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CONTEMPORARY
PUBLICS
SHIFTING BOUNDARIES IN NEW MEDIA,
TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE

EDITED BY
P. David Marshall
Glenn D’Cruz
Sharyn McDonald
Katja Lee
Contemporary Publics
P. David Marshall • Glenn D’Cruz • Sharyn McDonald • Katja Lee
Editors

Contemporary
Publics
Shifting Boundaries in New Media,
Technology and Culture
Editors
P. David Marshall Sharyn McDonald
Deakin University Deakin University
Burwood, Victoria, Australia Burwood, Victoria, Australia

Glenn D’Cruz Katja Lee

Deakin University Simon Fraser University
Burwood, Victoria, Australia Burnaby, British Columbia, Canada

ISBN 978-1-137-53323-4 ISBN 978-1-137-53324-1 (eBook)

DOI 10.1057/978-1-137-53324-1

Library of Congress Control Number: 2016952564

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2016

The author(s) has/have asserted their right(s) to be identified as the author(s) of this work
in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher,
whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation,
reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in
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tation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter
developed.
The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this
publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are
exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use.
The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information
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lisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, express or implied, with respect to the
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Cover illustration: © Rebecca Johnson / Alamy Stock Photo

Printed on acid-free paper

This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by Springer Nature

The registered company is Macmillan Publishers Ltd. London
 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Contemporary Publics arose from the Contemporary Publics International

Symposium, 24–25 February, 2014, Melbourne, Australia. Our thanks, as
an editorial team, begin with the originators of this inaugural symposium
and their collation of impressive submissions from multiple disciplines.
Our thanks extend to all the participants of the symposium whose contri-
butions and input made the event a success. It has been a privilege to select
from, and work with, such talented academics. We would like to thank
Deakin University and, in particular, the School of Communication and
Creative Arts for supporting the symposium and the Persona, Celebrity,
Publics Research group (PCP), an emergent research think tank that has
begun to achieve global input and recognition. We would especially like
to thank Elizabeth Braithwaite for the comprehensive feedback and copy-
editing assistance she provided.

v
 CONTENTS

1 Introduction: The Plurality of Publics 1

P. David Marshall

Part I Countering Neoliberal Publics: Screen and Space 15

2 The Beach Beneath the Street: Art and Counterpublics 17

Glenn D’Cruz

3 A Hungry Public: Stranger Relationality and the Blak Wave 27

Felicity Collins

4 Re-membering, (Re-) appropriation, and Polyphony:

SBS Independent and White Australian Memory 43
Amanda Malel Trevisanut

5 Ghosting: Putting the Volume into Screen Memory 61

Paul Carter

6 Dancing Dandenong: The Poetics of Spatial Politics 77

Glenn D’Cruz, Shaun McLeod, Dirk de Bruyn,
and Steven McIntyre

vii
viii CONTENTS

7 New Strategies for Old Practices 97

Cameron Bishop

Part II Making and Shaping Publics: Discourse

and Technology 115

8 Media Technologies and Publics 117

Sharyn McDonald

9 Cosmopolitanism on Demand? Television

and the Narrowing of Mediated Social Connection 129
Paul Atkinson and Rebecca Strating

10 Multilingual Publics: Fansubbing Global TV 145

Tessa Dwyer

11 Surveillance Publics After Edward Snowden 163

Michael Richardson

12 Stoking Expectations: Public Relations

and the Politics of “Bogans” 181
Kristin Demetrious

13 We Are Rhetoric. Get Over It! 199

Steve Mackey

Part III Commodifying Public Intimacies 215

14 Making Cents of Contemporary Intimacies:

The Private in the Public 217
Katja Lee
 CONTENTS ix

15 When the Private Becomes Public:

Commodity Activism, Endorsement,
and Making Meaning in a Privatised World 229
P. David Marshall

16 Elite Athletes as Charitable Ambassadors:

Risks Associated with Indiscretions 247
Sharyn McDonald

17 The Intimate Publics of Popular Music Memoirs:

Strategies of Feeling in Celebrity Self-representation 267
Katja Lee

18 Spirited Publics? Post-secularism, Enchantment

and Enterprise on Indian Television 283
Tania Lewis

Index 301
 CONTRIBUTORS

Paul Atkinson teaches communications and media within the School of Media,
Film and Journalism (MFJ) at Monash University. He has lectured and published
in a wide range of areas including critical theory, media studies, cinema studies,
visual aesthetics, performance studies, and contemporary French philosophy. He is
currently working on a book and a series of articles that explore how processual
theories of time can be used to understand differences between media types.
Cameron Bishop is an artist and academic living in Melbourne. He lectures in
Visual Arts at Deakin University. Since 1998, he has exhibited artwork, collabora-
tively and individually, in Australia and overseas. He has written a number of book
chapters, catalogue essays and journal articles. In his art and writing he explores
place—its relationship to subjectivity, social relations, architectures, and resistance
strategies. This has led to an interest in critical occupancies and the shifting role of
the artist in rapidly changing cultural and technological circumstances.
Dirk de Bruyn is Associate Professor in Screen and Design at Deakin University.
He has performed his multiscreen performances internationally including Tokyo,
London, Brighton UK, Shanghai, and The Hague, Rotterdam, and Utrecht in the
Netherlands. He has published numerous experimental, animation, and documen-
tary films over the last 40 years as well as curating and writing about this work
internationally, including in Senses of Cinema and Screening the Past. His book on
The Performance of Trauma in Moving Image Art was published in 2014. A sum-
mary of this creative practice is available at http://www.innersense.com.au/mif/
debruyn.html whilst the scope of his research is accessible at: https://deakin.aca-
demia.edu/DirkdeBruyn
Paul Carter is a writer and artist who lives in Melbourne. He is interested in
cultural production in the context of colonial legacies. His recent books include

xi
xii CONTRIBUTORS

Ground Truthing: Explorations in a Creative Region (2010) and Meeting Place:

The Human Encounter and the Challenge of Coexistence (2013). In 2013, a volume
of his poems also appeared: Ecstacies and Elegies. Through his design studio
Material Thinking, Paul maintains an active public space design practice. He is
currently delivering a major public artwork for Yagan Square, Perth. Paul is
Professor of Design (Urbanism), School of Architecture and Design/Design
Research Institute, RMIT University.
Felicity Collins is Reader/Associate Professor in Screen + Sound in the
Department of Creative Arts at La Trobe University. She has published widely on
Australian screen culture, its institutions, its feminist interventions, its popular
genres (particularly comedy), and its imbrication with the history wars and the
politics of reconciliation since the 1990s. She is the author of Australian Cinema
after Mabo with Therese Davis, and The Films of Gillian Armstrong. Her recent
work has been informed by memory and trauma studies, and debates on anticolo-
nial ethics and aesthetics.
Glenn D’Cruz teaches drama and cultural studies at Deakin University. He is
the author of Midnight’s Orphans: Anglo-Indians in Post/Colonial Literature
(2006) and the editor of Class Act: Melbourne Workers Theatre 1987–2007
(2007). He has published widely in national and international journals in the
areas of literary studies, performance studies, and cultural studies. He is the
higher degree coordinator and a member of the Persona, Celebrity, Publics
emerging research group in the School of Communication and Creative Arts at
Deakin University.
Kristin Demetrious is an Associate Professor in Public Relations at the School of
Communication and Creative Arts, Deakin University. Kristin has published
extensively in the emerging field of critical public relations, focussing on public
relations and its links to power in society. As such, she has investigated a range of
cultural sites such as gender, class, race, identity, activism, and ethics. In 2014
Kristin’s monograph Public Relations, Activism and Social Change: Speaking Up
was awarded the PRIDE Book Award for outstanding Innovation, Development,
and Educational Achievement in Public Relations by the National Communication
Association, USA.
Tessa Dwyer is a Lecturer in Film and Screen studies at Monash University. She
has published widely in journals including South Atlantic Quarterly, The Translator,
and The Velvet Light Trap, and in edited anthologies including The State of Post-
Cinema (Palgrave Macmillan, forthcoming), Politics, Policy and Power in
Translation History (forthcoming), Locating the Voice in Film: Critical Approaches
and Global Practices (forthcoming), B for Bad Cinema (2014), and Words, Images
and Performances in Translation (2012). She is a member of the multidisciplinary
research group Eye Tracking the Moving Image and is currently writing a book on
error in screen translation.
 CONTRIBUTORS xiii

