Gourt Home::Gourt :: Public sphere
A concept in continental philosophy and critical theory, the public sphere contrasts with the private sphere, and is the part of life in which one is interacting with others and with society at large. Much of the thought about the public sphere relates to the concept of identity and identity politics.
Martin Heidegger claims that 'Dasein' (existence) must balance its activities in the public sphere with its private, authentic activities, but believed ultimately that engagement in the public sphere was necessary to truly be Dasein. Hannah Arendt inverted Heidegger's claim, arguing that in fact the only true and authentic self was the self in the public sphere.
Frantz Fanon discusses the way in which one's identity in the public sphere and one's identity in the private sphere can become dissonant, leading to what he calls dual consciousness. His examples deal with issues of colonialism, and the way in which a colonized subject is forced to publicly adopt a foreign culture, while privately they maintain their identity as their own culture.
In contemporary thought, informed by the rise of postmodernism, questions about the public sphere have turned to questions about the ways in which hegemonic forces dictate what discourse is and is not allowable in the public sphere, and in turn dictate what can and can't be formulated as a part of one's identity. For example, the concept of heteronormativity is used to describe the way in which those who fall outside of the basic male/female dichotomy of gender or whose sexual preferences are other than heterosexual cannot meaningfully claim their identities, causing a disconnect between their public selves and their private selves. Lauren Berlant has gone so far as to argue that there is in fact no public discourse about sex/gender or sexuality whatsoever, leaving all sexual identity or gender identity in the realm of the private sphere, where it is, in her view, deadened and powerless.
Important contemporary thinkers about the public sphere include Jürgen Habermas, Michel Foucault, Louis Althusser, Alexander Kluge, Oskar Negt, and Eve Sedgwick.
In Civil Society and the Political Public Sphere Habermas defines the public sphere as "a network for communicating information and points of view" which eventually transforms them into a public opinion.
The concept of Public Sphere was first introduced by Jürgen Habermas, in his book, “The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere – An Inquiry into a Category of Bourgeois Society” (originally in German and later translated into English). Through this work, he gave a historical and sociological account of the rise and decay of the bourgeois public sphere. The German term Offentlichkeit (Public Sphere) encompasses a variety of meanings and it implies to a spatial concept, the social sites or arenas where meanings are articulated, distributed, and negotiated, as well as the collective body constituted by, and in this process, “the public”. (Negt and Kluge 1993).
“The public sphere denotes specific institutions, agencies, practices; however, it is also a general social horizon of experience in which everything that is actually or seemingly relevant for all members of society is integrated. Understood in the sense, the public sphere is a matter for a handful of professionals (e.g., politicians, editors, union officials) on the one hand, but, on the other, it is something that concerns everyone and that realises itself only in people’s minds, in a dimension of their consciousness.” (Negt and Kluge, 1993)
The concept of public sphere as expressed by Habermas (1989) has existed in its true sense in the UK since the 18th century. The coffee houses in London society at this time became the centres of art and literary criticism, which gradually widened to include even the economic and the political disputes as matters of discussion. In French salons, as Habermas says, ‘opinion became emancipated from the bonds of economic dependence’. Any new work, or a book or a musical composition had to get its legitimacy in these places. It not only paved a forum for self-expression, but in fact had become a platform for airing one’s opinions and agendas for public discussion.
The development of capitalism paved the way for a new kind of public sphere with its changed institutional forms of political power. With the emergence of civil society and modern government, the privatised economic relations were brought under the area of public authority. The private realm comprised both the public economic relations and the private intimate relations and to negotiate between these two there emerged a new bourgeois public sphere. It comprised groups of individuals who would debate and discuss and regulate the civil society through constructive criticism.
The emergence of bourgeois public sphere was particularly supported by the 18th century liberal democracy making resources available to this new political class to establish a network of institutions like publishing enterprises, newspapers and discussion forums, and the democratic press was a main tool to execute this. The key feature of this public sphere was its separation from the power of both the church and the government due to its access to a variety of resources, both economic and social.
As Habermas argues, in due course, this sphere of rational and universalistic politics, free from both the economy and the State, was destroyed by the same forces that initially established it. The growth of capitalistic economy led to an unfair distribution of wealth, thus widening the economic polarity. This resulted in limiting access to the public sphere and the political control of the public sphere was inevitable for the modern capitalistic forces to operate and thrive in the competitive economy.
The rise of advertising and public relations has made it vital for the government to control public information in the interest of the market forces. As Garnham says, (1990) ‘the space between the civil society and the state which had been opened by the creation of the public sphere was squeezed shut ‘.
Public opinion is formed with the help of institutions like the media, publicly accessible courts, elections, etc. The main concern of Habermas is to ensure ‘undistorted communication’ as he identifies it as a critical tool for human emancipation. He says that the ideal speech situation has four validity claims; comprehensibility, truth, appropriateness and sincerity, and claims to these have a social context in which they have to be justified. In idealistic situations, claims to the above are rationally debated and consensually agreed but in reality the differential power relations and resource distribution inhibit them and this leads to ‘distorted communication’. Garnham (1990) further argues that in order to retain the public sphere in its holistic sense we need to revalue the modes of public communication and utilise it rationally.
