A Habermasian Literary Criticism

Criticism, 2004

Studies in Social and Political Thought, 2003

Jürgen Habermas has spent a long career developing a critical theory of reasoned communication, following Weber's idea concerning the negative aspects of rationalization in western society which places emphasis on technocratic or engineering solutions to problems in society. As the state gathers more power and resources to intervene in the lives of citizens (presumably for their benefit), citizens are less able to act on their own behalf to solve problems locally (i.e., the problem of the system colonizing the lifeworld). To assure reasoned communication and to preserve the lifeworld against the onslaught of instrumental rationality, Habermas locates the condition of reasoned communication within talk itself (by way of the validity claims). He extends this idea into political participation with the idea of deliberative democracy, whereby only the weight of the better argument prevails. Although primarily committed to critical theory, Habermas nevertheless borrows from Talcott Parsons' structural functionalist theory for its indispensable conceptualization of systems and normative solidarity. This tensionful mix of critical and technocratic-functional elements has been subject to criticism over the years, including the rise of postmodern theory which brings into doubt all modernist metanarratives seeking to conceptualize society in its totality. The paper ends with a consideration of how and to what extent Habermas's project withstands this postmodernist challenge.

International studies in philosophy, 2007

In his book, The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity, and especially in the “Excursus on Leveling the Genre Distinction between Philosophy and Literature” (pp. 185-210), Jürgen Habermas criticizes the work of Jacques Derrida. My aim in this paper is to show that this critique turns upon itself. Habermas accuses Derrida of effacing the distinctions between literature and philosophy. Derrida indeed works to subvert the distinction between fictional and argumentative writing, but in doing so he works with the genres he is mixing. (...) It is Habermas’ own insistence on subordinating all genres to argumentative rationality that truly effaces these genre distinctions.

Constellations, 2013

According to Jürgen Habermas, his Theory of Communicative Action offers a new account of the normative foundations of critical theory. Habermas’ motivating insight is that neither a transcendental nor a metaphysical solution to the problem of normativity, nor a merely hermeneutic reconstruction of historically given norms, is sufficient to clarify the normative foundations of critical theory. In response to this insight, Habermas develops a novel account of normativity, which locates the normative demands of critical theory within the socially instituted practice of communicative understanding. Although Habermas has claimed otherwise, this new foundation for critical theory constitutes a novel and innovative form of "immanent critique." To argue for and to clarify this claim, I offer, in section 1, a formal account of immanent critique and distinguish between two different ways of carrying out such a critique.

Art & the Public Sphere

Jürgen Habermas' famous description of the public sphere, and its central place in liberal democracy, has unfortunately become a normative model, both within arts and politics. However, as this article argues, Habermas' proposition is not only historical, but was retrograde from the outset, and now functions more a blacking of political action than an enabler, and must be contested in terms of counterpublic formations and experiences, as well as criticized from its insistence on rationality and negotiation in an era of post-political consensus within the former public sphere.

Cultural Critique, 2001

Culture Unbound: Journal of Current Cultural …, 2010

Sage Handbook of Frankfurt School & Critical Theory, eds. Werner Bonefeld et al., Los Angeles, 402-415, 2018

A critical overview with an eye to Critical Theory

2011

This interdisciplinary research examines the public sphere as a communicativelyconstructed realm and challenges Habermas's model of public sphere communication based on the "public use of reason"/communicative rationality. It questions the model's counterfactual normativity and its emancipatory potential in revisiting core concepts such as reason, power and consensus, while also considering social complexity, the media and counterpublics. This research is theoretical but informed by the quest for empirical relevance. Using critical hermeneutic methods, the thesis critically reconstructs Habermas's theories of the public sphere and of communicative rationality, as these were developed and revised throughout his works, in order to lay the foundations for second-and thirdorder critique. The main critics considered in revisiting Habermas's public sphere model are: Niklas Luhmann (functionalism and social systems), Michel Foucault (historical materialism, theory of power and rejection of universal norms), Nancy Fraser and Seyla Benhabib (critical feminism, identity politics), Thomas McCarthy (critique of rationalism and normativity), James Bohman (social complexity) and Colin Grant (postsystemic communication studies). Drawing on these, the thesis proposes a renewed public sphere model consisting of systems and emergent publics, while rethinking communicative reason and power in conditions of overcomplexity (Bohman). Lastly, it redefines normativity in an empirically plausible light, connected to emergent communication practices. iii DEDICATION To my parents and to Rodney. vi TABLE OF CONTENTS Chapter 1-Introduction 1.0 Research Scope 1.1 Thesis Outline Chapter 2-Habermas's Model of the Public Sphere: A Hermeneutic Reconstruction of his Theoretical Premises 2.0 Introductory remarks 2.1 The Initial Model: A Bourgeois Public Sphere 2.1.1 Initial Scope 2.1.2 Initial Method 2.1.3 'Public' and 'publicity' 2.1.4 The Greek Model and the Initial Question 2.1.5 Representative publicity 2.1.6 The Bourgeois and the Genesis of the Public Sphere 2.2 The Basic Blueprint 2.2.1 The Initial Demarcation 2.2.2 People's Public Use of Reason 2.2.3 Institutions of the Early Bourgeois Public Sphere 2.2.4 Role of the Bourgeois Family in the Evolution of the Bourgeois Public Sphere 2.2.5 The Public Sphere in the World of Letters in Relation to the Public Sphere in the Political Realm 2.3 Socio-structural transformation of the Bourgeois Public Sphere 2.3.1 The Gradual Merging of Public and Private Spheres 2.3.2 Refeudalisation of Society 2.3.3 The Disengagement of the Social Sphere and the Intimate Sphere 2.3.4 From a Culture-Debating to a Culture Consuming Public 2.3.5 The Impact of the Mass Media 2.4 Political Functions of the Bourgeois Public Sphere 2.4.1 Contestation of Authority 2.4.2 Public Opinion: Defining 'public' and 'opinion' 2.4.3 Public Opinion as 'Fiction' 2.4.4 Public Opinion as a Political Function of the Public Sphere 2.4.5 Civil Society as the Sphere of Private Autonomy vii 2.4.6 Legitimation and Legitimacy 2.5 Functional Transformation of the (Bourgeois) Public Sphere 2.5.1 The Commercialisation of the Press and the Manufacturing of News 2.