The Phantom Public Sphere

In the recent "culture wars" over canon, curriculum, and multiculturalism, enraged cries are repeatedly echoed that the academy has failed in its duty to "the public". These cries echo older charges against schools and universities and the media for failing to produce active, informed citizens and, more recently, against race and gender politics for dividing the body politic against itself. "The Phantom Public Sphere" interrogates the concept of the public in whose name all such charges are levelled. The public sphere is presented as something already lost, an unrepresented absence. In the heterogeneous, electronically mediated society we call postmodern, can we still speak meaningfully of a public sphere? On the other hand, can supporters of democracy afford not to speak of it? Robbins presents the public sphere and the public/private opposition as a truly interdisciplinary field of inquiry. These are pressing topics for feminist theory and media studies, architecture and urban planning, political science and philosophy, economics and advertising, education and medicine.
Coming from a number of different disciplines and perspectives, the contributors to this volume share a concern with what the public means now - not as an object of nostalgia, but as a presence within the institutions and movements that have redefined contemporary life. "The Phantom Public Sphere" takes up the challenge Walter Lippmann posed for democracy in 1925 when he called the public a "phantom" - yet this book speaks in the name of democracy and its still unfulfilled radical possibilities. Bruce Robbins is the author of "The Servant's Hand: English Fiction From Below" (1986) and the editor of "Intellectuals: Aesthetics, Politics, Academics" (Minnesota, 1990). This book is intended for academics with interests in media, TV, communications, women's studies and feminist theory.