Khansari Debating the Fall of Public Man

7/27/2019 Khansari Debating the Fall of Public Man

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Marzieh Hassanzadeh Khansari

Kungliga Tekniska Hgskolan, Faculty of Built Environment, Department of UrbanPlanning and Design

Urban Theory- a worldwide approach, Final essay on: Sennet, R. (1978[1974]) The Fall

of Public Man. New York: Vintage.

Changing form of city life and public domain in our time: DebatingThe Fall of Public Man

In 1974, Richard Sennett, an American urban sociologist, published The Fall of Public

Man to warn the society of the devolution of the public in the city, of the inflictions theimbalance between public and private life imposes upon both domains. The book was a

huge success among scholars and soon became a major source for urban theory.

Summary:

Our society is facing a crisis because people have become so reluctant to takeany measure relating to res publica, to anything that does not seem immediate

and close to them. We live in a world that is invaded by intimate feelings and

measurement where it becomes more elusive each day to find out our realpersonality and feelings. We can not experience the pleasure in play, in acting

certain roles and enacting certain conventions that are highly emancipating. The

playact helps us resist the burden of narcissism on one hand and being able to

interact with others for mutual benefits, to negotiate and make differences in oursurrounding on the other hand. In order to understand this conundrum, it needs

to follow the social and economical processes through history that brings us tothe present problems of erosion of public life.

Before the industrial revolution city was a confined settlement where the

position of each member of society was known and fixed. In such a society

people knew how to behave according to the customs and in relation to the clearsocial hierarchy. By the fall of the ancien regime, introduction of industrial

capitalism in Europe, people did massive migration to cities, the commodities

produced in a homogenous form in unprecedented amount. The domination ofnobility and church was terminated and people experienced turbulent situation of

instability and disorder. Secularism implied that there need to be no primacy to

explain the existing fact; the immanent then replaced the transcendental. Itaffected how people interpret the strange and the unknown. Because of thetraumatic situation of the society and alienation of man from his work, people

tried to find peace and order in intimate zone of their family. In the public, one

was confronted by lots of strangers who looked the same, to make any contact tothese others one had to be quick to guess who they were. The flourishing of

pathology and phrenology made people even more concerned of involuntary

revelation of self, it means that manifestation of the signs that were beyond their

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power to mold disclosed their personality to others. Silence in public space and

withdrawal from public activities was a way of defending against these threats.The result of this was that the line between private feeling and public display of

it could be erased beyond the power of the will to regulate. The boundary

between public and private was no longer act of a resolute hand.

Gradually those who could perform in public were treated with great respect andpassivity since they do what an ordinary person could not do. While people

stopped acting as an active force or public, the public performer became one to

control people rather than interact with them. When people want to judge apolitician, instead of measuring his beliefs, acts and agenda which may require

foresightedness and imagining a distance from immediacy (here and now) they

tend to evaluate him in terms of personal character and his authenticity.

Today narcissism is mobilized in social relationships to an extent that people can

not tolerate anything that may contradict their personality. They try to form

communities that share a collective personality. Community has a surveillancefunction but members are not free and it becomes an exercise of fratricide. Thecommunity becomes a weapon against society. Such a community only thinks of

itself; since it is inward looking and self-absorbed it can not negotiate or

compromise to the other, the outside and it expectations can never be slaked.

After this short review, I would like to proceed deeper into this book by examining themain statements, theoretical framework and methodology. Also, by debating underlying

premises I like to argue its validity. Ultimately, I will try to define the strength and

weaknesses of his debate and suggest certain points to be concerned in relation to thisspecific theme to go beyond this book and think of other options according to the

situation of our time.

A theory of public expression

It is always crucial to define the problem correctly and precisely before looking for

responses. As many intellectuals have confirmed that the problem of modern society is a

process of losing our tools to interact with each other in an efficient way, which prohibits

us to challenge the institutionalized structures dominating public life and interests andgain social experiences. Sennet suggests that lessened social participation/ interaction is

not a matter of common psychology (of general lack of will or desire) but in fact it is aproblem of losing the human ability to play roles , in other words the ability to be

expressive in an impersonal manner.

