Publics, Crowds, Middle- and Working Class -- Mindless and Depraved

The “mindless and depraved” refer not to anyone in particular.

Richard Butsch has an interesting introduction in his book The Citizen Audience: Crowds, Publics, and Individuals and I need to spend more time in the book itself. Consider these few notes as a summary of his argument, how socio-economic class identifies itself (or has its identity crafted) in the social sphere. This tension between classes can explain how some in the college institution see community college students as mindless and depraved crowds instead of intellectual publics, thus shifting attention and resources from the needs of the community to the skills of the few who meet the expectation of administration and faculty middle class ethos. By seeing the multicultural student's body as depraved and "other" (though Butsch doesn't address Said's orientalism), the tension exhibited in the passive-aggressive monitoring of the college student's body by the dominant-culture mind can be explained.

We can see a similar distinction in attitudes as institutions position college student bodies as a contest of High vs Low (and we see students unconsciously reflect this; they feel it). Rob Shields aligns the high and low to “central/marginal” where the rhetoric of marginal places and spaces is, as Said defines, “the edge of civilization.” The exclusion of the central is constructed through Said’s “positional superiority” which positions the High in a whole series of possible relationships with the Low without ever losing the upper hand (Shields 5). Marginality reveals itself in the liminal zones of otherness (Shields 5-6).  

Butsch first explores the history of crowds and publics in early America, distinguishing how groups were identified in the Republican vs Federalist periods. Historically, crowds were seen as protests and carnival; eventually these were analyzed in the late 19th century as “mindless” and depraved. Publics, on the other hand, were seen as the opposite of crowds, something more diffused rather than assembled. In the ideal public, individuals were discussion- rather than action-oriented, were deliberative rather than impulsive, and were rational rather than emotional (11). Defining public, Butsch summarizes Weintraub (Theory and Politics of the Public/Private Distinction (1997) as variously:

• the political sphere
• an economic sense of state ownership vs private ownership
• the public as sociability and space where it may occur
• or contrasted to the private domestic space of the family.

French sociologist Jean Gabriel de Tarde (aka Gabriel Tarde) was first to conceptualize publics (early 20th century) as bound up with media; because they are diffused, they must need a centralized communication, newspapers. Both de Tarde and Habermas then require publics to have conversation based on their media. In both theorists’ views, this reading-conversing-writing cycle prohibited action; the purpose would be to form public opinion which would then inform elected officials. The intellectual public, then, had little time or interest in storming the Bastille.

Women March on Versaille, Unknown, 1789. Bibliotheque Nationale de France

de Tarde distinguished publics from crowds as being less emotionally attached to the moment, more disinterested, more independent and individual, where discussion was more rational and deliberative, more “civilized and tolerant than crowds” (Butsch 12). Publics must converse with one another, conversation being the primary civil, non-domestic social interaction, linking the social to the political. Conversation is “the strongest agent of imitation, of the propagation of sentiments, ideas, and modes of action” because it produces the greatest intensity of attention (Butsch 13). By placing reading as the central act of the public, rationality forms opinion, building on the individual will rather than the collective’s/crowd’s loss of individuality. This reading lifestyle, however, is mediated through the economic liberties of the middle and upper class, which Butsch doesn’t attend to enough. The lifestyle of the mind permits reading and writing, and by definition requires little bodily action (Aristotle’s peripatetics, notwithstanding). The working class, on the other hand, moves by the transformation of body through labor to production. The working class is habituated to action and mediates its identity because of action. And yet we expect working class students to sit on their butts for hours on end in the physical prime of their life, banking that knowledge.

John Dewey, contra de Tarde, emphasized community rather than communication, and action rather than discussion; for Dewey, a public is a spontaneous group of people that arise as a result of the community being confronted by an issue, who engage in discussion to reach a collective decision. Here we can afford a community college student population as integrating both mind and body --- confrontation engages discussion, deliberation results in a collective -- not individuated -- decision. The community’s needs are primary instead of the intellectual’s ego and the profit margin of the middle class merchant.

Generally, action is a working class characteristic who “historically valued loyalty and solidarity above individuality” and otherwise subordinated to the middle class, which is more deliberative (15). Middle class debate questions leadership, creates dissent, and paralyzes or undermines group action, exactly antithetical to the habits and needs of the working class. “The two concepts, publics and crowds, are interpretation from the point of view of two different class cultures” (15). Here, Butsch sees the two classes as a dichotomy of mind (middle class) vs. body (working class) and therefore crowds are seen as bodily work, while publics are seen as mind, or intellectual work.

Thus we must reevaluate the type of pedagogy we use with working class community college students. Though they are very capable of “mind work,” they may find more value in transforming that mind work into community body work. Thus, again, we see a need to take the college back to the community, get the students out of the classroom, translate the lecture to community action. Else, it is the institution that is in fact mindless and depraved.

References

Butsch, Richard. "Introduction." The Citizen Audience: Crowds, Publics, and Individuals. New York: Routledge, 2008. Print.

Shields, Rob. Places on the Margin: Alternative Geographies of Modernity. London: Routledge, 1991. Print.