The Publics and Ordinary Critique: Challenging Authoritarian Regimes

How does critique emanating from the television public become significant within authoritarian public spheres such as those of the Maghreb countries? Answering this question requires that we rethink the notion of the public and that we consider what qualifies as ordinary critique.

In recent debates about the notion of television audiences and their (in)capacity to produce public critique, there seems to be agreement about the limits of the acts they produce. Many scholars still see such acts as mundane and politically insignificant. While acknowledging the porous borders between the private and the public spheres, they are challenged to consider the possibility that putatively no political locus (e.g., domestic) can produce serious critique. This lecture addresses the difficulties these theoretical approaches face in applying their arguments to longitudinal fieldwork on Maghreb publics and their critical positions towards their regimes. By reorienting the theoretical frame and redefining ?the public,? Ratiba Hadj-Moussa shows how Maghrebi publics produced micro-publics that enabled them to be at once indifferent to and critical of their authoritarian regimes. She also discusses how this congregates the publics, which were instrumental to the fall of Arab regimes.

Ratiba Hadj-Moussa is Professor of Sociology at York University, Toronto, and IFK_Senior Fellow.