(no subject)
Public Sphere and Private Life - Dena Goodman
- The entire discussion rooted in the 18th century, 'when an authentic public sphere was articulated and establshed for the first and only time' (p.12)
- A long standing tradition of seperating the public sphere (Habermas - The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere) from the private life (A History of the Private Life - Chartier, both published in 1989) Goodman aims to bring a synthesis of the public and private - 'the public sphere...is a dimension of the private sphere.' (p.2)
The Public Sphere - Habermas and Koselleck
- Koselleck's public sphere, one based on political absolutism (reason d'etat - politics outside the realm of moral consideration) and intellectual criticism (the republic of letters, the philsophes who eventually turned criticism to the realm of absolutism - Masonic Lodges/Illuminati- leading to the Jacobin Republic?) which created a dialectic discourse from which the French Revolution emerged.
- 'Kollselleck sets up a fundamental opposition between the public sphere of absolutism and the private sphere of relgious conscience,' (p.3) Goodman sees this as the fundamental weakness of his argument, an oversimplication in order to gain the oppositional forces of his dialectic.
- Habermas' argument is more nuanced - looks at the derivation of the term, 'public sphere.' In the middle ages public was merely a social status, 'it represented the power of the person rather than articulating a sphere of social action' (p.4) Whereas Koselleck sees private conscience arising from poltical absolutism, Habermas sees the development of the public and private spheres as simaltaneous, with differing origins
- 'What the state did create however was it's own object: the public,' (p.4) initially an object of state power, transferring into the reading public (the bourgeoise)
- Hab. also sees criticism as, not a reaction to absolutism, but something in constant contact with the monarchy, a form of communication between state and subjects, 'in which private people come together as a public.' (p.5) Unlike Kollsellecks model which set up the public sphere as a type of pseudo politics, Habermas' model shows the public sphere as an area of socialibility to challenge the political secrets of the state.
- Habermas has 2 public spheres - the inauthentic (merely a zone of state power) and the authentic (where the private people come together to create a public - ie the rep. of letters)
'the authentic public sphere is the ground that mediates between the private life of individuals as producers and reproducers, and their public roles a subjects and (later) citizens of the state.' (p.6)
- Areas of bourgeoise sociability therefore become the social structures of the authentic public sphere, a form of civil society that was reknowned publically. 'the bougeoise publc sphere was authentic precisely because it was open...the veil lay not over the real, hidden, economic interest of the bougeoise but over the political practices of the state.' (p.7)
- Although he is a Marxist historian Habermas' work has been taken up by post Marxist historiography because his model of the authentic public sphere, 'provides a social and material base for the, 'political culture,' ' of subsequent work (p.8)
'Habermas sees the authentic public sphere and the Enlightenment that shaped it as something of a lost paradise that emerged in the 18th century and then collapsed in the 19th, Koselleck sees that same formation as the origin of the hypocritical deceptions of the 20th' (p.8)
Private Life: Ares and Chartier
- The historian Ares designates Habermas' socialability of the authentic public sphere (ie letter writing, coffee houses, reading outloud) to the private sphere as it belonged to private life of individuals. ' As I see it, Ares reflects, the entire history of private life comes down to a change in the forms of socialbility' (p.10)
- In this way work on the public sphere and private life were infact two sides of the same coin.
- Ares attempted to use the history of private life to elucidate aspects of the public sphere, Chartier complicated this picture by studying, 'the privitisation of the state (ie the court and its strict rules of modesty/chivalry) and the publicization of the private sphere.(ie none institutionalised sociabiliy - Habermas' authentic public sphere)' (p.10)
'Chatier has inscribed the public face of the private realm, identifying it with the instituitions of sociability' (p.11 - a synthesis of public/private and political/cultural history is fully explored in Chartier's, 'The Cultural Origins of the French Revolution,' that comes to the paradoxical conclusion that the invention of the private life culminated in the emergence of a revolutionary public sphere. He answers this paradox by stating that the moral values implicit in private life facillitated the growth of the public sphere that was autonomous and critical of state authority)
Convergence and Implications
'We need to get away from rigidly oppositional thinking that assumes two spheres or two discourses, one public and the other private' (p.14) - as sociability was a form of public and private articulation a stable distinction between the two areas is hard to make, 'the 18th century was not an enlightened age but an age of enlightenment, it was in the same sense an age of defintion in which nothing was firmly defined.' (p.14)
- Joan Landes, 'Women and the Public Sphere in the Age of French Revolution' (feminist historical study, an example of, 'a too rigid understanding of the opposition between public and private spheres failsto account for the complexity of the old regime.')
- Lande argues that the Republic that rose from the Revolution was inherently gendered, despite the republics universalist language of, 'the people.' The role of women in revolutionary France was one of domesticity and subsequent female activity has been a struggle for women to re-enter the public sphere. In this theory the public sphere is essentially masculine, 'she sees the public sphere as unitary and the private sphere as its antithesis.' (p. 15) essentially ignoring all the complexities therein.
- Goldman agrees that women were excluded from the revolutionary public sphere but wants to use the complexities rather than dichotomy of public/private to explain how and why.
- Habermas' complicated theory of the authentic public sphere (and its private face as studied by Ares and Chariter) belies a simple model of male public sphere vs. female private sphere (wherein any women operating in the public sphere were, 'transgressing the bounds of the private sphere within which men sought to confine them.' p.16)
- Faults in Landes argument - she doesn't differentiate between women of the court and women of the salon (2 very different publi institutions, see Chartier above), she does not acknowledge that the public space was inherently private so the role of women was acceptable within them (and when the terrors shut down the authentic public sphere and banished women back to the domestic it wasn't just plain misogyny, but a collapse of the nuanced authentic public sphere)
- Landes feels, 'the saloneres were the women against whom men revolted,' (p.17) from grub street hacks to Rousseau, Landes identifies a drive to exclude women from the public sphere (lumping all women, be they prostitutes or salonneires, together)
- Goldman draws a more complex picture of women's role in the growth of the private to a relam of sociability and public voice. She makes a distinction between, 'the role of women in the authentic public sphere and that of women in the public sphere of the state' (court women are portrayed as vessels of secrecy, intrigue and deceit - abetting the privitisation of the state) nb. she does acknowledge that there was an overlap between the two groups of women but generally states, 'each was an institution of a certain kind of sociability and discoursethat corresponds to one of Habermas's two public spheres.' (p.18)
- In contrst to court women, salonnieres were defended by the philosophes who frequented their coffee houses ('the enlightenment salon functioned as a regulated matrix for the dissemination and publication of works that extended this discourse to the literate public and the tribunal of public opinion.' p.18) In the domestic realm of the salon the public role of women was legitimised.
