The Ideology of Communication in the Public Sphere

30Apr09

All politics contains and is contained by an ideology of communication that determines the character, location and tone of what is understood as ‘political’ about the world.  An ideology of communication is integral to politics because communication shapes the collective action of communities; an ‘ideology of communication’ essentially constitutes the perceived connection from words, symbols and images to the action of human subjects.  This ideology is necessarily multifaceted, involving questions of agency, proper discourses and community.  I believe contemporary society remains in thrall to an ideology of communication that is a model of the spectacular ‘public sphere.’  Under an overarching system of alienated spectatorship politics that operates via the production of attention, this model selectively articulates at least two different forms of human-political agency under capital: the rational speaking subject of bourgeois industry, and the more contemporary consumer subject.  In order to engage in an earnest confrontation with capital, radical politics must explore and articulate new forms of struggle beyond the spectacular public sphere, identifying points of unity and potential in communication that re-orients the subject in collective action.
The discourse of the public sphere necessarily involves a kind of alienation because it projects an image of ideal communication, persuasion and politics that takes place in a similarly idealized public space – none of which can be accessed by the concrete or ‘imperfect’ human subjects who engage in political action, resulting in a real sense of disempowerment.  The spectacular public sphere opens political agents to post-political critiques (in the sense of being disengaged and directed at actions in the past) of form and strategy driven by the projected image of idealized communication or persuasion.  These post-political critiques divide out the ‘ends’ of politics from the ‘means’ that describes how communication/persuasion actually takes place in comparison to the idealized communication of the public sphere.  The description of a connection between means and ends also constitutes a connection between conviction and action, as well as the mind and body.  Rhetoric about the public sphere operates in terms of a discourse of abstract concepts interacting in open space, but it also acts directly on the bodies of political subjects, normatitively articulating the desires and discipline the body should take on in politics.  The post-political critiques of action in the ‘public sphere’ are a symptom of interactive conventions that associate certain norms of communication with ‘legitimate’ discourse.  These conventions develop in the practice of politics as a subtext that sustains authority.  Every political statement implicitly contains within it adherences and departures from the anticipated styles of legitimate discourse that interact with the identity of the speaker, their subject of discourse, and their audience.  The process of stylistic disciplining of political subjects constitutes the real impact of an ideology of communication: certain people remain unintelligible to power because of their ways of speech, others are required to adhere to norms of presentation that undermine their goals, essentially outlawing certain topics of discussion from politics entirely.  The ideology of communication acts on the intelligibility and efficacy of politics, and acts as a limit on the imagination of possible changes.
The norms of the public sphere construct a subject amenable to capital – a subject that speaks in places and styles that suit a particular kind of media environment, and who is forced to conceive of their body (labor) in ways that supports capitalist production.  The most salient model of the contemporary public sphere emphasizes the power of deliberation through a disciplined increase in the amount of discourse in circulation.  Within certain stylistic boundaries, the argument essentially reduces to ‘more speech will lead to better decisions by forcing ideas into competition and allowing us to choose the best among them.’  This manifests itself often in a defense of ‘free speech’ and idealized visions of debate or pluralized public deliberation, as well as in critiques directed at ‘hastiness,’ ‘shutting down discussion,’ and an ‘uninformed citizenry.’   This element of contemporary ‘public sphere’ rhetoric reflects a capitalist media environment that relies on attention to drive profits via advertisement sales.  For-profit media outlets rely on increased number of issues and high circulation to increase ad rates, and so have a vested interest in a certain proliferation of voices and an expansion of debate.  This does not mean that the argument for free speech emerged exclusively from a class owning the media’s means of production, but rather that its persistence and efficacy depends on its amenability to the contemporary capitalist media environment. This rhetoric of expanding discourse posits a kind of straightjacket on possible avenues for political resistance, requiring that struggle be spoken of and intelligible, itself already a concession to the environment of capital in media. In this sense, the image of the public sphere becomes spectacular:
[The spectacle] is the omnipresent celebration of a choice already made in the sphere of production, and the consummate result of that choice.  In form as in content the spectacle serves as the total justification for the conditions and aims of the existing system. (Debord, 1967 p. 13).
