Large and small scale forms of personhood

This article describes how forms of mediation are segmented into mediatized forms through links among discursive and commodity-based practices. In obscuring these practices, the “mass media” construct obscures the characteristics of cultural forms that emerge and spread through these practices. The paper focuses on the processes through which the cultural form known as “the liberal subject” was re-scaled through mediatized practices in early modern Europe, a consideration of which clarifies the causes underlying its present day anxieties.