Page 124 - Democracy and the Public Sphere

Mediations: From the Coffee House to the Internet Café 119

certain decommodification or reclamation of the female body that

may enable some women to control the terms on which their bodies
are disseminated, something which sets it apart from traditional and
more exploitative outlets. At the same time, the way in which online
culture rips symbols more comprehensively from their points of
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origin than Walter Benjamin could ever have imagined, makes the
provenance of pornographic images (and the monetary or exploitative
relations that may have shaped their production) extremely opaque,
whilst the anonymity and instantaneous mode of its (predominantly
male) reception helps to smooth out any anxieties that consumers
may have about them in this regard. That digital culture can blur

boundaries and deter reflexivity is not in question, then. My point
is that the contradictions and complexities of digital culture must
be taken seriously if we are to deepen our understanding of the
public sphere and the culture of reflexivity to which a Habermasian

discourse ethics necessarily appeals.
My aim in this chapter has simply been to scratch a little at the
problem of mediation. If it is to be truly relevant to our world today,
the theory of the public sphere must not content itself with being a
theory of communication: it must also become a theory of mediation,
which is not in fact the same thing. Our analysis of mediation must
look beyond the role of the media as a conduit for ideas, symbols
and messages, and beyond the ‘media’ of power and money: it
must also engage with the mediation of those cultural fault-lines
and boundaries that shape both the fissures of contemporary society

and our aspirations for a better one. To pre-empt the moral of the

next and final chapter: there is not merely unfinished business, but

important and complex business that has scarcely begun.

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Goode 02 chap04 119 23/8/05 09:36:12