Making Things Public: Atmospheres of Democracy (Hardcover)

~ (Editor), Peter Weibel (Editor)

Editorial Reviews

Review

"MIT's version of a coffee-table tome, an astonishing anthology of highbrow meditations on culture and politics by world-class writers and intellectuals such as Richard Powers, Peter Sloterdijk and Richard Rorty, complete with lavish art. The first latte-table book?"
— Carlin Romano, Philadelphia Inquirer

Product Description

In this groundbreaking editorial and curatorial project, more than 100 writers, artists, and philosophers rethink what politics is about. In a time of political turmoil and anticlimax, this book redefines politics as operating in the realm of things. Politics is not just an arena, a profession, or a system, but a concern for things brought to the attention of the fluid and expansive constituency of the public. But how are things made public? What, we might ask, is a republic, a res publica, a public thing, if we do not know how to make things public? There are many other kinds of assemblies, which are not political in the usual sense, that gather a public around things—scientific laboratories, supermarkets, churches, and disputes involving natural resources like rivers, landscapes, and air. The authors of Making Things Public—and the ZKM show that the book accompanies—ask what would happen if politics revolved around disputed things. Instead of looking for democracy only in the official sphere of professional politics, they examine the new atmospheric conditions—technologies, interfaces, platforms, networks, and mediations that allow things to be made public. They show us that the old definition of politics is too narrow; there are many techniques of representation—in politics, science, and art—of which Parliaments and Congresses are only a part.

The authors include such prominent thinkers as Richard Rorty, Simon Schaffer, Peter Galison, Richard Powers, Lorraine Daston, Richard Aczel, and Donna Haraway; their writings are accompanied by excerpts from John Dewey, Shakespeare, Swift, La Fontaine, and Melville. More than 500 color images document the new idea of what Bruno Latour and Peter Weibel call an "object-oriented democracy."

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 1072 pages
• Publisher: The MIT Press (September 1, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0262122790
• ISBN-13: 978-0262122795
• Product Dimensions: 9.6 x 7 x 2.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 5.9 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #411,901 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A must-have..., April 18, 2009

By	Tomás SC "TSC" (Madrid, Spain) - See all my reviews

This book addresses how can ecology, health, technology, science, markets... be "made public" in order to discuss about who we are and what we are to become, In that sense, it is a must-have for two different publics:
(a) for those interested in pragmatist trends in political thought (e.g. Dewey, Rorty) and its intersections with biopolitics, deliberative, agonistic and participatory democracy.
(b) for those interested in understanding and becoming part of the "political turn" in STS.

It's only inconvenient resides in the weight and the size of the volume. As a colleague said some time ago: it's a pity you can't read it while being in bed.

You can download his whole review (much better than this one) at: http://www.aibr.org/antropologia/44nov/libros/nov0502b.pdf

5 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Original, provocative, thoughful, August 16, 2006

By	Bungler Jane (Cambridge, UK) - See all my reviews

I think this is a brilliant book. A great selection of interesting and relevant ideas on art, politics and technology. Beautiful images too and well published.