Making and Unmaking of Audiences and Publics (454-0-1)

Instructors

Dilip P Gaonkar
847/491-5853
2240 Campus Dr. Rm 2-148 Frances Searle Building

Meeting Info

Frances Searle Building 1483: Wed 2:00PM - 4:50PM

Overview of class

Since the onset of modernity, especially since the 18th century, a family of concepts such as public, publicity, public opinion, public interest, and public affairs have become indispensable for understanding how society, politics, and communication practices are distinctively and complexly intertwined. The term "public" signifies relatively unrestricted communication across civil society regarding governance and other matters affecting the general welfare. Theoretical articulation of the "public sphere" has directed critical understanding of key institutions in modern societies, including the liberal-democratic state, capitalist social relations, the media and culture industries, and social movement protests. Similarly, another set of concepts such as audience, spectator and spectatorship, crowds, parades and marches, rallies, carnivals, fairs, and festivals, both calendric and contingent, have becomes equally indispensable for understanding the dynamics of the capitalist political economy which is dependent on ever escalating consumption cycles. This seminar will focus on the crossing of these two networks of concepts, one foregrounding the political subjectivity of the citizen and the other targeting the market subjectivity of the consumer, to identify and analyze a full range of deep problems afflicting the seemingly "ungovernable" liberal-capitalist democratic societies today. Readings include John Dewey, Walter Lippmann, Jürgen Habermas, Oskar Negt and Alexander Kluge, Nestor Garca Canclini, Miriam Hansen, Michael Warner, Lauren Berlant, John Peters, and others.

Class Attributes

Graduate Students Only