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One method of making sense of the shift between public and private in modern culture

would be to investigate the historical change in the public roles. That is the method of

this book. (Sennett 1974:29)

As a member of New Left, Sennet is preoccupied by historical materialism, the past in

present. He believes therefore that the present crisis of public life is the legacy of 19th

century. Thus, by scrutinizing the innate logic and the process by which industrial

capitalism and objective secularism has affected society and its elements, we will have

the necessary conscious to come in terms with the issue and think of solutions. However,

psychological obsessions of individual are regarded as the main villain in this warfare.

I have tried to create a theory of expression in public by a process of interplay between

theory and history. Concrete changes in public behavior speech, dress and belief are

used in this book as evidence for making a theory about what expression is in society.

As the history has suggested clues to a theory, I have tried to take the abstract insights

gains as clues in their turn for new questions to ask the historical record. (ibid: 6)

One of the main concepts in The fall of public man is playacting. However, the vision ofcity as a theateris not singular to Sennett. What does play and play act have to do with

question of public life? What are the implications of viewing the city as a great theater?

As Sennett indicates, there is a commonality between the city and the theater; in both youhave to be concerned about your appearance among an audience of strangers. Second

similarity, is the continuity of content with the rules governing response to the stage at

the theatre. In so far as a common code of believability is regnant, a public geography is

produced so that:

The world external to immediate surroundings and personal loyalties become

consciously defined, and movement through diverse social circumstances and groups ofstrangers with the aid of this common code becomes comfortable. (ibid: 38)

The public geography is the setting in which the expression to others can be meaningful

on their own, rather than a personality dependent representation, that puts the actor before

act.

The volubility of play is in accustoming to believe in the expressivity of impersonal

behavior. Made-up rules become act of self-distance; you practice a rule or an act to

increase its effect and power of expression and you can have a sense of control over it. Inthis term, one can develop a third ear, an ability to judge oneself and ameliorate ones

performance. Since playing to the rules and conventions is not a matter of idiosyncrasy,

the familiar syndromes of frustration-causing withdrawal, frustration-causing apathy donot appear. Play enables people to have experiences they otherwise could never know.

Being together depends on making commonly accepted rules which is the realm of public

geography that encourages the observation of rules as a means of liberating self-denial;

this self-denial is the essence of forging social bonds.

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It may be necessary of course to question where the resource of these masks, these

conventions is and how their legitimacy can be judged. Or is it rather important toplaytogetheras an end to itself? I think Sennet has taken some ideological status for granted.

In terms of legitimacy he nostalgically comes across the fact that in a society deprived of

ritual or natural order ready-made masks of the past, one has to make the modern masks

through trial and error.

Shift of public-private and tyranny of intimacy

The shifting weight between public and private life has been of great interest amongwriters on modern society: Trilling, Adorno, Riesman, Habermas, etc. The field of

concern is comprised of Sennett remarks:

issues as diverse as the erosion of public space in cities, the conversion of political discourse

into psychological terms, the elevation of performing artist to a special status as publicpersonalities, and the labeling of impersonality itself as a moral evil.(ibid, 28)

In 1950 Riesman tried to explain a similar problem in American society in The LonelyCrowd. Riesman identified a pattern of historical movement beginning with a tradition-

directed society followed by an inner-directed trend. Finally, he claims, by the conditions

of industrial revolution the society became more other-directed. Since the other-directedindividuals could only identify themselves through references to others in their

communities (what they earn, own, consume and believe in) they inherently were

restricted in their ability to know themselves.

By alluding at The Lonely Crowd, Sennett is giving us clues and background of his

own debate. Although he disputes that the society has been in fact reversely transformed

from other-directed to inner-directed, he appreciates Riesman for forging a psycho-social

language to deal with this problem, as well as his acknowledgment of a certain tradition

in a germane sociology literature: that of Alexis De Tocqueville.

De Tocqueville believes that in an egalitarian condition, the engaging issues in life will

become more and more psychological and the degree of emotional risk-taking andpeoples will to participate in public affair grows less and less. But the malign of self-

absorption inflicts not merely the society but the very individual himself. Gratification of

self could become increasingly difficult in this state since, emotions can only bemeaningful when perceived in a web of social relations rather than autonomous lonely

expressiveness. Accordingly, Sennett poses some critical questions:

How is society injured by blanket measurement of social reality in psychological terms?

