Good Morning 1877, Sit Down: On Civility, Reconstruction, and Our Revanchist Moment

We wrote this dialogue across 2017 as a political crisis unfolded. In it we explore a term–civility—that we felt was being reshaped under the new political imperatives (the new "crisis normal") of our present moment. In the following dialogue we ask: Why does civility seem like a pressing term to consider? What tools can we, as scholars of race, sexuality, and performance, in the United States bring to this current moment? And then too, what new pressures are being brought to bear on this term as the political sphere undergoes a traumatic explosion of uncivil affect? Is civility useful? Is incivility? What are their paradoxes or alternatives?