- The central flaw in Landes argument is not recognising that the women in court and the women in the salons were operating in very different spheres, by lumping them together Landes has oversimplified Habermas' complex mapping of state public sphere vs. authentic public sphere and created a false male public/female private dichotomy.
- 'There was no such thing as a public woman in 18th century France. Most women, like most men, functioned within a priavte realm that had a public face.' (p.19)
The Communist Manifesto - Marx
- Bourgeoisie is the class of modern Capitalists, owners of the means of social production and employers of wage labour.
- Proletariat, the class of modern wage-labourers who, having no means of production of their own, are reduced to selling their labour power in order to live (both definitions taken from Engels notes, English edition 1888)
Bourgeoise
- Marx sees history as a constant struggle between class (bourg/proleteriat, lord/peasant, oppresser/oppressed) Struggle that ended in either revolution or ruin of the common class.
- However Marx makes a distinction between this written history, and the history of primerval man (a subject of study in his time)
'The inner organization of this primitive Communistic society was laid bare, in its typical form, by Morgan's crowning discovery of the true nature of the gens and its relation to the tribe. With the dissolution of these primeval communities society begins to be differentiated into separate and finally antagonistic classes.'
- From this moment onwards Marx sees a progression of class stratification and antagonism (from Roman patricians, knights, plebians, to medieval feudalims to current capitalist class system)
'The modern bourgeois society that has sprouted from the ruins of feudal society 'has not done away with class antagonisms. It has but established new classes, new conditions of oppression, new forms of struggle in place of the old ones.'
- Marx sees globalisation (particularly America) and improvements in communication (the railways) as stretching the reach of the bourgeoise. The manufacturing industry replaced local guilds, manufacturers replaced guild masters. Manufacture stiumlated demand and a cycle of capitalism was established, ever growing in magnitude:
'The place of manufacture was taken by the giant. Modern Industry, the place of the industrial middle class, by industrial millionaires, the leaders of whole industrial armies, the modern bourgeois.'
- Marx views the rise of the bourgeoise as a cycle of revolutions (much like Bayly's continuum?) and developments in modes of production. Each step of revolution advanced the bourgiouse as they were the advancing political class. Generally speaking, for the economical development of the bourgeoisie, England is here taken as the typical country; for its political development, France.
- The bougeoise revolution is seen as one that tears man away from a patriarchal, feudal and idyllic heirarchy and into a nexus of self interest
'It has pitilessly torn asunder the motley feudal ties that bound man to his 'natural superiors', and has left remaining no other nexus between man and man than naked self-interest.'
'It has resolved personal worth into exchange value, and in place of the numberless indefeasible chartered freedoms, has set up that single, unconscionable freedom - Free Trade.'
- Marx sees the bourgeoise as rooting everything in money (ie religion becomes secular, the sentimental veil of the family is torn, the wonders of industry are seen as greater than those of mythology - ie pyramids, temples)
'The bourgeoisie cannot exist without constantly revolutionizing the instruments of production, and thereby the relations of production, and with them the whole relations of society.' - whereasn feudalism thrived on stability, the capitalist middle cass only thrive on the production of products for ever expanding markets:
'The need of a constantly expanding market for its products chases the bourgeoisie over the whole surface of the globe. It must nestle everywhere, settle everywhere, establish connexions everywhere.'
- In such a way capitalism makes the world a cosmopoliton one, and makes industry international (unlike the reactionists national footing for industry), raw materials come from the, 'remotest zones,'. This becomes an enemy to national seclusion, ideas become communal. Marx speaks of a, 'world literature.' Through this communication and product incitement Marx sees even the most barbourous nations becoming civilisation.
'In one word, it creates a world after its own image.'
- Marx also lays urbanisation (gaygaygaygaygaygaygaygaygay) at the feet of the bourgeoise - a centralisation of property to the few hands, ' It has created enormous cities, has greatly increased the urban population as compared with the rural, and has thus rescued a considerable part of the population from the idiocy of rural life.' (satire?)
- This allegory is extended to a global scale, 'Just as it has made the country dependent on the towns, so it has made barbarian and semi-barbarian countries dependent on the civilized ones, nations of peasants on nations of bourgeois, the East on the West.'
'The bourgeoisie, during its rule of scarce one hundred years, has created more massive and more colossal productive forces than have all preceding generations together. Subjection of Nature's forces to man, machinery, application of chemistry to industry and agriculture, steam-navigation, railways, electric telegraphs, clearing of whole continents for cultivation, canalization of rivers, whole populations conjured out of the ground - what earlier century had even a presentiment that such productive forces slumbered in the lap of social labour?'
'The essential condition for the existence, and for the sway of the bourgeois class, is the formation and augmentation of capital; the condition for capital is wage labour.'
The Proletariat
-If the bourgeouse revolution was part of an historical conituum of change (feudal relations of property became no longer compatible with the already developed productive forces; they became so many fetters. They had to be burst asunder; they were burst asunder), then it has in turn created the new conditions that will be it's downfall:
* Overproduction creates a economic crisis (plunging countries into the babarism of recession) 'The conditions of bourgeois society are too narrow to comprise the wealth created by them.' - this process is worsened by governments systematically shutting down old markets of production and opening new ones (a temporary solution that actually worsens thwe problem)
* However industry has also created the class that will overthrown them. Through industry the working class has been expanded from simple labourers to a whole movement
'But not only has the bourgeoisie forged the weapons that bring death to itself; it has also called into existence the men who are to wield those weapons - the modern working class - the proletarians.'
- The indutrial capitalist model makes the worker a commodity, a resource that is purchasable like any other. As a commodity they are subject to the vicissitudes of the market. Devlopments in machinary have both mechanised ('he becomes an appendage of the machine') the worker and are starting to put him out of a job.
'In proportion, therefore, as the repulsiveness of the work increases, the wage decreases.'
