Public Space and Democracy

2001

Marcel Henaff and Tracy B. Strong, editors

A timely look at the ways new technologies affect public life and power relationships.

Moving from classical Greece to the present, Public Space and Democracy provides historical accounts and a comparative analytical framework for understanding public space both as a place and as a product of various media, from speech to the Internet. These essays make a powerful case for thinking of modern technological developments not as the end of public space, but as an opportunity for reframing the idea of the public and of the public space as the locus of power.

Contributors: Sylviane Agacinski, Benjamin R. Barber, Marcel Detienne, Paul Dumouchel, J. Peter Euben, Jacqueline Lichtenstein, Anne Norton, Sigheki Tominaga, Dana R. Villa, Samuel Weber.

Moving from classical Greece to the present, Public Space and Democracy provides historical accounts and a comparative analytical framework for understanding public space both as a place and as a product of various media, from speech to the Internet. These essays make a powerful case for thinking of modern technological developments not as the end of public space, but as an opportunity for reframing the idea of the public and of the public space as the locus of power.

Contributors: Sylviane Agacinski, Institut des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales; Benjamin R. Barber, Rutgers U; Marcel Detienne, Johns Hopkins U; Paul Dumouchel, U of Quebec, Montreal; J. Peter Euben, UC Santa Cruz; Marcel Hénaff, U of California, San Diego; Jacqueline Lichtenstein, U of Paris; Anne Norton, U of Pennsylvania; Tracy B. Strong, U of California, San Diego; Sigheki Tominaga, Kyoto U; Dana R. Villa, UC Santa Barbara; Samuel Weber, UCLA.

A philosopher and anthropologist, Marcel Hénaff is professor at the University of California, San Diego. He is the author of Claude Lévi-Strauss (Minnesota, 1998) and Sade: The Invention of the Libertine Body (Minnesota, 1999).

Tracy B. Strong is professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of California, San Diego. He is the author of Frederich Nietzsche and the Politics of Transfiguration (2000), Jean-Jacques Rousseau and the Politics of the Ordinary (2001) as well as other books and articles. He was editor of Political Theory from 1990 to 2000.

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