Aristophanes' Adôôniazousai

2008 ◽  
Vol 27 (2) ◽  
pp. 282-333 ◽  
Author(s):  
L. Reitzammer

A scholiast's note on Lysistrata mentions that there was an alternative title to the play: Adôôniazousai. A close reading of the play with this title in mind reveals that Lysistrata and her allies metaphorically hold an Adonis festival atop the Acropolis. The Adonia, a festival that is typically regarded as ““marginal”” and ““private”” by modern scholars, thus becomes symbolically central and public as the sex-strike held by the women halts the Peloponnesian war. The public space of the Acropolis becomes, notionally, a private rooftop, and Adonia-like activity proliferates; boars, myrrh, Aphrodite, ““gardens of Adonis,”” and lamentation all play important roles. The notion that the women of Lysistrata hold an unexpected Adonis festival on the Acropolis, at the very heart of the Athenian polis, provides a more nuanced reading of the play and forces us to rethink the place of the Adonia at Athens as well as, more generally, the distinction between public and private festivals.

Author(s):  
Natalia Kostenko

The subject matter of research interest here is the movement of sociological reflection concerning the interplay of public and private realms in social, political and individual life. The focus is on the boundary constructs embodying publicity, which are, first of all, classical models of the space of appearance for free citizens of the polis (H. Arendt) and the public sphere organised by communicative rationality (Ju. Habermas). Alternative patterns are present in modern ideas pertaining to the significance of biological component in public space in the context of biopolitics (M. Foucault), “inclusive exclusion of bare life” (G. Agamben), as well as performativity of corporeal and linguistic experience related to the right to participate in civil acts such as popular assembly (J. Butler), where the established distinctions between the public and the private are levelled, and the interrelationship of these two realms becomes reconfigured. Once the new media have come into play, both the structure and nature of the public sphere becomes modified. What assumes a decisive role is people’s physical interaction with online communication gadgets, which instantly connect information networks along various trajectories. However, the rapid development of information technology produces particular risks related to the control of communications industry, leaving both public and private realms unprotected and deforming them. This also urges us to rethink the issue of congruence of the two ideas such as transparency of societies and security.


Author(s):  
Samuel Llano

This chapter provides an account of how organilleros elicited public anger because their activity did not fit into any of the social aid categories that had been in place since the late eighteenth century. Social aid in Spain relied on a clear-cut distinction between deserving and undeserving poor in order to rationalize the distribution of limited resources and reduce mendicancy on the streets. Organilleros could not, strictly speaking, be considered idle, since they played music, but their activity required no specific skills and was regarded with suspicion as a surrogate form of begging. The in-betweenness of the organillero caused further anger as it challenged attempts to establish a neat distinction between public and private spaces. On one hand, organillo music penetrated the domestic space, which conduct manuals of the nineteenth century configured as female; on the other, it brought women into the public space, which those manuals configured as male.


2019 ◽  
Vol 29 (4) ◽  
pp. 549-573
Author(s):  
Honor Brabazon

While the privatisation of public space has been the subject of considerable research, literature exploring the shifting boundaries between public and private law, and the role of those shifts in the expansion of neo-liberal social relations, has been slower to develop. This article explores the use of fire safety regulations to evict political occupations in the context of these shifts. Two examples from the UK student occupation movement and two from the US Occupy movement demonstrate how discourses and logics of both private and public law are mobilised through fire hazard claims to create the potent image of a neutral containment of dissent on technical grounds in the public interest – an image that proves difficult to contest. However, the recourse to the public interest and to expert opinion that underpins fire hazard claims is inconsistent with principles governing the limited neo-liberal political sphere, which underscores the pragmatic and continually negotiated implementation of neo-liberal ideas. The article sheds light on the complexity of the extending reach of private law, on the resilience of the public sphere and on the significance of occupations as a battleground on which struggles over neo-liberal social relations and subjectivities play out.