It is robbed of its civility. How is the self injured by estrangement from a meaningful

impersonal life? It is robbed of the expression of certain creative powers which all the

human beings possess potentially- the power of play- but which requires a distance

from the self for their realization. Thus the intimate society makes of the individual an

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actor deprived of an art. The narcissistic focus on motivation and the localization of

communal feeling give a form to each of those issues. (ibid: 264)

Same as Tocqueville, Sennett disapproves that common feelings and emotions incite andintervene the public affairs. This is what he announces as the most obscene intrusion of

intimacy into public life. In reaction to Tocqueville phrase the tyranny of the majority,

Sennett entitles his concluding chapter: The Tyrannies of Intimacy (Hughson et al,2004).

Sennett defines Tyranny as a situation in which all the matters in society are referred to asovereign rule; an unrivaled person or principle then tyrannize the society. This

governing of a multitude of actions by a single measure does not necessarily involve

coercion; it can be exerted through seduction, so that people want to be governed by a

single entity. Intimacy is a tyranny of ordinary life of the latter kind:

[Tyranny of intimacy is] the arousal of a belief in one standard of truth to measure the

complexities of social reality. It is the measurement of society in psychological terms.

And to the extent that this seductive tyranny exists, society itself is deformed. (ibid:338)

Sennett argues forcefully that a healthy society should delineate a line between public

and private spheres characterized by intimacy and impersonality, otherwise coming to

crisis in both domains. He indicates that, this crisis has obscured for us two main areas of

social life: one is the realm of power, the other is the realm of city.

To backs up the idea of encroaching intimacy and the damage it does to democracy,

Sennett draws on many concrete examples. Most notably, the political atmosphere of US

on his era: the political life of R. Nixon and his so-called Chekers speech. When the

president was forced to confess a financial scandal on television, he shed a few tears andtalked about his personal life and his love for dogs and his own dog Chekers, to represent

to people that he is an honest and kind man. We can agree with Sennett that the disguiseof power through projecting motivations of the political leaders keeps established

institutions unchallenged and it is commonly used as a trick for political pacification.

Death of public spaces and the city of ghettos

As argued before, the tyranny of intimacy is obscuring our understanding of city, its

meaning, and reason for being. This distortion is embodied in modern city in twodomains: one is the public space, the other is neighborhood andquartier.

Sennett blames certain trends in the modern city, which are squarely related to the

erosion of public space. He makes examples of structures that are set in a milieu withoutany relationship to it. He also laments unrestricted mobility of person -by means of

private car- to the cost of deteriorating urban street and square, making public space

unsafe and instrumental. He notices an inclination among architects for treating public

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space as a space to pass through rather than linger. The most woeful injury our modernist

space configuration has done to city is however, the hyper visibility- as a virtue ofinternational style architecture- by which people is able to keep each other under

pervasive surveillance. As a result of this forced intimacy, people lose their sociability

and interest to communicate with each other .Thus one becomes even more indifferent to

what is outside the self. These phenomena are quite disruptive to urban spacenevertheless, Sennett is not the first one who suggests these issues, since Jane Jacobs had

discussed such themes more in detail, in her great classic The death and life of great

American cities a decade prior to him.

At the same time, planners have committed themselves to building community territory

in the city as a social goal. The premise underlying this idea is a notion of order that is

only possible through a clearly defined space that allows contacts between very fewindividuals. Sennett applies his bipolar sociological theory to explain this phenomenon.

He demarcates the relationship between a communal collective personality and concrete

territories of community. But what is the appeal of community?

For destructive gemeinschaft to arise, people must believe that when they reveal their

feelings to each other, they do so in order to form an emotional bond. This bond

consists of a collective personality which they build up through mutual revelation.

(Sennett 1974: 262)

In a society that regards impersonality as a moral evil, when public affairs are measured

with emotional dimensions, the value of contact with stranger is dismissed. However,

people grow only by a process of encountering the unknown. Intimacy (closeness) andclosed-ness are of the same root; community implies a surveillance function that restricts

the freedom of its members and becomes an exercise of fratricide. As Sennett notes, the

more local the imagination of people, the greater number of social issues for which the

psychological logic is: we wont get involved, we wont let this violate us.

