By Jeffrey C. Goldfarb, February 8th, 2013 
To skip this introduction and go directly to Daniel Dayan’s In-Depth Analysis, “On Un-publics: Former Publics, Future Publics, Almost Publics, Observers and Genealogies,” click here.
In today’s “in depth” post, Daniel Dayan examines publics in depth, from different analytic viewpoints, drawing upon the insights of a broad range of thinkers. Dayan considers what comes before and after “publics,” the diversity of types of publics, their relationships, their life histories, how their projects are realized, or not, how they are related to audiences. He analyzes the way publics perform and show, how they watch and are watched. It is an elegant and challenging rumination, valuable, because it clarifies how thinkers who often don’t seem to understand each other are actually talking to each other in a serious way. And I should add that the study of publics is especially important to me because it is my field, and Daniel and I have been talking about it for a long time. This piece advances the conversation.
I was struck by a number of telling observations, one particularly hits close to my intellectual home, related to my research on Polish theater, and my colleague, Eiko Ikegami’s studies of “linked poetry,” in her book Bonds of Civility.
“Aesthetic publics (the reading publics of literature, the active publics of theater, the connoisseur publics of music and the arts) have always been singled out as exemplary by theorists of the public sphere, and by Habermas in particular. Yet, despite this ostensible privilege, aesthetic publics have been often ignored, or analyzed as mere training grounds for political publics. ‘Salons’ were first celebrated, and then turned into antechambers to the streets. Interestingly the publics, which tend to be best studied, are political publics. Aesthetic publics have been often neglected. This is why approaches that pay aesthetic publics more than a lip service, approaches such as those of Goldfarb (2006) or Ikegami (2000) are so important.”
Ikegami and I examine the relationship between art and politics through the analysis of publics. Dayan approves. He notes that aesthetic publics have been an important . . .
Read more: Introduction to “On Un-publics”
By Jeffrey C. Goldfarb, November 30th, 2012 
 
To skip this introduction and go directly to the In-Depth Analysis “How to be an Intelligent Anti-American,” click here.
I saw Lincoln yesterday. I intend to write a post on its significance over the weekend. I have fundamentally two responses to the film, aesthetic and political. On aesthetic grounds, I don’t think it is his best, but, on the other hand, I am blown away by the film’s political power. The debate it has opened is impressive. Fundamental questions about the nature of politics, the connection of past and future, and the human capacity to change the world are now being raised in the discussion of Spielberg’s latest, and a broad audience is taking part and listening in. I will explain more fully on Monday.
Today, I have decided to post an essay I published ten years ago, inspired by my ambivalent response to Schindler’s List, which of course Lincoln resembles, for better and for worse, in many ways. My essay, as I explain in its opening, was inspired by two occasions which led to its composition as lectures. My theme on the two occasions was anti-Americanism, and Spielberg came to mind. I am posting the piece today both because I think an American film genius has does it again, revealed all the strength and weaknesses of American popular, democratic, culture, and because the main theme of my lectures, anti-Americanism, continues to be a pressing topic, both in its comic and tragic dimensions.
So today: an in-depth post, a lecture on how to be an intelligent anti-American.
To read the In-Depth Analysis, “How to be an Intelligent Anti-American,” click here.
By Jeffrey C. Goldfarb, October 31st, 2012 
 To skip this introduction and go directly to the In-Depth Analysis, “Reinventing Democratic Culture: Then and Now,” click here.
It is odd in the extreme to read about a devastating storm in New York, listen to my local public radio station, WNYC, from Paris and Rome. It took a while to find out how my son in Washington D.C. and his wife, Lili, in Long Island City were doing. I also have been worried about my mother and sister and sisters-in-law, and their families, in their homes in Brooklyn, Manhattan and the Bronx. All seems to be OK, with very significant inconvenience. My friends and neighbors, my house and my community center, these I don’t know about and am concerned. The Theodore Young Community Center, where I swim and where I have many dear friends, in fact, is still without its basketball court after the devastation of tropical storm Irene. All this while I have been enjoying my family just outside Paris, taking a beautiful stroll in Paris on Monday and having a nice first day in Rome. I hurt for my friends and family as I am enjoying European pleasures topped off yesterday with a wonderful dinner with my dear colleague, Professor Anna Lisa Tota of the University of Rome.
