UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — From books like “How Democracies Die” to The Washington Post’s slogan of “democracy dies in darkness,” the notion of democracy being under attack has been a common refrain in media and culture since the 2016 election.
But do we really understand what an attack on democracy looks like? Or what the effects of an attack would be? Ralph Cintron of the University of Illinois at Chicago will address those questions when he presents the Center for Democratic Deliberation's 2022 Kenneth Burke Memorial Lecture. The lecture, which is open to the public, will be held at 4 p.m. April 14 at the Hintz Family Alumni Center on Penn State's University Park campus and online.
Cintron’s presentation, “Is Democracy Under Attack?” will argue that the reference to attacks on democracy reinforces our commitment to democracy’s institutions while hiding its structural shortcomings, such as a dependence on capitalism and preference for citizens over noncitizens. This talk will be framed through Burke’s “a way of seeing is also a way of not seeing” — which Cintron extends to say, “a way of knowing is also a way of not knowing.”
Xiaoye You, director of the Center for Democratic Deliberation at Penn State and Liberal Arts Professor of English and Asian Studies, first became aware of Cintron’s work on ethnography in graduate school. He saw an opportunity to connect that earlier work to his more recent focus on democracy and rhetoric.
“In his book ‘Democracy as Fetish,’ for instance, he compares a so-called advanced democracy (the United States) and an emergent democracy (Kosovo) to identify democracy's inherent contradictions,” You said. “In discussing American democracy, he incorporates insights from his ethnographic fieldwork conducted over the course of 20 years in the Latino neighborhoods of Chicago. I know our rhetoric students will have questions on how Cintron incorporated ethnographic knowledge into his rhetorical scholarship, and they are very excited about his visit.”
Cintron holds a joint appointment in English and the Latino and Latin American Studies Program at the University of Illinois at Chicago. His research and teaching interests are in rhetorical studies and ethnography, particularly urban ethnography; urban theory; theories of transnationalism; political theory, particularly the anthropology of democracy; and social theory. His most recent book is “Democracy as Fetish,” published in 2020 by Penn State University Press.
The Kenneth Burke Memorial Lecture honors the legacy of the American literary theorist, poet, essayist and novelist for which it is named. Burke taught at Penn State's University Park campus; his papers are archived in the University Libraries.
Visit democracy.psu.edu/events for more information and to register.