EVENTS
John Michael Roberts
27/05/2009
John Michael Roberts' lecture
Exploring the Public Sphere
Wednesday, May 27th. 7.30 p.m.
This talk on the public sphere will be divided into three main parts. In the first part John will briefly look at the modern meaning of the terms “public” and “public sphere”. He will show how modern societies create different meanings of the term “public” (e.g. “public interest”, “public opinion”, “public gathering”, “public sociability”, “public space”) which also relate in various ways to how we debate and discuss social and political issues in different public spheres.
In the second part of the talk John will illustrate these points through a historical example taken from the UK. Probably the most well known popular public sphere in the UK is called Speakers’ Corner at Hyde Park in London. Speakers’ Corner is a legally defined public space in London in which people can gather and speak about social and political topics of their choice. However, the history of Speakers’ Corner is a fascinating one, and it is a history that stretches back in time. This is because Speakers' Corner used to be a famous place of public execution in London known as Tyburn hanging tree. Established around the thirteenth century, by the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries huge crowds of onlookers attended Tyburn executions to watch the spectacle of hanging. One interesting feature about Tyburn is that prisoners were allowed to give a last dying speech before being executed. Prisoners would often use this opportunity to criticise the government of the day. But such speeches also served to excite the crowds and elicit sympathy from people listening and watching. As a result, onlookers would sometimes riot in favour of the prisoner standing on the hanging platform. John goes on to show how the “last dying speech” at Hyde Park was slowly transformed into “free speech” during the nineteenth century by social movements who campaigned for greater political rights in the public spaces of London. By exploring the history of Speakers’ Corner, then, John will show how public spheres frequently emerge in societies through struggles amongst different social groups over social and political rights in public space.
In the final part of the talk John explores more recent changes to the public sphere before and after 9/11. Taking examples from the UK and USA, John looks at how governments have attempted to restrict and regulate the use of urban public space for (e.g.) public demonstrations. John also examines the increasing privatisation of public space through the establishment of (e.g.) shopping malls in urban cities. John concludes his talk by asking whether technology such as the Internet signals the growth of a new global public sphere.
About John Michael Roberts
John Michael Roberts is senior lecturer in Sociology and Communications at the School of Social Sciences in Brunel University (London). His work has focused on the public sphere and free speech from a contemporary, historical and theoretical perspective. Among his publications, are The Aesthetics of Free Speech: Rethinking the Public Sphere (Palgrave / MacMillan, 2003); After Habermas: New Perspectives on the Public Sphere, edited with Nick Crossley (Blackwell, 2004); Critical Realism and Marxism, with A. Brown and S. Fleetwood (Routledge, 2002); Realism, Discourse and Deconstruction, with J. Joseph (Routledge, 2003) and Realism, Philosophy and Social Science, with K. Dean, J. Joseph and C. Wight (Palgrave / MacMillan, 2005).