Katja Lee is a SSHRC postdoctoral fellow at Simon Fraser University and a

member of the Persona, Celebrity, Publics Research Group at Deakin
University. She has published essays on celebrity, public identity performance,
and life writing, and is co-editor of Celebrity Cultures in Canada (2016). Her
present research traces how Canadian magazines fostered an emerging contempo-
rary celebrity culture in Canada in the 1910–1930 period.
Tania Lewis is Deputy Dean of Research and an Associate Professor in the School
of Media and Communication at RMIT University. She has published widely on
lifestyle media and consumer culture and on grassroots sustainability movements
and ethical lifestyles. She is the author of Smart Living: Lifestyle Media and Popular
Expertise (2008), and coauthor (with Fran Martin and Wanning Sun) of
Telemodernities: Television and Transforming Lives in Asia (2016) and (with Sarah
Pink et al.) of Digital Ethnography: Principles and practises (2016). She has edited
and co-edited a number of collections including TV Transformations (2009),
Ethical Consumption: A Critical Introduction (2011), Green Asia (2016) and
Lifestyle Media in Asia (2016).
Steve Mackey is a former journalist and press officer who is now a senior lecturer
in public relations at Deakin University. In his 2001 PhD Public Relations and
Contemporary Theory he challenges conventional views of how public relations
was then theorised. His present work suggests that public relations could be better
understood if it were conceptualised as a continuation of the traditional art of
rhetoric, which has been a foundation of Western culture from at least the time of
the ancient Greeks. He joins those who are critical of the way rhetoric has become
maligned and much misunderstood during modernism.
Amanda Malel Trevisanut is an early career researcher and sessional lecturer
with the School of Culture and Communications (SCC) at the University of
Melbourne. Amanda completed her PhD with the SCC in 2014. Her thesis, “SBS
Independent: Productive Diversity and Countermemory”, analyses SBS
Independent as a cultural institution in relation to policy developments, elucidat-
ing how the commissioning house shaped new practices of production, distribu-
tion, and countermemorial representation in the independent film and public
broadcasting sectors between 1994 and 2007. Amanda also currently works as a
research assistant to the Research Unit in Public Cultures (RUPC) at the University
of Melbourne.
P. David Marshall holds a research professorship and personal chair in New
Media, Communication and Cultural Studies at Deakin Univesity, Melbourne
Australia and is also a Distinguished High-End Visiting Foreign Expert at Central
China University’s School of Journalism and Communication in Wuhan, China.
He is the author, co-author, editor, or co-editor of many books including Celebrity
and Power, 2nd Edition (2014), Companion to Celebrity (2015), Promotional
xiv CONTRIBUTORS

Vistas (2016), Persona Studies (2016) New Media Cultures (2004), Celebrity
Culture Reader (2006), and Fame Games (2000). His current research is primarily
focused on persona as way to understand the presentation of the contemporary
and online public self.
Sharyn McDonald is a lecturer at Deakin University, teaching specifically in repu-
tation management and marketing communication. Previously, Sharyn worked in
secondary education in the UK, and tertiary education in the UK and Australia.
Her combined teaching and industry experience spans over 20 years and has
strengthened her interdisciplinary approach to research. Sharyn’s research focuses
on social responsibility and issue management with a particular emphasis on non-
government organisations. Her recent work has examined cross-sector relation-
ships, particularly those enacting strategies and initiatives which seek to positively
contribute to the resolution of environmental and social issues.
Steven McIntyre is a film-maker and academic. He has published articles and
essays on film in Senses of Cinema and the Moving Image Review & Art Journal.
His film works—such as Muchas Personas (2015), The House That Eye Live In
(2014), Mondrian Sprockets (2009), Non Jazz Trio (2006), and Keepintime
Abstract (2005)—have been exhibited widely in international film festivals and
published by Mochilla, Stones Throw, and Ninja Tune.
Shaun McLeod is a dancer, choreographer, and academic who lectures at Deakin
University. He is interested in the affective consequences of dance improvisation
and performance, as well as exploring different situations and interactions for audi-
ence/performer relationships. He has recently completed a practice-led PhD on
the engagement of the Authentic Movement for performance.
Michael Richardson is Lecturer in the School of Arts & Media at the University
of New South Wales. His research examines literary, cultural and media affect,
focusing on torture, trauma, secrecy and power. He is the author of Gestures of
Testimony: Torture, Trauma and Affect in Literature (2016) and co-editor of
Traumatic Affect (2013). He also reviews books, writes commentary, and was
awarded a 2014 Varuna PIP Fellowship for his in-progress first novel. Once, he
was the only Australian speechwriter in Canadian politics.
Rebecca Strating is a lecturer in Politics in the Department of Politics and Philosophy
at La Trobe University. She has a Bachelors (Hons) Degree in Journalism and a PhD
in International Relations from Monash University. While primarily publishing in the
field of Southeast Asian politics, including in journals such as Contemporary Southeast
Asia, Asian Security and The Journal of Pacific History, Rebecca maintains a research
interest in cosmopolitanism and the politics-media nexus.
 LIST OF FIGURES

Fig. 6.1 Shaun McLeod and Soo Yeun You 82

Fig. 6.2 Theatre performance: Dirk de Bruyn, Shaun McLeod
and Soo Yeun You 86
Fig. 7.1 Bozo Ink, Op-Shop Series, 2014 (Photo courtesy of
Bozo Ink) 103
Fig. 7.2 Bozo Ink, Op-Shop Series, 2014 (Photo courtesy of
Bozo Ink) 107
Fig. 10.1 Viki’s “Billion Words March” Campaign Interface.
© Viki, licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 3.0 146
Fig. 18.1 Dr. Chawla, the star of Live Vaastu 289

xv
 CHAPTER 1

Introduction: The Plurality of Publics

P. David Marshall

Every now and then, there is something infinitely calming in observing

ants. As entomologists will explain, ants are remarkably socially connected.
Each individual ant will move through its task with an efficiency and direc-
tion that is unshakeable. Yet, what one observes about the social behavior
of ants is that as they pass each other, they communicate something. It
either reinforces the tasks or it changes them. The alteration may appear
to be insignificant—a slight change in path or a reconfiguration of their
order of activities. As a non-scientific researcher of ants, I may be anthro-
pomorphizing my reading of their forms of communication, and I may
not see the other chemicals and agents that are producing these subtle
shifts; nonetheless, what I can discern as a popular observer is that ants do
not change their overall mission. Their connection of the individual to the
collective seems universal, even when there is an errant message flowing
along the ant line.
Metaphorically, ants’ social activity crudely describes a kind of ideal-
ized public sphere. All are included. Debates (although in the ant-world,
these debates only last milliseconds) lead to connected solutions. There
is an intuitive sense that all are connected to the collective good in
some way. Indeed, if there is an identity that can capture this sensitized

P.D. Marshall ()

