By Jeffrey C. Goldfarb, July 5th, 2013 
Goin’ Fishing? Not quite, but things here at Deliberately Considered are slowing down for the summer, as I go to teach in the Democracy and Diversity Institute in Wroclaw, Poland, and then to take part in a research project on Regime and Society in Eastern Europe (1956 – 1989) in Sofia, Bulgaria. After three years of regular, often daily, publishing, posts will be less frequent until September. At that time, we will be presenting Deliberately Considered in a new form.
Here some quick thoughts on topics I would like to write about now, but don’t have the time or energy to do so thoroughly.
On Egypt: I am fascinated by the grayness of it all: the unbearable grayness of being? I don’t see heroic figures or villains. Rather I see mortals, tragic figures, facing huge challenges, beyond their capacity to address.
Most objective observers are labeling the latest turn of events as a coup, but that seems to me to be too simple. Equally simplistic is the view of those who see the events as a clear political advance. A democratically elected leader, President Morsi, was overthrown by the military, not a good thing. But there was a significant popular movement, perhaps representing more than fifty per cent of the public, demanding the resignation of Morsi and new elections, and a resetting of the political order, which didn’t include them and their opinions, and didn’t provide the mechanisms for recalling the President. Yet, a legitimate President, from the point of view of many of the over fifty percent that voted for him, has been removed by the military. While I am no fan of military interventions in politics, I know that there is a real danger when a party confuses its particular interests with the common good. Yet, while lack of inclusion was a key problem in the Muslim Brotherhood led regime, it continues to be a problem as reports today indicate a crackdown on the Muslim Brotherhood.
On Obama, the NSA and Snowden: I am disappointed, dismayed and irritated. National security is the one arena in which I have been least . . .
Read more: Summertime and the Posting is Slowing: Notes on Egypt, and on Obama, the NSA and Snowden, and the Social Condition and the Ironies of Consequence
By Jeffrey C. Goldfarb, February 24th, 2013 
To skip this introduction and go directly to read Daniel Dayan’s In-Depth Analysis, “Overhearing in the Public Sphere,” click here.
Daniel Dayan in today’s “In-Depth” post considers overhearing on a global scale. He investigates a simple formula: overhearing + global media = public crisis. He starts with a little anecdote, a personal experience at an academic conference in Sweden, and uses the anecdote to open an examination of major challenges of our times: differentiating, maintaining and then connecting public spheres, which resist the twin dangers of fragmentation from within, and global confusion. As usual, his is an elegant and provocative inquiry.
I find particularly illuminating his concise definition of the public sphere: “a conversation between a given nation- state and the corresponding civil society, with central media connecting centers and peripheries,” along with his expansive discussion of how such spheres operate. He analyzes how such spheres are de-stabilized, and how they are interrupted, how overhearing and intruding have become a normal in global public life promising a more universal public, but delivering moral spectacles. Reflecting on the case of Gerard Depardieu and his relationship with Vladimir Putin, and on the WikiLeaks dump, Dayan warns of the dangers of irrational spectacle in the world of normalized overhearing and intrusion, and he notes the illuminating transparency of things near and far lead to unintended tragic effects.
And note how Dayan’s opening story presents a concrete compact rendering of his global diagnosis. I will respond to this in my next post.
To read Daniel Dayan’s In-Depth Analysis, “Overhearing in the Public Sphere,” click here.
By Daniel Dayan, February 24th, 2013 1. Overhearing, intruding, my interview & Goffman
I was once invited to speak at a conference in Sigtuna, near Uppsala, in Sweden. The conference dealt with religious sociology and a few clerics were present. One of them was a famous Danish Imam, Abu Laban. He had ignited what came to be known as the Danish scandal of the Mohammed Cartoons (Favret-Saada 2007). I had exchanged a few words with him and was being interviewed by a Swedish newspaper. Abu Laban was seated nearby. In fact, he listened to the interview. Sometimes he nodded. Sometimes he smiled. I could hardly object to his presence without being rude. But then, the Imam started answering the questions that were put to me.
Although I do not remember how I reacted, what happened on that day illustrated a fundamental distinction established by Erving Goffman, between the “ratified” listeners of a verbal exchange and those who just happen to be there.
Being present and technically able to hear everything that is said does not make you a partner in a conversation. Unless “ratified” as a listener, you are just “overhearing.” An implicit protocol expects overhearers not to listen, since listening would amount to a form of eavesdropping. As to intervening, it clearly establishes that you have been overhearing and constitutes an additional transgression. Intervening takes overhearing one step further. It is, and was in the case of the Imam and me, an intrusion.
