平特五不中

Art, Media and the Public Sphere

In The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere (first published in 1962 and translated into English in 1989), J眉rgen Habermas defined the modern public sphere as a realm of social life where public opinion takes shape. This realm constitutes around rational-critical deliberations between individuals who 鈥渃ome together as a public鈥 as they debate on matters of general interest and common concern. Its ideal type is the 18th-century public sphere whose efficiency lay in its capacity to act as a normative principle of democratic legitimacy, producing public opinion that influenced political action against the domination of the state. In subsequent revisions, Habermas emphasized the role of deliberative language and communicative rationality in the consolidation of the public sphere, which he redefined as 鈥渁 network for communicating information and points of view鈥 where 鈥減articipants enter into interpersonal relationships by taking positions of mutual speech-act offers and assuming illocutionary obligations.鈥

Read more

The Habermasian formulation of the public sphere has been contested from the start. Critics have questioned its presumed universalism and unity, as well as its rational-critical discourse. Nancy Fraser has shown that the bourgeois public sphere was constituted through a considerable number of exclusions鈥攖hose of women and other social groups, who in fact constituted counterpublics where members could formulate oppositional understandings of their identities and interests. Oskar Negt and Alexander Kluge have disclosed the interdependency between the bourgeois public sphere and the proletarian counterpublic sphere. Chantal Mouffe has contested Habermas鈥檚 rationalistic model of argumentation, to propose instead an agonistic model where antagonism is the necessary passion of politics. Media scholars have shown that the interpersonal relationships composing the public sphere were much more actively mediated than Habermas initially presumed and that the development of mass media does not necessarily lead to the degeneration of the public sphere. Other critics have highlighted the surveillance capacities of media, together with the increased privatization and commercialization of the internet, as well as the neoliberal depolitization of publicness. They maintain that these operations have contributed to the weakening of the public sphere as a democratic space. Habermas himself has postulated that the public sphere has been in decline since the 19th century.

In light of these critiques, what remains of the public sphere, and what is to be saved from it? Much more multiple, porous, passionate, mediated and mutable than initially formulated, can the public sphere nevertheless function as a motivating ideal? More importantly: how can and how does art participate in this impetus? In The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere Habermas locates the origins of the public sphere in 17th鈥 and 18th鈥 century cultural spheres, which progressively developed into a politically-oriented public sphere. Institutionalized by the coffeehouse, the journal of opinion and the art and literary salons, the cultural public sphere was composed of readers, spectators, listeners and critics engaged in deliberations (analyses of meaning, judgments of taste and moral discussions) around artistic, literary, theatrical and musical works. These deliberations unfolded through processes of identification and disidentification, as well as judgments on a variety of subjects aesthetically represented and performed (private life, the humanness of the family described in sentimental literature, beauty, the imagined life of others). The cultural sphere鈥攖he subjective themes and empathic author-reader relationships it introduced; the meeting places and critical arguments by which it unfolded鈥攂oth prepared for and enriched the deliberations of the political sphere.

While it is difficult today to maintain the universal and rationalistic presuppositions of these two spheres, and although the cultural sphere is increasingly privatized, the role of culture in the shaping of the public sphere is worth reexamining. Some components of the public sphere鈥攃ritical publicness; the aesthetics of its deliberations on matters of general and common interest; a public body鈥檚 capacity to reconfigure common sense鈥攁re worth defending. During the 2015-2016 academic year, Media@平特五不中 will dedicate most of its research and conference activities to the question of the cultural public sphere, examining its relation to the political sphere and its operativeness both as an analytical tool and an aesthetic category. While some models of the cultural public sphere have failed, others have been reinvented and must be assessed. These models have been historically and are still today critical for the development and reconsideration of democracy, justice, commonality, relationality, ecology, vitality and publics, as well as for the evolution of the museum as one of the privileged institutions of the public sphere.

Our investigation of the role of the cultural public sphere in contemporary reformulations of the public sphere will revolve around six questions. First, what is the general state of publicness in the world today, especially the state of its related ideals: democracy, justice, commonality and emancipation? Second, what is the relationship between art, politics and media in the making of public spheres? Third, if we adopt Gerard Hauser鈥檚 more flexible definition of the public sphere, as a sphere 鈥渋n which individuals and groups congregate to discuss matters of mutual interest and, where possible, to reach a common judgment,鈥 how can the public sphere be aesthetically defined as a 鈥渟ensibility鈥 and not simply as a mode of rational-critical deliberation or decision-making process? Fourth, to paraphrase Nelson Goodman, when (more than what) is the cultural public sphere? The cultural public sphere has a history and a genealogy that still need to be traced by art historians, museum thinkers, curators, media scholars and social scientists. Fifth, when and how does art (especially media art) succeed in actualizing inclusive public spheres鈥攑ublic spheres that are open to human and nonhuman relations? To use Bruno Latour鈥檚 Inquiry into Modes of Existence鈥檚 terminology, when and how does art deploy spacious in-common worlds, which make room for a diversity of beings in conversation, new and old ways of relating through sensibilities, perception, thought, affects, movement, circulation, media, speech and body acts? Worlds that redefine what it is to be human. And sixth, how are cultural public spheres spatialized and temporalized in different geographies, in relation to globalization?

Magic: Between Embodiment and Ontology

Media @ 平特五不中 continues its co-sponsorship of the AHCS Graduate Symposium, now renamed as the Emerging Scholars symposium and combined with the AHCS Faculty Symposium.

Anonymity in Authorship and Activism

Anonymity in Authorship and Activism will take place on Friday, September 25, from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., at Morrice Hall 17 aka Tuesday Night Caf茅 Theatre, 平特五不中, 3485 McTavish Street,...

Common Aliens: inaugural conference organized by Celadon

Media@平特五不中 is one of the co-sponsors of the inaugural Common Aliens: Diaspora Conference 2015 / 脡trangers communs: conf茅rence sur la diaspora 2015, run through Atelier C茅ladon, a community-based...

Wendy Brown to give 2015 Beaverbrook Annual Lecture

For its flagship event, the 2015 Beaverbrook Annual Lecture, Media@平特五不中 is excited to announce the speaker as Professor Wendy Brown, political theorist and activist....

Panel : "The Long Eighteenth Century's Public Spheres"

M茅dia @ 平特五不中 organise une table ronde (en anglais), 鈥淭he Long Eighteenth Century鈥檚 Public Spheres鈥 le 17 novembre, 18 h, dans la salle Leacock 232, Universit茅 平特五不中, 855, rue Sherbrooke Ouest....

Sounds of Activism: Dont Rhine workshops at IPLAI

Media@平特五不中, in collaboration with IGSF and IPLAI, invite applications to participate in "Sounds of Activism," a three-session practice-based workshop on militant sound research a three-day...

Why We Remember: HIV/AIDS Media Now

Cait McKinney, 2015-2016 Media@平特五不中 Postdoctoral Fellow and the Institute for Gender, Sexuality, and Feminist Studies are co-organizing Why We Remember: HIV/AIDS Media Now, a symposium on AIDS...

Live Streaming as a Political Act: Film Screening and Discussion

Join Media@平特五不中 for a public event titled--Live streaming as a political act: The case of CUTV's live stream coverage from the Quebec's Maple Spring.

Workshop: Research Methods for Movements 鈥 Being Relevant and Responsible

Media@平特五不中 is sponsoring a workshop, Research Methods for Movements 鈥 Being Relevant and Responsible, led by Dr. Elise Thorburn, on Friday, February 26, from 11:00 a.m. to 2:30 p.m., in Arts 160....

Pages

Back to top