Non-liberal Theories of The Public Sphere
By the end of the 20th century the discussions about public spheres got a new biopolitical twist. Traditionally the public spheres had been contemplated as to how free agents transgress the private spheres. Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri have, drawing on the late Michel Foucault's writings on biopolitics, suggested that we reconsider the very distinction between public and private spheres. They argue that the traditional distinction is founded on a certain (capitalist) account of property that presuppose clear-cut separations between interests. This account of property is (according to Hardt and Negri) based upon a scarcity economy. The scarcity economy is characterized by an impossibility of sharing the goods. If "agent A" eats the bread, "agent B" cannot have it. The interests of agents are thus, generally, clearly separated.
However with the evolving shift in the economy towards an informational materiality, in which value is based upon the informational significance, or the narratives surrounding the products, the clear-cut subjective separation is no longer obvious. Hardt and Negri see the open source approaches as examples of new ways of co-operation that illustrate how economic value is not founded upon exclusive possession, but rather upon collective potentialities. Informational materiality is characterized by gaining value only through being shared. Hardt and Negri thus suggest that the commons become the focal point of analyses of public relations. The point being that with this shift it becomes possible to analyse how the very distinctions between the private and public are evolving.
Read more about this topic: Public Sphere
Famous quotes containing the words theories, public and/or sphere:
“The wise man regulates his conduct by the theories both of religion and science. But he regards these theories not as statements of ultimate fact but as art-forms.”
—J.B.S. (John Burdon Sanderson)
“The discovery of Pennsylvania’s coal and iron was the deathblow to Allaire. The works were moved to Pennsylvania so hurriedly that for years pianos and the larger pieces of furniture stood in the deserted houses.”
—For the State of New Jersey, U.S. public relief program (1935-1943)
“Wherever the State touches the personal life of the infant, the child, the youth, or the aged, helpless, defective in mind, body or moral nature, there the State enters “woman’s peculiar sphere,” her sphere of motherly succor and training, her sphere of sympathetic and self-sacrificing ministration to individual lives.”
—Anna Garlin Spencer (1851–1931)