Slovene Suplement, Vol. 14 - 2007, Suplement

Nomadic Public

Mojca Pajnik, pages: 39-54

The article discusses implications of mobile phoning for the changes of the public space. Through the optics of critique of consumer society, advertising practices and interests of economic and political lobbies it discusses private uses of mobile phones as a practice of changing the public space: first, by the intrusion of “nomadic intimacy,” and, second, with practices of the captured public or the alienated audience. Mobile practicing of privacy and intimacy in the public brings forth a situation when the individual finds herself in a less intensive relation to the public space and the activities happening therein or, to say it differently, she practices intimate relations in the public via the mobile phone. The intrusion of mobile unrelated discourses into the public as a process of colonization of the public sphere produces the erosion of activities in the public space where observers of mobile communication are dragged into intimate relationships. According to the second interpretation mobile phoning amplifies subjectivisation and individualization of the public space when this is no longer a space of joint venture, but becomes a fragmented system of individualized communications of the captured public which, although present in the public space, is directed outside of it. The third kind of change of the public space is theorized in the article as the theatrical renewal of the public space. This is analysed taking into consideration practices of new social movements as »nomadic public«.

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