The Public [may] not be Televised

Earlier this week while I was on my way home Spotify played me Gil Scott Heron’s “The Revolution will not be Televised”. Heron’s wry way of pointing out the absences in “public television” at the time, immediately brought to mind the topics we’ve been discussing in this class. The poem is an example of the distinctions we have been making in class between publics and counterpublics or, as referenced by the textbook, enclaved counterpublics. I thought it was particularly interesting because there is an interplay of sorts between the publics this piece addresses.

In first glance the public of this text is certainly a counterpublic and most likely one which is isolated somewhat from the general U.S. population. Heron’s use of the word “Brothers” to refer to other black men, in addition to the more inclusive exclusive term of “revolution” immediately imply to the listeners that there are distinctions between themselves and those who do not hear the piece. Revolutions don’t happen without something or presumably someone to revolt against. The mocking tone the text takes towards traditional or standard commercial television culture further re-enforces the “us-not-them” address of the text. Heron’s public very much enclaved; black, revolutionary, and anti-consumer.

At the same time, Warner notes the importance of how publics and their rhetorics must be continually affected by the progress of time.“It is not texts themselves that create publics, but the concatenation of texts through time. Only when a previously existing discourse can be supposed, and a responding discourse be postulated, can a text address a public.” (p 82). Now, this song is ubiquitously known as a rebel anthem and a powerful contributor to the 70s Black Power movement. As a young, white, female college student of no exceptional revolutionary tendency, I am now also in its public. It has become a part of, and shaped, the broader public discourse of the U.S.

Its meaning has also changed. It is viewed mostly with historical context now. I would presume that listeners who felt the message resonated too perfectly with contemporary times would be thought a bit affected by the rest of their peers. However, the continued discussion of failed representation of black publics, in the Oscars, or in police arrests, or in the coverage of terrorism, all suggest that the message is not entirely out of place. It is quite likely that in shaping how we view issues of underrepresentation of certain publics, Heron’s piece may have been the first to point out the lack of minority interests represented in television and other media.

Here is a link to a bit about Heron, and also the lyrics to “The Revolution will not be Televised”

Quotes from Warner, I & II

"Indeed, a public might almost be said to be stranger-relationality in a pure form, because other ways of organizing strangers—nations, religions, races, guilds, and so on—have manifest positive content. They select strangers by criteria of territory or identity or belief or some other test of membership. One can address strangers in such contexts because a common identity has been established through independent means or institutions (e.g., creeds, armies, parties). A public, however, unites strangers through participation alone, at least in theory. Strangers come into relationship by its means, though the resulting social relationship might be peculiarly indirect and unspecifiable." p 56

"Our subjectivity is understood as having resonance with others, and immediately so. But this is only true to the extent that the trace of our strangerhood remains present in our understanding of ourselves as the addressee." p 57

"No single text can create a public. Nor can a single voice, a single genre, or even a single medium. All are insufficient to create the kind of reflexivity that we call a public, since a public is understood to be an ongoing space of encounter for discourse. It is not texts themselves that create publics, but the concatenation of texts through time. Only when a previously existing discourse can be supposed, and a responding discourse be postulated, can a text address a public."  p 62

"Public discourse, in other words, is poetic. By this I mean not just that a public is self-organizing, a kind of entity created by its own discourse, or even that this space of circulation is taken to be a social entity. Rather, I mean that all discourse or performance addressed to a public must characterize the world in which it attempts to circulate, projecting for that world a concrete and livable shape, and attempting to realize that world through address." p 81

"Public discourse says not only: “Let a public exist,” but: “Let it have this character, speak this way, see the world in this way.”" p 82

Selected quotes from the Chapter

"Encapsulating the role of the counterpublic and the need for an oppositional discourse, African-American cultural critic bell hooks'? explains: "The most important of our work-the work of liberation-demands of us that we make a new language, that we create the oppositional discourse, the liberatory voice plays a central role in counterpublics. People cannot challenge the way things are unless they can see another way to be, and develop a language to articulate that alternative vision. Examples of enclaved counterpublic discourse include the consciousness-raising groups of second-wave feminism, the discussions in black churches about the immanent humanity of all people that fed into the activism of the Civil Rights movement, and the identity formation and needs identification in the farmworkers' organizations" p. 245

"For this reason, she argues, "there is no public sphere in the contemporary United States, no context of communication and debate that makes ordinary citizens feel that they have a common public culture, or influence on a state that holds itself accountable to their opinions."73 US citizenship has been privatized by "rerouting the critical energies of the emerging political sphere into the sentimental spaces of an amorphous opinion culture, characterized by strong patriotic identification mixed with feelings of practical political powerlessness." p. 249

Habermas Response

Habermas's article was very unusual in style. Maybe it was just all the "bourgeoisie" but it came off like this almost Marxist critique of politics and public discourse. What an odd approach to the topic of public speech.

Public, according to Habermas, seems to be function of the democratic freedom of the people; something that exists only in an unrepressed society. While "public rhetoric" may have been limited prior to democracy by overwhelming political powers, to say that it existed only after the rise of democracy seems unfair. Satire was not invented after the writing Magna Carta. Criticism and open speech were available long before that, in public spaces even, and I think that those must be counted amongst "public rhetorics".

The public sphere now involves less "formal" media than ever before. I think a lot of support can be found saying that traditional media outlets- television newscasts and newspapers -are less representative of the public thought than they used to be. Often, social movements are reported on by these media after the fact. The public sphere is so much online, and as result, far more able to be directly affected by the public than ever before (see: #blacklivesmatter, Kony 2012, etc). Our current public sphere is very oriented towards "viral" rhetoric. This, in particular, is very related to the democratic values Habermas discusses, what is more democratic than public comment via overwhelming hashtags of the masses?