Counter Publics, Hackers, and Punks
What is a Public?
As stated by Michael Warner in Publics and Counterpublics, and reiterated in class on September 29, 2008, a public has the following characteristics:
1. “A public is self-organized… It exists by virtue of being addressed” (67).
2. “A public is a relation among strangers” (74).
For example, as in the notion of Nationhood, there is a bond of commonality, though everyone does not know each other.
3. “The address of public speech is both personal and impersonal” (76).
While a speech is addressed to us (personal), it is also addressed to the strangers round us, anyone else listening (impersonal).
4. “A public is constituted through mere attention” (87).
Some kind of attention/ “active uptake” must happen for a public to exist.
5. “A public is the social space created by the reflexive circulation of discourse” (90).
Both known and unknown discourses are essential to the process of constituting a public.
6. “Publics act historically according to the temporality of their circulation” (96).
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A question that was raised in class was whether hackers are public or counter-public? According to Warner, counter publics share the discursive nature of publics, but the counter-public’s discourse is generally in opposition of what the public believes. Also, “a counterpublic maintains at some level, conscious or not, an awareness of its subordinate status” (Warner, 119). In those respects, hackers belong not to a dominant public, but to a counter-public, being aware that they are not the mainstream, and sharing the discourse that opposed certain mainstream beliefs, for example the belief in “the free exchange of information (which) goes against the perceived public perception since many people believe in the value of intellectual property and copyright” (Richard Rodriguez).
We also discussed Dick Hebdige’s article “Posing…Threats, Striking…Poses”. In the article, Hebdige discusses the subculture, as related to youth. A brief history lets us know that the conditions that set the creation of the “youth-as-trouble” (Hebdige 400) and “trouble-as-fun” (401) cultures was industrialization and capitalism. More time and more money meant the kids could develop their style, organize into clicks, and wreck havoc while parents were at work. With the development of photography, the delinquent youth allowed themselves to be documented. Hebdige states that “unlike the powerful who opt for anonymity, these people make a pretty picture, make a ‘spectacle’ of themselves, respond to surveillance as if they were expecting it, as if it were perfectly natural” (398).
“The voyeuristic notion of youth subcultures, know that they are indeed being watched and ultimately cornered by society as a whole, drives them to strike out a difference between us and them” (Maxwell Salzberg).
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