Modern urban development makes community contact itself seem an answer to thesocial death of the city (ibid). The formation of modern community usually starts in the

name of fraternity in a hostile world but all too often becomes an experience of fratricide.I am quite convinced that, as Sennett suggests; we have no choice but to try to make that

larger world habitable. Therefore, the destruction of a city of ghettoes is both a political

and a psychological necessity.

General comments on the book

When one reads The Fall of Public Man, tree decades after its transcription, one maycuriously notice two odd features in it. First, is the resentment the author has shown about

the present era; it is strange that Sennett does not mention a single advantage of our age,

any improvement or progress in contemporary age comparing to 19th

or 18th

centurysociety. Obviously, this can cause a certain bios in his statements since it indicates a lack

of impartiality. Also, Sennett ultimately eschews looking ahead not only by resorting to

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the history but because of the very fact that much of his samples and examples are taken

from his very immanent surroundings; consequently a considerable amount of hissuppositions seem nave and maintain no credit in our time. I will come back to this issue

more specifically in the next part.

While he acknowledges the regret for the past as a dangerous feeling that inhibits oftaking measures to change the present, Sennet falls in the trap of becoming nostalgic andtakes a normative position in his statements. Although, he warns the society of the way

politicians manipulate the mass by sinking them in emotional streams, his rhetoric is

imbued with emotion and metaphor for example he talks about Trauma which the reignof intimacy produces upon people. Metaphors are a source of aesthetic in literature but

they are indubitably rather dangerous tools for analytical purpose like that of Sennetts.

The similarity between history and literature (or lets say the desire of story-telling) seems

to encumber him.

He strongly asserts the merits of impersonality while he somewhat fails to be impersonal

in his book i.e. it is not too difficult to discern his Jewish ethnicity, his background as amusic performer (he takes 5 pages to depict the sufferings of the obscure pianist in ourmodern cities), and even his pervasive use of French jargons is an explicit hint to his

scholarship in France (No matter that this may intimidate a general readerto proceed).

Ultimately, Sennet has succeeded to make his point by an appealing clearly organized

text. The book is written in such a language to have a broad audience and not only

sociologists. On this term, he has accomplished his goal to serve the expectations of a

sophisticated, intelligent general reader.

The rise of a new public domain

By this point, I would like to make comments on main assumptions of Sennett that is, hisposition about democratic city and his viewpoint about communication technology. As

we will see, there is a significant correlation between these two visions.

Spatial strategies are not incidental to politics; each political standpoint has its own

idiosyncratic spatial configuration. A distinguished tradition in democratic philosophy is

tied to public sphere for that urban public space is essential to democratic citizenship.The ideal setting for practice of democracy is an open political space which all citizens

can have access to it. That is a realm in which people join together to enact and achieve

collective interests. It is not incidental that, Sennetts starting chapter is entitledpublicdomain, in which he has allocated some pages to discuss the death of public space.

Sennet opposes anonymity and casual contact among strangers to traditional ties offamily and kinship, which is vital to civic association and mutual growth. Sennett

believes that if we want a state of people for people, we have to take part in political

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affairs through impersonal playact in public domain. This public act requires repetition

and effort to work out. Mastering in specific roles enables person to be most expressive

and clear and collaborate effectively with others.

But we can challenge this way of thinking in at least tree ways. First, by questioning the

idea of public sphere as a means of democracy. Some authors like Bruce Robins suggestthat, the public is like a phantom, as both space and sphere, if it is meant to signify thecommon good or single public: the city has never been open to the scrutiny and

participation, let alone under the control of majority ?(Cited in Amin & Thrift, 2002:

136) and besides Where were the workers, the women, the lesbian, the African-

American in the most evocations of the public sphere?(ibid)

Second, there is no reason to suppose that civic virtue will prompt out of mingling in

public space. As offered by Amin(2002), our contact with strangers is fleeting. For someothers, anonymity may result to irresponsibility and lack of organization. The idea of

public domain has a kinship to Greek agora or ancient forum but, we must not forget that,

in those societies the people who actually had the right to act and speech in public wereso few that there could be no such possibility as to regard them as strangers (both were

slavery societies in which women and Berbers did not have political rights).

