Michael Warner The Public Summary

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According to Michael Warner, a public is first, self-organized, it is a “space of discourse organized by nothing but the discourse itself.” The sense of this term, “the public” is a new and completely modern term, no other term can capture the same sense. It exists by virtue of being addressed, he describes that when the discourse is not addressing a specific audience like those in a profession, an audience can “understand itself as not only a public but the public.” Second, a public is a relation among strangers. Warner elaborates on this concept by describing the stranger as a mysterious presence requiring resolution, that publics influence us to perceive strangers as other than simply people who we do not know yet. Third, the address of