Deakin University, Burwood, VIC, Australia

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2016 1

P.D. Marshall et al. (eds.), Contemporary Publics,
DOI 10.1057/978-1-137-53324-1_1
2 P.D. MARSHALL

connection to the meaning of actions, it would be the very notion of ants

as citizens.
Whether we take the notion of the public and the public sphere from
Walter Lippman in his Public Opinion or from Jürgen Habermas’ original
foray in The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere, most (if not
all) iterations of “public” have contained this overriding communicative
relationship of the individual to unity. Debates and discussions define the
activity of the public sphere and, on the surface, represent some sort of
disunity; but the sense that these debates comprehensively and categori-
cally connect to all people, and that the discursive and communicative
plays and counterplays are simply effective, just, and democratic ways of
arriving at consensus and compromise, ultimately has put the concept of
the public and public sphere in the realm of utopia. The public sphere
is and was a mythic concept. As much as it is valued in consensus build-
ing, the public sphere is an “imagined community” (Anderson 1983,
15). The related concept of public similarly defined a way to characterize
both opinion and belongingness into something coherently accepted as
significant, valued, and self-evidently universally constituted and con-
structed. Using the word public has thus been a way to allow one voice
to embody the entire body politic of citizenry. In contrast, other terms
that describe the link between the social and the political generally have
some negative connotation. From Matthew Arnold’s late nineteenth-
century polemic on “mass” culture to Gustav LeBon’s efforts to under-
stand the mental weakness of the crowd, the formulations of collective
activities in the nineteenth and twentieth century imagined order chal-
lenged by the rabble and the mob. While the mass and the mob were
characterized as irrational and seething with raw emotion, the utopian
public and its expression in the public sphere were characterized as sym-
bolizing rationality and reasoned argument. The public and the public
sphere celebrated non-violence even if the debate was heated; they were
terms that indexically pointed to democratic practices and the role of
citizenry.
This book’s intervention into the understanding of public and the pub-
lic sphere similarly realizes the impossibility of achieving these utopian
and unified concepts in the contemporary moment. It is the singularity of
the concept of public which is challenged in the essays in this collection.
Our title, Contemporary Publics, heralds the idea that the mythic quality
of the comprehensive public sphere and public needs to be rethought in
terms of parallel, overlapping, and competing publics. In addition to this
 INTRODUCTION: THE PLURALITY OF PUBLICS 3

challenge to the universality and utopian quality of what the public and
public sphere represents, what also unifies the various approaches taken
here is a recognition of how publics are formed through discourse. They
may not reproduce the unity of the ant colony, but publics imply a vibrant,
contentious engagement of various groups to articulate views, positions,
and postures audibly and visibly.
In this opening essay I want to position the intellectual and political sig-
nificance of thinking through the plurality of publics in three stages. The
first stage investigates the multiple uses of the term public as a nomination
of different forms of visible cultural engagement. The second stage builds
from this multiplicity of definitions to identify the location of the non-
public—the private—in this plethora of publics. The final stage identifies
the various disciplines and intellectual directions that have informed the
essays in this book and how they have further helped situate the value of
thinking and using the concept of publics.

PUBLIC USES: DEPLOYING THE

TERMS PUBLIC AND PUBLICS
Etymologically, public represents one of those words that has had a
proliferating array of uses over the centuries. From the Oxford English
Dictionary, there are seven variations of the term public as an adjective,
and as a noun, another five. Contained in the concatenation are literally
thousands of variations. With its Latin origins, public has been deployed
in some aspect to reveal something related to the people as a whole and as
something visible or at least “conspicuous” (Oxford English Dictionary)
for almost two millennia. Moreover, with little variation, it appears in all
the European Romance languages and beyond. Habermas, along with
most of northern Europe, used Öffentlichkeit or some close variation to
express this same adjectival or noun form.
As well as being a ubiquitous term, over time it has also become quite
promiscuous in its associations. For centuries, it has been wedded to gov-
ernment as a way to express its representativeness of the people. In this
way, public has always had a close affinity to forms of democratic govern-
ment—hence the word republic. But as it has modified particular nouns, it
has migrated somewhat. Terms such as public housing or public works have
clear links with government-related initiatives and have developed in the
twentieth century to indicate some form of public welfare. Some expres-
sions using public are invocations for political actions of caring: public
4 P.D. MARSHALL

good, public spirit, and public benefit are examples of this embedded notion
of the state and its responsibility for its people.
But its use cannot be contained by these characterizations. A public
library expresses something that simultaneously identifies its potential
funding by the state but also its openness to a community for its benefit.
Like a library, public baths or public square are expressions of an equally
open territory, one where no individual can lay claim to its property;
all can use it and borrow without taking away from its connection to a
commonwealth.
As public becomes attached to these practices and activities, one can
see its relationship to visibility. Over the past five centuries, a public life
has very often been defined by its relationship to political office, where an
individual, by choice or by what Rojek would describe as the “ascribed”
role that members of royalty inhabit (2001, 17), works for others—what
Habermas calls “representative publicness” (1989, 9–12). However, a
public life is also related to those members of society that are seen and,
therefore, has come to encompass our celebrity culture, where certain
individuals are seen to have a visible presence to the rest of a culture. The
rest of us move in and out of public spaces and thereby express acceptable
(or unacceptable) public comportment which defines our rather limited
public lives. The somewhat contested term public intellectuals has become
a way to describe how certain individuals who are normally sealed monas-
tically as academics from the everyday, invest in a public and visible pres-
ence via their ideas, possibly for public good. Often it is not their expertise
that defines their activities as public intellectuals but rather that they are
called upon to become part of political debate as an agent of the public.
Even the role of the publican, which has come to mean the person who
manages the pub or public house, describes an individual who provides
space for the expression of the social self and possibly a collective identity
as well. The pub is an inn where all are welcome, and even travellers pass-
ing through particular spaces find in the public house something that is
beyond the private and foreign domain of their travels.
What becomes more complicated is when public is used in the parlance
of commerce and trade. When a company decides to go public, it is a deci-
sion that is at least connected to the idea that public means visible. This
visibility is closely related to when an individual, after months of media
pressure to reveal their private (and apparently compelling) story, decides
to be interviewed by the media and go public. The stock exchanges and
the share market become ways that a company is reconfigured as accessible
 INTRODUCTION: THE PLURALITY OF PUBLICS 5

to more investors and shareholders, and therefore subjected to this very

particular formation of collective activity. Publicly traded companies, which
have had an initial public offering, in their new status as publicly listed cor-
porations, are subject to new levels of scrutiny in the publication of annual
reports and quarterly profit and loss statements.
In a similar vein, the related words of publication and publishing, like
their trade counterparts, address the formalization of text for its wider
distribution, but also for its consumption by an audience. One of the larg-
est conceptual debates in cultural theory since Matthew Arnold’s origi-
nal 1869 treatise involves making sense and relating these collectivities of
mass, public, and audience (Arnold and Garnett 2009 (1869)). Where the
audience has been related broadly to some form of mediated production,
from theatre, newspapers, and film to radio, television, and magazines, the
audience has also been an entity that has allowed the conceptualization of
both public and public opinion to have some recurring and current reality.
From this survey of the way that the term has been deployed, it is clear
that as an idea public has become attached to a wide variety of activities
and practices. But interestingly, this plurality of practices and uses did not
lead to pluralizing of the term for centuries. Publics, as opposed to public,
emerged gradually in the twentieth century from institutions and indus-
tries most closely associated with publicity. Historically, publicity is the
practice of making known a person or a product. In its deployment over
the last two centuries it has been connected to the various entertainment
industries as they attempted to attract attention around a particular film,
for example, or personality. Publicity also migrated into reputation man-
agement for corporations. Over the twentieth century, the field of pub-
lic relations emerged as an organizational management structure either
directly connected to institutions or employed as an agency to service
companies in crisis communication situations. The first uses of publics
comes from the public relations field and industry. Edward Bernays, self-
acclaimed father of public relations, began to see the twentieth-century
social field as composed of more than one public and that targeting publics
critical to the particular issues or concerns of corporations was essential to
his job. Although Bernays used the plural term “publics” only in passing
in his first book in 1923 (2015/1923, 142, 168), in 1947 he elaborated
further on the idea by identifying “internal and external publics” in an
article entitled “The Engineering of Consent.” By 1952, Bernays directly
used “publics” to describe the third component of his definition of public
relations: “efforts to integrate attitudes and actions of an institution with
6 P.D. MARSHALL