I believe that Goffman’s distinction between ratified participants and overhearers can be transposed on a larger scale, concerning those conversations societies hold with themselves under the name of “public sphere.”
2. Destabilized public spheres
Our vision of the public sphere is predicated on the implicit model of a conversation between a given nation- state and the corresponding civil society, with central media connecting centers and peripheries. This geography of centers and peripheries has been submitted to many waves of destabilization. After having been structured for a long time in national terms and dominated by central television organizations, public spheres have grown in a number of directions, most of which involve a post-national dimension. Three such directions are particularly significant.
First, mega television networks offer world audiences vantage points . . .
Read more: Overhearing in the Public Sphere
By William Hackmore, September 13th, 2011 
These reflections on a trip to a hackers’ conference reveal an emerging new culture: where the public and private are confused, identity is hidden, appearance is suspected, and surveillance is assumed. -Jeff
My arrival in Vegas has put me somewhat off my equilibrium. It’s twelve in the morning here, and through some trick of non-euclidian geometry, my cell tells me that it’s only been three hours since my flight left New York City at nine. I know that the time-difference has created the illusion that less time has passed than I perceived, but the streets of Vegas are indifferent, and beat out their manic, midnight tempo regardless.
I’m here, in search of Anonymous, that nameless, faceless organization that scares the pants off of politicians and public figures everywhere, a bogeyman, haunting the nightmares of middle-class boomers, and mid-level bureaucrats. This past Summer has seen a great uptick in the number of high-profile cyber crimes, many committed in the name of WikiLeaks, and I know that this may be my best chance to get a word with someone who knows about the splinter-group Lulsec.
Even as Jim, Frank, Karen and I make tracks across the desert highway in the rental car, fifteen-thousand hackers are making similar pilgrimages, converging on our location from all over the world. The leaders from every tribe come to DEFCON, one of the largest hacker conferences on the planet, bring the latest news and gossip from all corners of the world back to their local communities. Nobody knows quite what will happen, but whatever does will set the tone for the entire year.
First impressions, Vegas: a hooker thumbs a ride under a sign advertising six dollar prime rib. The strip is a hallucinogenic wonderland of dancing light, and architectural insanity. Each architectural monstrosity bound to its neighbors only by divergence, and difference. Each is more garish and twisted than the last. This city is a schizoid’s sandbox in the middle of the desert. The land here is . . .
Read more: In Search of Anonymous: Down and Out in the Digital Age
By Jeffrey C. Goldfarb, July 26th, 2011 
I did not have the time to prepare a post while teaching with Daniel Dayan “Media and News in a Time of Crisis” in Wroclaw, Poland. This was unfortunate because there were news events during the period of the course that seemed to be a series of case studies on our topic. As we were examining theoretical material, which illuminates the roles media play in such cases, media were playing important roles, from the Murdoch scandal, to the terrorist attack in Oslo. Today, I will reflect on Murdoch and, more broadly, the tasks of making distinctions and coming to actionable judgments in the media. Oslo will wait for another day. I draw on the ideas of Eviatar Zerubavel, a distinguished sociologist of cognition and student of Erving Goffman, to make sense of our ongoing seminar discussion and the debate between Daniel and me.
The Murdoch presence in America has long concerned me, particularly Fox News and the Wall Street Journal. While Fox is a strange mix of opinionated journalism and political mobilization instrument, as I have already examined here in an earlier post, the Journal has been a distinguished business newspaper with a conservative slant on the news, with the slant increasingly prevailing over the news in recent years with Murdoch’s ownership. I was struck by Joe Nocerra’s analysis in The New York Times. Concern with factual reality has diminished. Editors went beyond improving reporter’s copy from the stylistic point of view to ideological “improvement.” Political and business news reported was re-worked to confirm the political positions promoted on the editorial page. Note the problem in these cases is that strong distinctions between journalism as a vocation and other vocations are ignored became fuzzy, in the terms of Zerubavel.
Such willful ignorance is also present in The New York Post, another Murdoch enterprise that I see in my daily life. I read it only late at night, picking up a discarded copy on the train when I have . . .