In this context it is relevant to refer to Hartley (1982), who identifies speech to be governed by two forces, i.e. the language system and a discourse, and that ‘news comes to us as the pre-existing discourse of an impersonal social institution which is also an industry’. Thus Habermas says that “ the public was transformed from participants in political and cultural debates into consumers of media images and information” (as quoted in pg 26, Hoynes, 1994,). The electioneering process in the modern democracy is another channel through which the pseudo public sphere is spearheaded where the voices of the public are used merely to suit the political agenda of the powerful rather than for the constructive democracy.
But as Thompson (1995), says, Public Sphere in its true sense existed only in the idealistic sense of Habermas. Even in the 18th century, Public Sphere was used more to make the power visible and the real decisions were invisible. With the emergence of media in the modern world, the nature of Public Sphere has widened its scope to such an extent that events and acts are made public even to those who are far away from the places of their occurrence.
The modern means of mass communication through their transnational agents has brought the range of the Public Sphere to the international arena. For the modern media corporations like the BBC, and CNN, issues range from the most local culture specific contexts to the global political arena transcending the national boundaries. The 50 year-old current affairs magazine programme, Panorama on BBC one, gives evidence that public need not be seen as mere consumers.
But the role of these corporations in the modern democratic government in maintaining the Public Sphere in its true spirit is debatable because of the obvious political and economic stakes of those behind them. The Kilroy epitimises perfectly the public spehere. According to Dahlgren, affective communication is more influential in spearheading popular culture and the television, as a medium, uses both cognitive and affective elements of communication. Hartley believes that media is public and is an effective public domain. But media in the modern days is another weapon of the ideology for its propagandist interventions, and in order to restore the autonomy of the media, both in an economic and cultural sense, and ensure rationality rather than power to operate, democratic processes have to be revitalised in both political and cultural spheres.
See also public place.
Öffentlichkeit | הספרה הציבורית | Openbaarheid | 公共圏 | 公共领域
-- Another View : The Genealogy of The Public Sphere Habermas’ public sphere is historically the public sphere of the modern bourgeois, the middle class. In this sense it is a sociological construct, which may pose either theoretical-conceptual questions, or questions regarding the knowledge claims about the social history of what have been termed as the public sphere. The conceptual question will be concerned with the ways in which the notion is limited by the perspective of the author. Habermas methodologically restricted the notion of ‘bourgeois Public Sphere’ to an aspect of the historical development specific to modern Europe and warned of the difficulties in “transferring or ideal typically generalizing it to historical situations that “represent formally similar constellations.” This might rule out the use of the term in studies of other contemporary social configurations exhibiting similar characteristics. One may hope, by deleting the “bourgeois” might retrieve the generality of the notion of public sphere. But this paper argues that the level of generality, the notion of public sphere retrieves when the qualifier ‘bourgeois’ is removed is one at which both descriptive or theoretical account cannot be undertaken with the required clarity. This is primarily because the word ‘public’ hardly makes sense if deprived of the contexts of its historical uses. Habermas’ own cursory observation of the shifts in the uses of ‘public’ over a period of time across Europe is a serious reminder. It is by the middle of the seventeenth century the word came to develop certain characteristics in its use resembling the one it has now. In this use ‘public’ (when used as a noun) refers to an indistinct group of addressee, who may be specified socio-historically with respect to which the addressee assumes significance. To be addressed in this way is to be situated in relation to the addresser in some historically specifiable way. Habermas says, “ In Great Britain, from the middle of the seventeenth century on there was talk of “Public”, where as until then “world” or “mankind” was usual.” However, he does not seem to turn to a discussion of the politics of this replacement or appearance. The reassured use of the word might have a socio-ontological anchoring. Etymologically, ‘public’ has an earlier form poplicus, which means people. English spelling of the word retains traces of this root, i.e., p-eo-ple. My point is, the later use of ‘public’ should be seen as causally linked to an earlier use and facilitated by it. Public is therefore not simply that which is a general addressee, but people, the non-ruling section in a social setting. In this sense, they are commons, the group that is together (com+) obliging (munis). Public is not that which a public authority addresses. Public authority is recognized to be so because it addresses the public. The recognition of the public is characteristically different from taking notice of an undifferentiated ‘world’. Public is that which has eventually come to stand in a specific relation to the ruling power. If we see this as an instance of the ruling power being compelled by the circumstance to recognize, or has come to develop an interest in, the public, i.e., people, then we can also appreciate the changing nature of the state in Europe, especially in England during the period starting from the late 17th to early 18th century. There, the common people who have hither to been unrecognized as a power, came to form a third estate, and eventually turned the other two estates largely into private affairs. This is part of the history of democracy in modern Europe. ‘Munis’ the root of ‘common’ is akin to ‘mean’ that which is obliging and low. The coming into power of Commons changed the concept of state and the relation between the ruling and ruled. In Britain, the commons growing in power and the emergence of the public sphere converged. In proportion