Improvising politics: Jazz, democracy, and challenging the politics of mutual respect

My dissertation, “Improvising Politics: Jazz, Democracy, and Challenging the Politics of Mutual Respect,” is an interpretive study of deliberative democracy, jazz theory, and the political virtue of mutual respect. Leading democratic theory generally defines mutual respect as a rule that discourages treating people as ends and instead appeals to common humanity. The problem with this requirement is that racialized patterns of character and moral assessments have not fully yielded to appeals to common humanity. Moreover, mutual respect as a precondition tends to be imposed and locks citizens into certain norms of behavior to guarantee that their positions will be recognized and taken seriously. Even correctives to deliberative theories seek to preserve deliberation by encouraging people to pay attention, but they offer no mechanism for citizens to respond to what has been heard in deliberation. My dissertation deviates from traditional analyses of deliberative democracy by elaborating a theory of democratic engagement based upon improvisation.; Overall my dissertation suggests the need for a new and unconventional approach to understand how citizens engage each other. I define improvisation as an orientation towards politics, that occurs when citizens open themselves up to surprise, to influence from others, after agreeing to work within a framework where the primary constraint is that they agree to respond to what has been heard from fellow citizens. I argue that improvising politics can be an intentional approach to political interaction (not merely “spontaneous”), one that encourages citizens to build skills in the areas of hearing, acknowledging, responding to what has been heard, practicing compassion, and depending on others. This approach can offer deeper insight into democratic theory by strengthening the potential to explain democratic engagement in the twenty-first century. It also suggests a different “structure” of sorts, where each participant has a chance to lead and learns how to play a supportive role. I maintain that citizens are capable of improvising, whether it is at the level of everyday discussion or in more formal settings. I examine examples from the Civil Rights Movement and electronic organizing to illustrate ways that improvisation has already made its appearance in politics.