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Notes on Habermas, "Political Functions of the Public Sphere"
Hey all, remember how I used to post notes on readings I did? I'm gonna try to do that sometimes again for things I am doing notes-aside on rather than notes-annotated. Don't expect quite as many as last fall, but hopefully these are still interesting to a few of you!
bourgeois do not rule, but instead have power claims based on the "public" (28)
public is guided by the private "autience-oriented subjectivity of the conjugal family's intimate domain." (28)
earlier there was an apolitical public sphere, a "literary precursor" nonetheless "operative in the public domain." (29) Culture becomes commodified.
"civil society" is private on page 30? what? Oh, just "commodity exchange and… social labor" hrm.
When court lost "its central position in the public sphere," the public sphere changed and was no longer as tightly coupled to royalty. You get salons and things. This leads to actual political conversation. "critical debate ignited by works of literature and art was soon extended to include economic and political disputes" (33) and in post-salon English coffeeshops these could be serious. Salons had women, coffeehouses did not. More middle-class.
In France "salon held the monopoly of first publication" (34)
Germany had societies. "social equality was possible at first as an equality outside the state." (35) Public sphere was secret, or at least secretive, based on reason, which also had to stay secret.
All of these things:
* ignored status rather than assuming statuses were equal --- this may not have actually happened but was the goal
* were able to interpret texts (considered broadly) outside of the ways that the texts might have been defined by Church and court
* commodification of culture makes these new public spheres inclusive --- "the new form of bourgeois representation." Most people could not afford to buy literature even if they could read, so this is kinda dubious. Theater sooooorta works on this but Habermas claims it basically doesn't.
Apparently concerts are a better example. (39) Most music was occasional until end of 1700s? Musical performance became commodified and this allowed for music "not tied to a purpose," listening "to music as such." Anyone "propertied and educated was admitted," hoo boy! Painting also did this --- appreciation turned to discussion. "Art criticism as conversation." (40) Critics occupy a position both inside and outside of the public (which would seem to me to already poke at the boundaries of this whole binary division --- maybe critique this --- page 41)
IS this whole journal thing, like, where academia comes from? How do zines play into this as publics or not publics? (Counterpublics? I have seen people use this word.)
p43 "the mediocre Pamela" is a value judgement, which he mostly hasn't been making, interesting.
17th century British style featured a "privatization of life" based on architecture; "the line between private and public sphere extended right through the home" (45) Sure, but the same people live in the home, I don't think I buy this entirely. Lines are fuzzy. The architectural argument is sort of reductive.
Actually he sort of critiques this too in a different way on page 47, talking about thow "the family was not exempted from… its precisely defined role in the process of the reproduction of capital." I mean I wouldn't take such an economic argument to it but that doesn't mean he's not right. Nonetheless "the ideas of freedom, love, and cultivation of the person that grew out of the experiences of the conjugal family's private spehre were surely more than just ideology." (48) Ok. Believed they were not in an economic relationship. The letter displays subjectivity without economy? Contrasted with but intertwined with news reporting.
"Subjectivity, as the innermost core of the private, was always already oriented to an audience." (49) ShaZAM, Habermas, well played. Correspondence in the private nonetheless intended for publication (Blurring those boundaries again). Novels written in letter form (gah Goethe and Werther come up here too, I need to just go find that and read it, ugh). Private and public conjoined in fiction? Hrm. Public libraries came out of this, interesting.
bottom of page 51 is a maze of public/private that actually addresses some of my complaints.
political->civic shift actually makes me think of conversations last week, would it be reasonable to say Brown is arguing in some sense for a shift back to political? Hrm. Something to chew on.
Here comes the "law" that we say in Locke. "truth not authority makes law" on page 53. The "physiocrats" (what????) "relate the law explicitly to public opinion as the expression of reason." (54)
So we end up with the family as intimate, the market as private, and then a political public from which women and dependents were excluded, and a literary public that was more inclusive. "IN the educated classes the one form of public sphere was considered to be identical with the other" (56) but this was a false conclusion; see more on p56. I would aruge that not only is it true that the roles of individuals were arbitrary and incomplete, but that the individual itself is a bad metric to use to calculate this. A sort of post-individual take on Habermas I guess?
bourgeois do not rule, but instead have power claims based on the "public" (28)
public is guided by the private "autience-oriented subjectivity of the conjugal family's intimate domain." (28)
earlier there was an apolitical public sphere, a "literary precursor" nonetheless "operative in the public domain." (29) Culture becomes commodified.
