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Questions on Dramatic Reflections Directions:

12 January, 2015 - 12:50
Available under Creative Commons-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. Download for free at http://cnx.org/contents/3d8499e9-08c0-47dd-9482-7e8131ce99bc@11.15

After you have acted out your decision point in the Hughes case, you and your group have two further activities. First, you will answer the questions below to help you reflect generally on the nature of dramatic rehearsals and specifically on recent dramatization. These five questions (outlined in detail just below) ask you to discuss your dramatic form, the form of responsible dissent you used, how the action you dramatized fared with the three ethics tests, the value and interest conflicts you dealt with, and the constraints that bordered your decision point. Second, you will provide a storyboard that summarizes the drama you acted out before class. This is also detailed just below.

As was said above, John Dewey suggested the idea that underlies these dramatic rehearsals or What-if dramas.As Dewey puts it "deliberation is actually an imaginative rehearsal of various courses of conduct. We give way, in our mind, to some impulse; we try, in our mind, some plan. Following its career through various steps, we find ourselves in imagination in the presence of the consequences that would follow: and as we then like and approve, or dislike and disapprove, these consequences, we find the original impulse or plan good or bad. Deliberation [becomes] dramatic and active...." (Dewey, 1960, p. 135) Think of your "dramatic rehearsal" as an experiment carried out in your imagination. The hypothesis is the alternative course of action decided upon by your group that forms the basis of your "What-if" rehearsal. Imagine that you carry out your alternative in the real world. What are its consequences? How are these distributed? How would each of the stakeholders in your case view the action? How does this fit in with your conception of a moral or professional career? Your imagination is the laboratory in which you test the action your group devises as a hypothesis.

This quote will also help you understand the concept of dramatic rehearsal. It comes from John Gardner, a famous novelist, and Mark Johnson, a theorist in moral imagination. John Gardner has argued that fiction is a laboratory in which we can explore in imagination the probable implications of people's character and choices. He describes what he calls "moral fiction" as a "philosophical method" in which art "controls the argument and gives it its rigor, forces the writer to intense yet dispassionate and unprejudiced watchfulness, drives him-in ways abstract logic cannot match-to unexpected discoveries and, frequently, a change of mind." (Johnson, p. 197; Gardner, p. 108).

There are different versions of what form dramatic form takes. In general there is plot, character, agon (struggle or confronting obstacles), resolution, and closure. A drama is a narrative, an unfolding of related events in time. One event arises to give way to another and so forth. Dramas can be driven by the ends of the characters and the unfolding can be the realization or frustration of these activities. Dramatic rehearsals take isolated actions and restore them to this context of dramatic form.

1. What is the dramatic form taken on by your enactment?

  • Perhaps your drama is a comedy. Many groups have chosen this form but have found it hard to explain why. How does comedy help your group to get its message across? What is its message?
  • Some groups have approached this rehearsal as a tragedy where the good intentions and goals of those involved all turned out bad. In many ways, this is how the case played out in reality. So, if your group chose tragedy, then it is important to state why there were no viable alternatives to the choices actually made by the participants in the Hughes case. What constraints prevented the agents from achieving their ends? (Look for more than just bad people here.)
  • Some groups decided to frame their rehearsal as a documentary Here a narrator describes and frames the activities carried out by the different participants offering commentary and analysis.
  • Continuing with the documentary line, some groups have presented their drama as proceedings in a trial where a judge presides over attorneys presenting the arguments from both sides. This approach has the advantage of laying out the different perspectives but when the judge reaches a decision, it takes on the risk of oversimplifying the case by making one side completely right and the other completely wrong. The "winner takes all" interpretation of a court trial (guilty-innocent) often leaves out moral complexity.
  • Some groups convert their dramas into Quixotic ventures where they "tilt at windmills." Here they try to present scenarios where idealistic participants strive to realize their values over difficult, constraining and harsh realities. The advantage of this approach is that it does not compromise on values and ideals. The disadvantage is that it may underestimate elements in the real world that oppose acting on the ideal. Realizing the "intermediate possible" may be the best route here.
  • Some groups approach their dramatizations as cautionary tales where they act out the harsh consequences that attend immoral, greedy, selfish, or corruption action. Here the world is constrained by justice. Those who hubristically try to exceed these constraints are punished for their transgressions. Cautionary tales are more moralistic than tragedies but, at some point, converge on this other dramatic form.
  • You are, of course, encouraged to go beyond this list by inventing your own dramatic form or combining those listed above to produce a new, synthetic form. The point here is that dramatic forms both filter and structure elements of this complicated case. I am asking that you be deliberate and thoughtful about how you work your way through the Hughes case. What did your dramatic form leave out? How did it structure the drama differently than other forms? Why did you choose the form you chose?

2. Your dramatic rehearsal also should test the three forms of responsible dissent we studied this semester.

  • Generic Forms of Dissent. Did your rehearsal test any of the generic forms of dissent such as gather more information, nolo contendere, oppose diplomatically, oppose confrontationally, distance yourself, or exit?
  • Moral Compromise. Did your rehearsal deploy any of the strategies of moral compromise? For example, referring to the Ethics of Teamwork, did it deploy bridging, logrolling, expanding the pie, or non-specific compensation? Were you able to get things moving by negotiating interests rather than person-based positions? What were the circumstances that elicited compromise? For example, does the Hughes case display any "moral complexity?"
  • Blowing the Whistle. If your drama followed the case and advocated blowing the whistle, provide a justification using the class framework. For example, argue that whistleblowing was permissible or that it was obligatory. To whom do your recommend blowing the whistle given the problems Ibarra and Goodearl had with the Inspector General's office? How would you recommend they go about gathering documented evidence? What should they do before blowing the whistle? In short, do more, both in your drama and in this reflection, than just advocate the action. Describes the means, complexities, and circumstances surrounding blowing the whistle on Hughes.

3. Outline your ethics experiment by examining the action you advocate using the three ethics tests.

  • Reversibility. How does your action look when you reverse with the key stakeholders? Project into their shoes avoiding the extremes of too much identification and too little identification.
  • Harm. What harms have you envisioned through your dramatic rehearsal? Are these harms less quantitatively and qualitatively than the action actually taken in the case?
  • Publicity. Finally, project the action taken in your rehearsal into the career of a moral professional. Is it consistent with this career or does it embrace (or neglect) values out of place in such a career. In other words, carry out the publicity test by associating the values embedded in the action you portray with the character of a good or moral agent carrying out a moral, professional career.

4. Value and interest conflicts in your drama.

  • All these decision points involve some kind of conflict. How did you characterize this conflict in your dramatization? Pose your conflict in terms of values. How did your drama "resolve" this value conflict?

5. Recognizing and dealing with the constraints you found in your decision point.

These drama/decision points had different kinds and degrees of constraints. Early decision points have fewer constraints than later because the earlier decisions both condition and constrain those that follow. Here is another issue you may need to address. Your feasibility test from the "Three Frameworks" module outlines three kinds of constraints: resource, interest (social or personality), and technical. Did any of these apply? Outline these and other constraints and describe how they were dealt with in your drama.