36M:366 The Public Sphere - Fall Semester 2003

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Overview

Political philosophy often comes after change or revolution. This is one way to interpret Hegel's famous dictum about Minerva's owl only taking flight in the gathering dusk: wisdom is belated, tinged with mourning for a past or lost moment, and a historical era can be intelligible only as it is passing away. (Plato's failure as a practical politician was a benefit for political thought.) In the United States and also globally, there have been three main waves of interest in the public and its problems, each following a major catastrophe and drifting in the doldrums of steady-state politics: the 1920s (in the wake of world war 1), the 1950s (in the wake of world war 2 and the cold war), and the 1980s and 1990s (on both sides of the revolutions and failed revolutions of 1989). Much of the writing we will examine in this class comes from the second and third of these waves (you will study debates about the public in the 1920s by people such as John Dewey and Walter Lippmann in other classes). Arendt and Habermas represent much of the best thinking from the late 1950s and early 1960s; Habermas and his many critics in turn stand for much of the best thinking over the past decade plus. In 2003, the "public sphere" is a well established scholarly term, used fruitfully in a wide range of inquiries and for many purposes. Today the concept faces less the acne of youthful promise than the creeping paunch of middle age, so the principle of retroactive intelligibility may apply to the concept as well. What the value of this concept is as an interpreter of our present moment will be one of the tasks of this class, one which I hope you will give a variety of answers to.

One of the most useful things about the concept of the public sphere is the explicit place it gives to media and modes of communication as central to political life in all varieties. Political philosophy has long been about forms and forums of communication; similarly communication theory has long been driven by implicit or explicit political commitments. The notion of the public sphere nicely knots these concerns together. Scholars interested in rhetoric, broadcasting, cinema, news, popular culture, music, among other kinds of communication have all made useful of notions of the public sphere. Media are, in short, central to public sphere theory. Likewise, public sphere theory raises central questions in the sociology of our time: the hidden injuries of class, race, gender, sexuality, ability and other axes of difference; the problem of popular sovereignty and public access in a commercial media system cozy with state interests; and issues about the styles and contents of deliberative life. Finally, it has stimulated a wide range of historical studies on topics such as revolution, resistance, festival, drama, censorship, violence, sound, image, and many other hitherto neglected topics.

One central aim of this seminar is to provide a thorough grounding in some of the basic texts of public sphere theory (rather than to survey all the vast offshoots since). The seminar's main goal is to encourage students to grapple with some of the great questions of our time through (1) lectures, readings, and class discussions and (2) their own original writing and thinking. The public sphere is not only a topic of scholarship, but a vision of scholarship and what its larger function should be. The public sphere is exciting for intellectuals because it suggests that intellectuals matter. The concept provides the chattering classes with an account of their raison d'être, of their historical mission to criticize power, and of reason's world-historical office as not merely a faculty of ratiocination but as the motor that advances the human interest of emancipation. No wonder it's such a seductive story!

Habermas, his critics, and applications of his ideas (or leads that he opened up) have centered on several key questions in social and political theory today, such as:

1. Rationality: a commitment to critical-rational debate exclude people on race, class, gender, and other lines? Does it exclude other forms of political communication that are unruly, impolitic, pleasurable, spectacular, rhetorical, physical, sensational, musical, etc? Is a politics of universality possible or are all attempts at universality just subtle exercises of dominion?
    
2. Difference: can democratic theory (not) recognize strangeness and otherness?
    
3. Historical method: what are the prospects of reconstructing norms of public communication today, given their history of gender, racial, class, age, sexual, ability, and other exclusions? Does the history indicate a fatal flaw in the conception itself or simply its incomplete realization? Did the public sphere ever exist? Should we think of the public sphere or public spheres (bourgeois, plebeian, etc.)?
    
4. Space: how crucial is face-to-face interaction, assembly, or presence to public life? Can public spheres be diasporic (i.e., dispersed in space)? Can they be anything but diasporic? What is the role of media (in both the conventional and broad sense) in dispensing or constituting public space? Can there be democratic participation at a distance? Can the public sphere be placeless? What kind of place do the media provide? Is conversation possible on a large scale?
    
