Race And Ethnicity In Latin America Book

In The Fall of Public Man, Richard Sennett (1976) argues that the public realm now has become a mere formality (3) and that the private life has become interoriorized (4), leading to confusion between intimate life and public life (5). Thus, there is a question for the "authentic" self rather than a public of presenting ideas (8). Sennett argues that this is a function of changes in the 19th century. Before this time, public relations were more about "theatricality" than "representation" of the self, the former of which Sennett sees as more friendly to public life (37). According to Sennett, people understood publicity as presenting and theatrical in a sense in the 18th century, but the 19th and 20th centuries brought upon a "ideology of intimacy" (259) with "openness of expression" (262). Thus, we've started to judge character and "authenticity" in our leaders who "can dramatize his own motivations" (265).