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