- Marx also identifies a usurping of the labourers jobs through women (because labour is less intensive due to mechanisation) this breaks down traditional social barriers, a further homogenisation of the working class
- Not only is the working class wage decreasing but it is being taken up by consumable products (the lower echelons of the bourgeoiuse - the shopkeeper, tradesman are the first hit by recession as they lose this business and sink into the proletariat themselves)
'The development of Modern Industry, therefore, cuts from under its feet the very foundation on which the bourgeoisie produces and appropriates products. What the bourgeoisie, therefore, produces, above all, is its own grave-diggers. Its fall and the victory of the proletariat are equally inevitable.'
Stages of Proletariat Revolution
'The proletariat goes through various stages of development. With its birth begins its struggle with the bourgeoisie.'
- Firstly the proletariat directs any anger at the machines of bourgeoise development (factories get burnt, machines and wares destroyed)
- 'At this stage the labourers still form an incoherent mass scattered over the whole country, and broken up by their mutual competition.' (any unionism is the result of the bourgeise utilising the working class as a mass for political ends - against the aristocracy, foreign powers etc. This gives the working class their own socio-political tools and awareness)
- However as industry grows so does the strength of the proleteriat, working man/bourg collisons occur and as a result working class men start to form trade unions. Sporadic outbursts of trade unionism are not important in victory at this point but in the effect they have in creating 'one big union' (aided by increasing global communications)
'And that union, to attain which the burghers of the Middle Ages, with their miserable highways, required centuries, the modern proletarians, thanks to railways, achieve in a few years.'
- In such a way disparate unions become a united working class, a political party who can fight for the rights of the worker (ten hours bill in England)
- As recession becomes increasingly violent, sections of the ruling class take a philosophical/ideological stance with the working class (seeing their emergence as a new socialist, historical force?)
'Of all the classes that stand face to face with the bourgeoisie today, the proletariat alone is a really revolutionary class.' (the lower middle class fight to save their existance, not for the existance of others so they are conservative)
- Proleteriat revolution is one of complete destruction of old modes of production (whereas previous revolutions appropriated suitable aspects of the old community/heirarchy)
'All previous historical movements were movements of minorities, or in the interest of minorities. The proletarian movement is the self-conscious, independent movement of the immense majority, in the interest of the immense majority.'
- Marx sees this revolution as nationlist in form, but not substance - ie proleteriat has to fight their national bourgeoiuse before there can be a global working class
The Wretched of the Earth - preface by Jean Paul Satre
- Satre outlines a world where the western bourgeoise subjagated the native through 'the word.'
'In the colonies the truth stood naked, but the citizens of the mother country preferred it with clothes on.'
The bourgeoise elite created a native elite, training them in the voice of Western nationalism/culture and acting as a go between, between 'man' and, 'native.'
- 'It came to an end; the mouths opened by themselves; the yellow and black voices still spoke of our humanism but only to reproach us with our inhumanity.'
- A form of western arrogance did not take this appropriation of the word seriously, merely as proof of the success of imparting western values of the rights of man to the natives. Men said, 'let them bawl their heads off, it relieves their feelings; dogs that bark don't bite.'
- A fundamental culture clash:
'With unbelievable patience, its writers and poets tried to explain to us that our values and the true facts of their lives did not hang together, and that they could neither reject them completely nor yet assimilate them.'
This clash was rooted in the internal contradiction of liberalism (or what Satre calls humanism) - the white man promoted the rights of man through racial differentiation.
- The bourgeoiuse misinterpereted the native cry as one for integration,
'As to a revolt, we need not worry at all; what native in his senses would go off to massacre the fair sons of Europe simply to become European as they are?'
National differentiation between the West and the colonial man:
- The native does not want intgration, 'Europe now lives at such a mad, reckless pace that she is running headlong into the abyss; we would do well to keep away from it.'
- A fenchman may produce such a sentiment but Satre posits that at the bottom of it will be an empathy and unity with his fellow countryman. A statement of apparent desolution will infact be one of instruction to improve the country, bound by national intersubjectivity.
- Fanon's book has little concern for the wreck of France - his prediction of doom is a diagnosis rather than a call for change.
- Fanon is more concerned with speaking of the West rather than too the West. He calls for a unifcation of the native to bring about a new era of humanism and change.
'An ex-native, French-speaking, bends that language to new requirements, makes use of it, and speaks to the colonized only: ' Natives of all under-developed countries, unite!'
The emergence of the Third World from Western shadow
'In short, the Third World finds itself and speaks to itself through his voice.' (again location of culture in THE WORD. The language is central to identification. Fanon doesn't care if his book is read in the West - it is addressed to the colonies)
- Satre notes that the third world is not a homogenous zone of freedom fighting (slavery still exists as does differences in level of freedom) but he roots this differentiation in colonial history and a still existing levels of feudalism (native bourgeoise) in some areas.
'Thus Europe has multiplied divisions and opposing groups, has fashioned classes and sometimes even racial prejudices, and has endeavoured by every means to bring about and intensify the stratification of colonized societies.'
- Firstly Fanon attempts to break down these internal barriers. Satre sees a structure of puppet bourgeoise falling inline with the greater power of the native rural masses ('that veritable reservoir of a national revolutionary army') In countries where colonialisation held up capitalist development it is natural the the lowly peasants are the first to rise.
* 'In order to triumph, the national revolution must be socialist.'*
'In this violence which springs from the people, which enables them to hold out for five years - for eight years as the Algerians have done - the military, political and social necessities cannot be separated.'
- This is what Fanon explains in his book - the need for his, 'brothers,' to unite from the bottom of the social ladder upwards to overthrow imperialism ('The reader is sternly put on his guard against the most dangerous will o' the wisps: the cult of the leader and of personalities, Western culture, and what is equally to be feared, the withdrawal into the twilight of past African culture.')
- Satre sees the emancipation of the third world as inivitable ('our methods areout of date.')
'The settler has only recourse to one thing: brute force, when he can command it; the native has only one choice, between servitude or supremacy.'
Why should Europeans read the book?
- The colonies are no longer, 'dark/dead souls,' given a glimpse of the light through western culture. They ignore the European man and are now the revolutionary force that will have an impact worldwide. 'in these shadows from whence a new dawn will break, it is you who are the zombies.'