5. Representation: what means are best for creating democratic public spaces? Theater, art, information, entertainment, image? What is the role of aesthetics in politics? Can the image be democratic? Music? Is the public sphere something necessarily staged--or upstaged? Is audition the fundamental mode of public life as opposed to vision? What about tactility? Imagination?
    
6. Embodiment: is publicity necessarily a regime of disembodiment, a privileged stance encoded to fit those bodies that are readily able to perform the feat of self-abstraction? What is the relation of the private body to the body politic? Is the public sphere a spirit or a body?

In addition to these questions, directly raised by Habermas and his critics in Calhoun, Habermas and the Public Sphere (and elsewhere), we will examine other questions that the current moment seems (to my mind at least) to impose upon us--pity, pain, religion, technology, globalization, etc. I hope you will likewise bring an active agenda of questions to the table as well.

Requirements

1. A substantial seminar paper, around 25 pp. or so. This could serve as the first draft of an article for publication, a conference paper, a dissertation chapter, or better yet, it could simply be a major project that you have been wanting to do for a long time. Or it can be something new and fascinating that emerges from this class. Attached is a list suggesting some possible topics: each topic should be carefully thought out and crafted by you, as the list offered is not ready to download. I am looking for original, imaginative, audacious, thoughtful, visionary, ingeniously researched and well-written work (to make my expectations explicit). Link theoretical questions with particular dramas, fields, and metaphors. Infuse your thinking and analysis with a historical sensibility. Tackle topics that perplex and fascinate you. Find new angles and mini-dramas that anchor your argument. Defy the ruling orthodoxies (whatever they are for you). In doing the reading in class, we will intermittently step back to examine the techniques of craft and quality evidenced in our readings, hopefully for guidance in the art of scholarship. I'd be happy to look at drafts and otherwise help you develop your papers. I'd encourage you to work on your topic throughout the semester and bring up your discoveries, as relevant, in class discussion. Better papers go through many drafts, and pacing yourself to write sooner than later will be a great favor to yourself.
    
2. Oral presentation of your paper in the final weeks of class: 15 minutes max plus 10 minutes for discussion. All hand-outs are limited to one side of one page.
    
3. A statement of your proposed topic, due by 17 September. Please start brainstorming at once. Please feel free to chat with me about your potential ideas and to keep an open mind before you fix on something (read ahead in books for ideas). And I expect that you will go beyond, and even do violence to your proposal as your research and thinking progress; if not, you'd not have learned anything. Don't lock in prematurely--I'll gladly accept multiple proposals.
    
4. Two short exercises: "identifying an archive" and "scanning a journal." Due 1 October. These should fit together naturally with your statement of topic.
    
5. A rough draft of the paper, say around 10 pp., due on Halloween, 31 October. This can be very rough, and I will not make extensive comments--I just want to get you working soon and early, and to be able to give some ballpark feedback (dates adjustable for people undergoing "das Qual").
    
6. Active participation in discussion, including possible leading of a session. This is a seminar--a genre that signals lots of class participation. I will lecture some to launch us and keep us on track. Form and content of discussion will depend to a large extent on your interests.

Readings

The following books have been ordered at Iowa Book and Supply (10 South Clinton Street), available in the textbook section (in the basement):

Arendt, The Human Condition
Arendt, On Revolution
Calhoun (ed.), Habermas and The Public Sphere
Habermas, Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere
Warner, Publics and Counterpublics (listed as "optional" due to the high price)

I have tried to keep the reading load digestible and focused, so you have time to work on your papers. Depending on class interest, I can organize (and order) additional readings on various topics of interest. Other readings will be made available either in the reserve room of the main library or as handouts that you can copy. Purchase the books as you like; we may not read any of them cover to cover.

A more extensive list of books has been put on reserve in the library. These books represent more of the variety of recent English-language scholarship using the notion of the public sphere and can be used for brainstorming and reviews. These compensate for the standard nature of the common readings.

