I’m involved in a listserve centered around discussion of a particular band. I was wondering to what extent this listserve exemplifies or diverges from Habermas’s definition of a public sphere. One point I took into consideration the most was his description of the public sphere as one made up of private people that are not heirarchized based on a status apart from their ability to offer well-reasoned and persuasive arguments. On this listserve, there are definitely politics of status that determine whose opinion is more powerful in creating a consensus, although seemingly they fit in with Habermas’s condoned type of status based on expertise, i.e. their familiarity with the music, their closeness to band members, etc. However it seems that its not so much about who expresses the most intelligent, or rational discussion, but that status is awarded based upon personality, humor, and the entertainment provided by their posts. This speaks to me of the medium of the internet as one primarily situated in terms of entertainment, whereas its other virtues (spread of information, communication between individuals, etc) are secondary. Or this aspect of the inflated, larger-than-life internet personality could be explained as a compensation for lack of face-to-face contact. Another important consideration is the universal access aspect of Habermas’s public sphere. That is, can anyone raise any topic equally? Well, no. There is a list administrator that can kick anyone off for posting undesirable comments or detracting from discussion. It seems like this would be allowed though based upon the requirements of a reason informed discussion. Also, if someone is going to be kicked off the list, the administrator usually publicly announces it, theoretically opening the issue up to strenuous disapproval. However, it seems that with this mechanism in place of the ability to eliminate people from the forum or to censor someone’s comments (as on the daily jolt forum) the full breadth of the openess of the ability to contribute to the building of consensus is denied because if someone strays too far from the general consensus they are no longer allowed to participate in discussion. So it seems to me that in the way that the anonymity of the internet prevents certain status discriminations that other medium would allow, new heirarchies are created in their stead. And that the liabilities of the theoretical openess that the medium should allow – people can post stupid things right alongside intelligent posts – require the impositions of un-public restrictions to participation in the “public” sphere of the listserve.

(apparently i'm not alone in having problems with this system. this is my 3rd try to post. the first being yesterday when it seemd like it had worked but apparently didn't, and just now in my attempt to reconstruct my post which timed out. apparently from now on one should copy and paste their posts.)
posted by Anonymous at 12:48 PM

Alright- I have tried posting twice, and have been kicked off twice-
Here is a severe paraphrasing-

"The surveillance was as complete as the abandonment"
This comment by Keenan I felt reflected very well through much of what we read for this week. The physical abandonemt he speaks of ties into the abandonement of imagination which Adorno and Horkhiemer discuss in the culture industry. Our inability to distinguish life from movies is exactly the phenomenon which Keenan is probing in the CNN effect and global media coverage. Our desensitization to voilence has tainted our ability to categorize real versus fabricated images in their respective place. These "real" images are also fed to us through not only the same device for delivery- but production methods and effects as well. The sensual immersion of the sound film has buffered our imagination, just as our exposure to the instantaneous visions of horror have left no room for intelectual reasoning or digestion. We have been reduced to pure voyeurs without the ability to respond- because images no longer exist in the same place as our bodies.
I hope this works---------------
posted by Anonymous at 12:28 AM

In Keenan's "Publicity and Indifference: Media, Surveillance, Humanitarian Intervention," it is argued that "we cannot count on the obviousness of the image, fall for the conceit that information leads ineluctably to actions adequate to the compulsion of the image, precisely because images are so important. There is no compulsion, only interpretation and reinscription, and the image dictates nothing." By this the author means to say that our consideration of the image as a powerful impetus that can move one, or many, to "action" does not always hold true. It is clear from Keenan's examples of Somalia and Bosnia that images do not produce consistent spectatorial responses, but we should further investigate the conditions that may have given rise to these distinct responses. Keenan brings us to the point where we know not to "not expect the unexpected," but this makes it necessary for us to determine why it is that the unexpected should now be taken as a "natural" spectatorial response to the image. True, the immediacy of the image effect is no longer stable and images must be interpreted before a reponse is constituted, but what are the conditions that cause these interpretations to lead to different results? One can think of several occasions in which images held the attention of the public sphere and either resulted in action (outrage?) or "inaction" (indifference?): the WTC bombings, Bosnia, Somalia, the 2000 Puerto Rican Day Parade, the 1963 Birmingham protest, etc. I would be very interested to examine the different spectatorial repsonses which were produced by these image-events and push Keenan's argument further to understand what makes an image reliable or unreliable as a powerful force.
posted by Anonymous at 12:12 AM

