“What One Voice Can Do”: Civic Pedagogy and Choric Collectivity at Camp Courage

Abstract

Camp Courage exemplifies the indivisibility of rhetoric and performance in practices of civic education and the production of choric collectivity. Designed to mobilize grassroots support for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender equality, this activist training session is based on Marshall Ganz's Camp Obama organizing model. By utilizing three specific techniques of choric communication—storytelling, chanting and call and response, and applause—Camp Courage seeks to foster a community of activists that is based on synchronized action rather than shared identities. These harmonious bodily practices, I contend, physically enact participants' membership in a group and constitute a temporary but powerful collectivity.