Finally, the assumption under a public sphere-bound version of democracy is based onunmediated communication. Giving privilege to face-to-face contacts among the

members of society is neither reasonable nor possible in our age. Not is this only due to

the colossal size of urban areas and population, but also, because of all technologicalachievements through which a social space is created in a new dimension, which is called

cyberspace. What is the morality in denying the sprit of our time, the legitimacy of

network society?

This brings us now to our second point, the question of media in Sennetts opinion.

Without much effort, he can be categorized as dystopian or anti-technotopia. For Sennett,

electronic communication isone means by which the idea of public has been put to anend. Of course, by the time of his book the internet was not yet for public use, he mainly

referred to radio and specially the tube then. But, lets see his reasons for being so

pessimist about the new means of communication. Sennett argues that radio and TV donot permit audience interruption, you have to be silent to be spoken to, and passivity is

the logic of this technology. I do not agree that TV makes people necessarily passive.

People are not omnipresent creatures; if they can watch a political or social debate from

TV it is still much better than, not being able to know about such a thing at all, becausethey could not be in the actual gathering place which anyway should have certainly had a

limited capacity. The more the amount of people involved in any public issue, the more

necessary it becomes to use media (as mediator) to give everyone an equal chance to beau current. And it seems nave to talk about interrupting the speak man; we can rarely see

anything like that happen in a real public meeting, as occurring a few times it can cause

the speech to be diverted and has a disorganizing effect on the public. Also, Sennettcomplains that it is not possible to listen to the same part of speech twice, if it is unclear

for you or if it is so impressing that you want to hear it again. The irony is that we can in

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fact record and playback any public event, thanks to technology, with an ease never

known before.

I do not want to fall apart form my point. There are many reasons, much potential, why

we can draw on the new communication technology as fecund and emancipating force

toward a more well-connected and participatory society, toward a more enriched publicdomain, and toward what has always been the prime merit of city, encountering thestrange and the new, and at the same time rest anonym and impersonal. I am not an avid

admirer of technotopia and I am not implying that contemporary communication

technologies and cyberspace are the panacea for all the maladies of our modern society.However, it is inevitable to reflect upon the choices and alternatives so inseparable of our

era. It is clear that computer networking, for better and for worth, has become part of the

process of producing social spaces (Saco, 2002). As Saco points out,

We are both more visible and less visible in cyberspace. We are in a public space that

isolates us form face-to-face encounters to others, and we are in a self-designed private

space of privilege that can bring us closer together as virtual communities.(ibid, 199)

Accordingly, Hetherington suggests:

A heterotopias provides new instances of both freedom and order. We may found

ourselves free from some of the dictates of movement of atoms (e.g. bodiless), but the

flow of electrons in cyberspace follows certain order as well, and it is the nature and

impact of this different ordering that must be reached more fully.(cited by Saco, 2002:

202)

I think new communication technology, especially the space created by the exchange ofinformation, facts and feelings, is a new competition ground in which state and power

institutions try to benefit from and keep their domination over society in many ways; oneexample can be the propaganda over Hollywood stars. On the other hand, people arefinding new emancipating possibilities to bypass the current political structure and to

discuss their opinions. And, form congregations to defend their rights and change the

distribution of power. These are only some of the facts against Sennetts idea that thecomplete repression of audience response by the electronic media creates the logic of

interest in personality or that Media makes no demands on the perceiver. (Sennett

1974: 285)

We can think about YouTube for instance, that is today the most referred source of gettingthe news, far outnumbering CNN and New York times readers. As a matter of fact, by the

means of new information and communication network, people are allowed a new spacein which they can create, share and discus information, knowledge, art and news.Cyberspace is for them a space to claim their common interests and public rights, to

debate and follow impersonal needs and to act in a new scene that is accessible to an

unprecedented amount of audience bridging across the distances of space and time. Onenotable example of this mobilization happened in March 2003; over 1 million people

signed a petition against the war in Iraq on five days, by their own initiation, through

email circulation. In my homeland, Iran, young people especially women, take advantage

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of weblog writing to play an active role in the society. The astonishing amount of about

half a million active weblogs is more than enough evidence of recent trends of mobilizingsocial forces to reshape the political structure and challenge the established rules and

constitutions.

