1

36M:366 The Public Sphere Fall Semester 2006, University of Iowa Prof. John Durham Peters Office: 125 BCSB, Phone: 353-2258 (voice mail) e-mail: [email protected] Office Hours: Wednesday 1:00-4:00 p.m. and by appointment. Not available T & Th. Broadcasting, dissemination, love of the world (Paddy), Streeter on simulated property, radio, carnivore, eavesdropping, conversation, etc. Classic texts. Challenges to public spheres in new millennium: technologies (otaku, cell phones, terror), military (warfare, violence), religion (toleration, obscenity, offense), and globalization (cultural sovereignty). Brief Overview I have designed the seminar to provide a thorough grounding in classic conceptions of the public sphere and its applications and critiques; this focus leads us to many central debates in social and political theory today. The seminar's main goal is to encourage students to grapple with some of the great questions of our time about public life and communication through (1) lectures, readings, and class discussions and (2) their original scholarship. Many of the following interrelated questions, all of them central to recent debates, will inform the course: 1. Rationality: a commitment to critical-rational debate exclude people on race, class, gender, and other lines? Does it exclude other forms of political communication that are unruly, impolitic, pleasurable, spectacular, rhetorical, physical, sensational, musical, etc? Is a politics of universality possible or are all attempts at universality just subtle exercises of dominion? 2. Difference: can democratic theory recognize strangeness and otherness? 3. Historical method: what are the prospects of reconstructing norms of public communication today, given their history of gender, racial, class, age, sexual, ability, and other exclusions? Does the history indicate a fatal flaw in the conception itself or simply its incomplete realization? Did the public sphere ever exist? Should we even think of the public sphere or public spheres (bourgeois, plebeian, etc.)? 4. Geography: how crucial is face-to-face interaction, assembly, or presence to public life? Can public spheres be diasporic (i.e., dispersed in space)? Can they be anything but diasporic? What is the role of media (in both the conventional and broad sense) in dispensing or constituting public space? Can there be democratic participation at a distance? Can the public sphere be placeless? What kind of place do the media provide? Is conversation possible on a large scale? 5. Representation: what means are best for creating democratic public spaces? Theater, art, information, entertainment, image? What is the role of aesthetics in politics? Can the image be democratic? Music? Is the public sphere something necessarily staged--or upstaged? Is audition the fundamental mode of public life as opposed to vision? What about tactility? Imagination? 6. Embodiment: is publicity necessarily a regime of disembodiment, a privileged stance encoded to fit those bodies that are readily able to perform the feat of self-abstraction? What is the relation of the private body to the body politic? Is the public sphere a spirit or a body for Habermas and for others?

2

Requirements 1. A substantial seminar paper, around 25 pp. or so. This could serve as the first draft of an article for publication, a conference paper, a dissertation chapter, or better yet, it could simply be a major project that you have been wanting to do for a long time. Attached is a list suggesting some possible topics: each topic should be carefully thought out and crafted by you, as the list offered is not ready to download. I am looking for original, imaginative, audacious, bold, novel, thoughtful, visionary and well-written work (to make my expectations explicit). Link theoretical questions with particular dramas, fields, and metaphors. Infuse your thinking and analysis with a historical sensibility. Tackle topics that perplex and fascinate you. Find new angles and minidramas that anchor your argument. Defy the ruling orthodoxies (whatever they are for you). In doing the reading in class, we will intermittently step back to examine the techniques of craft and quality evidenced in our readings, hopefully for guidance in the art of scholarship. I'd be happy to look at drafts and otherwise help you develop your papers. I'd encourage you to work on your topic throughout the semester and bring up your discoveries, as relevant, in class discussion. 2. Oral presentation of your paper in the final weeks of class: 15 minutes max plus 10 minutes for discussion. 3. A statement of your proposed topic, due by 18 September. Please start brainstorming at once. Please feel free to chat with me about your potential ideas and to keep an open mind before you commit to something (read ahead in books for ideas). 4. A book review of some “classic” work in political theory. A spotty list is attached. Since this incarnation of the course does not deal in any depth with the history or roots of notions of public and private, this is a chance to enrich your historical sense. Use this as an opportunity to read a book you have been wanting to read anyway; choose a book that will be helpful for your seminar paper. Due 17 October, by beginning of class. 5. Active participation in discussion, including possible leading of a session. This is a seminar--a genre that signals lots of class participation. I will lecture some to launch us and keep us on track. How we structure discussion will depend on your interests. Readings The following books have been ordered at the IMU bookstore: Arendt, The Human Condition Calhoun (ed.), Habermas and The Public Sphere Habermas, Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere Habermas, Between Facts and Norms I have tried to keep the reading load digestible and focused, so you have time to work on your papers. Depending on class interest, I can organize (and order) additional readings on various topics of interest. A more extensive list of books has been put on three-day reserve in the library. These books represent the variety of recent English-language scholarship using the notion of the public sphere and can be used for brainstorming and reviews. These compensate for the standard nature of the common readings. Nasty Notice Although no one ever plans to get an incomplete for a course, I want you actively to plan not to. I will not give incompletes for this course save in the most severe of crises (such as the student's death). Plan now to finish on time; the last weeks have no reading assignments save to come to class and write.

3

Tentative Schedule Given the somewhat fluid nature of the genre of a seminar, the following schedule may evolve over the course of the course. August M 21 Introduction to the Class I. Classic Texts A fuller overview would include at least some of the British libertarian tradition (Milton, “Cato,” Mill) and some of the early twentieth century American debates (Lippmann and Dewey). I assume many of you have at least the latter. M 28 The Human Condition READ: Habermas, “The Public Sphere: An Encyclopedia Article (1964),” New German Critique 1:3 (Fall, 1974), 49-55. Reprinted in many other books: Jürgen Habermas on Society and Politics, Cultural Studies Reader, etc. Read: The Human Condition, TBA. STPS, big chunks--two weeks of reading. September M 4 Labor Day: No Class M 11 STPS Read: Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere, TBA. Statement of Topic due by beginning of class. Fred Turner visit. M 18 Between Facts and Norms, more recent work by Habermas Read: Habermas’s 1989 self-critique, ch. 17, in Calhoun. Read: Habermas, Between Facts and Norms, chs. 7-8, ICA paper. M 25 Habermas and his Critics Read: Fraser, ch. 5; Schudson, Ryan, who? Recommended: Negt and Kluge, The Public Sphere and Experience (1974). McLaughlin, “Feminism and the Transnational Economy of Public Space” II. Contemporary Problems October M 2 Public Sphere and Broadcasting, simulated property, The shifting public and private realms Feminist theory, conversation, eavesdropping, carnivore, etc. Read: Garnham, Scannell M 9 The Question of Religion--Laclau Visit Read: Habermas, Holberg Prize address, Islam, Fundamentalism, cartoons M 16 Obscenity and Offense--Badiou Visit Read: George Steiner Read: Ken Cmiel

4

Book review due by beginning of class. M 23 Questions of Evil, or Witnesssing Arendt on Eichmann, Thinking and Moral Considerations McDaniel, “Speaking Like a State” M 30 Questions of Pity or Global Care Halttunen, Orwin, etc. Chouliaraki, Silverstone. Tony Korn. November M 6 Technologies: Public Broadcasting, Telephones, miniaturization Goffman, Behavior in Public, or Forms of Talk, or a couple articles SSRC seminar, papers M 13 Seminar Presentations M 20 Thanksgiving Break, No Class M 27 Seminar Presentations December M 4 Seminar Presentations Papers due Friday 15 December, by 3:30 p.m.