The public: the triple contingency and the course of the story

Abstract

This article validates the concept of triple contingency as a premise to understand the role of public. This is accomplished in two steps. First, I define the triple contingency specific to the public. Second, I reconstruct the historical course of the narrative that made that triple contingency possible in three stages, namely, myth, tragedy and novel. In this way, I grand constitutive and constructive power to communicative relationships. And finally, I question the theoretical constructions based on the assumption of double contingency, in particular, those of Parsons or Habermas, the concept of information and the Sociology of Communication tradition.