Agonistic Respect and the Labour of Civility

Debates about civility usually picture politics in terms of deliberation. When framed in this way, the problem of civility concerns the function of socially contingent norms of politeness for sustaining public-minded communication through which political disagreement can be addressed. While it is commonly acknowledged that the ways in which we display respect (or disrespect) for each other according to contingent social norms is embodied, the significance of such practices is judged in relation to a regulative ideal of speaking among persons who are free and equal. In this paper, we consider the significance of civility by picturing politics as labour. Drawing on feminist theory, we highlight four key aspects of the politics of civility. First, civility is productive. Specifically, it is concerned with the production and reproduction of social relations. Second, civility is embodied and exploited. It is not just a matter of using the body to signal respect or disrespect but is experienced by those who enact it as burdensome business, through which we take on or relinquish ourselves of the weight of the social. Third, the division of the labour of civility is gendered. The affective labour that it entails is disproportionately by women and members of other oppressed social groups. Fourth, the enactment of civility and incivility is typically habitual and routinized. We become reflexive about this productive activity when interrupted and often experience these moments through affects such as embarrassment, shame or disgust. Attending to these features enables us to better understand how respect is not only communicated but produced through the labour of civility. This in turn, provides a basis from which to develop the concept of 'agonistic respect' (as outlined by thinkers such as William Connolly) by reflecting on how the productive, embodied, habitual and affective labour of civility is a condition of possibility for the exchange of reasons in public life.