Odds and Ends Essays, Blogs, Internet Discussions, Interviews and Miscellany

public sphere have, in these particular instances, been overstated. The public sphere in Britain
continues much as it would have otherwise, and I don’t think it is aware of any threat from the vicinity
of, say, J. H. Prynne. (Note that Prynne hasn’t made any claim to such transforming power, just some of
his more zealous advocates, as quoted above).
I should say that I do think that the way much of this poetry has been distributed and read has often
occurred at an interesting angle to the public sphere. For decades, Prynne and those associated with
him often published in the kind of micro-press world that’s familiar to many poets: self-publishing, free
distribution to a small network of those who are interested, tiny journals, etc. This seems to me less like
a challenge to the public sphere than a withdrawal from it into something that sits somewhere between
the private sphere of family and friends and the public sphere. But an alternative-a good thing in itself
-isn’t the same thing as a challenge. (It is also, I might add, exactly “the institutional space allotted to
poetry and literature in late-capitalist culture”, not a breaking out of that space, as Kerridge and Reeve
maintain)”.
Jeremy Green
http://samizdatblog.blogspot.com/2010/05/poetry-and-challenge-to-public-sphere.html
I think this is misleading. Habermas presents an idealized model of the public sphere as it emerged in the 18th
century (that’s why RA mentions Tom Paine). Habermas goes on to argue that the public sphere, such as it was, gave
way over the course of the next two centuries to the privatized mass media, which is something distinctly different:
publicity and public relations replace the ideal of reasoned debate in an arena open to all (well, all bourgeois white
males).
To assume that political “efficacy” (but isn’t that a wretchedly positivistic term?) entails stirring up this (fantastically
idealized)public sphere, Tom Paine style, suggests a reductive notion of what politics might be. (Likewise, I think it’s
reductive to suggest that there is “a” public sphere and a private sphere). An “avant-garde” poet (more scare quotes,
more scarecrows) might engage in a variety of activities-write a poem, attend a demonstration, stop by the polling
station, sign a petition, blog a bit, march on Downing Street . . . in each case, the meaning of the politics of these
actions needs to be “produced” (can’t, in other words, be assumed). One thing (some) avant-garde poetry has been
very good at, I’d suggest, is in looking at the conditions and costs of politics (in all these instances) as something
unstable, unsettled, slippery and often delusive. To bludgeon all of that into a mash with the club of “efficacy”
doesn’t strike me as terribly useful.
Jeffrey Side
Jeremy, point by point:
1) ‘I think this is misleading. Habermas presents an idealized model of the public sphere as it emerged in the 18th
century (that’s why RA mentions Tom Paine). Habermas goes on to argue that the public sphere, such as it was, gave
way over the course of the next two centuries to the privatized mass media, which is something distinctly different:
publicity and public relations replace the ideal of reasoned debate in an arena open to all (well, all bourgeois white
males)’.
I don’t know if you’ve had a chance to read Archambeau’s response to one of the comments left on his blog relating
to this. Archambeau responds: ‘The definition of the public sphere (and its others) is a pretty standard one from
Habermas, not mine alone. As I said, the most common criticism is that actual manifestations don’t live up to the idea.
You are not alone in taking issue with it (I believe I made a note on some of the reasons for finding Habermasian
public sphere ideas problematic)’.
2) ‘To assume that political “efficacy” (but isn’t that a wretchedly positivistic term?) entails stirring up this
(fantastically idealized)public sphere, Tom Paine style, suggests a reductive notion of what politics might be’.
I agree. I don’t think Archameau disagrees, either. It seems to me he is responding to claims that Cambridge Poetry is,
or can be, effective in this way. Like you, I don’t think it can for the reasons you give. Whether it has very long-term
influences is hard to test, and is only something that can be confirmed retrospectively. I don’t think Archameau
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