its publics and of publics with those of the institution” (Bernays quoted
in Cutlip 1994, 187).
From these origins, the idea of publics is thus connected to expressing
a diversity of opinions and the practices of directing or shaping opinion to
particular ends. In public relations itself, public became a way of express-
ing an organized and coordinated way of thinking for a group or institu-
tion and thus any number of publics could exist in a given society. Perhaps
because the concept of publics emerged from publicity and its connection
to the entertainment industries, the term also became a way for media
theorists to conceptualize plurality and difference in contemporary cul-
ture. Whereas the idea of audience and audiences defined the experiential
relationship people had to cultural forms, public and publics became a way
to think of that experience politically and strategically.
The deployment of the term publics shifted from the relatively con-
servative practices of public relations specialists in the mid-twentieth
century to a term that began to describe quite different and distinct
communities by the end of the century. Specifically, publics became a
way to express new generations of political and cultural visibility in a
culture and thereby relied definitionally on how the concept of pub-
lic is fundamentally associated with attention. The emergence of new
publics, or to use Michael Warner’s idea of “counterpublics” (2005),
depended on a media economy that privileges difference, novelty and
distinctiveness, which could be characterized as formations of public-
ity and were important methods of conveying news from the centres of
power. In conjunction with communities, publics emerged as political
entities related to visible cultural movements. In the American context,
a recognizable black public emerged from the civil rights movement.
Similarly, gay counterpublics established themselves as well as a femi-
nist public from the 1970s onwards. Along with visibility, these publics
offered their participants a sense of egalitarian citizenship within their
spaces that rivaled the older unitary public sphere that described the
nation state (see Emirbayer and Sheller 1999, 150).
These new publics also identified the blind spots of what Habermas
attempted to describe as the public sphere. These new publics underline
distinctively new speaking positions within a culture and work to legitimize
formerly excluded forms of performance of the public self (Fraser 1992).
Forms of protest, possibly seen as illegitimate, become both recognized
and authentic in this shifted conceptualization of publics. Classed expres-
sions, gendered ways of behaving or misbehaving, and racial and ethnic
 INTRODUCTION: THE PLURALITY OF PUBLICS 7

differences in address and public posturing become ways of new-found

legitimacy within publics and in a competing culture of publics and coun-
ter-publics. The contentious world of publics has become a performative
space with varied and nuanced codes of communication within publics and
between publics.
In the twenty-first century, publics have become further legitimized by
the marketplace as different publics are configured into demographic tar-
gets for the fabrication and selling of goods and services. Choice and dif-
ference have become the catchwords of consumer culture through product
differentiation that appeals to these visible publics, which simultaneously
become recognizable and sometimes sizeable markets. As a new ethereal
culture of connection and networking has emerged through digital cul-
ture, the idea of digital publics has been naturalized and layered onto the
reading of contemporary culture as a plurality of publics. Embedded in the
digital have been similar appeals to new freedoms, new forms of presenting
the public self, and a connection to citizenry that once again transcends
the nation state as previous emergent publics have done (see, for example,
Roberts 2014; Gripsrud and Moe 2010). In the practices of social media,
further extrapolations of publics have developed. In my own research, I
have heralded the expansions of intersecting “micro-publics” (Marshall
2015). Other online researchers have coined pluralities such as “personal
publics”(Schmidt 2014), “networked publics” (boyd 2010), and “meso-
publics and macro-publics” (Bruns and Moe 2014) to describe the new
movements of communication and the new patterns of publicity and self-
exposure that are part of the Internet and mobile media experience.

CHANGING BOUNDARIES: PRIVACY BECOMES

A FORM OF PUBLIC

The term publics has become both an analytical tool to help describe con-
temporary culture’s new networks of visibility and a prescriptive nomina-
tion of a new politics. Of equal significance to these two dimensions of the
era of the plurality of publics is its quite direct challenge to the boundar-
ies of the public. Highly visible publics imply an expanded engagement
with publicity. What is outside the bounds of the visible and beyond the
purview of the attention economy becomes harder and harder to discern.
Determining what is private and privacy means defines the era of contem-
porary publics that many of us now inhabit and navigate.
8 P.D. MARSHALL

The media industries have been instrumental in both providing the

material for the idea of a public and the development of multiple publics.
For more than two centuries, they have expanded the dimensions of what
is publicly visible and published. With the expansion of the visual tech-
nologies of recording and dissemination through photography, film, and
video, there has been a related expansion of what has become acceptable
to reveal both in fictional and non-fictional forms. So, in many ways the
private has become public. Through our films and television narratives
of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, we have been allowed to pass
through windows and doors into the interior of lives, making visual what
the novels and biographies of the nineteenth century described in text.
Connected to this visual discourse of increasing revelation, it is also pos-
sible to position the expanding reach and play of pornography as another
example of what is apparently private becoming public in some specific
way (see Williams 2004).
An even further expansion of these discourses of revelation is the move
to what would be considered “backstage” or “behind-the-scenes” in our
popular culture. For most of the twentieth century, magazines principally
provided the channel to reveal more private and potentially intimate details
about our most celebrated individuals. Whether in the structured and man-
icured presentations of the picture magazines of the mid-twentieth century
such as Look or Life or, increasingly, in the pages of the tabloid newspapers
and magazines such as People, Hello, Who Weekly, or Us, by the late twen-
tieth century, an entire industry produced and circulated private images of
stars and celebrities specifically for public consumption. These invasive dis-
courses and practices also describe and anticipate the development of what
has come to be called “reality television.” Using the basic documentary
film-making techniques of “fly-on-the-wall” camera and audio work, the
audience is invited into the private spaces and conversations of constructed
“families,” as in the tradition of Survivor or Big Brother, or directly into the
everyday of famous families such as the now long-running Keeping up with
the Kardashians (since 2007). Although by consent, the individuals por-
trayed “privately” in this televisual universe help form a new understanding
of what should be public and accessible to public discourse. They collec-
tively buttress the expanding publicness advanced through news reports
and debates about the unusual Clinton-Lewinsky scandal of 1996 which,
in its extensive intimate description of sexual acts by a sitting US president
and a White House Intern, worked to transform the sheer dimensions of
the public revelation of the private (Busby 2001).
 INTRODUCTION: THE PLURALITY OF PUBLICS 9

In her book, A Private Sphere (2010), Papacharissi makes the claim

that determining the domain of the public and the private is the essential
work of democracy itself. This process is complicated, however, by the
way that media has insinuated itself into the expression of both pub-
lic and private through its past prevalent uses in the domestic sphere
(we can think here of the way that television and radio have occupied
the private hearth of the home over different time periods [see Spigel
2001]) and its current expansion of its uses publicly (in its new mobility)
and privately (in the pervasive expansion of personalized devices of con-
nection and communication). Papacharissi’s work makes the significant
point that the contemporary moment, with its extensive use of digital
media, has produced the pathway to the public sphere through gate-
ways of the private to an even greater extent than these past avenues.
Drawing from Livingstone’s efforts at understanding the public and
the private in terms of media publics (Livingstone 2005), Papacharissi
attempts to demarcate the different ways in which profit, participation,
and governance move our sometimes personal alignments and interests
into different “planes of socio-economic activity on which private and
public domains overlap and separate” (2010, 36). Thus, our current
social media activity represents a complicated mélange of public and
private interest: while social media companies push us to reveal and
share in online culture in a way that produces vibrant and visible public
debates at times, this structure also enables the movement of quite per-
sonal information for aggregation and sale to potential advertisers. As
individuals, we are simultaneously moving in the private dimension as
consumers of social media, as commodities for re-sale, and as publicly
engaged citizens.
The private—when not referring to the non-collective, self-interested
drives of commercial culture—is getting harder and harder to discern
in the contemporary moment. Our forms of communication are now
only superficially personal in their subjection to surveillance and re-
communication for sometimes other ends. Contained in our investi-
gation of the plurality of publics is an effort to identify the conflicted
notion of public—and private—and thereby map and chart a spectrum
of public-like activities that are often making visible what used to be
thought of as private and personal. Because of this blending and recon-
figuring of the private and the publics, understanding contemporary
publics is actually a project making sense of the new dimensions of con-
temporary cultural politics.
10 P.D. MARSHALL

