Grace O'Donnell Blog 9 Public v. Private

Sometimes in this class, it felt like nothing was private. We were  often asked to reveal ourselves in ways other classes with other instructors never would have asked us to do. Directly asking us to identify our race in the first week seemed prying then, but now it seems completely normal for our community. There is an openness to 222 that doesn't exist in other places. However, thinking about it now, I wonder if what actually happened is that our class went from being a public institution of the school to being something private meant for only us. The public sphere is a place where nothing is intimate, things are on display, and people are often putting on acts. The private sphere is what is real.

When I think about the nation and public v. private, the first thing I think of are terrorist attacks. Why terrorism is so scary is that it's an attack on what is private. Families are destroyed when people doing normal things like going to work or running in a marathon are attacked. Fear becomes ubiquitous, a constant element of the public and private parts of life.War is a public act, and a soldier is a public representation of the nation. Of course ordinary citizens are members of a nation, and the nation influences their lives. However, they are not formal representations of the nation in everything they do. Some things are private in people's lives, like family and home, and these things are what are targeted by terrorism.