Abstract

In this paper we focus on the role that the new communication technologies play in blurring the distinction between the public and the private, and the political ramifications that the obscuring of this demarcation holds for citizenship. We begin by examining the roles that private and public spaces play in a democracy; next, we explore how the public space is being privatized and how private space is made public; and finally, we analyze the problems for democracy created by this slippage between places. In the course of our analysis, we argue that the current blurring of the private/public distinction is not at all the same as that presaged by the feminist slogan, 'the personal is political,' because rather than empowering citizens, these pseudo-private and pseudo-public realms undermine human growth by replacing citizens with consumers, activism with passivity, and knowledge with information.