- Europeans should read the book to
1. view objectively the mechanisms of imperialisam. Give Europe a sense of their responsibility (guilt? shame?) for imperialism, even if they themselves weren't colonisers. The Western states promised to be humane yet by a silence on colonial violence the West infact legitimised and upheld it.
'Violence in the colonies does not only have for its aim the keeping of these enslaved men at arm's length; it seeks to dehumanize them. Everything will be done to wipe out their traditions, to substitute our language for theirs and to destroy their culture without giving them ours'
For if a native is merely a superior monkey then universal humanism can still be claimed by the West.
Every European is implicated in this.
'Have the courage to read this book, for in the first place it will make you ashamed, and shame, as Marx said, is a revolutionary sentiment.'
2. Fanon is the first since Engels to reveal the processes of history, to strip them away and show, 'the dialectic which liberal hypocrisy hides from you and which is as much responsible for our existence as for his.'
In particular Satre is speaking of the dichomoty between the, 'free worker,' and enforced peasant labour to produce goods/survive in Western capitalism. Fanon's work can be applied to French and English economic/social systems revealing the hypocrisy in Western claims of universal humanism/liberalism
'Laying claim to and denying the human condition at the same time: the contradiction is explosive.'
The capitalist system was also highly responsible for the violence of decolonisation, due to the economic demands to turn the native into a half man/half beast...
Decolonisation - an outlet for violence
- Satre sees decolonisation rooted in the very violence levelled against the natives. If a native is turned into something half man/half beast (because the West tried to 'break in,' the native but stopped the process halfway because a farmhand is always more profitable than a farm animal) then the only way to reverse the machine to to rise up in violence (taught by the West, who oculd not fully degrade the native to animal) against the oppressers.
- Western culture would stamp native uprisings as the very inherent 'bad nature' that he sought to beat out of the colonised slave. Yet Satre says, 'Can he not here recognize his own cruelty turned against himself? In the savagery of these oppressed peasants, does he not find his own settler's savagery, which they have absorbed through every pore and for which there is no cure?'
- If Western culture believes it can rule over the colonies as a gun or a horsewhip, by merely conditioning native reflexes to obey then he underestimates the deep rooted scar Western violence leaves on the native subconcious. The West was infact creating a violent native to decolonise:
'we only become what we are by the radical and deep-seated refusal of that which others have made of us.'
'the ' half-natives' are still humans, through the power and the weakness of the oppressor which is transformed within them into a stubborn refusal of the animal condition.'
- Decolonisation becomes a process of growing fury. The half man native becomes a man through shooting his oppresser, he in turn is shot in retribution ('teach the natives'), making him a matyr to incite more passion. The cycle continues.
- Through this process disorganised resistance becomes mass revolution, 'their agony exalts the terrified masses.'
- Satre does note that if the native does not understand the enemy then their suppressed violence can errupt against each other in tribal warfare. A deep seated urge to murder is acknowledged by Fanon. ('collective subconciousness.'). Also a retreat into tribal culture and primative religious rites can result if the native does not turn the violence outwards.('This is a defence, but it is also the end of the story; the self is disassociated, and the patient heads for madness')
- The other form of defence against violence that the colonised can take is actually embracing western values. To legitimise the term, 'native,' through consent.
Revolution
'we are living at the moment when the match is put to the fuse. When the rising birthrate brings wider famine in its wake, when these newcomers have life to fear rather more than death, the torrent of violence sweeps away all barriers.'
- This is referred to by Satre as the third phase of violence (the first being western violence against the native, the second internal tribal violence) - a phase where the westerner is murdered on sight (see Algeria)
- Satre states this form of revolution is peculiar to the native. In the West the liberal recognises their mistake. The Left is embarrassed by the West's mistakes but does not condone the full scale violence of decolonisation.
'Sometimes the Left scolds them . . . 'You're going too far; we won't support you any more.' The natives don't give a damn about their support.'
'They would do well to read Fanon; for he shows clearly that this irrepressible violence is neither sound and fury, nor the resurrection of savage instincts, nor even the effect of resentment: it is man re-creating himself.'
- In the native revolution nationalism becomes central, as a tool of unification against the West. Tribal dissentions weaken as they endanger the revolution
- Revolution by it's nature of overthrow has to institute new socio-political orders which will becomes the foundation for peace time order.
- Revolution, because it is rooted in violence, takes losses in it's stride, 'this new man begins his life as a man at the end of it; he considers himself as a potential corpse. He will be killed; not only does he accept this risk, he's sure of it.' Death perpetuates the agony of the masses and uprising.
Progress from decolonisation/revolution
'Here Fanon stops. He has shown the way forward: he is the spokesman of those who are fighting and he has called for union, that is to say the unity of the African continent against all dissensions and all particularisms.'
- However Satre states the implications of Fanon's argument stay with the West:
*'for we in Europe too are being decolonized: that is to say that the settler which is in every one of us is being savagely rooted out.'*
- Humanism is revealed by decolonialisation to be an, 'ideology of lies.' The West has been imobilised by its narcissm:
'Chatter, chatter: liberty, equality, fraternity, love, honour, patriotism and what have you. All this did not prevent us from making anti-racial speeches about dirty niggers, dirty Jews and dirty Arabs.'
'there is nothing more consistent than a racist humanism since the European has only been able to become a man through creating slaves and monsters.'
- The violence of decolonisation has altered Western violence. Whereas once the west practiced violence to harm others without any affect on our own pysche. Now the West is n a state of fear,
'Involution starts; the native re-creates himself, and we, settlers and Europeans, ultras and liberals, we break up.'
'The union of the Algerian people causes the disunion of the French people.'
- The West become, 'nigger hunters,' they become the very savage idea that they used to justify their imperialisam. This is the rise of the right wing facist and internal fragmentation ('civil war is forecast for this autumn'). The colonist turns it's fear inwards, rooting out dissenters within France itself.
- The Left is also under, 'the fever,' through recognition of it's myths and contradictions.
- Satres preface ends with a rousing call for France to vocalise against the government/reign of terror in Algeria (he feels it would be better to devolve into the native rather than bear the shame of Western violence and interrogation)
'This is the end of the dialectic; you condemn this war but do not yet dare to declare yourselves to be on the side of the Algerian fighters.'