2008 ◽  
Vol 26 (4) ◽  
pp. 324-343 ◽  
Author(s):  
Krishan Kumar ◽  
Ekaterina Makarova

Much commentary indicates that, starting from the 19th century, the home has become the privileged site of private life. In doing so it has established an increasingly rigid separation between the private and public spheres. This article does not disagree with this basic conviction. But we argue that, in more recent times, there has been a further development, in that the private life of the home has been carried into the public sphere—what we call “the domestication of public space.” This has led to a further attenuation of public life, especially as regards sociability. It has also increased the perception that what is required is a better “balance” between public and private. We argue that this misconstrues the nature of the relation of public to private in those periods that attained the greatest degree of sociability, and that not “balance” but “reciprocity” is the desired condition.


2016 ◽  
Vol 12 (8) ◽  
pp. 161
Author(s):  
Bujane Topalli

The mobile phone, as a medium has influenced the ways in which we can interact with other media. It is considered like a channel between traditional and new media. Its specific characteristics, social functions and also its uses may vary in different contexts and cultures. The mobile phone, has contributed in increasing the idea of personal media, and the emergence of new kinds of media behavior. According to Morley (2002), communication technologies transform and rearrange relations between the domestic and the public space. In particular, mobile communication functions to broaden the sphere of the home outside the physical household; to blur the boundaries between the public and private spheres. In this study we aim to discuss through the literature review the role of the phone in the everyday life, and to know more about the different ways and reasons why 12-15 year old teenagers, part of Municipality of Shkoder, use mobile phone. This qualitative research is based on semi structured interviews with children. The identified problems consist in: First: The children use more mobile phones in order to use the internet and social networks and this makes it really difficult for their parents to control them. This exposes more the children towards negative effect of internet usage. The second problem is that parents do not have enough knowledge on the usage of new technology. Third: Children have taken information about the risk of internet from the media or by friends and they haven't discussed about this subject at school with teachers.


IDEA JOURNAL ◽  
2017 ◽  
pp. 88-101
Author(s):  
Menna Agha ◽  
Els DeVos

In 1964, indigenous Nubians were displaced from their original land – the land between what is now Egypt and that of Sudan – to modernised settlements built by the Egyptian state. The Nubians dissatisfaction with the novel built environment translated into transgressive public spaces. One of the most common transgressions was the addition of an external bench called Mastaba. Since power relations between men and women have changed, the built environment now acts as a catalyst in the exclusion of women from formal public spaces such as conventional coffee shops and squares. Mastabas function as liminal spaces, spaces which blur the boundaries between public and private spheres. As these spaces do not suit the formal understanding of public spaces, we investigate these liminal spaces in order to reveal the spatial tactics of the marginal. We argue that the existence of these spaces raises issues of spatial justice and spatial resistance.    The behaviour of liminal public spaces varies; they have the ability to transform adjacent spaces. This research investigates the role of the Mastaba in opening up the public space for women, thereby giving them the ability to contribute to the writing of their social contract. We base our analysis on extensive fieldwork, consisting of auto-ethnographic observations and participation, informed by a feminist epistemology. We use tools of spatial analysis to explore an alternative public space offered by liminality. To question the binary notions of private and public space, we ask ourselves: where does that space start? As spatial professionals, we also wonder: can we contest the hegemonic definition of public space and contribute to spatial resistance? Drawing lessons from the case of the Mastaba, we propose contingencies for designing the liminal that serve the marginal.


2017 ◽  
Vol 10 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mattias De Backer

Many assumptions underlie a concept such as public space but seldom are they made explicit in the public debate. In this paper I will investigate what constitutes ‘publicness’ by building on research with young people hanging out in public space in Brussels. I will argue that young people, by meeting in public space, produce parochial places (Lofland, 1998). By doing so they transgress certain rules in public space. I will argue that the paradox embedded in ‘publicness’ is that in order for young people to truly be in public they have to break or bend the rules of that public; a person can only be in space when that space becomes of that person. The question then becomes if these forms of parochiality allow us to overcome the boundaries between people and communities, and between public and private.


