Intimacy and Spectacle

Intimacy and spectacle are rarely considered central to contemporary liberalism. Yet intimacy and spectacle are precisely what liberal theory teaches citizens, Stephen Esquith suggests in this book, a compelling analysis of liberal theory as a form of political education. His work offers a cogent account of how, in the last century, citizens of liberal societies have come to see themselves as clients intimately involved with professionals and as consumers of spectacular images, particularly of political leaders.
Focusing on the writings of John Stuart Mill and John Rawls, Esquith shows how modern liberal theory represents politics as the play of spectacular images and the reasonable interchange of domesticated voices - a representation that narrowly restricts the boundaries of public life, excluding those who are unable to enter this political domain of clients, consumers, and professional policymakers. By revealing this weakness, Esquith hopes to move political education in a more democratic direction. He uses Bakhtin's notion of speech genres to develop a critical interpretation of liberal theory's relationship to practice, then draws on Emerson's ideas of power and the public intellectual to reconsider the relationship between democratic theory and political education. A nuanced critique that locates the philosophical methods of liberal theory within dominant social practices, his work marks a significant advance toward a more democratic theory of the education of citizens - and, perhaps, toward a more democratic liberal society.

Stephen L. Esquith is Professor of Philosophy at Michigan State University.