“Thought becomes a commodity, and language the means of promoting that commodity, then the attempt to trace the course of such deprivation has to deny any allegiance to current linguistic and conceptual conventions, lest their world historical consequences thwart it entirely.” (Horkheimer & Adorno, 4)
This comment was the most unclear in my mind and the most intriguing as I began to read Dialectic of Enlightenment. From reading the Kant, I understood that the ideal of Enlightenment thinking was to think for oneself, and therefore someone selling you an idea or a way of thinking is inimical to the process of enlightenment. But then, the part about language troubled me: if they weren’t going to use current linguistic and conceptual conventions, how would they even think or speak in a communicable way?
Kant writes:
“After the guardians have first made their domestic cattle dumb and have made sure that these placid creatures will not dare take a single step without the harness of the cart to which they are tethered, the guardians then show them the danger which threatens if they try to go alone. Actually, however, this danger is not so great, for by falling a few times they would finally learn to walk alone. But an example of this failure makes them timid and ordinarily frightens them away from all further trials.”
This falls into place with Horkheimer & Adorno’s assessment of current culture. Both Kant and Horkenheimer and Adorno see culture as opposed to Enlightenment because being able to question the system you have set up and live in is a major value. However, Horkenheimer and Adorno point out that the biggest problem with enlightemnet thinking is that even though the mind is able to rationally understand anything it perceives, current culture is working to hide all of the little blips in the constructed ideology or mass consumption – get them out of the camera frame, if you will. So, with current culture, how can you think of other possibilities, think outside the box? I mean, isn’t it true that with reason, man could think through and deconstruct all the myths? But they seem to be saying you can’t escape it, that the mind can only perceive as clearly as possible the things offered to it, and culture is doing its best to hide all the little blips that reveal that culture is created, not true.
Kant makes this seem like a play for power, sort of insidious, cruel and mean in the hands of a few people who have taken enlightenment ideas and worked out . . . . a whole cultural ideology? Weren’t they just supposed to come up with the objective answers about utility and science?
This brings me to the question of the status of the oppressor. Is the oppressor a bound and himself-oppressed administrator caught in the hierarchical system that enlightenment thinking has created, as in the Sirens story? Or is the oppressor a power hungry individual, like the people who run those power hungry industries (electricity, oil, etc.) who rather consciously works pushes others into creating a coherent ideology that keeps him in power? Are the current oppressors actually people or have, somehow, ideological apparatuses become more powerful and capable than the people who work within them?

posted by Anonymous at 12:06 AM

Uh!!!! I'm not running late! I finished my response and I was timed out! This is my first time posting on a system like this! Is there anyway to get my response back?
Anyone help?
Thanks!
Ellen
posted by Anonymous at 11:59 PM

I'm running a little late tonight -- Pats winning and everything.

I know, bad form and all the first post. It will be up later on tonight.

Apologies.
posted by Anonymous at 11:55 PM

first of all... let me make a general complaint about blogger... after spending a *!$% load of time writing stuff in this editing window... i was trully frustrated when
clicking post and publish trashed everything i wrote and complained i was no longer logged in...
did i do something wrong? did i deserve to lose my entire posting?... please tell me..

ok... well i guess i'll have to say more in class because i lost all of my original response

anyways.. as i was trying to say... before i was interupted by blogger.. erg.

