On Dissent: Its Meaning in America
By Ronald K..L. Collins and David M. Skover
Cambridge University Press
Hardback $24.99, Amazon $18.95
200 pages
June 2013
For all that has been said about dissent—in books, articles, judicial opinions, and in the popular culture—it is remarkable that no one has devoted much, if any, attention to explaining what dissent is or what we intend to convey when we invoke it. No one has attempted to sketch its philosophical, linguistic, legal, or cultural meanings or usages. Again, as a concept, dissent is taken for granted, as if we should all recognize it immediately when we see or hear it.
Imagine a great, weekend-long, detailed college bull session with scholars, lawyers, and a handful of professional intellectual troublemakers and you've got the flavor of legal mavens Ronald K.L. Collins' and David M. Skover's intriguing thought book,
On Dissent. Rather than coming to a consensus around the vague notion of dissent, the authors pose questions to the likes of the late Howard Zinn, Ralph Nader, Cornel West and even Phil Donahue about what, exactly, constitutes dissent.
As the authors point out in the opening of the book, dissent has been honored and lauded (usually not at the time, but later)—yet rarely explored in depth. And this is reflected in some of the discussions featured in the book. It becomes clear that different concepts and lines are drawn by different interpreters of dissent—and what makes "legitimate" dissent stand out from that considered illegitimate is an open question.
Join me beneath the fold for more cerebral and intriguing discussion featured in the book ...
But before getting even to the question of legitimacy, the authors tease out what they call the three "key characteristics" of true dissent: "that the expression is intentional; that it is critical; and that it is public." You can't, they argue, accidentally dissent, you can't be expressing dissent by agreeing with majority opinion (with one exception, which I'll get to) and you can't really "dissent" uttering rebellion only to yourself. On these principles, pretty much all interviewees agree … until one begins defining some of these terms—like public. One thought experiment has someone write a strongly dissenting private letter to President Johnson. Is that private or public? Is it private until it's posthumously published? What if the public never sees it but the writer is risking a job or an appointment by the criticism? Is it then dissent?
And then there's the question of the object of criticism. If you're in a Mormon community that believes in polygamy and you disagree with that tenet—yet are agreeing with the wider society—is that dissent? Most interviewees thought so; in-group dissent, even if it aligns with outside majority opinion, is a transgression for the individual dissenter, who risks ostracism in his or her own community.
Other questions arise: Is dissent always speech? Is it an action? And what is the relationship between protest and dissent? This latter question takes up quite a bit of space in the book, as the authors muse:
… there is something regarding the word "dissent" that has a more dignified appreciation about it. While "dissent" and "protest" may be seen as conceptual cousins, the former strikes us as the nobler cousin... “dissent” may generally be perceived as indicating "protest-plus"—that is, a "plus" that suggests societal toleration.... the more the notion of dissent moves away from normative acceptance, the more we are likely to devalue the term and even forsake it.
There's quite a bit of discussion around legality and illegality: Does an act have to be illegal in order to qualify as dissent? Or, to turn it around, is an illegal act "legitimate" dissent? Instinctively, I think most of us think of illegal acts—Thoreau's refusal to pay taxes, for instance—as the prototypical dissension. But the authors argue there are some who view illegal acts as beyond the pale:
Dissent only connotes legitimate modes of conveying oppositional viewpoints. For those who hold such views, change is to be brought about in an open and democratic society by legal means – engaging in peaceful and public debate, petitioning the government for a redress of grievances, exercising the franchise, or, if need be, amending the Constitution. Underlying their perspective is the assumption that legitimate dissent must be peaceful, orderly, and lawful.
The authors also postulate that doubt, disbelief and dissent "appear to fall on a conceptual and linguistic continuum, with doubt and disbelief quite often being antecedent stages to dissent." Martin Luther is the prime example of this; first, his personal religious beliefs were doubted, then bloomed into disbelief. But it wasn't until he made them public that they crossed the line into dissent.
The greatest fault line on definitions emerges when one looks at violence and dissent. If an act is violent, does it qualify as dissent? One argument on the nay side:
At some point, degrees of violence taint the purity of persuasive exercise that is a primary hallmark of dissent. That is, the more that violence is poured into the beaker of dissent, the more it dilutes its staying power. This is particularly the case in a democratic and free-speech culture such as our own, which furnishes many nonviolent avenues for opposition to governmental policies and practices.
Discussion also begins around a definition of violence. Is a pie in the face "violence?" Is destruction of property? What property? Of what value? And what of the revolutionary? Is the revolutionary the penultimate dissenter or an outlying illegitimate actor? The authors come down pretty squarely on the side of
not classifying the revolutionary as a true dissenter:
The criticism of a dissenter is not analogous to the militant acts of a revolutionary, assassin, or terrorist. While exercises of dissent may, over time, become more robust and blossom into revolution, the dissident makes the journey from insider to outsider, from group member to outlier, from reformer to insurrectionist, and from peaceful and mildly violent acts to forceful and excessively violent acts. In short, the difference is between persuasion on the one hand and coercion on the other.
In the age of Occupy gatherings and tea party town hall protests, the question of dissent and its definition—and ultimate purpose—becomes more urgent, and the timing of
On Dissent couldn't be better in that sense. However, keep in mind it's a book that raises more questions than it answers, and that leaves you thinking through the implications long after the last page is read. Like many complex areas where individuals and societies come in conflict, there is a lot of gray area. That's part of the discomfort, the authors would say, of democracy. And the clashing opinions of the likes of Zinn and Nader, West and Noam Chomsky, just underscore how open the framing of dissension still is in this country.