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13-11-2023 | FORUM: RETHINKING THE PUBLIC SPHERE: THEORETICAL CRITIQUE AND NEW APPLICATIONS

Editor’s Introduction to Rethinking the Public Sphere: Theoretical Critique and New Applications

Author: Andreas Hess

Published in: Society | Issue 6/2023

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More than sixty years have passed since Jürgen Habermas published his ground-breaking study, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere (1962, English translation 1989).¹ In the first instance, this sociological-historical inquiry dealt with the emergence, differentiation, and ambivalences of bürgerliche Öffentlichkeit, the bourgeois or civil sphere.² However, as early as in the foreword to the first edition, Habermas had hinted at a further distinction between a liberal model of the public sphere and a subaltern, ‘plebeian’ public sphere, thereby indicating that there was an ambiguity in the term ‘public sphere’. In other words, it appeared to be a bit like wet soap, that is, not easy to grasp conceptually or to describe empirically due to its slippery nature.³ …

next article A New Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere? With, against, and beyond Habermas

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With the exception of two new chapters, the book was identical with Habermas’s Habilitationsschrift.

The German bürgerlich can mean both bourgeois and civil, a problem that was somehow one-sidedly resolved in the English translation of the book (i.e. ‘bourgeois’ instead of ‘civil’). For some of the problems of translation of such key terms, see Fania Oz-Salzberger (1995) Translating the Enlightenment.

Ten years later, Oskar Negt and Alexander Kluge used this Habermasian distinction to introduce a further sphere somewhat neglected in Habermas’ study—the proletarian public sphere (Negt and Kluge 1973). Since then, many other attempts have been made to historicise and conceptualise this complex phenomenon. See, for example Van Horn Melton (2001) The Rise of the Public in Enlightenment Europe and the two essay collections Jeff Weintraub and Krishan Kumar (eds.) (1997) Public and Private in Thought and Practice and Craig Calhoun (ed.) (1993) Habermas and the Public Sphere. For a more ambitious theoretical attempt, see Jeffrey C. Alexander, The Civil Sphere (2006). A pioneer in all matters of the modern public was of course John Dewey (1927) The public and its problems.

The jury is still out when and where exactly the beginning of the theory of communicative action lies. Thinking about public reasoning is not necessarily the only (early) root and (later) branch here. An argument could well be made that the earliest ideas of what would later become one of the founding elements of Habermas’s grand theory were first expressed in a spin on Hegel’s idea about the differentiation between labour and interaction (Habermas 1967 [reprinted in Habermas 1988]).

Interesting here is that the idea of a European public sphere does not appear—a point that Habermas had elaborated upon almost to the point of obsession in the 1990s and 2000s. The silence in his latest book could be simply an omission. However, it also might be seen as both a realisation and resignation: realisation referring to the international social media networks and relations that transcend borders and continents; resignation because such private networks might even be less inclined or interested in public reasoning and contributing to the common weal.

Alexander, J. C. 2006. The Civil Sphere. New York: Oxford University PressCrossRef

Calhoun, C. (ed.) 1993. Habermas and the Public Sphere. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press

Dewey, J. 1927. The Public and its Problems. New York: Henry Holt and Company

Habermas, J. 1984 and 1987 [German edition1981]. The Theory of Communicative Action, Vols. 1 and 2, Cambridge, Polity

Habermas, J. 1988 [German edition 1971]. “Labour and Interaction: Remarks on Hegel’s Jena Philosophy of Mind” in: Habermas, J. Theory and Practice, Cambridge, Polity

Habermas, J. 1989 [German edition 1962]. The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere. Cambridge: Polity

Habermas, J. 2023 [German edition 2022]. A New Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere and Deliberative Politics. Cambridge: Polity

Koselleck, R. 1988 [German edition 1973]. Critique and Crisis. Cambridge Mass: MIT Press

Landes, J. (ed.) 1998. Feminism, the Public and the Private. Oxford: Oxford University Press

Negt, O. and Kluge, A. 1988 [German edition 1973]. Public Sphere of Experience. Analysis of the Bourgeois and Proletarian Public Sphere. London: Verso

Oz-Salzberger, F. 1995. Translating the Enlightenment. Oxford: Oxford University PressCrossRef

Van Horn Melton, J. 2001. The Rise of the Public in Enlightenment Europe. Cambridge: Cambridge University PressCrossRef

Weintraub, J. and Kuman, K. (eds.) 1997. Public and Private in Thought and Practice. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press

Title: Editor’s Introduction to Rethinking the Public Sphere: Theoretical Critique and New Applications
Author: Andreas Hess
Publication date: 13-11-2023
Publisher: Springer US
Published in: Society / Issue 6/2023
Print ISSN: 0147-2011
Electronic ISSN: 1936-4725
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12115-023-00930-0

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