CONTEMPORARY PUBLICS
The conceit of this book is its apparent unity. Contemporary publics are
complex, immaterial entities that can attach and detach from territories,
technologies, spaces, and practices. When the Persona, Celebrity, Publics
Research Group, or PCP, originally embarked on hosting an international
symposium on this theme, it recognized that the idea of publics may have
many faces emerging from many disciplines. As this book moved from
those original abstracts, to presentations, to submissions, and to thematic
organization, we as editors were very aware that we had intersected and
engaged with thinkers and scholars from quite diverse backgrounds. The
heterogenous intellectual origins of our contributors resulted in valuable
and varied interventions in understanding contemporary publics. For
instance, this book contains several scholars who claim public relations as
their home discipline and practice. Athough public relations represents the
field where the concept public was first pluralized for strategic purposes, it
is clear from their engagement that our contributors have adopted a quite
intriguingly critical counterpoint to the discipline’s origins as the public
voice of institutions.
Approaching the topic from a radically different direction, academic
artists are well represented in this collection. Given how certain types of
artistic practice challenge public spaces and territorialization quite directly,
and that artistic practices represent discursive formations that are direct/
open appeals to being visible, heard, and public, the range of artistic dis-
ciplines represented—from animation, visual arts, dance, drama, design,
and film-making—define another collective home for the exploration of
the multiplicity of publics.
Perhaps because the various sub-disciplines of media, communication,
and literary studies have had a long intellectual history delineating private
and public value, as well as transforming collectivities/publics via their
work on audiences, they represent the largest group of contributors in
the collection. Our contributors from these areas (and others) are also
inflected in their approaches to publics by cultural studies. It is this tradi-
tion that provides some of the networks of theory that appear to make this
collective work conversantly rich and hopefully cohere in interesting ways.
As a result of the disciplinary diversity, one of the strengths of this col-
lection lies in its concerted efforts to make sense of publics. We are hop-
ing the sections themselves will help organize and define future thinking
about publics. The section introductions thus serve as the explanatory
 INTRODUCTION: THE PLURALITY OF PUBLICS 11

intermediaries as each member of our editorial team took the lead in

bringing the ideas together thematically.
Glenn D’Cruz has edited our first section, “Countering Neoliberal
publics: Screen and Space,” which is composed of five chapters and an
introductory essay entitled “The Beach Beneath The Street: Art and
Counterpublics.” Drawing from Warner’s ideas of counterpublics, situ-
ationists’ concept of détournement, and the conflicting politics of spectacle
and space, D’Cruz situates the place of artistic practice in the making and
shaping of publics. Along with the chapters in the section, he is able to
position the contradictory values of the screen in producing dominant
publics as well as the deployment of the screen in temporarily shifting the
meaning and politics of contested public spaces and postures.
There is no question that technology figures prominently in the shaping
of our conceptions of publics. Sharyn McDonald, through her introduc-
tory chapter, “Media Technologies and Publics,” maps our second sec-
tion entitled “Making and Shaping Publics: Discourse and Technology.”
McDonald, in an exploratory study of how non-governmental organiza-
tions (NGOs) engage with new communication technologies to pursue
their goals of social improvement, accurately situates technology’s utopian
quality within its equal capacity to lead to techniques of social control. In
her investigation of Facebook’s contested Internet.org philanthropic initia-
tive to connect disenfranchised populations with the Internet, McDonald
identifies the conflicting play of media and communication technologies
in producing a new global public sphere that simultaneously draws people
into the orbit of a private company’s pecuniary imperatives. The chapters
in this section deal with the potential of technology to produce new and
exciting publics, and also examine the capacity of technology to produce
new invasive, surveilled, and limiting public worlds.
Our final section, “Commodifying Public Intimacies,” deals with the
divides between the public and the private and the regular patterns of com-
modification that envelope our production of public figures and public
presentations. In her introductory essay, “Making Cents of Contemporary
Intimacies: The Private in the Public,” Katja Lee identifies and examines
the increasing uses made of intimacy in producing and sustaining contem-
porary publics. For Lee (drawing from Lauren Berlant), intimate publics
provide patterns of connection for people through the sense of feeling
and emotion. As the chapters in this section explore further, this intimate
public space has been commercialized for certain ends as it produces new
12 P.D. MARSHALL

publics couched in self-improvement and, in some instances, a form of

neoliberal self and agency.
Contemporary Publics, like the formation of publics themselves, is a
collective enterprise. Publics imply a connection beyond ourselves, a per-
haps fleeting bond around an idea that transcends the individual. Our
current generation of publics, their very plurality of presence, identifies a
transformed political culture where our attentions are sought and shifted,
our loyalties are drawn and positioned, and our citizenry is momentarily
solid but often fluid. The intellectual work in this book provides some of
the basic tools and concepts to understand the flows of these publics as
well as make sense of how publics expand and temporarily inhabit spaces
of all-inclusiveness even as they articulate the dangers of that ethereal but
powerful unity.

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Arnold, Matthew, and Jane Garnett. 2009 (1869). Culture and anarchy. Reissued.
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Bernays, Edward L. 2015 (1923). Crystallizing public opinion. Newburyport:
Open Road Media.
——— 1947. The engineering of consent. Annals of Social and Political
Science250(1): 113–120.
boyd, danah. 2010. Social network sites as networked publics. In A networked self,
ed. Zizi Papacharissi, 38–59. New York: Routledge.
Bruns, Axel, and Hallvard Moe. 2014. The structural forms of communications on
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Merja Mahrt, and Cornelius Puschmann, 16–27. New York: Peter Lang.
Busby, Robert. 2001. Defending the American presidency: Clinton and the Lewinsky
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Cutlip, Scott M. 1994. The unseen power: Public relations, a history, LEA’s commu-
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Emirbayer, Mustafa, and Mimi Sheller. 1999. Publics in history. Theory and Society
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 INTRODUCTION: THE PLURALITY OF PUBLICS 13

