Stacy Clifford Simplican, Senior Lecturer, Department of Gender & Sexuality Studies
Last week, the Vanderbilt Project on Unity & American Democracy launched the Vanderbilt Unity Lab. They are now accepting applications from students, faculty and staff to fill 25 program training positions.
I applied immediately. But there’s just one problem.
I hate unity.
How could I hate such a “great and noble idea”? Reading over the Unity Project’s website, I’m either lazy or an enemy to American democracy.
In fact, I’m a feminist.
More specifically, I am a senior lecturer in the Department of Gender & Sexuality Studies at Vanderbilt, and my expertise is in feminist democratic theory.
In the journal Disability & Society, I argued that there are different democratic theories. Democratic theorists all value democracy, but they prioritize different values. Unity is one of them. As a guiding principle, unity is closely associated with theories of communitarian democracy. Feminist theories of democracy, in contrast, are more likely to value plurality. Plurality is what enables democratic citizens to be different, to have conflicting beliefs and to debate these differences in open forums.
We can all value democracy, but how we prioritize competing values—like unity and plurality—can lead to very different visions of what projects like the Unity Lab should do.
With a name like the Unity Lab, and being organized by the Vanderbilt Project on Unity & American Democracy, I can’t help but suspect a communitarian vibe: a vision that by bringing members of Vanderbilt’s community together, we can bolster our ties to one another and heighten our sense of belonging.
John Geer, the Ginny and Conner Searcy Dean of the College of Arts and Science at Vanderbilt University, captures this when he says, “Community is a fundamental building block of unity.”
What’s not to like?
Critique 1: Unity Requires an ‘Us’ and a ‘Them’
For feminist democratic theorist and former professor at Westminster University Chantal Mouffe, the creation of an “us” always implies a “them.”
Mouffe calls this the “democratic paradox.” And we find it in places like the United States, where liberal political theory strongly influences our ideas of democracy. I’m talking about classical liberals like John Locke and John Stuart Mill, not Joe Biden and Jon Stewart.
Liberal political theorists understand all persons as equal, no matter what. Here, equality is an abstract and universal concept. Democratic equality is less abstract because a democracy needs actual people. Democracies need borders. This democratic paradox—between an abstract universal equality that encompasses everyone and a specific democratic community inhabited by actual people—is inescapable.
And it gets us back to the Unity Lab, the purpose of which is to cultivate “connections across campus.” Mouffe would point out that the Unity Lab has already constructed an “us” and a “them.” Those within our campus and those outside it.
Calls for unity cannot escape this “us” vs. “them” mentality.
But that’s not the only problem between unity and plurality.
Critique 2: Unity Silences Difference and Dissent
Mouffe welcomes communitarians’ emphasis on democratic participation, so she would be excited by the Unity Lab’s mission to bring people together. But she would worry about the organizing value of unity.
When we envision the ideal Vanderbilt as unified, who and what will we exclude? Will people who disagree and who criticize the institution threaten unity? Will they be forced to change? Or forced to leave?
Unity can sound a lot like consensus.
If allowed to divorce from other democratic values, unity can turn anti-democratic.
It’s important not to confuse some feminists’ emphasis on valuing difference with Vanderbilt University’s commitment to “freedom of expression and principled neutrality.” Yes, both viewpoints value difference, expression and conflict.
Feminists like Mouffe and me, however, bring attention to power and inequality and how they function. A posture of institutional neutrality cannot bring about the radical change necessary to disrupt institutional inequity at our university.
Calls for unity—that do not recognize the privilege of some and the disempowerment of others—can sound a lot like a celebration of the status quo, in which the values of the most vocal and the most powerful will prevail.
Critique 3: Unity Wants ONE Community
Finally, calls for a Unity Lab at Vanderbilt make it seem as if the best campus is the one that is unified. One community.
But our campus has lots of communities. And Mouffe would value the democratic plurality that multiple and diverse communities represent.
More importantly, as a feminist theorist always thinking about power and inequality, Mouffe reminds us that communities are not apolitical spaces.
Yale Professor Michael Warner captures this truth in his work on “counterpublics.” For Warner, a counterpublic maintains “an awareness of its subordinate status.” Counterpublics are politically significant because they offer marginalized and minoritized communities spaces to actively resist the oppressive norms of mainstream, dominant spaces.
An uncritical call for a unified campus can invalidate the multiple and diverse ways that people navigate and find belonging on our campus.
But Here’s Why I Hope the Unity Lab Hires Me—and Why I Hope You Apply Too
Mouffe would not despair!
This tension—between a desire for unity and the value of recognizing difference—is the heart of the democratic paradox. Indeed, as I argued: “This democratic paradox—between abstract universal equality and an exclusionary democratic community—is inescapable and, yet, productive: The commitment to universal liberal equality enables citizens to challenge exclusion.”
In short, the democratic paradox jump-starts democratic participation.
I find lots of inspiration for robust and diverse community connections in the Unity Lab’s description of their four training models. These include the Intercultural Development Inventory, Narrative 4, Restorative Practice Pedagogy and Millions of Conversations.
You can read more about these four training models here, but what I find most inspiring in the descriptions is the complete and utter disregard for unity.
Instead, the values underlying these models include empathy, listening, curiosity, compassion, disagreement, conflict and communication.
These are the values that inspired Audre Lorde’s famous speech “The Master’s Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master’s House”:
But community must not mean a shedding of our differences, nor the pathetic pretense that these differences do not exist.
These are the values of a feminist democrat—the democratic citizen who is not afraid to demand equality, even if their equality threatens the status quo that glues unity together.
And I hope they are the values that attract you—students, faculty and staff—to apply too.
I believe these values—compassion, empathy, listening and difference—will make a difference to our campus and our democracy.
Even if we have to throw out unity to get there.