CHAPTER 1

CLAPPING IN

What is the sound of one hand?Hakuin Ekaku (1686–1768)

"Let's begin," I'd say, and all of us would clap our hands three times, inunison, twice softly followed by a louder third clap. In my course Arguingas an Art of Peace, I opened class sessions by "clapping in" with students,a ritual that signaled the beginning of our work for the day. I introducedthis practice on the first day of the semester, evoking a few looks of confusionand concern. Arguing as an Art of Peace fulfilled the first-yearseminar requirement in the College of Arts and Sciences, so the studentswere all freshmen, taking one of their first college courses, and clappingin wasn't quite what they were expecting. But I had their attention andseized the opportunity to introduce some features of the course.

Quite a few things about this course would, I said, be different frommost of their other college classes. I explained that I had learned aboutthe clapping-in ritual from my exposure to Japanese martial arts, wheresessions often begin with two or three claps. The practice probably hasroots in Shinto, the indigenous religion of Japan, in which clappingthe hands at a shrine alerts the deities to one's presence. The gesturealso awakens the clapper to the present moment. In our case, clappingwould serve as a call to attention and an announcement that our workwas about to begin (no invoking of deities, for better or worse). It was anunusual ritual for my students, drawn from an unfamiliar context, andthe fact that we were clapping to start each class suggested, I hoped, myinterest in new and different approaches. It also indicated the degree towhich I would be drawing on Asian arts, ideas, and practices to defamiliarizeour work on arguing and provide fresh perspectives from a non-Westerntradition. The martial connection was suggestive too becausewe would be learning some movement sequences drawn from Chineseand Japanese martial arts, focusing on arts of the "open hand." And thenotion that a clap provides a wake-up call resonated with the emphasison mindful awareness that would permeate the course. When theyclapped in that first day, students were performing a ritual that anticipatedmany aspects of their seminar, Arguing as an Art of Peace.

First-year seminars at Lehigh are small classes, usually offered in thefall semester when students are making the transition from high schoolto college. Each seminar focuses on a topic of inquiry in the arts andsciences and, in most cases, includes intensive writing. The project forstudents in my seminar was to explore how arguing could be conductedwith an open hand, as an art of peace. I used the images of an openhand and closed fist to represent, metonymically, different approachesto the arguments that occur when people disagree with one another.In this course, I explained, we would be exploring the kinds of intensedisagreements that arise when people have differing views, values, orgoals, and when they have a stake in how those differences get resolved.Hence, our focus would be on argumentative conflict, situations inwhich one could form a combative fist or offer an open palm.

CLOSED FIST, OPEN HAND

The semiotics of fist and palm are complex and multivalent: a closed fistcan be used to defend oneself or to protect good causes in peril, whereasan open palm can signal resignation or suggest appeasement. Becauseour work in Arguing as an Art of Peace would focus on the open hand, itwas important to explore that symbol's function as a signifier of peacefulintentions ... but not a sign of passive submission. Figured against thefist of power and victory, the open hand can all too readily be construedas weak or acquiescent. I wanted to present another option, based on adifferent conception of the open hand.

I encouraged students, therefore, to think about an open hand notsimply as a gesture of peaceful intent but also as an instrument of contact,a way to connect with an opposing force and, ultimately, control it.In a conflict, this open hand provides a way to establish a connectionwith an adversary in order to receive aggressive energy and redirect it.This hand is neither belligerent nor passive, neither confrontationalnor submissive, yet it has within its reach elements of both assertivenessand receptivity. The hand that connects and controls lies at the heartof a number of Asian martial arts; the one I know best is the Japaneseart of aikido. In aikido, one responds to an opposing force by blending,repositioning, redirecting, or spinning around it—all the while stayingin contact, using an open hand. While there are no kicks, punches,or hard blocks in aikido, its movements involve, nonetheless, a certainamount of forcefulness combined with yielding or acquiescence,creating a dynamic response to an unfolding encounter. The goal is toresolve conflicts nonviolently, protecting everyone (even one's opponent)from harm. That is why aikido is called an art of peace, a phrase Ihave appropriated and applied to a mode of argument based on similargoals and tactics.

THE AIM AND SCOPE OF THE BOOK

Over the course of six semesters, from 2007 through 2012, I taught a versionof my first-year seminar on the topic of arguing as an art of peace.Although I will regularly refer to the course in what follows, that course isin fact a composite of six seminars. While the class was substantially thesame in terms of structure and projects, the activities changed to someextent each time I taught it. In a sense, the course is a fictional construct,yet it is, nevertheless, an accurate and responsible representation of whatArguing as an Art of Peace became as it developed over several years.

I decided to write about the experience of teaching the coursebecause I believe that my curriculum, class activities, and pedagogicalapproach are sufficiently different from traditional ways of teachingargument to merit consideration. The course I will be presenting differsfrom most others I've encountered in the following respects:

• It includes rhetorical tactics and modes of arguing that differ fromtraditional approaches, offering alternatives to the familiar thesis-supportpatterns of arguing that many...