And I push on, talking about my work with colleagues and students first here in Italy and next week in Poland. This morning, I am off to give a lecture at the University of Rome to a group of film and media Ph.D. students, on media, the politics of small things and the reinvention of political culture. I decided to post today a lecture I gave in Gdansk last year which was a variation on the same theme: the project of reinventing democratic culture. The lecture highlights the links between my political engagements of the past and how they relate to the political challenges now. I will return to Warsaw and Gdansk with a follow up next week. In all the meetings and in the “in-depth post” today, . . .
Read more: Thinking About the Storm and Political Culture: An Introduction to my Solidarity Lecture
By Jeffrey C. Goldfarb, September 3rd, 2012 
 To skip this introduction and go directly to “Digital Events: Media Rituals in the Digital Age” by Lisa Lipscomb, click here.
In today’s In-Depth post, which was presented at this year’s American Sociological Association Meeting in Denver, Lisa Lipscomb extends Daniel Dayan and Elihu Katz analysis of media events to the new media and the new political environment. I am struck by how the analysis of Dayan and Katz still illuminates important political developments, and also appreciate how Lipscomb extension gives a fuller understanding of media politics of our day. Their work still shows how institutionalized democracy is significantly constituted through television. She shows how extra institutional democratic forces, contributing to what Pierre Rosanvallon describes as counter-democracy, are manifested through Digital Events of the new electronic media.
Thus, the main events of this week and last: using the insights of Dayan and Katz, it is clear that the nominating conventions are anything but empty affairs. It is true that these conventions have long ago lost their instrumental purposes: before the fact everyone knew who the candidates for president and vice president would be, and the party platforms developed and passed at the conventions are ignored by the electorate and the politicians alike. Yet, the conventions still play a very important political role, ritualistically indicating that the election contest is now entering its decisive stage, and that it is now the time for all good men and women to come to the aid of their party (to paraphrase the old typing drill).
Indeed, the nominating ritual confirms both the substantial existence and appeal of and the attachment to each of the parties. They try to refine and shape their message and appeal, and in the process, they define the terms of the American political contest and debate. In societies of the past, such rituals occurred face to face: not only in conventions and politics, but also in processions, coronations, funerals and holidays of all sorts, reported first by . . .
Read more: Digital Events: Media Rituals in the Digital Age (Introduction)
By Jeffrey C. Goldfarb, July 19th, 2012 
 To skip this introduction and go directly to the full In-Depth Analysis of “Fake vs. Fox News: OWS and Beyond,” click here.
In December of 2011, I took part in a very interesting conference in Sofia, Bulgaria. The conference participants were asked to respond to the work of the media theorist, Daniel Dayan (my dear friend and colleague and Deliberately Considered contributor) and to answer a straightforward question – “Is democracy sick of its own media?”
I presented a mixed answer: yes, when in comes to troubling developments in television news; no, when it comes to the effervescence of television satire and the social media. I closed with a proposal to Daniel to co-author a book, linking his ideas about “monstration” with mine about the politics of small things. While a book may or may not be forthcoming, a dialogue here at Deliberately Considered will appear in the near future.
In my paper, which I present here as an “in-depth” post, focused on the American case, I argued that we live in both the best of times and the worst of times concerning the relationship between media and democracy. Fox Cable News is relentlessly confusing fact with fiction with partisan intention, and serves as a model of media success, both financial and political, while responses to Fox including by the TV satirists, the famous “fake news” journalists, Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert, on Comedy Central, who also have interesting imitators around the world, present important challenges to Fox and its influence on common sense.
