Convergences and divergences of public and collective space in the Western world today

Abstract

Instead of modern society, which is now repelled as totalizing, there emerges a pluralistic and flexible field of groups. In this framework, the public is placed at the intermediate between the social and the individual and is interpreted as a collective. As, however, its momentum is extracted from the political coexistence of monological micro-collectivities, it appears to be missing a public quality that concerns the dimension of the whole and consequently proves to be weak against the discrete absorbing mechanisms of the capitalistic economy and the private interest. It is precisely this positioning of private and public as opposing and mutually threatening forces that invalidates the dynamic of collective space and deprives it of a democratic quality. In contrast, in a framework of a dialogical confrontational space publicity evolves in a social condition which places the individual-within-society and the private-within-the-public. Such a dialogical space is democratic as both political and social.

Keywords:

• public space
• collective space
• dialogical space
• individual freedom
• social justice