step one of the major revise: filling in the backstory on two key figures, and the revelation that in a sense, this is a plot of absence. 200,000+ words of characters reacting to the invisible. which did more for me in terms of renewing my energy than the half-notebook of scribblings i brought back from paris. a body built around an invisible spine. lovely.
and yes, the quote below is relevant.
“In the Middle Ages, according to Jürgen Habermas, there was no public sphere, ‘in the sense of a separate realm distinguished from the private sphere.’ Publicity was simply a kind of ‘status attribute’ of those with power; it represented the power of the person rather than a sphere of social action. Indeed, it follows that there was no private sphere either. Rather, the whole notion of public and private emerged and was contested over the course of the early modern period. Public and private spheres emerged in the early seventeenth century when the resolution of the religious wars included the beginnings of both the administrative state and the idea of freedom of conscience. As freedom of conscience began to define private autonomy, the administrative state began to demarcate the private holdings of the prince from the public budget.
“At first glance, this scenario suggests a simple dichotomy opposing public and private, the French monarchy and the Republic of Letters, the power-based state and the conscience-centered individual. Habermas, however, contends that it was the zone of interaction between the state and the individual that formed the ground of an authentic public sphere, the realm of civil society and the public.” – Dena Goodman