Read more: Making Distinctions: Murdoch, WikiLeaks, and DSK
By Jeffrey C. Goldfarb, June 10th, 2011 
As I reported last week, Daniel Dayan and I had a nice lunch in Paris on the terrace of a little restaurant at the Palais Royal. He ate blood sausage. My wife, Naomi, and I had couscous with chicken. I followed Daniel’s recommendation and ordered mine with olives, a dish that was his grandmother’s specialty back in Morocco. We discussed what proved to be the theme of last week, looking at North Africa and the Middle East from the point of view of Europe. But of course, we couldn’t and didn’t ignore the Dominique Strauss-Kahn scandal, then raging in Paris. The following evening, he extended his side of the conversation in a crisp essay, which we posted on Monday. Here I continue my side of the conversation.
My first response came in the form of an email I wrote him upon receiving his piece:
I don’t agree with you on all points, centered on two issues: the way the distinction between private and public moves (the most general issue), and how the presumption of innocence necessarily varies from one institutional sphere to the next, from the judiciary to the police to the press, for example. Consider the case of a child molester and how the presumption is enacted or not by different people placed differently in the society. This is an empirical and normative issue. More soon. Again it was great seeing you and great receiving the post.
In the case of a child molester, the police look for a suspect and attempt to confirm guilt, while in court there must be a presumption of innocence. Before, during and after a trial, the press and the general public judges, independently of formal legalities, and explores whether they think justice is done by the police and the courts, sometimes in a sensational way. The spheres of public activity and the press are different from the professional activities of the police and the courts. And quite clearly, when the issue is child molestation, the public and the press are predisposed, often without regard to the solidity of the evidence, to believe the police, given the nature of the crime . . .
Read more: DC Week in Review: DSK and the Presumption of Guilt
By Daniel Dayan, February 4th, 2011 
This is Daniel Dayan’s second in a series of posts written in response to the WikiLeaks dump. It analyzes how leadership is practiced in a changing media world, moving from “investigative’ to “ordeal” journalism. I think it provides theoretical clarification of yesterday’s post on “The Politics of Gesture in Peru,” and I think it also can be used to illuminate the discussion of how leaders, particularly President Obama, have responded to the dramatic events in Cairo, which I will address in my next post. -Jeff
From Flower Wreaths to Live Behabitives
Presidential gestures are often boring. Presidents must carry flower wreaths, listen to anthems, hoist flags, light eternal flames. In J.L. Austin’s terms, one could say that these routine tasks enact the “behabitive dimension.” This gestural dimension is steadily growing. It also is changing by becoming less routine, even risky.
Today’s gestures are meant to respond to unexpected situations. They take place in real time. There is nothing routine when Bush responds poorly to Katrina victims, or when Sarkozy calls young people who insult him “scumbags” (racailles). Of course, presidential jobs still consist of what Austin would call “exercitives.” Yet, the “exercitives,” speech acts making decisions such as orders and grants, increasingly give way to a vast array of “behabitives” such as offering condolences, “apologizing,” asking forgiveness, dissociating from, displaying solidarity .
Why the Importance of Behabitives? The Question of Visibility
While at the heart of governmental action, processes of deliberation, moments of decision are not really visible. They only become visible through announcements, or, much later, through their results. Yet the multiplicity and variety of media available allow for an almost continuous visibility of the political personnel.This visibility is expected to consist in presentations of self, which are anticipated, deliberately performed and controlled by those who choose to appear in public.
This visibility also consists in situations where those who “appear in public” lose control over their appearances. Suddenly thrown in the public eye, political actors are submitted . . .
Read more: Political Leadership and Hostile Visibility
By Rafael Narvaez, February 3rd, 2011 
 I agree with Daniel Dayan that the general commitment to make visible all things hidden is deeply problematic, as I explored in my initial post on WikiLeaks. But, this doesn’t mean that making previously secret things public is always without merit. Political judgment is at issue. Here, Rafael Narvaez, a sociologist originally from Peru, will consider the issue, as it applies to the situation in his native land, and, more generally, third world dictatorships, drawing upon the writing of Mario Vargas Llosa. -Jeff
After receiving the 2010 Nobel Prize for literature, Mario Vargas Llosa gave an interview with Inger Enkvist at the Swedish Academy. Enkvist begins by asking broad questions pertaining to the role of literature, of fantasy, the humanities, etc. He then asks about one of the key themes in Vargas Llosa’s work.
“In your oeuvre one often finds fanatics, characters that are cynics, politically, and also skeptics. And almost always there is a fracture [in your narrative] separating the world of politics and the world of ethics or morality. Can you comment?”