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Williams, Linda, ed. 2004. Porn studies. Durham: Duke University Press.
Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
fuera de proposito, señora Feliçia,
preguntar yo una cosa que jamás
pude llegar al cabo del
conosçimiento della: y es esta:
Affirman todos los que algo
entienden, que el uerdadero amor
nasçe de la razon: y si esto es
ansi, quál es la causa porque no
hay cosa mas desenfrenada en el
mundo, ni que menos se dexe
gouernar por ella? Feliçia le
respondió: Assi como essa
pregunta es más que de pastor:
assi era neçessario que fuesse
más que muger la que a ella
respondiesse, mas con lo poco
que yo alcanço, no me paresçe
que porque el amor tenga por
madre a la razon, se ha de pensar
que él se limite, ni gouierne por
ella. Antes has de presuponer,
que despues que la razon del
conosçimiento lo ha engendrado
las menos uezes quiere que
lo[1258] gouierne. Y es de tal
manera desenfrenado, que las
más de las ueces uiene en daño y
perjuyzio del amante, pues por la
mayor parte, los que bien aman,
se uienen a desamar a si mismos,
que es contra razon, y derecho de
naturaleza. Y esta es la causa,
porque le pintan çiego, y falto de
toda razon. Y como su madre
Venus tiene los ojos hermosos,
ansi él dessea siempre lo más
hermoso. Pintanlo desnudo,
porque el buen amor, ni puede
dissimularse con la razon, ni
encubrirse con la prudençia.
Pintanle con alas, porque
ueloçissimamente entra en el
anima del amante: y quanto más
perfecto es, con tanto mayor
ueloçidad y enagenamiento de si
mismo, va a buscar la persona
amada: por lo qual dezia
Euripides, que el amante biuia en
el cuerpo del amado. Pintanlo
ansi mismo flechando su arco,
porque tira derecho al coraçon,
como a proprio blanco, y tambien
porque la llaga de amor, es como
la que haze la saeta, o flecha en
la entrada, y profunda en lo
intrinseco del que ama. Es esta
llaga difficil de uer, mala de curar,
y muy tardia en el sanar. De
manera, Sireno, que no deue
admirarte, aunque el perfecto
amor sea hijo de razon, que no se
gouierne por ella, porque no hay
cosa que despues de nasçida
menos corresponda al origen de
adonde nasçio. Algunos dizen,
que no es otra la differençia entre
el amor uiçioso, y el que no lo es,
sino que el uno se gouierna por
razon, y el otro no se dexa
gouernar por ella, y engañanse:
porque aquel exçesso, y impetu
no es más propio del amor
deshonesto, que del honesto:
antes es vna propriedad de
qualquier genero de amor: saluo
que el uno haze la uirtud mayor y
en el otro acresçienta mas el
uiçio. Quién puede negar que en
el amor que uerdaderamente se
honesta, no se hallen
marauillosos y exçessiuos
effectos? Preguntenlo a muchos
que por solo el amor de Dios no
hizieron cuenta de sus personas,
ni estimaron por él perder la uida
(aunque sabido el premio que por
ello se esperaua, no dauan
mucho) pues quántos han
procurado consumir sus
personas, y acabar sus uidas,
inflamados del amor de la uirtud,
de alcançar fama gloriosa? Cosa
que la razon ordinaria no permite,
antes guia qualquiera effecto, de
manera que la uida pueda
honestamente conseruarse. Pues
quántos exemplos te podria yo
traer de muchos que por solo el
amor de sus amigos, perdieron la
uida, y todo lo más que con ella
se pierde: Dexemos este amor,
boluamos al amor del hombre con
la muger. Has de saber, que si el
amor que el amador tiene a su
dama (aunque inflamado en
desenfrenada affiçion) nasçe de
la razon, y del uerdadero
conosçimiento y juyzio: que por
solas sus uirtudes la juyzgue
digna de ser amada: que este tal
amor (a mi paresçer, y no me
engaño) no es illiçito, ni
deshonesto, porque todo el amor
desta manera, no tira a otro fin,
sino a querer la persona por ella
misma, sin esperar otro interesse
ni galardon de sus amores. Ansi
que esto es lo que me paresçe
que se puede responder a lo que
en este caso me has preguntado.
Sireno entonces le respondio: Yo
estoy, discreta señora, satisfecho
de lo que desseaua entender, y
ansi creo que lo estare (segun tu
claro juyzio) de todo lo que
quisiera saber de ti: aunque otro
entendimiento era menester más
abundante que el mio, para
alcançar lo mucho que tus
palabras comprehenden. Syluano,
que con Polidora estaua
hablando, dezia: Marauillosa cosa
es (hermosa Nimpha) ver lo que
sufre vn triste coraçon, que a los
trançes de amor está subjecto,
porque el menor mal que haze, es
quitarnos el juyzio, perder la
memoria de toda cosa, y henchir
la de solo él: buelue ageno de si
todo hombre, y proprio de la
persona amada. Pues qué hará el
desuenturado, que se vee
enemigo de plazer, amigo de
soledad, lleno de passiones,
çercado de temores, turbado de
spiritu, martyrizado del seso,
sustentado de esperança,
fatigado de pensamientos,
affligido de molestias,
traspassado de çelos, lleno
perpetuamente de sospiros,
enojos, y agrauios que jamás le
faltan? Y lo que más me marauillo
es que siendo este amor tan
intolerable y estremado en
crueldad, no quiera el spiritu
apartarse dél ni lo procure: mas
antes tenga por enemigo a quien
se lo aconseja. Bien está todo
(dixo Polidora) pero yo sé muy
bien que por la mayor parte los
que aman, tienen más de
palabras que de passiones. Señal
es essa (dixo Syluano) que no las
sabes sentir, pues no las puedes
creer, y bien paresçe que no has
sido tocado deste mal, ni plega a
Dios que lo seas: el qual ninguno
lo puede creer, ni la calidad, y
multitud de los males que dél
proçeden, sino el que partiçipa
dellos. ¿Cómo que piensas tú
(hermosa Nimpha) que
hallandose continuamente el
amante confusa la razon,
occupada la memoria, enagenada
la fantasia y el sentido del
exçessiuo amor fatigado, quedará
la lengua tan libre que pueda
fingir pasiones, ni mostrar otra
cosa de lo que siente? Pues no te
engañes en esso, que yo te digo
que es muy al reues de lo que tú
lo imaginas. Vesme aqui donde
estoy que verdaderamente
ninguna cosa ay en mi, que se
pueda gouernar por razon, ni aun
la podrá auer en quien tan ageno
estuuiere de su libertad como yo:
porque todas las subiectiones
corporales dexan libre (a lo
menos) la voluntad, mas la
subjection de amor es tal, que la
primera cosa que haze, es
tomaros possesion della, y
quieres tú, pastora, que forme
quexas, y finja sospiros, el que
desta manera se vee tratado?
Bien paresçe en fin que estás
libre de amor, como yo poco ha te
dezia. Polidora le respondio: yo
conozco, Syluano, que los que
aman, reçiben muchos trabajos, y
affliçiones, todo el tiempo que no
alcançan lo que dessean: pero
despues de conseguida la cosa
desseada, se les buelue en
descanso y contentamiento. De
manera que todos los males que
passan, más proceden del
desseo, que de amor que tengan
a lo que dessean. Bien paresçe
que hablas en mal que no tienes
experimentado (dixo Syluano)
porque el amor de aquellos
