Neutering Addison and Steele: Aesthetic Failure and the Spectatorial Public Sphere Author(s): Anthony Pollock Source: ELH, Vol. 74, No. 3 (Fall, 2007), pp. 707-734 Published by: Johns Hopkins University Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/30029578 Accessed: 19-11-2015 08:31 UTC REFERENCES Linked references are available on JSTOR for this article: http://www.jstor.org/stable/30029578?seq=1&cid=pdf-reference#references_tab_contents You may need to log in to JSTOR to access the linked references. Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at http://www.jstor.org/page/ info/about/policies/terms.jsp JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. Johns Hopkins University Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to ELH. http://www.jstor.org This content downloaded from 150.135.239.97 on Thu, 19 Nov 2015 08:31:14 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions NEUTERING ADDISON AND STEELE: AESTHETIC FAILURE AND THE SPECTATORIALPUBLIC SPHERE BY ANTHONYPOLLOCK More than four decades after its initial publication, Jiirgen Habermas'sStructural Transformation of the Public Sphere remains an unavoidablestarting point for studies of early eighteenth-century print culture. For Habermas,of course, the development of English coffee-house culture and its periodicalpress markedthe emergence of a potentiallyegalitarian discursive space, a realm governed more by the rationalforce of the better argumentthan by the institutional force of existing power relations.' Extending Habermas'sargument, historianLawrence Klein has recentlyargued that figureslike Anthony Ashley Cooper (Third Earl of Shaftesbury),Joseph Addison, and RichardSteele promotedan urbaneethos of sociabilitythrough their ideal of polite conversation,a form of dialogue that offered a "nor- mative frameworkfor human relationssince its conventionsimplied the values of freedom, equality,activity, pleasure, and restraint."2For Habermas'scritics, on the other hand, this interpretationof the post- Restorationpublic sphere is compromised:either by the blind spots in Habermas'stheory itself-especially regardingissues of gender and class-or by the fact that Habermas'sEnlightenment publicness was managedby preciselythose empowered Englishmenwhose interests it was supposed to scrutinize.3But both Habermasiansand their op- ponents leave unquestionedthe claim that post-RestorationEnglish writers imaginedtheir public sphere as a form of dialogic,conversa- tionalsociability focused on "rational-criticalpublic debate."4Addison and Steele, however,insisted that their paradigmaticperiodical The Spectator (1711-1714), despite its print dissemination, should be thought of as a vehicle for privatelyconsumed, surrogatevisuality-a spectatorialmodel of publicness.5 Addison and Steele's shift from a conversationalto a spectatorial model of print culture underminesrecent scholarlyconsensus about what these periodicalistshoped to achieve.6As a representativeread- ing, we can take Terry Eagleton'sview that Addison and Steele em- body the earliestexamples of criticism's"substantive social function," promotingsocial consolidationthrough their periodicalsby "codifying ELH 74 (2007) 707-734 c 2007 by The Johns HopkinsUniversity Press 707 This content downloaded from 150.135.239.97 on Thu, 19 Nov 2015 08:31:14 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions norms"and "regulatingpractices"; as such, the Spectatorialproject is imaginedto be that of "consciouslyeducating a heterogeneouspublic into the universalforms of reason, taste and morality."'7Though they would emphasizethe criticalfunction of the public sphere more than Eagleton does, Habermasianswould agree that Addison and Steele register the early eighteenth-centurydesire for a particularkind of ethical social order and that their texts reflect a confident effort at reform.Erin Mackiehas complicatedthe imageof Addisonand Steele as reformersby suggestingthat, to succeed in the market,the essayists "depend upon" the same disruptivesocioeconomic forces that they "warnagainst" in their papers; even so, Mackie still views Addison and Steele as deeply invested in getting readersto "do, say,like, and buy the right thing[s]."8 One task of this essay will be to reconcilethe longstandingidea of Addisonand Steele as promotersof Augustanvalues-decorum, good sense, politeness-with the almostcomplete absence in their work of characterswho exemplifythese values.9Critics often view Mr.Specta- tor, the eidolon of Addisonand Steele'speriodical, as a model of the polite sociabilityhe is taken to promote, a readingthat equates Mr. Spectatorwith his