After reading the habermas, i must make this quick response to Cynthia's post. I think that habermas would argue, in terms of an evolution of the transformation of the public sphere, that the internet spheres extend and embrace the true ideals of a public sphere (defined as a community which does not necessarily exist in any identifiable space. idealy, it is "made up of private people gathered together as a public and articulating the needs of society with the state"). Though i'm sure we will be discussing the likelihood of this scenario (as does anonymity garauntee privacy? and does the internet even garauntee anonymity?). Habermas was fascinated by the historical paths public debate took from feudal society to 18th century england. Habermas posits the binary between public and private spheres at the core of his understanding of modernity (specifically acheived through the growth of salons, literary and other societies, and the press). If the salons of the 18th century were integral in creating a seperation of spheres, then i can only imagine what habermas would say of the internet. True, arguements could be made about the lack of general access to the internet, but must all agree that as a community of public speech, it is the most accessible forum (and specifically, a forum of private opinion) in modern society.

i trully enjoyed reading habermas, if only because he constructs his points through detailed analysis of history. He explains the transformation of spheres as a logical step associated with the transformation of mercantilim to capitalism (prodded by the ever increasing need for the dissemination of information, and we all know what a commodity information is). I think its worthy to note his comments on the loss of art's aura of extraordinariness (p. 38) when art, as a commodity, broke the fetters of Church and court's publicity of representation. While his words echo of Benjamin's, it seems a logical conclusion to trace this transformation historically (which habermas does when he correlates the liberation of art with the comidification of culture).



-manu

posted by Anonymous at 11:45 PM

I am reminded of the futile attempts at democratizing the public sphere of television with the introduction of cable. A foreseen failure, yet in theory should work. Viewers have the opportunity to develop a relationship with the images shown; they can, in theory, veto broadcasting in order to gain the desired programming. In addition, they can broadcast their own programming through public access television. A failure indeed. What is our goal, then, to subjectify the reception of images, turning once passive consumers into active spectators? We all in some part desire unmediated information, a journalism that presents unbiased facts meant to incur debate and discourse among the so-called public. Naturally we would like to look at images as those that speak for themselves. Yet this is just not true. Images always do something, whether to secure in us comfortable lies or to promote sentimentalism by the mere quanitity of disturbing images or increased accessibility of images ["Oh, those poor people"]. Images ironically "do something" by precisely making us "do nothing". I challenge the notion of the existence of a public conceived a priori; Media creates the public much in the same way that life imitates art. Are we then to step out of the bounds of the so-called public, removing ourselves from the public sphere and into the private, in order to escape engulfment by a construction?
posted by Anonymous at 11:40 PM