"civil society" is private on page 30? what? Oh, just "commodity exchange and… social labor" hrm.
When court lost "its central position in the public sphere," the public sphere changed and was no longer as tightly coupled to royalty. You get salons and things. This leads to actual political conversation. "critical debate ignited by works of literature and art was soon extended to include economic and political disputes" (33) and in post-salon English coffeeshops these could be serious. Salons had women, coffeehouses did not. More middle-class.
In France "salon held the monopoly of first publication" (34)
Germany had societies. "social equality was possible at first as an equality outside the state." (35) Public sphere was secret, or at least secretive, based on reason, which also had to stay secret.
All of these things:
* ignored status rather than assuming statuses were equal --- this may not have actually happened but was the goal
* were able to interpret texts (considered broadly) outside of the ways that the texts might have been defined by Church and court
* commodification of culture makes these new public spheres inclusive --- "the new form of bourgeois representation." Most people could not afford to buy literature even if they could read, so this is kinda dubious. Theater sooooorta works on this but Habermas claims it basically doesn't.
Apparently concerts are a better example. (39) Most music was occasional until end of 1700s? Musical performance became commodified and this allowed for music "not tied to a purpose," listening "to music as such." Anyone "propertied and educated was admitted," hoo boy! Painting also did this --- appreciation turned to discussion. "Art criticism as conversation." (40) Critics occupy a position both inside and outside of the public (which would seem to me to already poke at the boundaries of this whole binary division --- maybe critique this --- page 41)
IS this whole journal thing, like, where academia comes from? How do zines play into this as publics or not publics? (Counterpublics? I have seen people use this word.)
p43 "the mediocre Pamela" is a value judgement, which he mostly hasn't been making, interesting.
17th century British style featured a "privatization of life" based on architecture; "the line between private and public sphere extended right through the home" (45) Sure, but the same people live in the home, I don't think I buy this entirely. Lines are fuzzy. The architectural argument is sort of reductive.
Actually he sort of critiques this too in a different way on page 47, talking about thow "the family was not exempted from… its precisely defined role in the process of the reproduction of capital." I mean I wouldn't take such an economic argument to it but that doesn't mean he's not right. Nonetheless "the ideas of freedom, love, and cultivation of the person that grew out of the experiences of the conjugal family's private spehre were surely more than just ideology." (48) Ok. Believed they were not in an economic relationship. The letter displays subjectivity without economy? Contrasted with but intertwined with news reporting.
"Subjectivity, as the innermost core of the private, was always already oriented to an audience." (49) ShaZAM, Habermas, well played. Correspondence in the private nonetheless intended for publication (Blurring those boundaries again). Novels written in letter form (gah Goethe and Werther come up here too, I need to just go find that and read it, ugh). Private and public conjoined in fiction? Hrm. Public libraries came out of this, interesting.
bottom of page 51 is a maze of public/private that actually addresses some of my complaints.
political->civic shift actually makes me think of conversations last week, would it be reasonable to say Brown is arguing in some sense for a shift back to political? Hrm. Something to chew on.
Here comes the "law" that we say in Locke. "truth not authority makes law" on page 53. The "physiocrats" (what????) "relate the law explicitly to public opinion as the expression of reason." (54)
So we end up with the family as intimate, the market as private, and then a political public from which women and dependents were excluded, and a literary public that was more inclusive. "IN the educated classes the one form of public sphere was considered to be identical with the other" (56) but this was a false conclusion; see more on p56. I would aruge that not only is it true that the roles of individuals were arbitrary and incomplete, but that the individual itself is a bad metric to use to calculate this. A sort of post-individual take on Habermas I guess?
no subject
no subject
That's actually something I'm doing some work with at an upcoming art show. Last year there were a lot of projected video installations, and what I'd regard as a boundary-preserving move by the establishment to relegate all the outsider art to a parking lot behind a stadium in west bumblefuck. This year, I'm taking a projector to the streets to project outsider criticism onto the art.