2015 ◽  
Vol 35 (7/8) ◽  
pp. 513-532 ◽  
Author(s):  
Susanne Helma Christiane Fehlings

Purpose – In contrast to the dominant accounts in post-Soviet studies that see public and private as two spheres existing in parallel, the purpose of this paper is to argue that in Armenia the public-private dichotomy can be better understood as a spectrum of different kinds of interactions between the state and private actors/social groups representing different sets of socio-cultural values, which are mirrored in Yerevan’s city planning and housing. Design/methodology/approach – The data derives from long-term ethnographic fieldwork in Yerevan. To analyse the data set the author used methods common in social and cultural anthropology. The theoretical background derives from urban anthropology (Liu), theories on housing (Carsten and Hugh-Jones), the anthropology of values (Dumont), and the anthropology of states (Herzfeld) linked to the debate on modernity. Findings – The author demonstrates that basic cultural concepts, norms, expectations, rules, beliefs, and values currently take effect on both sides (public and private/state and people), and that personal networks in Armenia are no longer used to trick an alien state, but also used by the state elites to gain advantage. The degree of intimacy of social relations thereby structures urban space and behaviour. Originality/value – The paper looks at the public-private dichotomy in post-Soviet states from a new perspective, which is inspired by the anthropology of (socio-cultural) values, and argues that cultural intimacy (Herzfeld) is – simultaneously – a unifying and a separating fact in the relationship of states and people.


2001 ◽  
Vol 49 (2) ◽  
pp. 202-218 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mats Franzén

This paper is about a specific aspect of the present restructuring of space: the cumulative, but unintended, effects on the public urban order, by a growing, and more intense, deployment of border controls. Border controls are recognized to operate both in public space, and at the entrances to those organized activities that directly face public space. Their working is understood as actuarial practices. Two preventive impetuses are identified, one specific, police-related, one general, related to the on-going socio-economic changes. To try to follow the aggregate effects of such a preventive spatial restructuring, an analytic thought experiment is made. Its focus is the public order in a square, or a segment of a street, located centrally in a relatively large Western European city and the effects of the following variations. To begin with, the targets of border controls: the volume and the composition of, first, the passers by, and second, the direct visitors of this public space, and third, different visitors to the organized activities adjoining this space. Then, of course, the variations in the deployment of border controls by both public and private police. Thus, it is possible to delineate how the preventive restructuring of space works upon the urban order. Perhaps surprisingly, there is a certain robustness in the urban order since many agents of the preventive restructuring do not work in concert.


ILUMINURAS ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 22 (56) ◽  
Author(s):  
Carolina Gallo Garcia

Neste artigo, apresento a obra da artista francesa Sophie Calle (1953 - presente) como um vetor para investigação acerca do espaço público, indagando o papel que as práticas artísticas críticas (Mouffe, 2013) podem desempenhar no questionamento da pressuposição democrática de tais espaços a partir dos conceitos de dissenso, aqui compreendido enquanto racionalidade política não consensual, e da partilha do sensível, que nos permite vislumbrar potencialidades da arte enquanto ferramenta política (Rancière, 1996; 2009). A partir das obras Suíte Veneziana (1980), The Detective (1981), The Address Book (1983), The Bronx (1980), Phone Booth (1994) os conceitos de dissenso e partilha do sensível serão articulados para análise das imagens e à luz dos registros textuais da artista sobre estes trabalhos.Palavras-chave: Sophie Calle; Flânerie; Performance Urbana; Partilha do Sensível; Dissenso.  SOPHIE CALLE’S FLÂNERIE: REFLECTIONS ON PUBLIC AND PRIVATE SPACESAbstract: In this article, I present the artwork of the French artist Sophie Calle (born 1953) as a medium to investigate the public space, inquiring which role that critical art practices (Mouffe, 2013) can play in questioning the assumption of democracy given to public spaces from the concepts of dissent as a non-consensual political rationality, and the distribution of the sensible, which allows us to glimpse the potential of art as a political tool (Rancière, 1996; 2009). From the artworks Suite Venetienne (1980), The Detective (1981), The Address Book (1983), The Bronx (1980) and Phone Booth (1994), the concepts of dissent and distribution of the sensible will be articulated for the analysis of images and the artist's textual records of these artworks.Keywords: Sophie Calle; Flânerie; Urban Performance; Distribution of the Sensible; Dissent.


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