Agent of Democracy - Society for College and University Planning

Agent of Democracy
“The public is not a
phantom. It is a phenomenon
that can be—and is,
more often than we realize
—generated by a set of
public ideas, occasions for
public deliberation, and
institutions through which
the public can find itself.”
(“Getting the Public’s Intelligence,”
HEX, 2004.)
valuable knowledge or authority to shape public policy. In the
remainder of this chapter I take up these problems with an eye
to how higher education may be an ally.
A public makes itself performatively.
It is in the process of
doing public work that people
become public. Recently I heard
a talk in which the author made
such a claim about the body itself. 6
If we notice what happens when
a part of the body is immobilized,
say, when a broken arm is put into
a cast, we notice that over time,
even as the bone heals, the muscles
atrophy. And even after the
bone mends, its strength is only
recovered when it is repeatedly
tested. Physical therapy involves
putting the body to work precisely
when and where it is not yet up for that work. The bone is not
healed until it is able to withstand stress, and it only can come to
withstand stress by doing this work when it’s not ready. It becomes
a body by “bodying.” The body is an effect of a body working.
Likewise for the public. Writing in the 2004 issue of the
Higher Education Exchange, David Mathews proposes:
A sovereign or democratic public comes into being
only when people begin to do the work of citizens,
which Harry Boyte of the University of Minnesota
calls “public work.” This way of conceptualizing the
public sees it as a dynamic force rather than a static
body of people.… In other words, the public doesn’t
just do the work—doing the work creates the public. 7
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6 David Morris, “The Body as the Institution of Temporality and as the Temporality
of Institution,” Merleu Ponty Circle, Washington, D.C., October 27, 2006.
7 David Mathews, “Afterword: ‘What Public?’“ Higher Education Exchange (2004):
87-88.