Having attended Conversation Cafés and World Cafés, and more recently Coffee Party meetings as an observer and guest, a question about the purpose of conversation or what is to come thereafter, is often asked before partings ways. Here are a few variations:
What’s next?
Now that we’ve talked about XYZ, how are we going to move forward?
I know that talking about these issues is important, but how are we going to change things?
Whether organized or informal, the act of conversation is more than just an exchange of words, ideas, and opinions. The act of conversation is an act of free will, especially when such conversation happens in public.
Throughout history, there have been attempts to control political discourse (sometimes successfully) by regulating the places in which people can meet and the conversations they can have, for the ideas and opinions that emerge have been known to challenge the status quo from time to time.
In 1675, Charles II of England called for the suppression of all coffeehouses in London. Here is an exert from the proclamation (Ellis, Aytoun. The Penny Universities; A History of the Coffee-houses. London, Secker & Warburg, 1956.):
Whereas it is most apparent that the multitude of coffee houses of late years set up and kept within this kingdom, the dominion of Wales and the town of Berwick-upon-Tweed, and the great resort of idle and disaffected persons to them, have produced very evil and dangerous effects, as well as that many tradesmen and others do therein misspend much of their time, which might and probably would otherwise be employed in and about their lawful callings and affairs, but also for that in such houses, and by occasion of the meeting of such persons therein, many false, malicious, and scandalous reports are devised and spread abroad, to the deformation of his Majesty’s government and to the disturbance of the peace and quiet of the realm, his Majesty has thought it fit and necessary that the said coffee houses be for the future put down and suppressed.
Ultimately, it was the uproar and conversations that followed that forced Charles II to cancel this edict and back down.
But what would have happened if Charles II was temporarily successful? Lloyd’s of London and the London Stock Exchange would not have emerged and flourished. If such a law passed in France when café conversations become a part of the cultural landscape, Diderot would not have been able to write the first modern encyclopedia and the French Enlightenment would not have been.
It is when the powers that be try to dominate and restrict where people can talk and what about that I get anxious for life temporarily becomes sterile, closed, and oppressive.
All forms of social ordering which seek to suppress otherness and to arrest dialogue are inevitably subject to resistance, to human freedom and transgression, and ultimately to transformation in the ongoing dialogue of forces, the continuing movement of history. – Chris Falzon, Foucault and Social Dialogue: Beyond Fragmentation
The act of conversation is an act of resistance, an act of human freedom. The act of conversation has purpose; it ensures the continuing movement of history.
One Comment
I agree that conversations can be worthy ends in themselves, vs. only means to other ends. I also agree that conversations can provide necessary preconditions for social, political, economic and religious change.
However, I would argue that conversations alone are not sufficient to support such change, and that the institutions you list would never have come into being if people were not willing to do something more than talk about them.
When conversation itself is the explicitly stated goal, as it is with Conversation Cafes, then there is no need to consider how the group will move forward (except, perhaps, to identify the topic for conversation at the next meeting).
When the goal is to promote political change, as it is with the Coffee Party movement, then conversation is a necessary ingredient, but I do not think it will prove sufficient … and so I do believe it’s important to both have conversations and move beyond conversations. I’m a strong proponent of civil discourse, but I cannot think of any examples of significant political change that have come about solely through conversation.