Daniel Dayan Archives - Public Seminar

Feature

My Arrest in Poland

The authorities hadn’t expected an American to be at this obscure performance

July 7, 2021 • by Jeffrey C. Goldfarb

_____ “At the time the circumstances of my arrest in Poland seemed trivial. I hardly thought about them afterward. But now, when I consider the fall of 1989, and the fall of communism, my little run in with the Polish authorities seems highly suggestive of how things were then and what ...

Democracy

On Media Mess and Its Alternatives

Islands of Totalitarianism and Democracy continued

February 1, 2019 • by Jeffrey C. Goldfarb

When people meet in their differences, as equals, develop a capacity to meet and talk in the presence of each other, and develop a capacity to act together in concert, they constitute political power, an island of democracy. For Hannah Arendt, in fact, this is political power in contrast to ...

Democracy

From “Islands of Democracy” to “Islands of Totalitarianism”

Notes on my conversation with Daniel Dayan about the disturbing events in France and the United States, and beyond

January 18, 2019 • by Jeffrey C. Goldfarb

We met in our favorite Parisian workplace, La Caféothèque, and then caught up with each other elsewhere over a lunch and a dinner. We’re working on our ongoing collaborative writing project, now influenced by recent events in France and the United States. We disussed papers he is developing on a theory ...

From “Islands of Democracy” to “Islands of Totalitarianism”

Feature

My Arrest in Poland

Reflections on the significance of an apparently trivial event

December 21, 2018 • by Jeffrey C. Goldfarb

“At the time the circumstances of my arrest in Poland seemed trivial. I hardly thought about them afterward. But now, when I consider the fall of 1989, and the fall of communism, my little run in with the Polish authorities seems highly suggestive of how things were then and what ...

Feature

Intellectuals—Can’t Live With Them, Can’t Live Without Them, Part I

Re-considering the democratic roles of the intellectual as revealed this week in Public Seminar

November 17, 2017 • by Jeffrey C. Goldfarb

Intellectuals have the knowledge and the experience required for people themselves to govern well. I am thinking of this today as I read the news and as I think about our work here at Public Seminar, drawing on my own long investigation of the sociology of intellectuals. My work on intellectuals ...

Education

The New Authoritarianism and the Structural Transformation of the Mediated Public Sphere II

The Sphere of Publics and its Bifurcation

August 19, 2017 • by Jeffrey C. Goldfarb

As our seminar on authoritarianism and public life progressed, we focused on the work of Daniel Dayan and Elihu Katz, and Joshua Meyrowitz to develop an understanding of mediated public life. Their sociology of media is a sociology of mediated interactions, rather than studies of the media, i.e. major newspapers, ...

The New Authoritarianism and the Structural Transformation of the Mediated Public Sphere II

Reviews

Solidarity, and the Rise and Fall of the Public Sphere

A Review of Daniel Dayan and Elihu Katz’s Media Events

April 18, 2017 • by Jeffrey C. Goldfarb

Twenty-five years after its publication, Dayan and Katz’s classic study of ceremonial television, Media Events, has continued relevance for understanding the politics of media. With the proliferation of cable television and digital media explosion, television is no longer the hegemonic media form it once was, and the media events they ...

Solidarity, and the Rise and Fall of the Public Sphere

Feature

Paris Terror Events and the Dramaturgies of the Aftermath

January 10, 2017 • by Public Seminar

Daniel Dayan is a fellow of the Marcel Mauss Institute (School of Advanced Study in the Social Sciences) and a professor at the Levinas European Institute. Dayan has been Research director at CNRS-Paris, and a visiting professor at Sciences-Po and the universities of Stanford, Geneva, Tel Aviv, and Oslo. He has also been an Annenberg scholar at the University of Pennsylvania, and for many years a ...