Sunday, October 9, 2016

Agora And Pynx

Agora and Pynx:
Definitions: Both are settings and forms of public discourse. Both are considered small and intimate settings in which anyone is allowed to speak and add to the discussion. In an agora, there is no form of amplification for any single member. All members find themselves even, and are able to discuss in an open and diverse setting. In a Pynx, while all are still allowed to take part, there is a central speaker who's voice is amplified to be heard by the rest. In this case, the single speaker has the floor in terms of the discussion.

Example from the text:

Agora: " The Athenian agora models metaphoric marketplace of ideas, an open and diverse (though not in terms of class and gender) space of mulitple activities, including trade, laws, entertainment, and politics."

Pynx: The Pynx, Athens' theater of democracy, calls forth our attachments to the New England town meeting on the village square or the public forum. A sloped, bowl-shaped theater, literally "a place for seeing," the architecture of the Pynx amplfied the one voice addressing the seated".

Passage Contextualizing the terms from the text:

"Despite the significant differences in methods and purposes of the agora and Pynx, we want to underline that they both privilege words in the form of embodied voices. Contemporary techno-industrial culture shares that privileging. When people imagine the ideal public sphere as the seat of civic life, the soul of participatory democracy, whether it be the marketplace of ideas wherein multiple knots of private conversations in coffee houses and salons add up to a public, or town meetings wherein anyone can say his or her piece, the public sphere is imagined as a place of embodied voices, of people talking to each other, of conversation." (186). This contextualizes the agora and Pynx as similar in ways to the public sphere. They both represent forms of public discourse in which people are having a conversation about what is to be done. There is a sharing of ideas and these ideas are embodied by the voices of those giving them.

Works Cited:

DeLuca, Kevin M., and Jennifer Peeples. "From Public Sphere to Public Screen: Democracy, Activism, and the 'Violence' of Seattle." Critical Studies in Media 

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