c. scott andreas

I’ve been reading bits and pieces of Jürgen Habermas’ The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere. It’s a biting critique of our present mode of cultural engagement: commerce, and the philosophy behind it that teaches us culture is something to be consumed, not discussed or debated.

In this little missive, I suggest that there’s a tremendous opportunity for the church to resurrect public culture by “taking it back” from Big Media.

Habermas suggests that a brief history of the word “public” and the concept of “publicity” may shed light on the path leading to our current social order and patterns of cultural engagement (or more accurately, consumption). He accredits reason for the shift from feudal / manorial authority toward a bourgeois public sphere. Private individuals, Habermas argues, began to fashion public lives for themselves by critically reflecting upon and engaging products of culture in community. Only later did “public discourse” attain political connotations as the bourgeois began to debate matters of governance. Today, private leisure and familial intimacy has largely displaced public discussion, debate, and sociability.

Rooted in the eighteenth century, this new concept of privacy transformed the relationship between the individual and “the public.” Rather than engaging in culture through rational-critical argument over the meaning and productivity of shared cultural artifacts in public areas, individuals simply began to consume mass-produced artifacts, reducing culture to a commodity on the level of baking soda or flour. The rise of the “culture industry” (the penny press; later radio, film, and TV) spurred a race-to-the-bottom as content producers discovered that citizens were willing to unite culture with commerce. By and large, individuals came to understand “cultural engagement,” both literary and political, as a private commercial duty. The implications of this shift are far-reaching: even the state must now address its citizens as consumers.

But what of the way forward? Might it still be possible to supplant commoditized entertainment media with a new discussive (indeed, subversive) model of civil society? We have in our possession technologies that enable individuals to “publish themselves” – pens, ink, and 39-cent stamps, but also laser printers and blogs. Legend has it that Martin Luther inaugurated the Reformation by nailing his ninety-five theses to the church door at Wittenberg five centuries ago. Tim Bednar recapitulated this subversive proclamation by “nailing” a treatise to his blog called We Know More Than Our Pastors: Why Bloggers are the Vanguard of the Participatory Church in which he proclaimed the death of the hierarchical / consumptive congregation. This paper ignited a movement of writing, criticizing, and publishing that continues today.

Perhaps there is hope yet.