The State of Free Speech

Abstract

In the previous chapter we saw how an intuitive form of free speech emerges within the proletarian public sphere. In this chapter I show how the capitalist state, through legal discourse and governance, attempts to reaccent these heteroglossic utterances within the remit of the monologic bourgeois public sphere. Specifically, I argue that the capitalist state acts as an abstract public sphere to reaccent heroic dialogue about unsatisfying work by restoring the reputable nature of the utterances of bourgeois-personalities. The state capitalist state achieves this initially through two mediated levels. First, the state transforms proletarian utterances into acts of defamation through dialogue about the libellous’ nature of proletarian dialogue. This is what I refer as state defamation. Second, state defamation opens up the opportunity to reaccent dialogue around an imagined community of ‘people-nation’, i.e. around dialogue of who is, and who is not, to give legitimacy to speak in the public sphere.KeywordsCivil SocietyPublic SphereGovernance MechanismFree SpeechSocial FormThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.