"Sometimes a Community and sometimes a Battlefield": From the Comedic Public Sphere to the Commons of Speakers' Corner

Abstract

Speakers’ Corner in London is perceived as a space in which people speak freely without state interference; it is also popularly known as a place in which eccentrics and others, without access to mainstream media, orate. In this paper I explore Speakers’ Corner as a discursive space, seeking to find a way through its polarised representations as a free space of serious and important deliberation and as a degraded trivial public sphere. I do so through the concept of the comedic public, which loosely draws upon Bakhtin’s work on the carnival but also differs in significant ways. At the same time I argue that Speakers’ Corner should not just be read or evaluated in terms of the public speech generated; the Corner is also a place in which communities form and strangers interact with others in counternormative ways. I argue that these social dimensions, often neglected, constitute an important aspect of the Corner’s practice; they are also dimensions generated and incited by the Corner’s discursive qualities. To illustrate this further I consider the expression of emotion, engagement in combative debate, and heckling as junctures through which social interactions arise. Finally, I suggest the social dimension to the Corner might productively be understood through the concept of the commons.