A list of the books on reserve is available at http://infohawk.uiowa.edu/ALEPH/-/start/uiowa. At the top of this page you'll see several options: click on "course reserves." You'll get a page with a copyright statement and click on "Proceed to Course Reserves" toward the bottom. Enter "Peters" in the course instructor search line, and you should get a list of the books that have been put on reserve for this class.

Nasty Notice

Although no one ever plans to get an incomplete for a course, I want you actively to plan not to. I will not give incompletes for this course save in the most severe of crises (such as the student's death). Plan now to finish on time; the last weeks of the semester have no reading assignments save to come to class and write.

Tentative Schedule

Given the somewhat fluid nature of the genre of a seminar, the following schedule may evolve over the course of the course.

August
Wed. 27	Introduction to the Class Discuss Paper (and the two mini-assignments)
September
Wed. 3	Definitions of Public and Private Read: Habermas, "The Public Sphere: An Encyclopedia Article (1964)," New German Critique 1:3 (Fall, 1974), 49-55. Reprinted in many other books: Jürgen Habermas on Society and Politics, Cultural Studies Reader, etc. Read: Habermas, Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere (STPS), preface, sections 1-2. Read: Warner, Publics and Counterpublics, 22-63. Recommended: Calhoun, "Habermas and the Public Sphere," 1-51. Recommended: Arthur Strum, "A Bibliography of the Concept Öffentlichkeit," New German Critique 61 (1994), 155-202.
Wed. 10	The Second Wave of Public Sphere Debate, part I Read: Arendt, The Human Condition, I, II, III. Focus especially on prologue, 1-10, 11, 12, 17.
Wed. 17	Continued Read: Arendt, The Human Condition, IV, V, VI. Focus especially on 18, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 31-34, 35, 37, 39, 41, etc. Statement of Topic due by beginning of class.
Wed. 24	The Second Wave, part deux. Read: STPS, sections 3-7, 11, 13, 17, 18, 21, 22, 25 (see also p. 195, pp. 234-5).
October
Wed. 1	Habermas and his Elaborations (especially on media) Read: Habermas, "The Tasks of a Critical Theory of Society," 1981 (photocopy). Read: Habermas's 1989 self-critique, ch. 17, in Calhoun. Read: Habermas, Between Facts and Norms, chs. 7-8. Focus especially on 7.2, 7.3, 8.3 (try to avoid getting bogged down--at this point at least--in the technical debates). Two short exercises due at the beginning of class
Wed. 8	Habermas and his Critics Read: Benhabib, ch. 3; Fraser, ch. 5; Schudson, ch. 6; others TBA in Calhoun. Read: Warner, "Publics and Counterpublics," 65-124. Read: something by Stanley Deetz
Wed. 15	Pain and Pity (see POROI Conference later this week) Read: Arendt, On Revolution, ch. 2. Read: Warner, Publics and Counterpublics, 159-186 (also in Calhoun, Habermas, 377-401). Read: Peters, TBA.
At this point the syllabus grows especially tentative and subject to revision . . .
Wed. 22	The Public: the Sacred and Sexuality? Zaret, "Religion, Science, and Printing," Calhoun, Habermas, 212-235. Peters, "Milton and Abyss-Redemption," TBA. Berlant and Warner, "Sex in Public"
Wed. 29	Critical Nonrational Debate? Extra-discursive forms (music for instance) Ryan, "Gender and Public Access," Calhoun, Habermas, 259-288. Peters, "‘Meekness as a Dangerous Activity,'" TBA. Recommended: Negt and Kluge, The Public Sphere and Experience (1974).
Fri. 31	Halloween: Rough Draft (around 10 pp.) of paper due, John's box, 105 BCSB.
November
Wed. 5	Broadcasting and/as the Public Sphere Garnham, Calhoun, Habermas, 359-376. Scannell, TBA. Curran, The Media as a Public Sphere. Dayan and Katz, TBA
Wed. 12	Public Sphere as Public Scholarship Warner, Publics and Counterpublics, 125-158. Eagleton, Hohendahl Cheever, "The Enormous Radio"--film? (Many possibilities)
Wed. 19	Seminar Presentations
December
Wed. 10	Seminar Presentations
	Papers due Friday 12 December, by 3:30 p.m., in John's box in 105 BCSB.

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