Vargas Llosa, with his usual nonchalant straight-forwardness, answers:
“I come from a world [Peru] where politics, generally and save exceptions, has been in the hands of the worst kind of people […]; a world that has had a very entrenched history of dictatorships that have been very violent and very corrupt; a world where politics seemed to be the monopoly of cheaters [pícaros], of bandits, of the most violent people. Naturally […] there have also been decent people, idealists; but they have been generally defeated, left in the margins –destroyed, in the end. So it is not at all strange that my oeuvre presents a view into political life in Peru and Latin America [which shows] such tradition of violence, of large-scale corruption, of thuggishness […]. In Latin America politics has generally been a terrible source of violence, of corruption, of backwardness. It would have been absurd and unreal for me to describe such political world as it were a world of generous beings, of idealistic characters who work for the common good [begins to . . .
Read more: Mario Vargas Llosa, The Politics of Gesture in Peru and Beyond
By Daniel Dayan, January 25th, 2011
This is the first of a series of posts by Daniel Dayan exploring the significance of WikiLeaks.
Is WikiLeaks a form of spying? Transferring information to an alien power can induce harm. This is why spying constitutes a crime. In the case of WikiLeaks, the transfer concerns hundreds thousands of documents. The recipients include hundreds of countries, some of which are openly hostile. In a way WikiLeaks is a gigantic spying operation with a gigantic number of potential users. Yet, is it really “spying?”
Spying (in its classical form ) involves a specific sponsor in need of specific information to be used for a specific purpose, and obtained from an invisible provider. WikiLeaks “spies” eagerly seek to be identified (Julian Assange, WikiLeaks founder and editor in chief, has been voted Le Monde’s “man of the year”). Information covers every possible domain, and there is no privileged recipient. Anyone qualifies as a potential beneficiary of Wiki-largesses and most of those who gain access to the leaked information have no use for it. Spying has become a stage performance.
On 9/11 a group of Latin American architects hailed the destruction of The Twin Towers as a sublime event. The pleasure of seeing Rome burning had been made available for the man of the street. It was –suggested the builders – a democratization of Neronism. In a way, WikiLeaks, could also be described as a democratization of spying. It offers a form of “public spying.” Distinct from mere spying (a pragmatic activity), it proposes “spying as a gesture.” This gesture concerns other gestures. What WikiLeaks discloses is less (already available) facts than the tone in which they are expressed.
Content or gestures? 
If the Assange leaks reveal nothing that we did not know already, what counts is less their propositional content than the enacted speech acts. The vocabulary of WikiLeaks gestures starts with the noble gestures of war. Many commentators tell the WikiLeaks saga in military terms. For the Umberto Eco, it is a“ blow:” “To think that a mere hacker could access the . . .
Read more: WikiLeaks and the Politics of Gestures
By Jeffrey C. Goldfarb, December 10th, 2010 
 This has been an important week for us at DC. As we have been making new efforts to reach out to our audience and potential contributors, we also have been working on making the site more fully functional. I hope that long time visitors notice the improvements and that new visitors look around. Let us know what you think, and please join our discussions.
I think DC discussions this week were particularly interesting as we addressed the issue of the relationship between institutional and political practices, on the one hand, and ideals, on the other. We have been considering how our ways of doing things are related to our values.
Democratic Ideals versus Plutocratic Realities
In the ongoing debate provoked by Martin Plot, there is the question of what is wrong with American democracy. Scott, informed by my response to Martin, wants to underscore that it is not only, or even primarily, a systemic problem, it is more crucially a problem of action. He criticizes “factoid based media, money based politics and narrow interest based legislating,” which have inhibited informed political action.
Jeffrey Dowd, who also identifies himself as Jeff in his replies, seems to agree with Plot that the possibility of an open politics is gravely diminished because of the workings of corporate power.
Michael is deeply concerned that the pressing issues of the day are not being addressed as they are overshadowed by ideological conflicts.
This is a full range of judgment, the basis of alternative political positions. I think the different characterizations of the situation are informed by competing ideals. I respect these differences and am interested in the alternative insights and interpretations they suggest for accounting for what has happened in the past, but also as a way of orienting future actions.
If Jeff and Martin are right, we can expect one pro – corporate move after another in the coming two years, with Obama triangulating and doing the work of corporations, perhaps doing so more efficiently than Bush would have. (This parallels the far left’s account of FDR and the New Deal).
If Scott is right, the only way of avoiding this is . . .
Read more: DC Week in Review: Democratic Ideals and Realities
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