Deborah Tannen's Agonism In The Academy: Surviving The Argument Culture

In Deborah's Tannen’s essay Agonism in the Academy: Surviving the Argument Culture, Tannen asserts her belief that in order to create educational in depth debates, scholars must be able to converse with others, and build off of their peers ideas rather than denounce them. Tannen first declares this concept when she revisits a moment in her life when she attended an unsatisfying reading group. In this reading group, the scholars among her turned to the faults of the focus book’s genre, rather than the book itself. Due to this setting, Tannen was reminded of a term coined by Walter Ong: agonism. Tannen describes Ong’s term as “a debate in which the contestants are assigned opposing positions, and one party wins. (Page 215)” Overall, the idea of agonism led to Tannen’s belief that academe, the academic environment or community, is negatively affected by conversations in which people attempt to assert themselves over each other, rather than effectively communicate their ideas.
Later in the essay, Tannen goes on to explain how by promoting agonism, society is forcing students to take part in a “metaphorical battle”, rather than an informative discussion. …show more content…
If students and teachers continue to host debates which pit students against each other, society will continue to foster ideals of arrogance and unhealthy competition. Furthermore, the idea of the “doubting game” that society unconsciously plays fosters the idea of cynicism. With agonism in education, everyone is a skeptic, which contributes to society's inability to adapt to new theories and ideas. By pushing for more discussion based arguments like Tannen suggests, society can progress with new ideas. In conclusion, I fully endorse Tannen's assertion and have come to realize that in my previous debates with my peers, I have been mistaking competition for a logical