The Fall of Public Man

by Richard Sennett

Overview

A landmark study of urban society, reissued for the 40th anniversary of the original publication with a new epilogue by the author.

A sweeping, farsighted study of the changing nature of public culture and urban society, The Fall of Public Man spans more than two centuries of Western sociopolitical evolution and investigates the causes of our declining involvement in political life. Richard Sennett’s insights into the danger of the cult of individualism remain thoroughly relevant to our world today. In a new epilogue, he extends his analysis to the new “public” realm of social media, questioning how public culture has fared since the digital revolution.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780393353747
Publisher:	Norton, W. W. & Company, Inc.
Publication date:	04/11/2017
Edition description:	40th Anniversary Edition
Pages:	512
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.30(h) x 1.40(d)

About the Author

Richard Sennett’s books include The Corrosion of Character, Flesh and Stone, and Respect. He was the founding director of the New York Institute for the Humanities and now teaches sociology at New York University and at the London School of Economics.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments xv

Part 1 The Public Problem

Chapter 1 The Public Domain 3

Love Outside the Public Domain 7

Dead Public Space 14

The Changes in the Public Domain 19

The Past in the Present 30

Chapter 2 Roles 35

Roles 41

Public Roles 46

Public Roles in Cities 48

Proof or Plausibility? 53

Part 2 The Public World of the Ancien Régime

Chapter 3 The Audience: A Gathering of Strangers 59

Who Came to the City 62

Where They Lived 66

Changes in the Urban Bourgeoisie 71

Interchanges at Court and in the City 76

Chapter 4 Public Roles 80

The Body Is a Mannequin 81

Speech Is a Sign 91

The Impersonal Realm Is Passionate 108

Chapter 5 Public and Private 111

There Are Limits on Public Expression 114

Natural Expression Is Outside the Public Realm 117

Public and Private Are Like a Molecule of Society 123

The Molecule Split 124

Chapter 6 Man as Actor 133

The Common-Sense View of Man as Actor 135

Diderot's Paradox of Acting 137

Rousseau's Indictment of the City as Theater 143

Rousseau's Prophecies 151

Part 3 The Turmoil of Public Life in the 19th Century

Chapter 7 The Impact of Industrial Capitalism on Public Life 162

Was the 19th Century Urban Dweller a New Personage? 163

The Localizing of the City 166

Chance and Bourgeois Life 171

Public Commodities 176

Chapter 8 Personality in Public 187

Balzac's Vision of Personality as a Social Principle 192

Personality in Public: New Images of the Body 201

The Stage Tells a Truth the Street No Longer Tells 217

Personality and the Private Family 220

Revolts Against the Past 229

Summary 241

Chapter 9 The Public Men of the 19th Century 243

The Actor 245

The Spectator 256

Chapter 10 Collective Personality 273

1848: Individual Personality Triumphs over Class 279

Gemeinschaft 296

The Dreyfus Affair: Destructive Gemeinschaft 299

Who Is a Real Radical? 313

Part 4 The Intimate Society

Chapter 11 The End of Public Culture 321

Chapter 12 Charisma Becomes Uncivilized 333

The Theories of Charisma 335

Charisma and Ressentiment 343

Electronics Entrenches the Silence of the Past 349

The Star System 355

Chapter 13 Community Becomes Uncivilized 363

Barricades Built Around a Community 366

Barricades Built from Within 372

The Humane Costs of Community 381

Chapter 14 The Actor Deprived of His ART 386

Play Is the Energy for Public Expression 389

Narcissism Enervates This Energy 399

The Mobilization of Narcissism and the Appearance of a New Class 404

Narcissism Is the Protestant Ethic of Modern Times 411

Conclusion: The Tyrannies of Intimacy 416

Epilogue: What Happened to the Public Realm 421

Appendix: "J'Accuse!" 434

Notes 446

Index 465

Editorial Reviews

"Provocative. . . . Sennett brings us to an undeniably recognizable place, the contemporary urban scene."

The Atlantic - Richard Todd

"Brilliant. . . . One admires the breadth of Professor Sennett’s erudition, the reach of his historical imagination, the doggedness of his analysis."

New York Times - Christopher Lehmann-Haupt

"A powerful argument for a more formal public culture and a swipe against the rise of a self-indulgent counter-culture."

Guardian - Melissa Benn

[...] Sennett is at once a historian, sociologist, student of psychoanalytic doctrine . . . and celebrant of city life. . . . Seldom have I read a serious work of social theory that explains as much contemporary experience as Sennett's does.

Robert Lekachman - Saturday Review

Sennett presses social theory and historical experience to his service in developing a provocative thesis: that the public world stage has been usurped by the private psychic scene to the detriment of both individual and society. Sennett's quest for the causes of the impoverishment of civil life in modern industrial society opens fascinating perspectives into the relationship between theater, politics, urban life, and the changing function of the family.

Carl Schorske

[...] Sennett is at once a historian, sociologist, student of psychoanalytic doctrine . . . and celebrant of city life. . . . Seldom have I read a serious work of social theory that explains as much contemporary experience as Sennett's does.— Robert Lekachman

Saturday Review

One of the most stimulating and challenging books to be written in years. . . . A major attempt . . . to re-examine the assumptions and objectives of the 1960s and transcend them without compromising their ideals. One admires the breadth of Professor Sennett's erudition, the reach of his historical imagination. . . . By all means buy this book and read it.— Christopher Lehmann-Haupt

New York Times