-organized publics, organically linked to our activity in their very existence, capable of being addressed, and capable of action, we would be nothing but the peas- ants of capital—which of course we might be, and some of us more than others.
In the idea of a public, political confidence is committed to a strange and uncertain destination. Sometimes it can seem too strange. Often, one cannot imagine addressing a public capable of comprehension or action. This is especially true for people in minor or marginal positions, or people distributed across political systems. The result can be a kind of political depressiveness, a blockage in activity and optimism—a disintegration of politics toward isolation, frustration, anomie, forgetfulness. This possibility, never far out of the picture, reveals by contrast how much ordinary belonging requires confidence in a public. Confidence in the possibility of a public is not simply the professional habit of the powerful, of the pundits and wonks and reaction-shot secondary celebrities who try to perform our publicness for us; the same confidence remains vital for people whose place in public media is one of consuming, witnessing, griping, or gossiping rather than one of full participation or fame. Whether faith is justified or partly ideological, a public can only produce a sense of belonging and activity if it is self-organized through discourse rather than through an external framework. This is why any distortion or blockage in access to a public can be so grave, leading people to feel powerless and frustrated. Externally organized frameworks of activity, such as voting, are perceived to be (and are) a poor substitute.
Aviva Gottlieb Zornberg, Bewilderments: Reflections on the Book of Numbers, 261-262
The one moment, it seems, when this uncanny state cracks open is the moment of Mah tovu--How goodly are your tents, O Jacob, your dwellings, O Israel! (Num. 24:5)... For the first time Balaam addresses Israel: he becomes an I addressing a you, in direct speech... Here, he calls on Israel, changes their identity: their tents are the houses of prayer and study that they will become. He recognizes them, expresses perhaps a desire that they be what the says they are.
A kind of pact is implicit in this form of address. It constitutes a speech act, which transforms the other through the fact of its utterance. Statements like, "You are my wife," or "I do," for instance, transform the speaker. Jacques Lacan notes that in such acts of "full speech," or "founding speech," both self and other are invested with a new reality.
Balaam achieves this essential form of human speech in one moment of Mah tovu--How goodly are your tents! We, Israel, who will be the original readers of this text, are changed by his address. It makes a difference to us, to Israel, that Balaam "tasted" this essential freedom of the mouth. When Balaam invokes Israel in this way, a kind of metaphysical circumcision, a brit, a Covenant, takes place: two things are linked in a kind of pact.
John D. Inazu, Confident Pluralism: Surviving and Thriving through Deep Difference (University of Chicago Press 2016), 101-103
We should not underestimate the power and significance of our words, or what is at stake in our language. Law professor James Boyd White suggests that “practically everything” is at stake, “including both the integrity of the individual person and the quality of our larger culture and polity.” White elaborates on this idea in a powerful passage in his book, Living Speech:
"Each of us is partly made by the world we inhabit; this means that our most private and personal and apparently independent choices, the roots of our imagination, may be corrupted by something wrong, or evil, or demeaning, or trivializing in our world, which we have internalized. This in turn means that our choices in the world of speech, and those of others, ought not be granted perfect and unquestioned authority, either on the grounds that speech is harmless or that more speech is always all to the good."
As White concludes: “What we say, and what others say, matters enormously to all of us. It is a form of action."
I wonder how many of us have ever thought about White’s challenge, let alone taken it seriously. If we did, our tweets and Face- book posts might look different. Some of us might better reflect tolerance, humility, and patience in our conversations across difference. Others of us might at least start having those conversations.
Confident pluralism’s speech imperative is: We should take steps to soften our tone and move out of our echo chambers. We should choose to avoid the hurtful insult and the conversation stopper. Living speech, even in the midst of real and painful differences, can be one of our most important bridges to one another.