Toward the Formation of The Public in a Marginalized Communicative Culture: Analyzing The Long Road of Woman's Memory

Abstract

This study analyzes Jane Addams’s contribution to an enduring topic: how marginalized people join the public from beyond political, socio-economic, cultural, and gendered barriers. I study Addams’s book, The Long Road of Woman’s Memory (1916b), which discusses the seemingly irrational devil baby case in Chicago. Using the concept of public and hidden transcripts and the method of cultural discourse analysis, I contextualize the book within the theorizing around the concept of the public by Addams’s contemporaries, Gabriel Tarde and Robert E. Park. The analysis shows that Addams’s discussion aligns with three conceptual aspects of the formation of the public. First, Addams describes the awakening of consciousness about a collectively relevant concern, and second, the emergence of interaction about the topic. Third, Addams constructs a conceptual distinction between two functions of memory, highlighting independent critical judgment as the divider between the two, which is the decisive factor that Park argues distinguishes the public from the crowd. Addams’s writing contains an unusual perspective in that she discusses development toward the formation of something like the public in a marginalized communicative culture. Instead of focusing on performative and dramatic public debate, Addams addresses discreet genres of communication and illustrates their public relevance.