Not to be too academic and out of touch with reality, I do think that Benedict Anderson's identification of the importance of the public sphere is, in fact, an accurate assessment of the way in which information has traditionally been disseminated to a community of people. Anderson explains in Imagined Communities that print culture - specifically the novel and the newspaper - was important for eighteenth-century nation building projects. Not only did these print cultures help to fix a vernacular language that would unite its reading population, but they also served to unite all peoples of a nation under what Anderson refers to as the imagined community of the nation. That is to say, even though all the members of a given nation do not know each other, they still have the same imaginary, or idea, of what that nation is, and believe themselves connected as a community.
It is in this way that I see Barack Obama playing particular importance in our nation, here and now. While the United States is clearly an already-formed nation state, the processes of nation building are ever-present and ever-pertinent. Our imaginary - or idea - of the American nation is not fixed, but rather is something that is flexible and malleable according to a wide set of factors, both political and social.
Although Anderson was writing in the eighteenth century before the advent of television and radio and thus was limited to print culture such as novels and newspapers, I don't think we can deny that television, radio, and of course the internet now plays a major role in the creation of our public sphere. It is in all these circuits where we see our Presidential candidates, such as Barack Obama, both presented (by themselves) and represented (by a third party source).
Due to the fact that he undeniably occupies our public sphere, Barack Obama, too, has the ability to enter into and alter our national imaginary. This is precisely how we can now understand his huge appeal to a wide audience. He is not simply a good speaker. He is not simply calm and cool-headed. He is not simply an admirable person. He is, in fact, changing our national imaginary of the United States.
Half, at least, of the population of the United States has found itself unhappy with the state of its nation and its leaders, excluding from membership into a national imaginary to which they could relate. We did not agree with Bush's policies, and so the idea we had of our nation was not only something at times embarrassing and shameful, but it was also something we felt was external to ourselves. We felt that we lived in our nation, but we did not believe in that nation. We did not feel a part of the imagined community of the American Nation.
What Barack has done is to allow us membership into that national imaginary once again. This is where his rhetoric is so important. Look at the quote at the top of this Obama webpage, to start: "I'm asking you to believe, not just in my ability to bring about real change in Washington... I'm asking you to believe in yours." Barack always encourages us, through mass media that allows him entry into the public sphere, to be active as individuals within a collectivity, that as individuals we can make a better nation. He presents us with new, radical ideas that change the way we conceive of US politics and policies.
All of this leads to a shift in the national imaginary of the United States. And that is precisely why Barack is so motivating, so moving, so exciting for so many people, even if they don't quite understand why. He is allowing them to participate in the creation of a new national imaginary - one of equality, stability, and more importantly, one that is different from the old conception of our nation.
The nation begins with the individual. By empowering us as individuals as he speaks in the public sphere, Barack is allowing us to build a new nation (national imaginary) based on a renewed sense of community and collectivity.
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