- The entire discussion rooted in the 18th century, 'when an authentic public sphere was articulated and establshed for the first and only time' (p.12)
- A long standing tradition of seperating the public sphere (Habermas - The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere) from the private life (A History of the Private Life - Chartier, both published in 1989) Goodman aims to bring a synthesis of the public and private - 'the public sphere...is a dimension of the private sphere.' (p.2)
The Public Sphere - Habermas and Koselleck
- Koselleck's public sphere, one based on political absolutism (reason d'etat - politics outside the realm of moral consideration) and intellectual criticism (the republic of letters, the philsophes who eventually turned criticism to the realm of absolutism - Masonic Lodges/Illuminati- leading to the Jacobin Republic?) which created a dialectic discourse from which the French Revolution emerged.
- 'Kollselleck sets up a fundamental opposition between the public sphere of absolutism and the private sphere of relgious conscience,' (p.3) Goodman sees this as the fundamental weakness of his argument, an oversimplication in order to gain the oppositional forces of his dialectic.
- Habermas' argument is more nuanced - looks at the derivation of the term, 'public sphere.' In the middle ages public was merely a social status, 'it represented the power of the person rather than articulating a sphere of social action' (p.4) Whereas Koselleck sees private conscience arising from poltical absolutism, Habermas sees the development of the public and private spheres as simaltaneous, with differing origins
- 'What the state did create however was it's own object: the public,' (p.4) initially an object of state power, transferring into the reading public (the bourgeoise)
- Hab. also sees criticism as, not a reaction to absolutism, but something in constant contact with the monarchy, a form of communication between state and subjects, 'in which private people come together as a public.' (p.5) Unlike Kollsellecks model which set up the public sphere as a type of pseudo politics, Habermas' model shows the public sphere as an area of socialibility to challenge the political secrets of the state.
- Habermas has 2 public spheres - the inauthentic (merely a zone of state power) and the authentic (where the private people come together to create a public - ie the rep. of letters)
'the authentic public sphere is the ground that mediates between the private life of individuals as producers and reproducers, and their public roles a subjects and (later) citizens of the state.' (p.6)
- Areas of bourgeoise sociability therefore become the social structures of the authentic public sphere, a form of civil society that was reknowned publically. 'the bougeoise publc sphere was authentic precisely because it was open...the veil lay not over the real, hidden, economic interest of the bougeoise but over the political practices of the state.' (p.7)
- Although he is a Marxist historian Habermas' work has been taken up by post Marxist historiography because his model of the authentic public sphere, 'provides a social and material base for the, 'political culture,' ' of subsequent work (p.8)
'Habermas sees the authentic public sphere and the Enlightenment that shaped it as something of a lost paradise that emerged in the 18th century and then collapsed in the 19th, Koselleck sees that same formation as the origin of the hypocritical deceptions of the 20th' (p.8)
Private Life: Ares and Chartier
- The historian Ares designates Habermas' socialability of the authentic public sphere (ie letter writing, coffee houses, reading outloud) to the private sphere as it belonged to private life of individuals. ' As I see it, Ares reflects, the entire history of private life comes down to a change in the forms of socialbility' (p.10)
- In this way work on the public sphere and private life were infact two sides of the same coin.
- Ares attempted to use the history of private life to elucidate aspects of the public sphere, Chartier complicated this picture by studying, 'the privitisation of the state (ie the court and its strict rules of modesty/chivalry) and the publicization of the private sphere.(ie none institutionalised sociabiliy - Habermas' authentic public sphere)' (p.10)
'Chatier has inscribed the public face of the private realm, identifying it with the instituitions of sociability' (p.11 - a synthesis of public/private and political/cultural history is fully explored in Chartier's, 'The Cultural Origins of the French Revolution,' that comes to the paradoxical conclusion that the invention of the private life culminated in the emergence of a revolutionary public sphere. He answers this paradox by stating that the moral values implicit in private life facillitated the growth of the public sphere that was autonomous and critical of state authority)
Convergence and Implications
'We need to get away from rigidly oppositional thinking that assumes two spheres or two discourses, one public and the other private' (p.14) - as sociability was a form of public and private articulation a stable distinction between the two areas is hard to make, 'the 18th century was not an enlightened age but an age of enlightenment, it was in the same sense an age of defintion in which nothing was firmly defined.' (p.14)
- Joan Landes, 'Women and the Public Sphere in the Age of French Revolution' (feminist historical study, an example of, 'a too rigid understanding of the opposition between public and private spheres failsto account for the complexity of the old regime.')
- Lande argues that the Republic that rose from the Revolution was inherently gendered, despite the republics universalist language of, 'the people.' The role of women in revolutionary France was one of domesticity and subsequent female activity has been a struggle for women to re-enter the public sphere. In this theory the public sphere is essentially masculine, 'she sees the public sphere as unitary and the private sphere as its antithesis.' (p. 15) essentially ignoring all the complexities therein.
- Goldman agrees that women were excluded from the revolutionary public sphere but wants to use the complexities rather than dichotomy of public/private to explain how and why.
- Habermas' complicated theory of the authentic public sphere (and its private face as studied by Ares and Chariter) belies a simple model of male public sphere vs. female private sphere (wherein any women operating in the public sphere were, 'transgressing the bounds of the private sphere within which men sought to confine them.' p.16)
- Faults in Landes argument - she doesn't differentiate between women of the court and women of the salon (2 very different publi institutions, see Chartier above), she does not acknowledge that the public space was inherently private so the role of women was acceptable within them (and when the terrors shut down the authentic public sphere and banished women back to the domestic it wasn't just plain misogyny, but a collapse of the nuanced authentic public sphere)
- Landes feels, 'the saloneres were the women against whom men revolted,' (p.17) from grub street hacks to Rousseau, Landes identifies a drive to exclude women from the public sphere (lumping all women, be they prostitutes or salonneires, together)
- Goldman draws a more complex picture of women's role in the growth of the private to a relam of sociability and public voice. She makes a distinction between, 'the role of women in the authentic public sphere and that of women in the public sphere of the state' (court women are portrayed as vessels of secrecy, intrigue and deceit - abetting the privitisation of the state) nb. she does acknowledge that there was an overlap between the two groups of women but generally states, 'each was an institution of a certain kind of sociability and discoursethat corresponds to one of Habermas's two public spheres.' (p.18)
- In contrst to court women, salonnieres were defended by the philosophes who frequented their coffee houses ('the enlightenment salon functioned as a regulated matrix for the dissemination and publication of works that extended this discourse to the literate public and the tribunal of public opinion.' p.18) In the domestic realm of the salon the public role of women was legitimised.
