Blind to Debate: What Rwanda (Scholarship) Reveals About U.S. Conceptions of Public Deliberation.

Prominent Western observers fault Rwanda for failing to enact the types of debate prevalent in the contemporary U.S. deliberative sphere. They search for spectacle and mediatized point-counterpoint and find them almost entirely absent. They posit the lack of satire and lampoon - especially of national leaders - as evidence of repression. Within this worldview, there is little debate in Rwanda and robust debate in the U.S. This conclusion reveals much about U.S.-driven I.R. scholarship, but offers scant empirical evidence of the democratic health of either nation. This leaves us with little more than a paradox: our culture renders us (nearly) blind to debate that is not consonant with our cultural expectations. Recognizing this paradox is a powerful first step in crafting robust rhetorical democracies. Reflecting upon the Rwanda case, we can see that debate exists in places and forms that don't typically count. To the extent that we can uncover these forms and recover their potential for our citizenry, we can learn a great deal about our (argument) culture from the land of a thousand hills. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]