The Phantom Public Sphere (Studies in Classical Philology)

by Bruce Robbins (Editor)

In a postmodern society, can we still speak meaningfully of a public sphere? The contributors address this question by presenting the public sphere and the public/private opposition as a truly interdisciplinary field of inquiry. Among the issues discussed are Jesse Helms's censorship campaign and the televised Anita Hill/Clarence Thomas Senate hearings.

Genres: Society, Politics

336 pages, Paperback

First published May 1, 1993

About the author

Bruce Robbins is the author of Feeling Global: Internationalism in Distress (NYU, 1999), The Servant’s Hand: English Fiction from Below (Columbia, 1986; Duke pb 1993) and Secular Vocations: Intellectuals, Professionalism, Culture (Verso, 1993). He has edited Intellectuals: Aesthetics, Politics, Academics (Minnesota, 1990) and The Phantom Public Sphere (Minnesota, 1993) and co-edited Cosmopolitics: Thinking and Feeling Beyond the Nation (Minnesota, 1998). He was co-editor of the journal Social Text from 1991 to 2000. His most recent book is Upward Mobility and the Common Good: Toward a Literary History of the Welfare State (Princeton, 2009).

Reviews

[Flora · Rating 4 out of 5]

For Lauren Berlant's passionate essay on "Imitation of Life," and Michael Warner's brilliant "The Mass Public and the Mass Subject," which offers a pragmatic yet dynamic argument about cultural-formation around spectacles of scandal, violence, and disaster.