amantes cuyas penas çessan
despues de auer alcançado lo
que dessean, no proçede su amor
de la razon, sino de un apetito
baxo y deshonesto. Seluagia,
Belisa y la hermosa Ciuthia,
estauan tratando, quál era la
razon, porque en absencia las
más de las uezes se resfriaua el
amor. Belisa no podia creer que
por nadie passasse tan gran
deslealtad, diziendo: que pues
siendo muerto el su Arsileo, y
estando bien segura de no uerle
más, le tenía el mismo amor que
quando biuia, que ¿cómo era
possible, ni se podia suffrir, que
nadie oluidasse en absençia los
amores, que algun tiempo
esperasse ver? La Nimpha
Ciuthia le respondio: no podré,
Belisa, responderte con tanta
sufiçiençia como por uentura la
materia lo requeria, por ser cosa
que no se puede esperar del
ingenio de vna Nimpha como yo.
Mas lo que a mi me paresçe es
que quando uno se parte de la
presençia de quien quiere bien la
memoria le queda por ojos: pues
solamente con ella uee lo que
dessea. Esta memoria tiene cargo
de representar al entendimiento lo
que contiene en sí, y del
entenderse la persona que ama,
uiene la uoluntad, que es la
terçera potentia del ánima, a
engendrar el desseo mediante el
qual tiene el ausente pena por uer
aquel que quiere bien. De manera
que todos estos effectos se
deriuan de la memoria, como de
una fuente, donde nasçe el
prinçipio del desseo. Pues aueys
de saber aora, hermosas
pastoras, que como la memoria
sea una cosa, que cuanto más va,
más pierde su fuerça y uigor
oluidandose de lo que le
entregaron los ojos: ansi tanbien
lo pierden las otras potençias,
cuyas obras en ella tenian su
prinçipio, de la misma manera
que a los rios se les acabaria su
corriente, si dexassen de manar
las fuentes adonde nasçen. Y si
como esto se entiende en el que
parte se entendiera tambien en el
que queda. Y pensar tú, hermosa
pastora, que el tiempo no curaria
tu mal, si dexasses el remedio dél
en manos de la sábia Feliçia, será
muy gran engaño: porque
ninguno ay, a quien ella no dé
remedio, y en el de amores más
que en todos los otros. La sábia
Feliçia, que aunque estaua algo
apartada, oyó lo que Cinthia dixo,
le respondio: No seria pequeña
crueldad poner yo el remedio, de
quien tanto lo ha menester, en
manos de medio tan espacioso,
como es el tiempo. Que puesto
caso que algunas uezes no lo
sea, en fin, las enfermedades
grandes, si otro remedio no tienen
sino el suyo, se an de gastar tan
despaçio que primero que se
acaben, se acabe la uida de quien
las tiene. Y porque mañana
pienso entender en lo que toca al
remedio de la hermosa
Felismena, y de toda su
compañia, y los rayos del dorado
Apollo paresce que uan ya dando
fin a su jornada, será bien que
nosotros lo demos a nuestra
platica, y nos uamos a mi
aposento, que ya la çena pienso
que nos está aguardando. Y ansi
se fueron en casa de la gran
sábia Feliçia, donde hallaron ya
las mesas puestas, debaxo de
unos uerdes parrales que estauan
en un jardin que en la casa auia.
[1259] Y acabando de çenar, la
sábia Feliçia rogo a Felismena
que contasse alguna cosa, ora
fuesse hystoria, o algun
acresçimiento, que en la prouinçia
de Vandalia uuiesse sucçedido.
Lo qual Felismena hizo, y con
muy gentil graçia començo a
contar lo presente:
En tiempo del ualeroso infante
don Fernando, que despues fue
Rey de Aragon, uuo un cauallero
en España llamado Rodrigo de
Naruaez: cuya uirtud y esfuerço
fue tan grande, que ansi en la
guerra, como en la paz alcançó
nonbre muy prinçipal entre todos
los de su tienpo, y señaladamente
se mostró quando el dicho señor
infante ganó de poder de los
moros la çiudad de Antequera:
dando a entender en muchas
empresas y hechos de armas que
en esta guerra sucçedieron, un
animo muy entero, vn coraçon
inuençible, y una liberalidad,
mediante la qual el buen capitan
no solo es estimado de su gente:
mas aun la agena haze suya. A
cuya causa meresçio que
despues de ganada aquella tierra
en recompensa (aunque desygual
a sus exçelentes hechos) se le
dio la alcaydia y defensa della. Y
junto a esto, se le dió tambien la
de Alora, donde estuuo lo más del
tiempo, con çinquenta hidalgos
escogidos a sueldo del rey, para
defensa y seguridad de la fuerça.
Los quales con el buen gouierno
de su capitan emprendian muy
ualerosas empresas en defençion
de la fe christiana, saliendo con
mucha honra dellas, y
perpetuando su fama con los
señalados hechos que en ellos
hazian. Pues como sus animos
fuessen tan enemigos de la
oçiosidad, y el exerçiçio de las
armas fuese tan acçepto al
coraçon del ualeroso Alcayde,
vna noche del uerano, cuya
claridad y frescura de un blando
viento combidaua a no dexar de
gozalla, el Alcayde con nueue de
sus caualleros, porque los demas
quedassen en guarda de la fuerça
armados a punto de guerra, se
salieron de Alora, por uer si los
moros sus fronteros se
descuydauan, y confiados en ser
de noche, passauan por algun
camino, de los que çerca de la
villa estauan. Pues yendo los
nueue caualleros y su capitan
ualeroso con todo el secreto
possible, y con muy gran cuydado
de no ser sentidos, llegaron a
donde el camino por do yua se
repartia en dos, y despues de
tener su consejo, acordaron de
repartirse çinco por cada uno, con
tal orden que si los unos se
uiessen en algun aprieto, tocando
una corneta, serian socorridos de
los otros. Y desta manera el
Alcayde, y los quatro dellos
echaron a la vna mano, y los
otros çinco a la otra, los quales
yendo por el camino, hablando en
diuersas cosas y desseando cada
vno dellos hallar en qué emplear
su persona, y señalarse, como
cada dia acostunbrauan hazer,
oyeron no muy lexos de si vna
boz de hombre que
suauissimamente cantaua, y de
quando en quando daua vn
suspiro, que del alma le salia, en
el qual daua muy bien a entender
que alguna passion enamorada le
occupaua el pensamiento. Los
caualleros que esto oyeron, se
meten entre un arboleda que
cerca del camino auia, y como la
luna fuesse tan clara que el dia no
lo era más, uieron uenir por el
camino donde ellos yuan un moro
tan gentil hombre y bien tallado,
que su persona daua bien a
entender que deuia ser de gran
linaje y esfuerço: uenia en un
gran cauallo ruoçio rodado,
uestida una marlota y albornoz de
damasco carmesi, con rapaçejos
de oro, y las labores dél çercadas
de cordonçillos de plata. Traya en
la cinta un hermoso alfanje con
muchas borlas de seda y oro, en
la cabeça una toca Tunezi de
seda y algodon listada de oro y
rapaçejos de lo mismo, la qual
dandole muchas bueltas por la
cabeça le seruia de ornamento y
defensa de su persona. Traya una
adarga en el braço yzquierdo muy
grande, y en la derecha mano vna
lança de dos hierros. Con tan
gentil ayre, y continente uenia el
enamorado moro, que no se
podia más dessear, y aduertiendo
a la cançion que dezia, oyeron
que el romançe (aunque en
arabigo le dixesse) era este:

