PRACTICING RHETORIC BEYOND THE DANGEROUS DREAMS OF DELIBERATIVE DEMOCRACY: ENGAGING A WORLD OF VIOLENCE AND PUBLIC SCREENS.

The author analyzes the views of professor Alan Gross on public sphere. He notes that Gross posits a platonized Jurgen Habermas and admonishes rhetoricians to understand Habermas aright in the service of restoring a mythical Golden Age of the public sphere and deliberative democracy. He claims that the public sphere valorizes by Gross has never and can never exist, despite the purported concern with the world of the people's everyday experience. He states that Gross's view on public sphere sacrifices rhetoric on the altar of moral idealism.