The aesthetics of free speech : rethinking the public sphere / John Michael Roberts.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Roberts, John M. (John Michael)

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Freedom of speech.

Democracy.

Discourse analysis.

Marxian school of sociology.

Political sociology.

Physical Description:

viii, 277 pages ; 23 cm

Place of Publication:

Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire ; New York : Palgrave Macmillian, 2003.

Summary:

It is frequently said that there has been an 'aestheticisation of democracy and participation'. People today, so the argument goes, are more prone to become politically active through issues surrounding 'lifestyle' and 'identity' politics. The Aesthetics of Free Speech: Rethinking the Public Sphere challenges this one-dimensional view. It does so by focusing on a crucial relationship within democratic theory, namely the relationship between free speech and the public sphere. John Michael Roberts argues that, far from being a recent phenomenon, a contradictory aesthetic of public discussion, and free speech has been at the heart of capitalist social relations since their inception. By drawing upon Marxism, and including the discourse theory of the Bakhtin Circle, John Michael Roberts demonstrates how liberal theorists frequently constuct an abstract aesthetic of 'rational', 'cultivated' and 'competent' discussion which then serves as a norm through which certain utterances can be humiliated and excluded from participating fully within the public sphere. However, the author also shows how excluded utterances develop their own aesthetic of free speech and how this aesthetic comes back to haunt the bourgeois public sphere. The Aesthetics of Free Speech is essential reading for anyone interested in radical and socialist approaches to democratic theory.

Contents:

1 Introduction: Digging and Levelling the Capitalist Public Sphere 1

2 Abstracting Dialogue 30

3 Consummating Aesthetics 58

4 John Stuart Mill and the Search for a State of Cultivation 94

5 Jurgen Habermas and the Search for a State of Competency 122

6 The Capitalist Form of the Public Sphere 162

7 The Intuitive Form of Free Speech in the Proletarian and Bourgeois Public Spheres 195

8 The State of Free Speech 217.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 260-274) and index.

ISBN:

1403905665

OCLC:

52347537