PRIVATE LIVES, SECLUDED PLACES - PRIVACY AS POLITICAL POSSIBILITY

The theoretical writings that underpin contemporary liberal democracies have all, in varying form, stressed the value of privacy as fundamental to the realisation of a civilised society. Yet it is ever more evident that privacy is now so threatened as to be practically lost to us already. Unless we turn our attention to the task of rethinking the nature of our concern for privacy, and to the possibilities of its realisation and preservation, we may indeed fmd ourselves bereft of one of our most fundamental values. I make this claim in recognition of the fact that the condition of postmodernity is characterised by forces that would erode many of the spaces and places in which privacy was previously grounded.