The illusion of choice through deliberation is only a product of a decision about how politics must proceed established in the means of production; the only thing necessarily excluded from the spectacular discussion is the spectacle itself, which undergirds the need and conventions of ‘discussion’ in the first place.  In this sense, it continually affirms that “Everything that appears is good; whatever is good will appear” by way of “its monopolization of the realm of appearances”  (Debord, 1967 p.15). More appearances more often becomes an axiom of political strategizing.
The spectacular model of the public sphere also implies a certain model of voluntary association that shapes our understanding of political action as the product of an engaged individual citizens in civil society, where people come together to ‘act on their beliefs.’  In this sense, politics becomes a kind of action undertaken as the expressive product of people volunteering outside of their involuntary duties as worker or family member, who come together because of their beliefs, understood as an internal and abstract expression of what should be. It sidelines the process of subject formation that frees up some for ‘volunteering,’ and ties down others at work or home.  The key actor for this model of the public sphere and civil society is the opinion forming and expressive individual subject, who engages in deliberative persuasion to overcome the opinions of their adversaries, and who coincides with a fragmentation of lines of solidarity between individuals in community via their collective labor or identity.  ‘Proper politics’ occurs in terms of purely abstract (alienated) beliefs or principles.  The abstract qualities of the spectacular, alienated subject of politics imposes a model of ideal persuasion on politics as well: persuasion involves a meeting of minds via discussion.    ‘Successful’ persuasion in the public sphere involves conscious agreement by subjects in dialogue, and ignores the productive role of social norms in shaping how and why decisions will be made: “The circulation of public discourse is consistently imagined, both in folk theory and in sophisticated political philosophy, as dialogue or discussion among already co-present interlocutors … the point is that the perception of a public discourse as conversation obscures the importance of the poetic functions of both language and corporeal expressivity in giving a particular shape to publics” (Warner, 2002 p.115).  The abstract idealization of ‘good’ communication and persuasion means that the public sphere of deliberation cannot fully exist – politics is fraught with idiosyncrasies of time and place, arbitrary opinion formation based on prejudice, and simple inability to place everyone in dialog with each other.  ‘Miscommunication’ will occur.  Despite this, decisions occur, change happens – only in terms that we do not consider to be properly ‘political,’ and the model of politics carried out through the public sphere constitutes a selective attention to a limited number of social systems that determine the course of our lives.  As in Debord’s analysis above, most significant among these issues elided by our norms of public deliberation is the process of producing the spectacular subject of ‘politics.’
The analysis above should not suggest that the public sphere exists as an ahistorical norm.  It has been subject to shifts roughly in line with shifts in the means of production under capitalism.  The classic subject of the public sphere engages in purely rational deliberation via interrogative dialogue.  The deliberation proceeds in a linear, logical fashion akin to written communication, enumerating points and carefully delineating differences of opinion.  This particularly cerebral, ascetic mode of practicing politics imposes a particular discipline on the body.  The ideal body in communication remains still during discussion, acting only through words (and in this way sneaking in concepts of ‘non-violence’), and produces on demand according to the situation – responding on cue, speaking in time limits, etc.  This highly regulatory rational body corresponds roughly to bourgeois industrial capitalism, with neatly regulated and rational systems of production.  This discourse explicitly directs itself at an abstract greater good which it claims to serve by way of personal distance from arguments –it excludes rhetoric that implicates the specific bodies of its interlocutors as the pejorative ‘ad hominem argument,’ a norm of argumentation derived from the print-media that undergird it.  In this sense, the discourse expects and demands uniformity imposed on the body of its subjects.  All subjects should perform the labor of ‘debate’ in the same way, just as factory workers or prisoners are subject to the uniform gaze of their overseers.  Despite its relative decline in favor of a consumption-driven politics, this form of deliberation still has salience for our contemporary political world.  For example, on February 20th of this year, immediately after the Kimmel Occupation, Opinion Editor for the (mass produced) Washington Square News Damon Peres published an article that described the occupation  as “self-indulgent and childish,” rejecting “legitimate conversation with school administrators,” and requesting a “disorganized list of demands.” This echoes the idealization of order, self-control and dialogue in the industrial public sphere, and shows how a criticism of the presentation of a political protest becomes an argument for order, regulation, and a particular kind of relationship to the self.  Not only are these values held outside of discussion, but it provides the outlines for the core values/issues which will remain explicitly beyond debate: social systems that create order, organization or perfect the rational subject via medicine or other means will likely remain unquestioned in the reporting of such a writer.