These media developments, I sought to demonstrate, are connected to significant new American social movements: the Tea Party and Occupy Wall Street. In the case of OWS, and other new “new social movements,” social media is of crucial importance. They are providing new health to democracy globally in many different political contexts.
I maintained in my Sofia paper, that the relationship between social media and OWS is a significant manifestation of the way the politics of small things have become large in our world. I see in this a . . .
Read more: Fake vs. Fox News: OWS and Beyond (Introduction)
By Jeffrey C. Goldfarb, June 27th, 2012 
To skip this introduction and go directly to Minas Samatas’s In-Depth Analysis of the Greek Election, click here.
It is clear. The recent election in Greece was of critical importance. The fate of that country, of Europe and the global economy all seemed to be in the balance. The establishment reading of those in power in Berlin and other European capitals, and in Washington, as well, was that a victory by the leftist party SYRIZA would be a disaster. On the day of the election, we presented an alternative view by Despina Lalaki .
Today, Minas Samatas deliberately considers the results, suggesting that even though SYRIZA did not win the recent contest, it is winning in the long run and that this is a good thing for very sober reasons. He explores the unprecedented interference in the election by European media and officials. He highlights the way the old guard parties and their supportive media framed the election. He presents the results in some detail. He maintains that the present political configuration will not last. And he thus concludes on a hopeful note:
“The revival of the parliamentary left in France, Italy and Greece, plus the sorely needed, from the point of view of Greece and Europe, re-election of President Obama in the U.S., bring some hope for a developmental turn against the irrationality of austerity in the European crisis and democratic reforms in the European Union. The concept of a unified Europe has been shaken to the core. If the Greek election serves as a wake up call and has promoted a recognition of a necessary change of course, it will be a real democratic win for the people of Europe, and beyond.”
To read “The Greek Election, June 17th, 2012” click here.
By Jeffrey C. Goldfarb, May 31st, 2012 
An interview recently published in the Polish online journal, Kultura Liberalna, posted here, provides an interesting insider’s view of how the political situation there is understood from the point of view of Putin’s opposition. Lukasz Pawlowski, a Ph.D. Candidate at the Institute of Sociology, University of Warsaw and a contributing editor to Kultura Liberalna, interviews Lilia Shevtsova, a political scientist and expert on Russian politics. She served as director of the Center for Political Studies in Moscow and as deputy director of the Moscow Institute of International Economic and Political Studies. Currently she is a senior associate at the Moscow office of Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. She is the author of numerous publications including her latest book Change or Decay: Russia’s Dilemma and the West’s Response (Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 2011).
This interview raises a number of significant issues, concerning the problems of democratization and the problems of Russia. Most fundamental is that the democratization of Russia requires Russian action. Outsiders, “the West,” and specifically the United States, cannot do much about this. This is a theme we have been observing in many parts of the world. Consider, for example, how Elzbieta Matynia reflects on the issue as it applies to Egypt, Poland and South Africa.
And then the interview gets into the particulars: critically appraising the strengths and weaknesses of the democratic opposition Russia, reflecting on the Medvedev – Putin relationship, and how each of these figures challenge the democratic project, judging the short and long term prospects of democratic movement in Russia, and the necessity of change from the bottom up. One of Shevtsova’s more provocative claims is that Russia is better off with Putin than Medvedev as President.
To read the interview of Lilia Shevtsova “Do Not Democratize Russia: We Will Do It Ourselves,” click here.
By Jeffrey C. Goldfarb, May 12th, 2012 
To skip this introduction and go directly to the full In-Depth post, click here.
A couple weeks ago, I gave the keynote address at a conference honoring my dear friend and colleague, Vera Zolberg. The papers presented to this conference, “From the Art of Memory to Memory and Art,” were in her special fields of inquiry, the sociology of culture, the arts and the study of collective memory. It was a wonderful event, a long set of conversations with Vera and her work. The day’s proceedings revealed how her fields of inquiry have advanced in the past twenty years, how she has contributed to this advance, and how the fields can and do speak to general public concerns. I am hoping that we will be able to put them together in a special collection drawn from the conference. Here I present my contribution to give a sense of what we discussed and its significance. I started with one of my pet peeves, concerning the word “reflection.”