- The central flaw in Landes argument is not recognising that the women in court and the women in the salons were operating in very different spheres, by lumping them together Landes has oversimplified Habermas' complex mapping of state public sphere vs. authentic public sphere and created a false male public/female private dichotomy.
- 'There was no such thing as a public woman in 18th century France. Most women, like most men, functioned within a priavte realm that had a public face.' (p.19)
The Communist Manifesto - Marx
- Bourgeoisie is the class of modern Capitalists, owners of the means of social production and employers of wage labour.
- Proletariat, the class of modern wage-labourers who, having no means of production of their own, are reduced to selling their labour power in order to live (both definitions taken from Engels notes, English edition 1888)
Bourgeoise
- Marx sees history as a constant struggle between class (bourg/proleteriat, lord/peasant, oppresser/oppressed) Struggle that ended in either revolution or ruin of the common class.
- However Marx makes a distinction between this written history, and the history of primerval man (a subject of study in his time)
'The inner organization of this primitive Communistic society was laid bare, in its typical form, by Morgan's crowning discovery of the true nature of the gens and its relation to the tribe. With the dissolution of these primeval communities society begins to be differentiated into separate and finally antagonistic classes.'
- From this moment onwards Marx sees a progression of class stratification and antagonism (from Roman patricians, knights, plebians, to medieval feudalims to current capitalist class system)
'The modern bourgeois society that has sprouted from the ruins of feudal society 'has not done away with class antagonisms. It has but established new classes, new conditions of oppression, new forms of struggle in place of the old ones.'
- Marx sees globalisation (particularly America) and improvements in communication (the railways) as stretching the reach of the bourgeoise. The manufacturing industry replaced local guilds, manufacturers replaced guild masters. Manufacture stiumlated demand and a cycle of capitalism was established, ever growing in magnitude:
'The place of manufacture was taken by the giant. Modern Industry, the place of the industrial middle class, by industrial millionaires, the leaders of whole industrial armies, the modern bourgeois.'
- Marx views the rise of the bourgeoise as a cycle of revolutions (much like Bayly's continuum?) and developments in modes of production. Each step of revolution advanced the bourgiouse as they were the advancing political class. Generally speaking, for the economical development of the bourgeoisie, England is here taken as the typical country; for its political development, France.
- The bougeoise revolution is seen as one that tears man away from a patriarchal, feudal and idyllic heirarchy and into a nexus of self interest
'It has pitilessly torn asunder the motley feudal ties that bound man to his 'natural superiors', and has left remaining no other nexus between man and man than naked self-interest.'
'It has resolved personal worth into exchange value, and in place of the numberless indefeasible chartered freedoms, has set up that single, unconscionable freedom - Free Trade.'
- Marx sees the bourgeoise as rooting everything in money (ie religion becomes secular, the sentimental veil of the family is torn, the wonders of industry are seen as greater than those of mythology - ie pyramids, temples)
'The bourgeoisie cannot exist without constantly revolutionizing the instruments of production, and thereby the relations of production, and with them the whole relations of society.' - whereasn feudalism thrived on stability, the capitalist middle cass only thrive on the production of products for ever expanding markets:
'The need of a constantly expanding market for its products chases the bourgeoisie over the whole surface of the globe. It must nestle everywhere, settle everywhere, establish connexions everywhere.'
- In such a way capitalism makes the world a cosmopoliton one, and makes industry international (unlike the reactionists national footing for industry), raw materials come from the, 'remotest zones,'. This becomes an enemy to national seclusion, ideas become communal. Marx speaks of a, 'world literature.' Through this communication and product incitement Marx sees even the most barbourous nations becoming civilisation.
'In one word, it creates a world after its own image.'
- Marx also lays urbanisation (gaygaygaygaygaygaygaygaygay) at the feet of the bourgeoise - a centralisation of property to the few hands, ' It has created enormous cities, has greatly increased the urban population as compared with the rural, and has thus rescued a considerable part of the population from the idiocy of rural life.' (satire?)
- This allegory is extended to a global scale, 'Just as it has made the country dependent on the towns, so it has made barbarian and semi-barbarian countries dependent on the civilized ones, nations of peasants on nations of bourgeois, the East on the West.'
'The bourgeoisie, during its rule of scarce one hundred years, has created more massive and more colossal productive forces than have all preceding generations together. Subjection of Nature's forces to man, machinery, application of chemistry to industry and agriculture, steam-navigation, railways, electric telegraphs, clearing of whole continents for cultivation, canalization of rivers, whole populations conjured out of the ground - what earlier century had even a presentiment that such productive forces slumbered in the lap of social labour?'
'The essential condition for the existence, and for the sway of the bourgeois class, is the formation and augmentation of capital; the condition for capital is wage labour.'
The Proletariat
-If the bourgeouse revolution was part of an historical conituum of change (feudal relations of property became no longer compatible with the already developed productive forces; they became so many fetters. They had to be burst asunder; they were burst asunder), then it has in turn created the new conditions that will be it's downfall:
* Overproduction creates a economic crisis (plunging countries into the babarism of recession) 'The conditions of bourgeois society are too narrow to comprise the wealth created by them.' - this process is worsened by governments systematically shutting down old markets of production and opening new ones (a temporary solution that actually worsens thwe problem)
* However industry has also created the class that will overthrown them. Through industry the working class has been expanded from simple labourers to a whole movement
'But not only has the bourgeoisie forged the weapons that bring death to itself; it has also called into existence the men who are to wield those weapons - the modern working class - the proletarians.'
- The indutrial capitalist model makes the worker a commodity, a resource that is purchasable like any other. As a commodity they are subject to the vicissitudes of the market. Devlopments in machinary have both mechanised ('he becomes an appendage of the machine') the worker and are starting to put him out of a job.
'In proportion, therefore, as the repulsiveness of the work increases, the wage decreases.'