En Cartama me he criado,
nasçi en Granada primero,
mas fuy de Alora frontero,
y en Coyn enamorado.
Aunque en Granada nasçi,
y en Cartama me crié,
en Coyn tengo mi fe,
con la libertad que di,
 alli biuo adonde muero,
y estoy do está mi cuydado,
y de Alora soy frontero,
y en Coyn enamorado.

Los cinco caualleros que quiça de

las passiones enamoradas tenian
poca experiençia, o ya que la
tuuiessen, tenian más ojo al
interesse que tan buena presa les
prometia, que a la enamorada
cançion del moro, saliendo de la
emboscada, dieron con gran
impetu sobre él; mas el valiente
moro que en semejantes cosas
era esperimentado (aunque
entonces el amor fuesse señor de
sus pensamientos) no dexó de
boluer sobre sí con mucho animo,
y con la lança en la mano,
comiença a escaramuçar con
todos los çinco christianos, a los
quales muy en breue dió a
conosçer que no era menos
ualiente que enamorado. Algunos
dizen que uinieron a él uno a uno,
pero los que han llegado al cabo
con la uerdad desta historia, no
dizen sino que fueron todos
juntos, y es razonable cosa de
creer que para prendelle yrian
todos, y que quando uiessen que
se defendia, se apartarian los
quatro. Como quiera que sea, él
los puso en tanta neçessidad que
derribando los tres, los otros dos
cometian con grandissimo animo,
y no era menester poco segun el
ualiente aduersario que tenían,
porque puesto caso que
anduuiesse herido en un muslo,
aunque no de herida peligrosa, no
era su esfuerço de manera que
aun las heridas mortales le
pudiessen espantar, pues auiendo
perdido su lança, puso las piernas
al cauallo, haziendo muestra de
huyr: los dos caualleros lo
seguian, y él buelue a passar
entrellos como un rayo, y en
llegando a donde estaua uno de
los tres quél auia derribado, se
dexó colgar del cauallo, y
tomando la lança se boluio a
endereçar con gran ligereza en la
silla. A esta hora, vno de los dos
escuderos tocó el cuerno, y él se
vino a ellos, y los traya de manera
que si aquella hora el ualeroso
Alcayde no llegara, lleuaran el
camino de los tres compañeros
que en el campo estauan
tendidos. Pues como el Alcayde
llegó, y vido que ualerosamente el
moro se combatia tuuolo en
mucho, y desseó en extremo
prouarse con él, y muy
cortesemente le dixo: Por çierto,
cauallero, no es vuestra valentia y
esfuerço de manera que no se
gane mucha honra en uenceros, y
si esta la fortuna me otorgasse no
ternia mas que pedille: mas
aunque sé el peligro a que me
pongo con quien tan bien se sabe
defender, no dexaré de hazello,
pues que ya en el acometello no
puede dexar de ganarse mucho.
Y diziendo esto, hizo apartar los
suyos, poniendose el vençido por
premio del uencedor. Apartados
que fueron, la escaramuça entre
los dos ualientes caualleros se
començo. El ualeroso Naruaez
desseaua la victoria, porque la
valentia del Moro le acresçentaua
la gloria que con ella esperaua. El
esforçado Moro, no menos que el
Alcayde la desseaua, y no con
otro fin, sino de conseguir el de su
esperança. Y ansi andauan los
dos tan ligeros en el herirse y tan
osados en acometerse, que si el
cansancio passado y la herida
que el Moro tenía no se lo
estoruara, con dificultad uuiera el
Alcayde victoria de aquel hecho.
Mas esto, y el no poder menearse
su cauallo, muy claramente se la
prometian, y no porque en el
Moro se conosçiesse punto de
couardia, mas como uio que sola
esta batalla le yua la vida, la qual
él trocara por el contentamiento
que la fortuna entonçes le
negaua, se esforço quanto pudo,
y poniendose sobre los estriuos,
dió al Alcayde vna gran lançada
por ençima del adarga. El qual
reçebido aquel golpe, le
respondio con otro en el braço
derecho, y atreuiendose en sus
fuerças si a braços uiniessen,
arremetió con él, y con tanta
fuerça le abraçó que sacandolo
de la silla, dió con él en tierra
diziendo: Cauallero, date por mí
uençido, si más no estimas serlo,
que la vida en mis manos tienes.
Matarme (respondio el Moro) está
en tu mano como dizes, pero no
me hará tanto mal la fortuna que
pueda ser vençido, sino de quien
mucho ha que me he dexado
vençer, y este solo contento me
queda de la prision a que mi
desdicha me ha traydo. No miró el
Alcayde, tanto en las palabras del
moro, que por entonçes le
preguntasse a qué fin las dezia,
mas vsando de aquella clemençia
que el uençedor ualeroso suele
usar con el desamparado de la
fortuna, lo ayudó a leuantar, y el
mismo le apretó las llagas, las
quales no eran tan grandes que le
estoruassen a subir en su cauallo,
y assi todos juntos con la presa
tomaron el camino de Alora. El
Alcayde lleuaua siempre en el
moro puestos los ojos,
paresçiendole de gentil talle y
disposiçion, acordauase de lo que
le auia uisto hazer, paresçiale
demasiada tristeza la que lleuaua
para un animo tan grande, y
porque tambien se iuntauan a
esto algunos sospiros, que dauan
a entender más pena de la que se
podia pensar que cupiera en
honbre tan ualiente, y
queriendose informar mejor de la
causa desto le dixo: Cauallero,
mira que el prisionero que en la
prision pierde el animo, auentura
el derecho de la libertad, y que en
las cosas de la guerra, se an de
reçebir las aduersas con tan buen
rostro, que se merezca por esta
grandeza de animo gozar de las
prosperas, y no me paresçe que
estos sospiros corresponden al
ualor y esfuerço que tu persona
ha mostrado, ni las heridas son
tan grandes, que se auentura la
uida, la qual no has mostrado
tener en tanto, que por la honra
no dexasses de oluidalla. Pues si
otra ocasion te da tristeza, dimela,
que por la fe de cauallero te juro,
que use contigo de tanta amistad
que jamas te puedas quexar de
auermelo dixo. El moro oyendo
las palabras del Alcayde, las
quales arguyan un animo grande
y magnanimo, y la offerta que le
auia hecho de ayudallo,
paresciole discreçion muy grande
no encubrille la causa de su mal,
pues sus palabras le dauan tan
grande esperança de remedio, y
alçando el rostro que con el peso
de la tristeza lo lleuaua inclinado,
le dixo: ¿Cómo te llamas
cauallero, que tanto esfuerço me
pones y sentimiento muestras
tener de mi mal? Esto no te
negaré yo, dixo el Alcayde, a mi
me llaman Rodrigo de Naruaez,
soy Alcayde de Alora y
Antequera: tengo aquellas dos
fuerças por el Rey de Castilla mi
señor. Quando el moro le oyó
esto, con un semblante algo más
alegre que hasta alli, le dixo: En
extremo me huelgo, que mi mala
fortuna traya un descuento tan
bueno, como es auerme puesto
en tus manos, de cuyo esfuerço y
uirtud muchos dias ha que soy
informado, y aunque más cara me
costasse la experiençia, no me
puedo agrauiar, pues como digo,
me desagrauia uerme en poder
de una persona tan prinçipal. Y
porque ser uençido de ti me
obliga a tenerme en mucho, y que
de mí no se entienda flaqueza sin
tan gran occasion que no sea en
mi mano dexar de tenella,
suplicote por quien eres que
mandes apartar tus caualleros,
para que entiendas que no el
dolor de las heridas, ni la pena de
uerme preso, es causa de mi
tristeza. El Alcayde oyendo estas
razones al moro tuuolo en mucho,
y porque en extremo desseaua
informarse de su sospecha,
mandó a sus caualleros que
fuessen algo delante, y quedando
solos los dos, el moro sacando
del alma un profundo sospiro,
dixo desta manera: Valeroso
Alcayde, si la experiençia de tu
gran uirtud no me la uuiese el
tienpo puesto delante los ojos,
muy escusadas serian las
palabras que tu uoluntad me
fuerça a dezir, ni la cuenta que te
pienso dar de mi uida, que cada
hora es çercada de mil
desassosiegos y sospechas; la
menor de las quales te paresçera
peor que mil muertes. Mas como
de una parte me assegure lo que
digo, y de la otra que eres
cauallero y que o auras oydo, ó
avrá passado por ti semeiante
passion que la mia, quiero que
sepas que a mi me llaman
Abindarraez el moço, a differençia
de un tio mio, hermano de mi
padre, que tiene el mesmo
apellido. Soy de los abençerrajes
de Granada, en cuya desuentura
aprendi a ser desdichado, y
porque sepas quál fue la suya, y
de ay uengas a entender lo que
se puede esperar de la mia:
sabras que uuo en Granada un
linaje de caualleros llamados
abençerrajes; sus hechos y sus
personas ansi en esfuerço para la
guerra, como en prudençia para
la paz, y gouierno de nuestra
republica eran el espejo de aquel
reyno. Los uiejos eran del consejo
del Rey, los moços exerçitauan
sus personas en actos de
caualleria siruiendo a las damas y
mostrando en sí la gentileza y
ualor de sus personas. Eran muy
amados de la gente popular, y no
mal quistos entre la prinçipal,
aunque en todas las buenas
partes que un cauallero deue
tener se auentajassen a todos los
otros. Eran muy estimados del
Rey, nunca cometieron cosa en la
guerra ni el consejo, que la
experiençia no correspondiesse a
lo que dellos se esperaua, en
tanto grado era loada su ualentia,
libertad y gentileza, que se trajo
por exemplo, uo auer abençerraje
couarde, escasso, ni de mala
disposiçion. Eran maestros de los
trajes, de las inuençiones, la
cortesia y seruiçio de las damas
andaua en ellos en su uerdadero
punto, nunca abençerraje siruio
dama de quien no fuesse
fauoresçido, ni dama se tuuo por
digna deste nombre que no
tuuiesse abençerraje por seruidor.
Pues estando ellos en esta
prosperidad y honra y en la
reputaçion que se puede dessear,
uino la fortuna embidiosa del
descanso y contentamiento de los
hombres, a deriballos de aquel
estado, en el más triste y
desdichado que se puede
imaginar, cuyo prinçipio fue auer
el Rey hecho çierto agrauio a dos