To continue reading the full In-Depth post “Art, Culture and Memory: Conversations with Vera Zolberg,” click here.
By William Milberg, May 4th, 2012 
Reflections on Argentina’s Economic Growth and Recovery, by Michael Cohen
My New School colleague Michael Cohen’s new book Argentina’s Economic Growth and Recovery: The Economy in a Time of Default provides the first detailed account in English of one of the remarkable episodes in recent economic history. Cohen’s rendering of 21st century Argentine political economy is detailed, nuanced, filled with summaries of political debates and standoffs and with a rich appreciation of the unequal ways in which the economic benefits are shared as the Argentine economy recovered from its macroeconomic collapse in 2001.
The book is a fast-paced (at times blow-by-blow) account, of macroeconomic extremes in terms of debt, exchange rates, government budget and trade balances and fiscal and monetary policy in Argentina. But when I finished reading the book (and took a big exhale) what struck me — not an expert on Argentina by any stretch — were the many ways that the Argentine experience contradicts the conventional economic wisdom. Without much explicit attention to issue of conventional economic wisdom (other than the attack on World Bank and IMF structural adjustment policies imposed on Argentina in the 1990s), Cohen’s account nonetheless forces us to think critically about some widely-held views in economics and especially development economics. Let me describe seven different ways in which Argentina’s experience in the 21st century should make us revisit some of the accepted aspects of economic wisdom.
To continue reading Will Milberg’s review of Argentina’s Economic Growth and Recovery by Michael Cohen, click here.
By Jeffrey C. Goldfarb, April 27th, 2012 
 To skip this introduction and go directly to the full In-Depth Analysis of “Why Poland? Part 3,” click here.
This is my third “Why Poland?” post. In the first, I addressed the question as it was posed by my mother most directly. I reflected upon my experience as a Jew in communist Poland in the seventies, as I observed the official anti-Semitism and the official silence about the experience of my ancestors in that land. In the second post, I consider how that silence made it difficult for people, Poles and Jews, of good will to commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, and how they somehow managed to join together, even as their collective memories in significant ways did not overlap. Here, I report and reflect on a debate in Poland which confronted the gaps in collective memory, a debate stimulated by the publication of a book, Jan Gross’s Neighbors, which tells the story of Polish Catholics killing Polish Jews, their neighbors, in the small town of Jedwabne during the war.
The book sparked a ferocious debate in Poland: denounced by extreme nationalists, but also the leader of the Polish Catholic Church, Cardinal Glemp, and many scholars and public figures. On the other hand, the book had many appreciative readers including citizens,officials, scholars, intellectuals and Church leaders. My report on the debate speaks for itself. My conclusion is that the debate has been difficult, but indicates that at long last there is responsible collective memory about the Shoah in Poland, which is a very positive sign, even as it reveals very negative attitudes and beliefs.
The first two parts of my “Why Poland?” reflections were written in the mid nineties, soon after the Auschwitz ceremony. This last part was added as I presented my thoughts to an audience in Lublin in 2007. I post here my address, with a few minor edits, that I presented in Lublin.
I worried about the reaction of my audience to the very critical things I had . . .
Read more: Why Poland? Part 3: Thinking about Jedwabne, Addressing Premature Holocaust Fatigue (Introduction)
|
A sample text widget
Etiam pulvinar consectetur dolor sed malesuada. Ut convallis
euismod dolor nec pretium. Nunc ut tristique massa.
Nam sodales mi vitae dolor ullamcorper et vulputate enim accumsan.
Morbi orci magna, tincidunt vitae molestie nec, molestie at mi. Nulla nulla lorem,
suscipit in posuere in, interdum non magna.
|
Blogroll
On the Left
On the Right
|