rhetoric and the public sphere
Habermas's discussions of the public sphere are enormously interesting to me, partly because his model provides a paradigm with which I can conceptualize the "place" where I meet others in mind and spirit, and how there are "memes" that run through conversations among members of a society. But his model also invites a lot of questions, and these are what I'll focus on now.
He expresses concern about the job of public relations, those who selectively release information from corporations into the public. But don't we all have little public relations nanobots working in my head? Certainly I craft what I say according to my audience, and I do not divulge all.
In Erkki Karvonen's introduction to these discussions about the public sphere, he describes (a very brief) history of democracy and its connection to the public sphere, beginning in Athens, that good ole birthplace of democracy and politics. But Athens was also the birthplace of rhetoric, a fact that Karvonen and Habermas don't address here (but perhaps they do elsewhere?). Rhetoric is the art of crafting words for an audience--really a form of old-school PR. And it was essential to Athenian democracy and all democracies since then.
If the inevitable forces of rhetoric and PR reward those who speak loudest or most eloquently, how would it be possible for everyone to participate on par? Hierarchies and status are built into language itself, and any time we must communicate with each other through language, we judge each other's words not just for their content, but also for their style. Perhaps technology will provide us with a method for expressing ideas without fixed form in language (which will be a nightmare for would be plagiarism police and copyright lawyers!), but until then, is the idea of an ideal public sphere relegated to an ideal rather than real form?
He expresses concern about the job of public relations, those who selectively release information from corporations into the public. But don't we all have little public relations nanobots working in my head? Certainly I craft what I say according to my audience, and I do not divulge all.
In Erkki Karvonen's introduction to these discussions about the public sphere, he describes (a very brief) history of democracy and its connection to the public sphere, beginning in Athens, that good ole birthplace of democracy and politics. But Athens was also the birthplace of rhetoric, a fact that Karvonen and Habermas don't address here (but perhaps they do elsewhere?). Rhetoric is the art of crafting words for an audience--really a form of old-school PR. And it was essential to Athenian democracy and all democracies since then.
If the inevitable forces of rhetoric and PR reward those who speak loudest or most eloquently, how would it be possible for everyone to participate on par? Hierarchies and status are built into language itself, and any time we must communicate with each other through language, we judge each other's words not just for their content, but also for their style. Perhaps technology will provide us with a method for expressing ideas without fixed form in language (which will be a nightmare for would be plagiarism police and copyright lawyers!), but until then, is the idea of an ideal public sphere relegated to an ideal rather than real form?
posted by advee at 10:45 PM
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