creators'public images. J. G. A. Pocock has noted that Addisonand Steele, like manyupwardly-mobile mercantile Whigs in early eighteenth-centuryEngland, wanted to distance themselves from "new types of personality"that provided easy targets for Tory propagandists,personalities whose status depended upon a tenuous credit economy that made them seem "unprecedentedlydangerous and unstable";as a result, Addisonand Steele often claimed cultural patrilineagefrom a kindof neo-classical"Roman mythology"--with Cato as a model-in orderto appear"self-mastered, stoic, andpublic."'a Mr. Spectatoroccasionally wants to be this kindof figure,but his behaviors and inclinationsare hardlythose of the stablesocial hero. In Spectator 131, Mr. Spectatoradmits he "doesnot love Jollityand what they call Good-Neighbourhood";he makes"a very unsociable Figure" during his visit to Sir Roger'scountry estate, and he resolvesto returnto London "inorder to be alone"amid anonymouscrowds (S, 2:20, 21). As read- ers' surrogateparticipants in the disorderlypublic sphere,Addison and Steele's personae characteristicallydo not intervene, they withdraw. Mr. Spectator repeatedly removes himself from urban scenes that threatento overwhelmhim. Even the editorialpersona of the Tatler, the slightlymore extrovertedIsaac Bickerstaff,offers a ratherlimited assessment of what spectatorialjudgment can achieve: he hopes his laborsas culturalcritic "canbut wear one Impertinenceout of human 708 NeuteringAddison and Steele This content downloaded from 150.135.239.97 on Thu, 19 Nov 2015 08:31:14 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Life, destroy a single Vice, or give a Morning'sChearfulness to an honest Mind,"as the minimalcondition of his not havingwritten "in vain" (T, 2:278). This perking up of the coffee-hour hardlymatches Eagleton'sdescription of Addison and Steele's "juridicaltechnology" bent on "scourgingdeviation and repressingthe transgressive."11 Perhaps we can better account for Addison and Steele's compli- cated relationshipto the supposedlydeviant elements in their culture by expandingon Mackie'sinsight that their periodicalpapers rely on the subversiveforces they want to contain. In fact, the papers col- laboratein the very productionor performanceof the disorderthey describe. Rather than encouragingsocial reform, the papers create an ideologicallyuseful image of the public sphere as beyond manage- ability.In the readingsthat follow,a blueprintfor their culturalproject emerges: the papers begin by depicting a public world in desperate need of regulation,but their subsequent attemptsto establishorder end up allegorizingthe failure, and even the illegitimacy,of their own disciplinaryefforts.12 In an apparentparadox, by establishingthe unmanageabilityof the public sphere, the papers attainwhat I would call their managerialmoment: the papers imply that social reform is not feasible, but they redeem that impossibilityby cultivatinga spec- tatorialethos that imaginesits public impotenceas both necessaryand unfortunate.As I hope to prove, the ideal of spectatorialneutrality or of "standingNeuter" is central to Addison and Steele's cultural project (S, 1:479). While previous readings emphasize Addison and Steele'sdesire to reformcontrary energies in earlyeighteenth-century England, I argue that the papers stage the failure of their public en- gagement in order to enable a privately-conductedneutralization (in the sense of "render[ing]ineffective") of their audience'simpulse to make ethics public.13Addison and Steele enforce a strict separation between an irremediablyantagonistic social realm and a compensatory private sphere of ethicallylegitimated spectatorship.In and through their periodicalessays, they develop an influential,aesthetic model of English publicness that theoreticallyassuages the violence it cannot practicallyprevent. I. VISION AND SOCIALORDER: THE SPECTATORIALPROJECT John Barrell has shown how eighteenth-centuryBritish writers hoped to containthe growingfragmentation of their society by offer- ing persuasiverepresentations of it as still unified.14As Barrellpoints out, only those who could be considered disinterestedwere deemed AnthonyPollock 709 This content downloaded from 150.135.239.97 on Thu, 19 Nov 2015 08:31:14 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions qualified to give an account of the social totality.Even magistrates and statesmen would not meet this standardof disinterestedness, since their perspectiveswere limited by the demandsof their specific occupations.To be reliable, the ideal spectator must be a property owner free from any particularemployment