- Marx also identifies a usurping of the labourers jobs through women (because labour is less intensive due to mechanisation) this breaks down traditional social barriers, a further homogenisation of the working class
- Not only is the working class wage decreasing but it is being taken up by consumable products (the lower echelons of the bourgeoiuse - the shopkeeper, tradesman are the first hit by recession as they lose this business and sink into the proletariat themselves)
'The development of Modern Industry, therefore, cuts from under its feet the very foundation on which the bourgeoisie produces and appropriates products. What the bourgeoisie, therefore, produces, above all, is its own grave-diggers. Its fall and the victory of the proletariat are equally inevitable.'
Stages of Proletariat Revolution
'The proletariat goes through various stages of development. With its birth begins its struggle with the bourgeoisie.'
- Firstly the proletariat directs any anger at the machines of bourgeoise development (factories get burnt, machines and wares destroyed)
- 'At this stage the labourers still form an incoherent mass scattered over the whole country, and broken up by their mutual competition.' (any unionism is the result of the bourgeise utilising the working class as a mass for political ends - against the aristocracy, foreign powers etc. This gives the working class their own socio-political tools and awareness)
- However as industry grows so does the strength of the proleteriat, working man/bourg collisons occur and as a result working class men start to form trade unions. Sporadic outbursts of trade unionism are not important in victory at this point but in the effect they have in creating 'one big union' (aided by increasing global communications)
'And that union, to attain which the burghers of the Middle Ages, with their miserable highways, required centuries, the modern proletarians, thanks to railways, achieve in a few years.'
- In such a way disparate unions become a united working class, a political party who can fight for the rights of the worker (ten hours bill in England)
- As recession becomes increasingly violent, sections of the ruling class take a philosophical/ideological stance with the working class (seeing their emergence as a new socialist, historical force?)
'Of all the classes that stand face to face with the bourgeoisie today, the proletariat alone is a really revolutionary class.' (the lower middle class fight to save their existance, not for the existance of others so they are conservative)
- Proleteriat revolution is one of complete destruction of old modes of production (whereas previous revolutions appropriated suitable aspects of the old community/heirarchy)
'All previous historical movements were movements of minorities, or in the interest of minorities. The proletarian movement is the self-conscious, independent movement of the immense majority, in the interest of the immense majority.'
- Marx sees this revolution as nationlist in form, but not substance - ie proleteriat has to fight their national bourgeoiuse before there can be a global working class
The Wretched of the Earth - preface by Jean Paul Satre
- Satre outlines a world where the western bourgeoise subjagated the native through 'the word.'
'In the colonies the truth stood naked, but the citizens of the mother country preferred it with clothes on.'
The bourgeoise elite created a native elite, training them in the voice of Western nationalism/culture and acting as a go between, between 'man' and, 'native.'
- 'It came to an end; the mouths opened by themselves; the yellow and black voices still spoke of our humanism but only to reproach us with our inhumanity.'
- A form of western arrogance did not take this appropriation of the word seriously, merely as proof of the success of imparting western values of the rights of man to the natives. Men said, 'let them bawl their heads off, it relieves their feelings; dogs that bark don't bite.'
- A fundamental culture clash:
'With unbelievable patience, its writers and poets tried to explain to us that our values and the true facts of their lives did not hang together, and that they could neither reject them completely nor yet assimilate them.'
This clash was rooted in the internal contradiction of liberalism (or what Satre calls humanism) - the white man promoted the rights of man through racial differentiation.
- The bourgeoiuse misinterpereted the native cry as one for integration,
'As to a revolt, we need not worry at all; what native in his senses would go off to massacre the fair sons of Europe simply to become European as they are?'
National differentiation between the West and the colonial man:
- The native does not want intgration, 'Europe now lives at such a mad, reckless pace that she is running headlong into the abyss; we would do well to keep away from it.'
- A fenchman may produce such a sentiment but Satre posits that at the bottom of it will be an empathy and unity with his fellow countryman. A statement of apparent desolution will infact be one of instruction to improve the country, bound by national intersubjectivity.
- Fanon's book has little concern for the wreck of France - his prediction of doom is a diagnosis rather than a call for change.
- Fanon is more concerned with speaking of the West rather than too the West. He calls for a unifcation of the native to bring about a new era of humanism and change.
'An ex-native, French-speaking, bends that language to new requirements, makes use of it, and speaks to the colonized only: ' Natives of all under-developed countries, unite!'
The emergence of the Third World from Western shadow
'In short, the Third World finds itself and speaks to itself through his voice.' (again location of culture in THE WORD. The language is central to identification. Fanon doesn't care if his book is read in the West - it is addressed to the colonies)
- Satre notes that the third world is not a homogenous zone of freedom fighting (slavery still exists as does differences in level of freedom) but he roots this differentiation in colonial history and a still existing levels of feudalism (native bourgeoise) in some areas.
'Thus Europe has multiplied divisions and opposing groups, has fashioned classes and sometimes even racial prejudices, and has endeavoured by every means to bring about and intensify the stratification of colonized societies.'
- Firstly Fanon attempts to break down these internal barriers. Satre sees a structure of puppet bourgeoise falling inline with the greater power of the native rural masses ('that veritable reservoir of a national revolutionary army') In countries where colonialisation held up capitalist development it is natural the the lowly peasants are the first to rise.
* 'In order to triumph, the national revolution must be socialist.'*
'In this violence which springs from the people, which enables them to hold out for five years - for eight years as the Algerians have done - the military, political and social necessities cannot be separated.'
- This is what Fanon explains in his book - the need for his, 'brothers,' to unite from the bottom of the social ladder upwards to overthrow imperialism ('The reader is sternly put on his guard against the most dangerous will o' the wisps: the cult of the leader and of personalities, Western culture, and what is equally to be feared, the withdrawal into the twilight of past African culture.')
- Satre sees the emancipation of the third world as inivitable ('our methods areout of date.')
'The settler has only recourse to one thing: brute force, when he can command it; the native has only one choice, between servitude or supremacy.'
Why should Europeans read the book?
- The colonies are no longer, 'dark/dead souls,' given a glimpse of the light through western culture. They ignore the European man and are now the revolutionary force that will have an impact worldwide. 'in these shadows from whence a new dawn will break, it is you who are the zombies.'
