Modern or Postmodern? That is the question. Well, it's a question that I'm not sure I can answer quite clearly. According to the modernist Habermas, the ideal public sphere "...would involve only private individuals expressing their own authentic ideas, with no compromises and no attempt to second-guess what other people would like to hear (Calhoun, 1992:b 21). It would only contain art and literature--no mass culture" (Mckee 54-55). This idea of the public sphere is very narrow minded and extremely dull. The postmodernist view of including the important issues of every group and culture is also one that is disorganized and chaotic. When I think of the postmodern view in it's pure state, I imagine a room full of people representing a variety of cultures all yelling "What about us!?!".
Like most people are about various ideologies, I'm somewhat in the middle. However, I will admit that I lean a little more towards the modern approach than the postmodern. I believe in a fairly ideal public sphere where the issues that affect us all as members of society are addressed. Arguably, issues that are important to one particular group of people are issues that affect us all as members of society are addressed. For example, if the working-class wants more social programs, it is surely going to come out of the pockets of the wealthy, and if the wealthy are demanding tax cuts it will certainly be to the detriment of social programs. I can also say that I prefer a public sphere that fairly fragmented, with mainstream media deal with more universal issues and other specialized venues that address more trivial issues. Mixing the trivial with the political can often result in a public sphere that is chaotic, as we have seen with the coverage of the death of Micheal Jackson, the sex scandals of Tiger Woods and the death of Anna Nicole Smith. Postmodernist would suggest that these seemingly trivial stories bring various private issues into light to be discussed by society. While I agree with that notion, I believe that there is a time and a place for such stories, and there should be a place reserved for this type of discussion outside of mainstream media. If we can marry the modern approach with the postmodern, I believe we can achieve a truly ideal public sphere.
I think you make a lot of good points. One of them being that fragmentation can actually help the modernist idea of the pubic sphere by creating spaces for the more trivial issues, while leaving a larger space for the more universally important issues. Maybe the compromise between the two ideologies lies somewhere near your idea.
ReplyDelete