Publics, Politics and Participation

(Wang) #1

108 Philosophical Frames


n Turner’s framework a breach is not a breach unless it is visible, I
unless it imposes itself on a public in such a way that it disturbs the nor-
mal functioning of social relations. As Turner puts it: “Each public crisis
hasal characteristics, since it is a threshold between more or less ... limin
stable phases of the social process, but it is not a sacred limen, hedged
around by taboos and thrust away from the centers of public life. On the
contrary, it takes up its menacing stance in the forum itself, and as it were,
dares the representatives of order to grapple with it. It cannot be ignored
or wished away.”^43 Visibility takes on here an implication that goes beyond
the more innocuous sense of interconnectedness. It becomes a sort of
challenge that needs to be taken up by the former power structures if they
are to go on functioning. Such was, I believe, the effect of the Kurdish
movement in Turkey or the Zapatistas in Mexico.
s opposed to mere visibility which assumes the prior existence of A
a space of appearance, conflicts and dramas could therefore be said to
create such a space. Conflict may bring the “other” closer in proximity.
Although “[o]verpoliticized definitions of identity and arguments of con-
spiracy exclude the possibility of finding semblance and familiarity [and]
reinforce the demoniacal definitions of the adversary,”^44 extreme polariza-
tion may, as Turner also demonstrates, be considered as the shock neces-
sary to bring a hegemonic public into self-reflexivity. The effectivity of
communication may, in the most extreme cases, depend on the rupture of
normality produced by conflict.
ut this cannot be taken to mean that conflicts and crises will inevi-B
tably create a public sphere or a community of actors. Publicity is a nec-
essary but not sufficient condition for creating a mobilizing bond that
alters or reshapes power structures. This initial phase must be followed
by world-making, if a public sphere of equals is to emerge at all. Thus,
while redress and reintegration are stages that follow breach and crisis in
Turner’s social drama, the creation (or re-creation) of a world between
actors and spectators is the second stage of Arendt’s drama.
hile there is no doubt as to the existential precedence action has W
in relation to the public realm, the capacity of a social or political move-
ment to become a conditioning factor, that is, to leave its traces on the
world, actually depends on the (re)appropriation of space. Seizing or
opening up a space of existence bestows a tangible reality on a political

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