Enlightenment - responses
Shawn E. Greenlee
3 February 2002

A theme running through the texts read this week is that media informs our experience of reality so much that it actually dictates what our opinions should be. Habermas cites Tocqueville as offering the notion that the media offers ready-made opinions so that we do not have to form our own. We can choose from the ones presented. Thus we establish our attitudes about what is happening in the world. In the piece by Thomas Keenan, he gives us the example of the way in which media presented the war in Bosnia as forming how the public viewed the event. He states the reaction of the public was one of sympathy to human tragedy rather that a call for a political response, as was the intended result of the reporters covering the war, but not necessarily how the media presented it to its public. The public's interpretation of the events was skewed and this interpretation was shaped by the media. Keenan states, "what makes something public is precisely the possibility of being a target or of being missed." If this is the reality of our current situation, being on the perpetual receiving end then this form of public fall shorts of what Habermas is looking for which is a public that has communication as one of its definitions. Keenan states that the media becomes a tool of propaganda to mobilize shame, to force a response. For Habermas this use of the publicity illustrates the public sphere taking on an advertising function. Regarding the public sphere, Habermas states, "The more it can be deployed as a vehicle for political and economic propaganda, the more it becomes unpolitical as a whole and pseudo-privatized." (175). Habermas also cites Marx, as making the observation that public opinion is a false consciousness. In the Adorno article, "The Culture Industry Reconsidered" he tells us that conformity has replaced consciousness. If indeed media offers us a pre-set notion of how to react to a topic then as we form our opinions as targets for the media we become conformists, aligning ourselves with a consciousness that is not ours but is one imposed. Adorno posits that, "the total effect of the culture industry is one of anti-enlightenment …enlightenment, that is the progressive technical domination of nature, becomes mass deception and is turned into a means for fettering consciousness. It impedes the development of autonomous, independent individuals who judge and decide consciously for themselves." Although I see the truth embodied in these notions, I found the rallying against mass media, especially in the Horkheimer/Adorno piece somewhat tiresome. Perhaps this has to do with my position of growing up surrounded by mass media and having no other experience to juxtapose it against. It seems apparent to me that all media is subject to use that is geared towards repression and facilitating opinions and influencing consumers. What is also apparent to me is the negative aspects of the media that Horkheimer/Adorno are hitting on - the removal of the individual from the public sphere. There is no engagement, no communication between the receiving public and the media. It is a one-way device. Yet is this necessarily an obstacle to public involvement? Yes, but I am not positive that it acts as a replacement. I do not doubt that the culture industry's goals are to dictate the attitudes of the masses for various reasons of influence or control, however I do not necessarily see that because this is the mode of what we view as a public sphere that it is responsible for hindering our ability to see beyond the mass deception. What seems to be at issue here is the lack of individual (the private) to feel as though they can influence the public. Horkheimer/Adorno offer the notion that media is designed to occupy peoples' senses during the time that they are not occupied during work. The result being that they have no time to think independently let alone react upon opinions they might form. This retaliation against mass media smells somewhat like just a fear of changes in society. Surely with every new incarnation of human culture there is resistance and fear of the corruption that it embodies- like every form of media has gone through - being the 'evil' that will corrupt the society. We cannot say that our media has removed public enlightened debate from our society. What it may have done though is hinder our ability to think that we can impact the public sphere. To a large degree, news stories offer nothing more than topics for discussion that coexist with similar discussions about who has amnesia now on any given soap opera or what character did the funniest thing on such and such sitcom. The media is entertainment driven and is fast, and so greatly influences our society to think in this direction. The truth to Horkheimer/Adorno's notion that media is designed to consume our lives when we are not involved in labor strikes me as frighteningly true. People work, they are tired, they don't want to think, they want to unwind, and relax, or rather escape reality. People believe that their influence in the public sphere is limited. Action often is possible because of privilege or comes from desperation. We can engage the public sphere as either a whim or a necessity but active, daily engagement in public life is uncommon because we have the sense that this engagement is already done for us, or beyond our control. Private influence can only impact the public sphere if substantial capital backs it up. The common person's private influence becomes more and more insubstantial and non-existent. Keenan cites Virilio as offering the notion that as the media becomes more and more immediate that the time for the public on the receiving end to respond becomes less and less. We are left with instantaneous information and thus a greater need for the media to shape our opinions and our governments to care for us and thus control us. It seems that the goal of the individual should be to catch up and develop new modes by which to react, to reclaim the possibility for influence in the public sphere, to reestablish democratic modes of operation. Otherwise as presented by Habermas, Horkheimer, and Adorno, the future looks grim because the proliferation of mass media shows no signs of slowing.






posted by Anonymous at 11:32 PM

In Keenan’s article, he claims that “Lack of action proceeds from the fact that the mediated images of the world are mere representations that lend an air of unreality to the things they represent,” but, though the alienating effect of a mediated universe certainly must contribute to the inaction or, even worse, indifference that he criticizes, it is insufficient to account for all of it. The assaults on women in Central Park in the summer of 2000 following the Puerto Rican Day Parade are a testament to this. Something like 40 women were verbally and physically assaulted in full view of a crowd of people but, according to eye-witness reports and some video footage, virtually no one stepped forward to help them. In this case, there was no mediated distance between the incident and the spectators; the people watching were simply unresponsive. This is the issue that Keenan is trying to resolve when he asks “when something happens ‘in full view,’ why do we expect that action will be taken commensurate with what (we have seen) is happening?” The implication throughout the article seems to be that the act of watching suggests a level of complicity with the watched, a statement that seems rather self-evident in these examples that involve obvious human suffering, but philosophically problematic. There is nothing that necessarily implies approval or disapproval of an action based solely on observing it without recourse to some kind of questionable Golden Rule principle about protecting humanity (or just another member of Habermas’s “public”). Maybe this sympathy is enough to implicate the watcher as somehow complicit in the suffering of the one he watches, but this seems like something of an unreasonable claim at its heart – that seeing might equate to doing. This becomes even more nebulous if the sufferer were somehow responsible for publicizing his suffering, making others see him being assaulted and, therefore, possibly implicating them in the assault.
posted by Anonymous at 11:21 PM

