Shelley: Fragmentation

To answer the question that Mckee asks in the beginning of this chapter "Is it a good thing that different cultures have their own public spaces, or is it rather another sign of degeneration of the public sphere?"(140). I would have to say that i believe it is helpful to the public sphere. I agree that "it is an opportunity to allow more people to develop their ideas in public, before going on to access the official public sphere" (171). When you are asked to define who you are, there is not just one thing on your list. You can be an African American, woman, lesbian, teacher, and a mother of three. There are so many spheres that each and every one of us can belong to, and to say that just because one might see the queer community as their main community does not make them any less part of the black, feminist, or american community or any other community for that matter. These other spheres give us a place to communicate with people who have the same struggles, issues, concerns, ect. as we do. The fact that modernists think there should only be one public sphere is ridiculous. That 'official' public sphere may have worked when all of the members were white men, but now, there are so many other people (who identify themselves in so many different ways) that are a part of the public sphere. The idea that we lose a common interest by having all of these different public spheres suggests that we are, or were once, all common. But we aren't. It is not that simple. We have many different interests that relate to the different communities that we belong to. These other public spheres are just branches of the one public sphere that i see as the official one----not made up of men of the white race, but of anyone who considers themselves a member of the human race.