Ultimately, I do not believe that these new possibilities are going to erode public spacerather they will exist in parallel and complementary to it. Making the public even moreconscious of the invaluable experience of impersonal expression to an audience of

strangers in a tangible public space that belongs to the very public man.

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Reference:

Amin, A. & Thrift, N, (2002) Cities: Reimagining the Urban. Malden: Polity Press.

Benn, M. (2003) The Guardian Profile: Richard Sennett. [Online] UK: Guardian.

Available at:http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2001/feb/03/books.guardianreview4 [Accessed 28

November 2008].

Free, M., Hughson, J., Inglis, D. (2004) The Uses of Sport. [Online] UK: Routledge.Available at:http://books.google.se/books?id=nWcIqELsRHYC&pg=PA55&lpg=PA55&dq=critic+on

+the+fall+of+public+man&source=web&ots=2_UhnuUqiA&sig=tSMNbtWgTaSjFCmu

Zs5FuxMiPOs&hl=en&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=1&ct=result#PPA56,M1

[Accessed 30 November 2008].

Saco, D. (2002) Cybering Democracy: Public Space and the Internet. [Online] USA:University of Minnesota Press. Available at:

http://site.ebrary.com/lib/kth/Doc?id=10151320&ppg=242 [Accessed 3 December 2008].

Sennet, R. (1978[1974]) The Fall of Public Man. New York: Vintage.

(2003) Worldwide Antiwar Petition Delivered to Security Council Members. [Online]USA: Win Without War. Available at:

http://www.winwithoutwar.info/html/press_3.10.2003.html [Accessed 5December 2008].
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2001/feb/03/books.guardianreview4http://books.google.se/books?id=nWcIqELsRHYC&pg=PA55&lpg=PA55&dq=critic+on+the+fall+of+public+man&source=web&ots=2_UhnuUqiA&sig=tSMNbtWgTaSjFCmuZs5FuxMiPOs&hl=en&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=1&ct=result#PPA56,M1http://books.google.se/books?id=nWcIqELsRHYC&pg=PA55&lpg=PA55&dq=critic+on+the+fall+of+public+man&source=web&ots=2_UhnuUqiA&sig=tSMNbtWgTaSjFCmuZs5FuxMiPOs&hl=en&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=1&ct=result#PPA56,M1http://books.google.se/books?id=nWcIqELsRHYC&pg=PA55&lpg=PA55&dq=critic+on+the+fall+of+public+man&source=web&ots=2_UhnuUqiA&sig=tSMNbtWgTaSjFCmuZs5FuxMiPOs&hl=en&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=1&ct=result#PPA56,M1http://site.ebrary.com/lib/kth/Doc?id=10151320&ppg=242http://www.winwithoutwar.info/html/press_3.10.2003.htmlhttp://www.winwithoutwar.info/html/press_3.10.2003.htmlhttp://site.ebrary.com/lib/kth/Doc?id=10151320&ppg=242http://books.google.se/books?id=nWcIqELsRHYC&pg=PA55&lpg=PA55&dq=critic+on+the+fall+of+public+man&source=web&ots=2_UhnuUqiA&sig=tSMNbtWgTaSjFCmuZs5FuxMiPOs&hl=en&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=1&ct=result#PPA56,M1http://books.google.se/books?id=nWcIqELsRHYC&pg=PA55&lpg=PA55&dq=critic+on+the+fall+of+public+man&source=web&ots=2_UhnuUqiA&sig=tSMNbtWgTaSjFCmuZs5FuxMiPOs&hl=en&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=1&ct=result#PPA56,M1http://books.google.se/books?id=nWcIqELsRHYC&pg=PA55&lpg=PA55&dq=critic+on+the+fall+of+public+man&source=web&ots=2_UhnuUqiA&sig=tSMNbtWgTaSjFCmuZs5FuxMiPOs&hl=en&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=1&ct=result#PPA56,M1http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2001/feb/03/books.guardianreview4

Khansari Debating the Fall of Public Man

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