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Reviewed by:
  • Public Modalities: Rhetoric, Culture, Media, and the Shape of Public Life
  • Lisa Carlton
Public Modalities: Rhetoric, Culture, Media, and the Shape of Public Life. Edited by Daniel C. Brouwer and Robert Asen. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2010; pp. vii + 267. $29.95 paper.

The boundaries distinguishing public from private are conceptually blurring, but the scholarly conversation focused on matters of publicity is continually sharpening. In their new volume Daniel C. Brouwer and Robert Asen present ten essays that enrich scholarly dialogue about the process of public engagement. Drawing on language's constitutive force, Brouwer and Asen recommend the term "modality" be added to the "constellation of public metaphors" to highlight new conceptual aspects in the rhetorical process of publicity. In their words, modality "entails a focus on multiplicity, movement, and activity, and the mutual implication of theory and practice" (3). A "modality approach" is not meant to be a method, but [End Page 185] rather an "orientation" (in the Burkean sense) providing a frame of response where none existed before. Emphasizing the concept of modalities gives scholars the opportunity to interrogate the inherently subjective process not only of public engagement itself, but also of the very process of studying public engagement.

Brouwer and Asen's previous collection, Counterpublics and the State (2001), demonstrated their fluency with contemporary public sphere scholarship by theorizing counterpublics in relation to the public sphere. Their new project extends their research by drawing attention to "the rhetoricity of prominent metaphors of publics and offering a new metaphor for the study of publics" (3). Public Modalities consists of an editorial introduction and ten exemplary case studies written by authors spanning the field of communication scholarship. By foregrounding purposive action, these essays emphasize how publicity is constituted rather than whom or what is publicized. Although the essays represent a variety of theoretical and methodological approaches ranging from psychoanalysis to ethnography, their outlooks coalesce in a modality emphasis that focuses on the "productive arts of crafting publicity" (3).

The editorial introduction entitled "Public Modalities, or the Metaphors We Theorize By" is a theoretical nod to George Lakoff and Mark Johnson's 1980 book, Metaphors We Live By. Following Lakoff and Johnson, Brouwer and Asen assert that language matters and the metaphors scholars assign to theoretical concepts can shape and sometimes constrain fundamental perspectives. Thus they argue that talk about publics and the metaphors influencing scholarly conversation need careful consideration. Closely monitoring the process of theoretical development—the terms we use and the metaphors we deploy—will help scholars attend to existing gaps and inconsistencies. In this way, the editorial introduction exemplifies the very self-reflexivity it promotes by meticulously interrogating the process of studying publics.

Brouwer and Asen examine the prevailing metaphors (spheres, screens, networks/webs, publicity, cultures) before introducing their preference, "modalities." The most prominent metaphor used by theorists like G. Thomas Goodnight and Jurgen Habermas, a "sphere," draws attention to boundaries, and the "politics of line drawing between public and private" (4); whereas another common metaphor—"culture"—lends itself to examining the construction of socializing norms and practices (13). At first blush, introducing another metaphor to an already saturated concept might seem superfluous. But Brouwer and Asen's term marks a profitable intervention, because it necessarily intersects with some of the existing metaphors to help [End Page 186] accommodate the fragility and fluidity of contemporary public formation (3). Modality's emphasis on dynamism, for example, is more fitting to an increasingly pluralizing public arena. Brouwer and Asen are clear that this is not a debunking project. They do not suggest that their metaphor is superior. Instead they hope to promote "metaphoric collaboration" (17) in an effort to nuance scholarly talk about public life.

An issue they confront, however, is that modality might be thought of as a dead and dried concept since it is often used synonymously with "formula," "mode," or "medium." Therefore one of Brouwer and Asen's early goals is to assert a more metaphoric meaning to modality. They accomplish this by conceptualizing modality in terms of the ancient notion of techne to accentuate processual qualities such as eloquence, invention, timeliness, and judgment. In this light, modality's critical character relies on...

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