---

In Britain, the resistance to popular determination allowed by the financial construct of the public has been so successful that this term, public, must be re-read as politically paralyzing. The problem, our problem, is the public - which we are so often told will bring us together and provide for us - and it is this we must move beyond.

---

1. Introduction: We are not ´The Public´ 2. The Public as Financial Trust 3. The Public as Cultural Commonwealth 4. Public Participation as Debt Demand 5. Public Reflexivity as Political Foreclosure 6. The Arts of Public Value 7. Coda: On not Saving ´The Public´

---

Claire Westall is Lecturer in the Department of English and Related Literature at the University of York, UK. Previous works include Literature of an Independent England: Revisions of England, Englishness and English Literature (2013) edited with Michael Gardiner, and Cross-Gendered Voices: Appropriating, Resisting, Embracing (2012), edited with Rina Kim.

Michael Gardiner is Professor in the Department of English and Comparative Literary Studies at the University of Warwick, UK. His previous books include The Cultural Roots of British Devolution (2004), At the Edge of Empire (2008), The Return of England in English Literature (2012), and The Constitution of English Literature (2013).

---