Assembly & Public Sphere

Abstract

This article aims to grasp the social mode of Arendt's pedagogically relevant metaphor of an 'assembly around a table' as a specific way of thematizing the ambiguity of the public sphere from two different perspectives. From one perspective, I want to examine how 'assembly' can be grasped as a mode of being together. To do this, I will sketch 'assembly' with Juliane Rebentisch as a 'plurality event'. Here I encounter the problem that alteritarian, mutually elusive, and unfathomable approaches to self and world have to be permanently translated into each other. This in turn gives rise to the question of how to maintain plurality. From a second perspective, I will try to grasp this 'maintenance of plurality' performatively with Butler. Bodies assemble and claim their presence in a public space of appearance. But it is precisely through the indexicality resting in these bodily acts that a reference is made from a particular position to a universal – to making precarity, homosexuality, transgender, racism, etc. disappear.