Keenan and Adorno & Horkheimer examine the relationship between mass culture and the public sphere, Keenan using a specific example - journalism and coverage of violence - and Adorno & Horkheimer discussing mass culture as an industry. Both articles/essays emphasize the point that the public sphere is, almost by definition, that which is addressed by mass culture and could depend on the media to exist as a public (according to Keenan). Adorno & Horkheimer argue that mass culture renders us essentially actionless against it, and Keenan shows this in his case study, but then challenges us to rethink the way a public responds to media addresses. The idea of the public response interests me. A&H seem not to have much hope for the public, in the way that they connect mass culture to capitalist economics and the public as a public of consumers. Keenan questions why we as viewers didn't respond in the predicted manner, which would have involved more action politically. But both deal primarily with media in the form of images and the public as passive receivers of images.
What, then, happens when mass culture becomes “interactive”? One could view the internet as a breaking down of boundaries, as a new binding factor of the group called “the public”, in that on the internet we have new “public spaces” in forums and chatrooms and via email. But what are the ideological functions of something like the internet, which offers choices and allows the user actively to do things… but also reflects the mass culture which already exists, (i.e. many things we can hear/see on tv or the radio or film we can also see on the internet, and advertisement is alive and well online – is this another venue for ensnaring the consumer into the capitalist web which other media forms have already formed, or is it the brink of a new kind of public sphere?) Even in this blogger.com (“publishing for the people”), we can post our own discussions and opinions and anyone who wishes can read our words. But how does this change the public sphere? Does this affect anything, who and how big is our audience (how many people actually read these?), and how does it change what we choose to say (do we censor ourselves, conscious that when we post it is for an audience of people we may or may not know?)? It is more accessible to the average person to contribute to the images/information on the internet than on television/radio, but if it simply reflects or expands other forms of media, how does our position as the public change except to think that we are making a difference or voicing a unique opinion?
posted by Anonymous at 9:57 PM

Response to Horkheimer and Adorno:

They use some confusingly general terms in reference to human consciousness; “spirit” in particular. For example:

“It is not merely that domination is paid for by the alienation of men from the objects dominated: with the objectification of the spirit, the very relations of men -- even those of the individual to himself -- were bewitched. The individual is reduced to the nodal point of the conventional responses and modes of operation expected of him. Animism spiritualized the object, whereas industrialism objectifies the spirits of men.” (p.20 in course pack)

Is the spirit equal to all the aspects of human existence which transcend the physical? Some subset of these aspects? The personality/self? Does it persist through time, or is it uniquely created at each moment? If the spirit is reduced to a concordance of expected behaviors, if man defines his inner life in terms of external marks, perhaps the spirit does not exist within man at all. But how else can we define our experience but in terms of past experiences (barring the possibility of direct perception of reality)? We always behave according to some kind of convention (most essentially in speech), regardless of the century we live in. So I think that what industrialism and scientific thinking has done to the spirit is just a far more extreme version of what has been going on since the dawn of human consciousness. What is so insidious about “industrial-strength” expectations of human behavior is the scale of the operation, the selfish intentions of the controlling forces, and the feeling of helplessness that results from being put in the position of conforming to “reality” or “the facts” (scientifically determined).
posted by Anonymous at 6:10 PM