Despite these echoes of the industrial, textual public sphere, the primary axis of discussion about contemporary politics embraces a less rational, but rather image and desire conscious version of the subject.  This model of the public sphere emphasizes communication that proceeds by way of creating and assuaging desires.  It speaks more directly of subjects who want to be comforted rather than confronted, and seeks a vague consensus that lets everyone get what they want.  This version of the public sphere also engages explicitly with questions of presentation, and makes a ‘public image’ explicitly a subject of discussion.  The meta-discourse of ideal communication that arises out of this contemporary public sphere articulates a subject of consumer capitalism, who seeks the fulfillment of individual desire as a way to avoid conflict with others: the post Cold War consensus of neoliberalism essentially reduces to the argument that everyone can meet their particular desires through consumption. Critiques of political action in this public sphere follow from the principles of contemporary globalization rhetoric, that we can and should respect a certain kind of individual desire fulfillment, and the politics should be consistent with the needs of subjects to hold onto their desire and practices.  It encourages a kind of self-righteous narcissism, on the part of the named opponents of a political action, who defend their right to desire differently.  Critique of political action by non-participants follows from the values of consumption as well – failure to achieve immediate consensus (gratification) through an action gets articulated as ‘polarization,’ the inverse of our End of History consensus under consumer capitalism that lets everyone carry out their desire in harmony.   The rise of consumer capital also involves a shift in the orientation of subjects towards media products.  Whereas under the industrial, textual public sphere published texts were seen first as paths to some truth and consumer products second, our contemporary environment views media products primarily as objects of consumption themselves, now framed as ‘entertainment.’  Entertainment rhetoric plays off of the above discourses about ‘proper’ political conviction to embrace a kind of ironic, image conscious lethargy that manifests itself as ‘snark.’  The heavy, truth-laden discourse of the industrial public sphere becomes the target of consumers seeking lightness of pure desire.  The website Gawker also covered the February occupation in Kimmel, and took a radically different approach than the WSN’s critique.  Their first post (“Revolution Strikes the NYU Food Court”, Feb 19th at 11 am) whose tone carried throughout their coverage, ‘reported’ the event using a caricature of classic 1960s student activist rhetoric, with the subtext that the reader should not take the occupation seriously, but also enjoy it as a misguided anachronism that simultaneously affirms the up-to-date relevance of the reader, who rebels against the sanctimony of ‘proper’ politics.  Debord neatly identifies how this expands the scope of life subject to the consumption-production of the spectacle: “A smug acceptance of what exists is likewise quite compatible with a purely spectacular rebelliousness, for the simple reason that dissatisfaction itself becomes a commodity as soon as the economics of affluence finds a way of applying its production methods to this particular raw material” (Debord, 1967 p.38).  By positing a consuming subject this manifestation of the spectacular public sphere resigns itself from the space of politics – convictions and opinions appear without any attempt to describe their origins, or evaluate their relative worth.  The consuming subject focuses back onto the individual body as a site of self-construction and image consciousness, both key values for producing a consuming subject.
These critiques require a new ideology of communication that provides alternative conditions for thinking about the subject in human collective action that would not make it amenable to capital.  The process of finding a new ideology of communication involves seeking out new basis for the perceived legitimacy of communicative action, that does not draw from a rational defense of universal good (industrial), or pluralistic desire fulfillment (consumer).

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Tags: Academic, communication, creative activism, new politics, public sphere, the image