Rage, Reason and Rethinking Public Life
Edited by Lesley Cowling and Carolyn Hamilton
This collection offers a new theory of the public sphere. The notion that societies mediate issues through certain kinds of engagement is at the heart of the democratic project and often centres on an imagined public sphere where this takes place.
But this imagined foundation of how we live collectively appears to have suffered a dramatic collapse across the world in the digital age, with many democracies apparently unable to solve problems through talk – or even to agree on who speaks, in what ways and where.
In this timely and erudite collection, writers from southern Africa combine theoretical analysis with the examination of historical cases and contemporary events to demonstrate that forms of public-ness are multiple, mobile and varied.
Public engagements work in society
“This finger-on-the-pulse collection offers a new theory of the public sphere. Through news media, photography, archives, hashtags, ‘art-rage’, Muslim manuscripts, and much more, this incisive book illuminates the underlying dynamics of public engagement.“
– Isabel Hofmeyr, Global Distinguished Professor, New York University, Professor of African Literature, University of the Witwatersrand, and Author of Gandhi’s Printing Press: Experiments in Slow Reading (2013)
Drawing primarily on insights and materials from Africa for their capacity to speak to global developments, the authors in this volume propose new concepts and methodologies to analyse how public engagements work in society.
“This is a timely, original and sophisticated collection that thinks the idea of the public sphere from a southern location. The essays attempt, in creative ways, to move out of the impasse of quibbles over how ‘public’ the public sphere is, stressing its pluralities, capillary nature and dispersed sites of discussion.“
– Dilip Menon, Mellon Chair in Indian Studies and Director of the Centre for Indian Studies in Africa, University of Witwatersrand, and Editor of Capitalisms: Towards a Global History (2020)
The contributions examine charged examples from the Global South, such as the centuries old Timbuktu archive, Nelson Mandela’s powerful absent presence in 1960s public life, and the contemporary debates around the 2015/2016 student activism of #RhodesMustFall and #FeesMustFall.
These cases show how issues of public discussion circulate in unpredictable ways. Babel Unbound will be of interest to anyone looking to find alternative ways of thinking about public-ness in contemporary society in order to make better sense of the cacophony of conversations in circulation.
“…an exciting book that brings the South African experience into the centre of debate over today’s deep crisis of public life and democracy. The interest is not just local. It is deeply relevant for understanding populism and protests around the world.“
– Craig Calhoun, Professor of Social Sciences, Arizona State University (USA) and Centennial Professor, London School of Economics and Political Science (UK)
About the editors
Lesley Cowling is Associate Professor of Journalism at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg and an associate researcher at the Archive and Public Culture Research Initiative at the University of Cape Town.
Carolyn Hamilton is the South African Research Chair in Archive and Public Culture at the University of Cape Town and leader of the research projects on the nature of public discourse.
- Publisher | Wits University Press |
- ISBN | 978-1-77614-589-8 |
- Recommended Price | R420.00 |
- Subject | Political Science & Theory, History, Media Studies |
For more information | Corina van der Spoel | +27 (0)11 717 8705/8700 | mail me |