Sport and the Quest for Unity: How the Logic of Consensus Undermines Democratic Culture

Abstract

<jats:p> In response to the political protest of National Football League (NFL) player Colin Kaepernick and subsequent controversial comments from President Donald Trump, New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft declared, “There is no greater unifier in this country than sports and, unfortunately, nothing more divisive than politics.” Such a sentiment is commonplace in sport, whether it is about race, political affiliations, or responses to tragic events, and it quickly became an organizing theme for NFL owners as they sought to defuse the issue. Meanwhile, sports media and others echoed the call for unity and largely dropped discussion of the commitment to social justice that had originally animated Kaepernick’s protest. This essay argues that claims to unity are rooted in the logic of consensus, a value in democratic theory that offers an illusion of peaceful cooperation while denying important conflicts and differences. As understood through the rhetorical tradition and theories of agonistic democracy, athletic activism in the NFL has been important precisely because it disrupts the illusion of unity on which the national anthem ritual rests. In short, contesting unity and consensus seeks to identify communicative resources that facilitate social justice in and through sport. </jats:p>

Sport, Social Justice, and the Limits of Dissent After George Floyd: A Reply to Butterworth

“…More than a call to rebuild the foundation of American political theory, such a shift of attitude mandates that we see demands for unity as implied threats to social justice. (Butterworth, 2020, p. 466)The struggle within the assertion rests, I think, in Butterworth’s reluctance to say, “Whose unity?” And, “What kind of community?” Like rivalries in sport, agonistic commitments are not—cannot be— value neutral . Overt commitments to the spirit of the agon, to pluralism for the sake of leveraging conflict, obscure perhaps the most important element of democratic citizenship, properly understood: We must choose sides.…”

“…More than a call to rebuild the foundation of American political theory, such a shift of attitude mandates that we see demands for unity as implied threats to social justice. (Butterworth, 2020, p. 466)…”

“…Among the collected pieces, one was especially provocative in response. Reflecting a diligence honed from thinking seriously about the rhetorical dimensions of sport for nearly a quarter-century, Michael L. Butterworth’s lead article, “Sport and the Quest for Unity: How the Logic of Consensus Undermines Democratic Culture” (2020), argued that overtures to the unifying dimensions of sport betrayed a fallacious logic which undermined democratic culture. The problem with such overtures was their emphasis on consensus.…”

“…My reply is concerned less with rehearsing the essay’s propositional content and more with what its arguments insufficiently rehearsed. First published online in January 2020, 5 months before the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis, Butterworth’s essay showed something almost like prescience in anticipating, after 26 May 2020, a surge in athlete activism that may signal the beginning of a new highwater mark for “progressive social change” (Butterworth, 2020, p. 454; Weinreb, 2020). But as Matthew Broderick’s portrayal of teenage angst qua adolescent shenanigans reminds us, life moves pretty fast.…”

“…Yet the examples of protests within and across the sporting landscape performed in solidarity with Black Lives Matter after Floyd’s murder point to my substantive point of departure from Butterworth’s piece. Namely, in theorizing about the illusion of unity and its nefarious effects on our democratic health, he overlooks the ways calls for unity on behalf of social justice also may advance a curious logic in conflict with the “sporting agonism” he celebrated (Butterworth, 2020, p. 454). Despite the desire to “recenter contestation” and to wonder, rightly, “If citizens are unified, what is it that they are unified about?,” Butterworth’s article seems to take for granted that unity on behalf of social justice—and the corresponding insistence on particular protocols of speech and performance—falls outside the “magnetic pull” of unity (p. 465).…”