Some thoughts on "The Public"

The questions raised last week surrounding the meaning of “public” seemed particularly relevant to this week’s readings. Although at best I have only a basic understanding of the arguments made by Habermas, Benhabib, and Jodi Dean, I found Dean’s distinction between the public sphere and civil society to be quite useful in thinking through issues of global communication.

What struck me in our discussion last week was our tendency (mine included) to throw around the term “public” without a careful consideration of what we actually mean by it. Often, when we talk of “the public,” we have in mind the masses, “commoners,” or that portion of society that is outside of government. Other times, as in the case of the salons described by Habermas, Benhabib and Dean, this term can be used to describe common spaces outside the home (in opposition to “private”), where all people can come together and interact, or do what I would describe as practice society. And yet on other occasions, in direct opposition with the first definition, when we speak of “the public,” we actually have in mind elements of the government itself, such as in the case of public institutions including schools, libraries, museums and monuments. Although work has been done to make this term more useful (for example, the “let’s throw an s on the end” approach that is so popular in academia), I still find the term to be highly ambiguous, and this lack of specificity has often been counterproductive.

Dean’s civil society is one logical response to this problem. Again, I feel I should stress my limited understanding of her argument (at times the heavy political theory was a bit much for me to hold), but her basic argument, particularly her emphasis on the inequalities in civil society seemed to me quite reasonable. Because civil society is, as noted on page 252, centered on communication, unequal access, particularly to communications spaces and technologies such as the Internet, raises important questions that challenge the egalitarian rhetoric tied to the public sphere. This fact struck me particularly on page 262, when Dean writes that “[r]ather than a common humanity, there is the uncommonality of cyborgean experience that threatens to increase the gap between rich and poor, or between those with information and those without it…”

In Gamer, this distinction between the haves and the have-nots was present throughout, although because technology was practically everywhere in the film, the boundaries felt to me, almost invisible at times. However, the boundaries surrounding “Society” and “Slayer” served a dual function: they defined not only the spaces of play, but also those with access to controlling technology from those without it (and who were instead controlled by it). This distinction was most evident when the police were interrogating Simon after Kabel escaped. The officer contrasted the realities of Simon’s life with Kabel’s, calling attention to the reality of human life on the other side of the screen. In this moment, I felt the false sense of egalitarianism and equal access of the public sphere come crashing down around both Simon and me, where suddenly we were made to acknowledge the presence of an outside, or an experience existing beyond the boarders of technology. Although this recognition was only a fleeting moment in the film, I hope that we as media scholars can hold it with us as we continue to press on in thinking about issues of global media. For, while it is very easy for us to think and theorize within the limits of our own experiences, our work will only reveal a fraction of the picture if we do not take into consideration those beyond the boundaries of our minds.