The Fall of Public ManA 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. |
Contents
Love Outside the Public Domain | |
Dead Public Space | |
The Past in the Present | |
A GATHERING OF STRANGERS | |
PUBLIC ROLES | |
PUBLIC AND PRIVATE | |
MAN AS ACTOR | |
THE IMPACT OF INDUSTRIAL CAPITALISM ON PUBLIC LIFE | |
THE END OF PUBLIC CULTURE | |
CHARISMA BECOMES UNCIVILIZED | |
COMMUNITY BECOMES UNCIVILIZED | |
THE ACTOR DEPRIVED OF HIS | |
CONCLUSION THE TYRANNIES OF INTIMACY | |
JAccuse | |
Notes | |
Acknowledgments | |
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Common terms and phrases
19th Century action activity actor adult Affair ancien régime appearance arouse audience Balzac became become began behavior belief bourgeois bourgeoisie capitalism character charisma clothes coffeehouse collective personality Comédie Française cosmopolitan costume created crowd culture Cuomo dress Dreyfus Dreyfus Affair du Paty Émile Zola emotional experience expression fact feeling force Forest Hills France Frédérick Lemaître Freud human Ibid idea illusion images impersonal impulses intimate Lamartine last century leader logical London matter meaning mid-18th Century middle middle-class modern narcissism narcissistic nature Nehru Place one’s oneself Paris Parisian passion passive performer petite bourgeoisie play political politician principle problem psychic psychological public realm Quotation reality relations ressentiment revolution Richard Sennett Rousseau rules self-distance sense sexual social society speak speech stage strangers street structure symbols theater theory University Press urban Wilkes workers York