Justice and drama: on Bakhtin as a complement to Habermas

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.

Much of modern scholarship on the public sphere, as well as attempts to refine what is conceptually meant by "the public sphere," take the form of responses to the seminal works of Jürgen Habermas. This is not incredibly surprising-Habermas "currently ranks as one of the most influential philosophers in the world" 1 and certainly maintains this position in discussion of the public sphere, the subject which placed him on the map. What is surprising, however, is the degree to which the responses to and criticisms of Habermas's conception of the public sphere unreflexively adopt the Kantian rationalism which drives Habermas's thought, including those works which attack his theory as "liberal." Ultimately, while the great many of these attempts succeed in accounting for and even justifying the growing fractures in modern Western "public spheres," their continued attempt to wed the pre-or preter-rational public to the conceptual ground rules of an idealized neutral public space produce flawed descriptions of and proscriptions for public spheres, something the thought of Carl Schmitt vis-à-vis the philosophical and the conceptual sphere can better describe. In other words, we still lack a philosophically adequate critique and rival conceptualization of the public sphere. My intention in this paper is to engage in such a critique and sketch the beginnings of such an alternative.

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.

German Studies Review, 1994

The American Sociologist, 2009

European Journal of Social Theory, 2001

Given powerful globalizing processes under way, the topic of how to conceptualize the modern public sphere is becoming increasingly urgent. Amidst the array of alternatives, the efforts of Jürgen Habermas to attempt to balance out the two main conceptual requirements of this idea, a universalistic construction of the principle of shared interests and a sensitivity to the fact of modern pluralism, might seem a particularly promising option. In order to reconstruct the main motivations of, and to determine a set of criteria of assessment for, Habermas's ongoing attempt to outline a theory of the public sphere adequate to the conditions of the present, the article turns first to a discussion of the seminal formulations of The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere. I suggest that the later writings are only partially successful in their attempt to redress some of the main conceptual difficulties that emerge in this early account.

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.

JAVNOST-LJUBLJANA-, 2003

In the last thirty years capitalism has gone through a major transition that has seen the intensification of globalisation, the rise of neo-liberalism and the New Right, the decline of trust and of social democracy, a process of de-traditionalisation, and the rise of new social movements. These changes have profound implications for the nature and functioning of the public sphere . In this paper we argue that the public sphere has been shaken substantially by these shifts opening up increasing possibilities in the process for counter public spheres to become established and flourish. We trace the development of the concept of the public sphere post 1989 that includes crucial and too often ignored revisions to the original Habermasian thesis. We argue that counter public spheres become established in periods of instability in the dominant public sphere.