Re-Imagining Public Space: The Frankfurt School in the 21st Century

Public space, both literally and figuratively, is foundationally important to political life. From Socratic lectures in the public forum, to Occupy Wall Street and the Arab Spring, public spaces have long played host to political discussion and protest. The book provides a direct assessment of the role that public space plays in political life.

Table of Contents:
Foreword: Stephen Eric Bronner 1. Habermas, the Public Sphere, and Democracy; Douglas Kellner 2. Reflections on the Meaning and Experience of Public Space: A Critical Psychoanalytic Perspective; Michael Diamond 3. The Public Sphere as Site of Emancipation and Enlightenment: A Discourse Theoretic Critique of Digital Communication; David Ingram & Asaf Bar-Tura 4. Walter Benjamin and the Modern Parisian Cityscape; Mary Caputi 5. Critical Spaces: Pubilc Spaces, the Culture Industry, Critical Theory, and Urbanism; Malcolm Miles 6. Idealizing Public Space: Arendt, Wolin, and the Frankfurt School; C. Fred Alford 7. Spatial Form and the Pathologies of Public Reason: Toward a Critical Theory of Space; Michael J. Thompson 8. Adorno and the Global Public Sphere: Rethinking Globalization and the Cosmopolitan Condition of Politics; Lars Rensmann 9. The Carnivalization of the Public Sphere; Lauren Langman 10. #OccupytheEstablishment: The Commodification of a "New Sustainability" for Public Space and Public Life; Diana Boros & Haley Smith

About the Author :
James M. Glass, University of Maryland, USA Diana Boros, St. Mary's College of Maryland, USA Douglas Kellner, University of California, Los Angeles, USA C. Fred Alford, University of Maryland, College Park, USA Mary Caputi, California State University, Long Beach, USA Michael J. Thompson, William Paterson University, USA Lauren Langman, Loyola University of Chicago, USA William E. Scheuerman, Indiana University, Bloomington, USA Malcolm F. Miles, Plymouth University, UK Michael Diamond, University of Missouri, USA David Ingram, Loyola University, USA Asaf Bar-Tura, Loyala University, USA Lars Rensmann, John Cabot University, USA Haley Smith, St. Mary's College of Maryland, USA

Review :
"Reclaiming the critical theory of the Frankfurt School, this volume breathes new life into the now familiar debate over the privatization, commodification, and commercialization of democratic public space. The essays vividly capture the late modern predicament of a culture that is being entertained to death while its already greatly attenuated spaces for practices of collective critique vanish. The authors show that there is no easy solution, but that there are still genuinely insightful ways of grasping and addressing the problem." Linda Zerilli, University of Chicago, USA "While reminding us of its vital importance to a democratic society, Boros and Glass have assembled a collection of essays that make a unique and defining contribution to newly conceptualizing, for our age, the meaning of public space, the public sphere, the idea of the public itself, all of which have not received the attention they deserve in recent contemporary political theory. Re-Imagining Public Space is a clarion call to refocus our intellectual energies on what is fundamental and indispensable to a democratic form of life.' Morton Schoolman, State University of New York at Albany, USA