28-31 January 2008

Conference Announcement

Emerging from the dictatorial terror of apartheid, the new South African order conspicuously committed itself to public deliberation and dialogue. The South African constitution made public consultation mandatory in a number of domains. State-established institutions like the Gender Commission and Human Rights Commission sought to defend the rights of citizens to participate in public life. The South African Broadcasting Commission set itself apparently rigorous standards of public accountability.

However, a decade after the political transition, these state-convened components of the public sphere are orchestrating public deliberation in particular ways, promoting certain ideas, dampening others and muting critical voices. At the same time deliberation and critique continues outside the offi cialised public sphere in a host of alternative sites. South Africa’s transition was both a movement to democracy and a shift into a rapidly globalizing world, marked by highly consumerized and mediatised forms of public debate. Radio talk shows, sitcoms, soap operas, celebrity magazines, and soccer fandom are sites of animated public engagement. In what senses are they public, and can such forums offer quality engagement? Are these forums in fact sites of political interpretation as much popular cultural analysis suggests? In the news media, where the facilitation of public debate is understood to be a professional responsibility, who gains access to the media as commentators, columnists and public intellectuals, and who is excluded and silenced?

South Africa is nominally a secular society. In reality, however, a signifi cant part of its public life is dominated by religious organisation and practice. How do such religious forms of debate intersect with broader forms of political activity? How do constitutional guarantees of secular democracy interact with religious and other forms of cultural interpretation, notably those termed “traditional”?

These contradictions of the public sphere are by no means unique to South Africa. Post-repressive regimes – both old and new – across Eastern Europe, Latin America, Africa and South Asia illustrate equivalent processes of the state capturing its citizens through offi cializing public debate. Cross cutting these processes are the forces of consumerism, mediatisation and religious and cultural organization. Under such circumstances, questions of the role of deliberation in democracy and in relation to the exertion of citizenship are thrown into sharp relief. Equally questions of
counter-public spheres are problematized. Can these exist or are they romantic illusions, at times upheld and used by the postcolonial state itself to capture its citizenry? Investigation of the paradoxes of the South African public sphere invite global contextualization and comparison.

The Research Conference

Using South Africa as a starting point, this conference seeks to explore the contradictory possibilities of the public sphere in post-repressive, postcolonial contexts. It calls for papers on South Africa but also seeks comparative investigations of the relationship of public deliberation and democracy. While the focus is on contemporary public spheres, the conference is interested in processes of transition and the signifi cance of the legacies of former repressive conditions.

Papers are invited which address one or more of the following themes: Domains of the South African Public Sphere such as parliament, institutions outside the state; public broadcasting; state-sponsored public debate; postcolonial public science; institutions of public culture, and the universities.

Counter Public Spheres and Alternative Spaces of Public Deliberation, for example, those constituted by social movements, as well as through cultural practices – fi lm, music, performance, art, and literature – and in the electronic media; and the conditions under which such spaces emerge and flourish or flounder and collapse.

Mediatized public spheres as themselves sites, or means, of political struggle; the role of new communication technologies involving what John Thompson terms mediatised visibility and mediated interaction; the role of talk shows, on-line forums and newsletters, columnists, opinion pages, commentary and editorials; the effects of the need for commercial viability. Religious and Cultural Public Spheres giving particular attention to the complex ways in which the terrains of rationality, belief and tradition are negotiated.

Comparative perspectives particularly on other post-repressive regimes (here we are especially concerned to invite papers which consider the relationship between public deliberation, the operation of democracy, human rights and citizenship, as well as the role of public intellectuals in post-repressive regimes.)

The Public Programme

The Public Programme, broadly focused around these same themes, will comprise a series of panel discussions involving local and international public commentators, media and cultural practitioners, and social movement activists, as well as exhibitions and performances. It will run alongsidethe Research Conference.

For more information visit www.public-conversations.org.za or contact Lenore on +27(11) 717 4674