Feminist Criticisms of Habermas's Ethics and Politics

The translation of Jürgen Habermas’s "The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry into a Category of Bourgeois Society" into English in 1989 generated much discussion on the historical nature and development of the public sphere. Historians integrated Habermas’s model into their studies on European politics and culture, the French Revolution, and women’s place in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century European society (and to a lesser extent in American society). However, historians did not use Habermas’s model unquestioningly or without criticism. One of the most vigorous responses came from feminist historians and political theorists who argued that Habermas’s conception of the bourgeois public sphere excluded women (both in his book and in the model itself) from participation and, in fact, the public sphere was predicated on masculinist assumptions about men and women’s proper roles in society and politics. This paper will first examine the models established by Habermas and Arendt, including the historical origins and transformation of their conceptions of the public sphere, the defining characteristics of each, and the relationship of the public sphere to the state, the economy, and the household/family. I will then consider several feminist critiques of both models, as well as arguments put forth by Carole Pateman and Joan Landes that the public sphere is inherently and intrinsically masculinist. I will subsequently examine each scholar’s (Habermas, Arendt, Pateman, and Landes) understanding of the relationship of the public sphere to modernity and the emancipatory nature of the public sphere. Finally, in agreement with Habermas’s later work and Nancy Fraser’s modifications of it, I will propose a move away from dualistic, oppositional thinking of “public” and “private” to replace that with a model that reflects the interconnections between four institutions: the public sphere, the state, the economy, and the household/family.

This paper attempts a critical discussion on the Habermasian model of Public sphere. The concept of the public sphere has become a key term in social science literature since it was introduced by German scholar Jurgen Habermas as a philosophically and sociologically pertinent concept. The public sphere refers to the discursive space that exists in modern societies between the state and society. It deals with a domain that is generally related to civil society, but goes beyond it to refer to the wider category of the public. The public sphere comes into existence with the formation of civil society and the forms of associational politics to which it led. However, Habermasian model, although widely praised and accepted by many, is not without its criticisms. The second section of the paper makes an effort to bring together some of the major criticisms of the model as postulated mainly by feminist scholars.

The American Sociologist, 2009

2011

The main purpose of this paper is to examine Habermas's account of the transformation of the public sphere in modern society. More specifically, the study aims to demonstrate that, whilst Habermas's approach succeeds in offering useful insights into the structural transformation of the public sphere in the early modern period, it does not provide an adequate theoretical framework for understanding the structural transformation of public spheres in late modern societies. To the extent that the gradual differentiation of social life manifests itself in the proliferation of multiple public spheres, a critical theory of public normativity needs to confront the challenges posed by the material and ideological complexity of late modernity in order to account for the polycentric nature of advanced societies. With the aim of showing this, the paper is divided into three sections. The first section elucidates the sociological meaning of the public/private dichotomy. The second section scrutinizes the key features of Habermas's theory of the public sphere by reflecting on (i) the concept of the public sphere, (ii) the normative specificity of the bourgeois public sphere, and (iii) the structural transformation of the public sphere in modern society. The third section explores the most substantial shortcomings of Habermas's theory of the public sphere, particularly its inability to explain the historical emergence and political function of differentiated public spheres in advanced societies.

Political Studies, 1985

The paper interprets C. Wright Mills's distinction between 'private troubles' and 'public issues' as indicating both a conceptual and an institutional separation between civil society and the public sphere. It goes on to argue that Habermas's social theory is founded upon the view that 'distorted communication' should be analysed within an already institutionalized public space within civil society. Arguments that claim that the public sphere is degenerate on historical or theoretical grounds are rejected. The paper differentiates between pre-institutional and institutional levels of the public sphere and concludes by illustrating this conceptual distinction, first, through a brief discussion of 'new social movements' and Alain Touraine's actionist sociology, and secondly, through a discussion of natural justice and public inquiries.

Constellations 3, no. 3 (January 1997): 377–400.

Communicative reason is of course a rocking hullbut it does not go under in the sea of contingencies, even if shuddering in high seas is the only mode in which it 'copes' with these contingencies.

If we are to believe what many sociologists are telling us, the public sphere is in a near-terminal state. Our ability to build solidarities with strangers and to agree on the general significance of needs and problems seems to be collapsing. These cultural potentials appear endangered from a variety of quarters: from the neo-liberal attempt to universalize the norms of the market and interpret democracy as another form of consumerism to the most recent efforts of the security state to constrain civil liberties in the face of terrorism. For the past four decades the public sphere has been at the top of Jürgen Habermas' theoretical agenda. He has explored the historical meaning of the concept, reconstructed its philosophical foundations in communication and repeatedly diagnosed its ongoing crises. In the contemporary climate, a systematic look at Habermas' lifelong project of rescuing the modern public sphere seems an urgent task.

Re-Imagining Public Space

The main purpose of this paper is to assess the validity of the contention that, over the past few decades, the public sphere has undergone a new structural transformation. To this end, the analysis focuses on Habermas's recent inquiry into the causes and consequences of an allegedly 'new' or 'further' [erneuten] structural transformation of the political public sphere. The paper is divided into two parts. The first part considers the central arguments in support of the 'new structural transformation of the public sphere' thesis, shedding light on its historical, political, economic, technological, and sociological aspects. The second part offers some reflections on the most important limitations and shortcomings of Habermas's account, especially with regard to key social developments in the early twenty-first century. The paper concludes by positing that, although the constitution of the contemporary public sphere is marked by major-and, in several respects, unprecedented-structural transformations, their significance should not be overstated, not least due to the enduring role of critical capacity in highly differentiated societies.

Distinction of society from the state was basic to the early modern development of liberalism. Society itself was understood as further differentiated into several spheres: family, religion, economy, and so forth. 1 While these were related, they were held to be largely autonomous. No one of them exercised complete authority over the others. This was at once an actual process of social differentiation and a hegemonic understanding of how society ought to be organized. The image of differentiation informed policies that secured real differentiation, but it also led peopleincluding theoriststo imagine that spheres were more autonomous than they were, to underestimate ways in which each was influenced by activity in others, and to neglect both they ways in which the terms of this very differentiation were shaped by culture and social structure, protected and influenced by the state, and challenged by social movements.