This event took place on 18th May 2005
Berrill Lecture Theatre, The Open University, Walton Hall Campus, Milton Keynes, United Kingdom
"Almost every cultural change - from christianity to printing to psychoanalysis - has left a new sedimentary layer in the meaning of the public and private" (Michael Warner)".
This lecture will explore the changing fortunes of the public domain. The boundaries between the public, private and personal have become increasingly contested and blurred. In the process, we have become less clear about what constitutes a public domain and how we should act in it. How should the public interest be expressed? What sorts of institutions are needed to sustain it? Is there - and can there be - a distinctive conception of ?public service?? In this lecture, I will trace some of the shifts in the ways in which peoples and publics are constituted in contemporary policy and politics. It will also address some questions about the role of the ?public intellectual? in the public domain.
"Almost every cultural change - from christianity to printing to psychoanalysis - has left a new sedimentary layer in the meaning of the public and private" (Michael Warner)". 
Click below to play the event (59 minutes)