- Europeans should read the book to
1. view objectively the mechanisms of imperialisam. Give Europe a sense of their responsibility (guilt? shame?) for imperialism, even if they themselves weren't colonisers. The Western states promised to be humane yet by a silence on colonial violence the West infact legitimised and upheld it.
'Violence in the colonies does not only have for its aim the keeping of these enslaved men at arm's length; it seeks to dehumanize them. Everything will be done to wipe out their traditions, to substitute our language for theirs and to destroy their culture without giving them ours'
For if a native is merely a superior monkey then universal humanism can still be claimed by the West.
Every European is implicated in this.
'Have the courage to read this book, for in the first place it will make you ashamed, and shame, as Marx said, is a revolutionary sentiment.'
2. Fanon is the first since Engels to reveal the processes of history, to strip them away and show, 'the dialectic which liberal hypocrisy hides from you and which is as much responsible for our existence as for his.'
In particular Satre is speaking of the dichomoty between the, 'free worker,' and enforced peasant labour to produce goods/survive in Western capitalism. Fanon's work can be applied to French and English economic/social systems revealing the hypocrisy in Western claims of universal humanism/liberalism
'Laying claim to and denying the human condition at the same time: the contradiction is explosive.'
The capitalist system was also highly responsible for the violence of decolonisation, due to the economic demands to turn the native into a half man/half beast...
Decolonisation - an outlet for violence
- Satre sees decolonisation rooted in the very violence levelled against the natives. If a native is turned into something half man/half beast (because the West tried to 'break in,' the native but stopped the process halfway because a farmhand is always more profitable than a farm animal) then the only way to reverse the machine to to rise up in violence (taught by the West, who oculd not fully degrade the native to animal) against the oppressers.
- Western culture would stamp native uprisings as the very inherent 'bad nature' that he sought to beat out of the colonised slave. Yet Satre says, 'Can he not here recognize his own cruelty turned against himself? In the savagery of these oppressed peasants, does he not find his own settler's savagery, which they have absorbed through every pore and for which there is no cure?'
- If Western culture believes it can rule over the colonies as a gun or a horsewhip, by merely conditioning native reflexes to obey then he underestimates the deep rooted scar Western violence leaves on the native subconcious. The West was infact creating a violent native to decolonise:
'we only become what we are by the radical and deep-seated refusal of that which others have made of us.'
'the ' half-natives' are still humans, through the power and the weakness of the oppressor which is transformed within them into a stubborn refusal of the animal condition.'
- Decolonisation becomes a process of growing fury. The half man native becomes a man through shooting his oppresser, he in turn is shot in retribution ('teach the natives'), making him a matyr to incite more passion. The cycle continues.
- Through this process disorganised resistance becomes mass revolution, 'their agony exalts the terrified masses.'
- Satre does note that if the native does not understand the enemy then their suppressed violence can errupt against each other in tribal warfare. A deep seated urge to murder is acknowledged by Fanon. ('collective subconciousness.'). Also a retreat into tribal culture and primative religious rites can result if the native does not turn the violence outwards.('This is a defence, but it is also the end of the story; the self is disassociated, and the patient heads for madness')
- The other form of defence against violence that the colonised can take is actually embracing western values. To legitimise the term, 'native,' through consent.
Revolution
'we are living at the moment when the match is put to the fuse. When the rising birthrate brings wider famine in its wake, when these newcomers have life to fear rather more than death, the torrent of violence sweeps away all barriers.'
- This is referred to by Satre as the third phase of violence (the first being western violence against the native, the second internal tribal violence) - a phase where the westerner is murdered on sight (see Algeria)
- Satre states this form of revolution is peculiar to the native. In the West the liberal recognises their mistake. The Left is embarrassed by the West's mistakes but does not condone the full scale violence of decolonisation.
'Sometimes the Left scolds them . . . 'You're going too far; we won't support you any more.' The natives don't give a damn about their support.'
'They would do well to read Fanon; for he shows clearly that this irrepressible violence is neither sound and fury, nor the resurrection of savage instincts, nor even the effect of resentment: it is man re-creating himself.'
- In the native revolution nationalism becomes central, as a tool of unification against the West. Tribal dissentions weaken as they endanger the revolution
- Revolution by it's nature of overthrow has to institute new socio-political orders which will becomes the foundation for peace time order.
- Revolution, because it is rooted in violence, takes losses in it's stride, 'this new man begins his life as a man at the end of it; he considers himself as a potential corpse. He will be killed; not only does he accept this risk, he's sure of it.' Death perpetuates the agony of the masses and uprising.
Progress from decolonisation/revolution
'Here Fanon stops. He has shown the way forward: he is the spokesman of those who are fighting and he has called for union, that is to say the unity of the African continent against all dissensions and all particularisms.'
- However Satre states the implications of Fanon's argument stay with the West:
*'for we in Europe too are being decolonized: that is to say that the settler which is in every one of us is being savagely rooted out.'*
- Humanism is revealed by decolonialisation to be an, 'ideology of lies.' The West has been imobilised by its narcissm:
'Chatter, chatter: liberty, equality, fraternity, love, honour, patriotism and what have you. All this did not prevent us from making anti-racial speeches about dirty niggers, dirty Jews and dirty Arabs.'
'there is nothing more consistent than a racist humanism since the European has only been able to become a man through creating slaves and monsters.'
- The violence of decolonisation has altered Western violence. Whereas once the west practiced violence to harm others without any affect on our own pysche. Now the West is n a state of fear,
'Involution starts; the native re-creates himself, and we, settlers and Europeans, ultras and liberals, we break up.'
'The union of the Algerian people causes the disunion of the French people.'
- The West become, 'nigger hunters,' they become the very savage idea that they used to justify their imperialisam. This is the rise of the right wing facist and internal fragmentation ('civil war is forecast for this autumn'). The colonist turns it's fear inwards, rooting out dissenters within France itself.
- The Left is also under, 'the fever,' through recognition of it's myths and contradictions.
- Satres preface ends with a rousing call for France to vocalise against the government/reign of terror in Algeria (he feels it would be better to devolve into the native rather than bear the shame of Western violence and interrogation)
'This is the end of the dialectic; you condemn this war but do not yet dare to declare yourselves to be on the side of the Algerian fighters.'