Abstract
Short-form polemical texts, or ›pamphlets,‹ have long had a crucial influence on transformations of the public sphere. Pamphlets criticize the social construction of ›rational debate,‹ articulate a critique of genteel progressivism, and circulate among and across distinct social groups and classes. Since the turn of the millennium, most of the defining social movements have used pamphletary texts: Literature is at the core of the recent political transformations of Western, liberal, democratic societies. The pamphlet is arguably the central genre of metadeliberative and metademocratic reflexivity in this context: The public sphere thinks about itself as a social and ideological structure by circulating pamphletary texts among and across social classes. This is especially true of a staggering number of online pamphlets on internet politics, net neutrality, filesharing, and freeware. The use of the pamphlet, understood both as a social practice and as a literary genre, allows online activists to draw on pre-established and widely disseminated literacies to campaign for normative changes.
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Notes
- 1.
This project has received funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program (grant agreement No 852205). This publication reflects only the author’s view, and the Agency is not responsible for any use that may be made of the information it contains.
See Jürgen Habermas: The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry into a Category of Bourgeois Society, Cambridge, Mass. 1991, 71–72.
- 2.
Ibid., 30.
- 3.
Albert O. Hirschman: Opinionated Opinions and Democracy, in: id.: The Essential Hirschman, ed. by Jeremy Adelman, Princeton 2013, 284–292, here: 289.
- 4.
The paradigmatic example being Frederick Douglass’s trope of the »bread of knowledge« in his autobiographical writings. Frederick Douglass: Autobiographies, ed. by Henry Louis Gates, Jr., New York 1994.
- 5.
See Oskar Negt, Alexander Kluge: Öffentlichkeit und Erfahrung. Zur Organisationsanalyse von bürgerlicher und proletarischer Öffentlichkeit, Frankfurt a. M. 1973.
- 6.
See Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak: Can the Subaltern Speak? in: id.: Can the Subaltern Speak? Reflections on the History of an Idea, ed. by Rosalind C. Morris, New York 2010, 33–40.
- 7.
See Marc Angenot: La parole pamphlétaire: typologie des discours modernes, Paris 1982.
- 8.
See Robert Darnton: The Literary Underground of the Old Regime, Cambridge, Mass. 1982, 52–66.
- 9.
See Georges Lefebvre: The Coming of the French Revolution, Princeton, N. J. 2005, 52.
- 10.
See Ralph W. Greenlaw: Pamphlet Literature in France during the Period of the Aristocratic Revolt. 1787–1788, in: The Journal of Modern History 29/4 (1957), 349–354.
- 11.
See Michel Winock: Le siècle des intellectuels, Paris 1999, 21–77.
- 12.
Zola explicitly states: »In making these accusations I am aware that I am making myself liable to articles 30 and 31 of the law of 29/7/1881 regarding the press, which make libel a punishable offence. I expose myself to that risk voluntarily.« This is cited from one of the few passable translations of the original: Émile Zola: I Accuse!, transl. by Chameleon Translations; cited from Marxists Internet Archive: https://www.marxists.org/archive/zola/1898/jaccuse.htm [accessed 10 July 2021].
- 13.
Ibid.
- 14.
Ibid.
- 15.
See for instance: Juan Branco: Crépuscule, La Laune 2019.
- 16.
See generally: Karine Nahon, Jeff Hemsley: Going Viral, Cambridge 2016, 60–80.
- 17.
See Michael Warner: The Letters of the Republic. Publication and the Public Sphere in Eighteenth-Century America, Cambridge, Mass. 1990, 34–63.
- 18.
Pierre Bourdieu: Pascalian Meditations, Stanford, Calif. 1997, 71.
- 19.
Some fundamental provisions of academic freedom are established in the 1988 Education Reform Act.
- 20.
Nancy L. Thomas: The Politics of Academic Freedom, in: New Directions for Higher Education 152 (2010), 83–90, here: 84, 89.
- 21.
See Shane Greenstein: Commercialization of the Internet. The Interaction of Public Policy and Private Choices or Why Introducing the Market Worked so Well, in: Innovation Policy and the Economy 1 (2000), 151–186.
- 22.
The ›Memo‹ begins with the statement that it »is by no means the complete story.«. James Damore: Google’s Ideological Echo Chamber; cited from: https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/3914586/Googles-Ideological-Echo-Chamber.pdf [accessed 10 July 2021].
- 23.
Ibid.
- 24.
Ibid.
- 25.
Google Inc.: Letter From the Founders. »An Owner’s Manual« for Google’s Shareholders, in: id.: Registration Statement; cited from: www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1288776/000119312504142742/ds1a.htm#toc59330_1 [accessed 10 July 2021].
- 26.
John Perry Barlow: A Declaration of Independence of Cyberspace, in: Manuel Schmalstieg, Bram Crevits, Viktor Kruug (eds.): Manifestos for the Internet Age, (sine loco) 2016, 38–41, here: 39 [my emphasis, P. M.].
- 27.
Ibid., 39.
- 28.
Ibid.
- 29.
Ibid., 40.
- 30.
Ibid.
- 31.
Jeremy Rifkin: The Age of Access. The New Culture of Hypercapitalism, New York 2000.
- 32.
Rick Levine, Christopher Locke, Doc Searls, David Weinberger: The Cluetrain Manifesto; cited from: https://www.cluetrain.com/#manifesto [accessed 10 July 2021] [original emphasis].
- 33.
[Anon.]: A feminist server manifesto 0.01, in: Manuel Schmalstieg, Bram Crevits, Viktor Kruug (eds.): Manifestos for the Internet Age, (sine loco) 2016, 179; cited from: https://github.com/greyscalepress/manifestos/blob/master/content/manifestos/2014-05-29-feminist-servers.txt [accessed 10 July 2021].
- 34.
Ibid. See also Star’s classic essay: Susan Leigh Star: The Ethnography of Infrastructure, in: The American Behavioral Scientist, 43/3 (1999), 377–391.
- 35.
[Anon.]: POwr, Broccoli and Kopimi, in: Manuel Schmalstieg, Bram Crevits, Viktor Kruug (eds.): Manifestos for the Internet Age, (sine loco) 2016, 105; cited from: https://github.com/greyscalepress/manifestos/blob/master/content/manifestos/2009-02-powr-broccoli-kopimi.txt [accessed 10 July 2021].
- 36.
Piotr Czerski: We, the Web Kids, in: Manuel Schmalstieg, Bram Crevits, Viktor Kruug (eds.): Manifestos for the Internet Age, (sine loco) 2016, 148–155, here: 149; cited from: https://github.com/greyscalepress/manifestos/blob/9234513c9537cd824da28d53fa937b465dcdd7f9/content/manifestos/2012-02-15-we-the-web-kids.txt [accessed 14 Apr. 2022].
- 37.
Ibid., 149.
- 38.
Ibid., 152.
- 39.
Ibid., 151.
- 40.
Ibid.
- 41.
Ibid., 150.
- 42.
Chaos Computer Club e. V.: Hackerethik; cited from: https://www.ccc.de/en/hackerethics [accessed 10 July 2021]
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Monot, PH. (2023). Poor, Nasty, British, and Short. Contemporary Pamphleteering, Popular Literacy, and the Politics of Literary Circulation. In: Gamper, M., Müller-Tamm, J., Wachter, D., Wrobel, J. (eds) Der Wert der literarischen Zirkulation / The Value of Literary Circulation. Globalisierte Literaturen. Theorie und Geschichte transnationaler Buchkultur / Globalized Literatures. Theory and History of Transnational Book Culture, vol 3. J.B. Metzler, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-65544-3_11
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