to the effectiveness of the public sphere there was state control in the hands of the Commons. This shows that public is not just a passive, amorphous addressee, as the word ‘public’ usually suggest, i.e., as something shown or made known to ‘all’. Following a causal theory of common noun words, one can say that when some thing is said to be public then it implies that it is done, or shown or said in front of the public, or people. Similarly, ‘publicly’ qualifies any act when it is done under the gaze of the public. Thus ‘public authority’ does not mean the authority that addressed all and ‘publicity’ did not mean the state of anything when that thing is made known to ‘all’. The latter means that something has come to the notice of the people. As for the theoretical and descriptive uses of the term ‘public’ this paper suggests that in order to retrieve its application at the level of generality the use of the term should be anchored in its socio-ontological sense, supported by a causal theory of meaning of ‘social’ kind words. Instead of regarding it as a semantically malleable term, that is to say, historical situations can arbitrarily fix its meaning, one might see it as picking out something very specific from a social world. Public is, thus, socio-ontologically a primitive predicate. In any social world public is that which constitutes that world, but which may not have the authority over that world. When the latter is possible we can talk about the realization of the republic. Republic is res-public, people-substance, a reality constituted by people. In this sense, when a state is wholly constituted by the people with out differentiation then it is a republic. So across different social worlds, the term public or its equivalent will pick out more ore less the same thing. This will ensure the generality of the notion. ‘Demo-’ in democracy is to be understood as people in this sense, who by constituting a socio-ontology serve as the necessary condition of democracy.
From this point of view public sphere is one in which the public addresses itself. Historically, this is what can be minimally said of the public sphere emerged in Europe during the 17th century. However, ironically it seems, the people under whose initiative the public sphere was formed was called private people. As Habermas says, “…they were private people who because they held no office, were excluded from any share in the public authority.” The sphere of activities of the (common) people, the public, is called private because it did not wield any authority. What does this mean? To rephrase the expression we should say, the authority that has a say on (some or all) life activities of the people ¾ public ¾ treated them, i.e., people, as private because the latter do not have such authority over themselves. Archaeology of the term private reveals the traces left on it by history. “Private’ is derived from privare, meaning ‘to rob’, meaning again, the state of being taken away, in this context, from public affairs. The common people were called private because they were always the addresses of the authority whose decision will affect their life. Let us interpret this state of affairs as one in which the people have no authority over themselves. In other words, they are deprived of the power to decide on matters that have consequence for their life. In contrast, in democracy this power is said to be lying with the people themselves who are not deprived and not private in this sense. Ironically again, both ‘private’ and ‘public’ were used with reference to people. ‘Public’ referred to people and ‘private’ to their state of being deprived, or robbed, of authority (in matters concerning themselves). However, the idea of public (i.e., who the people are) and in what way they are said to be private are historically contingent. Historically speaking, these terms do not constitute polar opposites, i.e., not dichotomous. The dichotomous use of these terms truly came down from a dominant social practice. The dichotomy corresponded to an actual, politically established division between those who have authority over the public and the public themselves who lacked this authority. In the social perception of the dominant section, the ‘public’ has now become an attribute of themselves (public people) in the sense of having to do something with the affairs of the people, i.e., public. Similarly, ‘private’ is attributed to those who are not public in the above sense. In its derived use the term ‘private’ is predicated upon any realm left out by the domain of activities of the agencies authorized to intervene in the affairs of the people and public means such domain of activities. If we hold the socio-ontological sense of ‘public’ mentioned earlier as the standard then the new historical use can be seen as the deviation and the historical appropriation of the term by the dominant discourse. This is an instance of socio-ontological sense overshadowed by a social-political sense and an instance of historical meaning shift. ‘Private’ also accordingly underwent a meaning shift. With modern bourgeoisie ‘private’ did not imply any lack, but positively suggests a domain that is free of intervention from the public, or hidden from the gaze of the public. ‘Public’, on the contrary, is that very intervening space and that gaze. With the modern bourgeoisie being private became a privilege, while with the Lords it meant a loss of privilege. In both the respects public is the intervenability of the authorized agency. Here, the interventions and the gazes are as such thought of being authorized. In this social-political sense, ‘private-public’ no longer meant a division among people, but spaces or positions people historically occupy alternately. Historically considered, the public in Great Britain did not cover the whole of people. ‘People’ is the self-claim of the dominant element of the public in whose affairs the public authority had a stake. This people are the modern bourgeois activists who are the spokesmen of democracy, humanity and representation. The modern bourgeois activists represented themselves as the people and self-authorized to represent the latter. The people were commons, in the sense of being ‘mean’, compared to the Lords who wielded authority over them in matters of the spiritual and the temporal. Out of this amorphous mass, i.e., of common people, emerged the modern bourgeoisie with his distinct form and energy, with his mercantilist spirit that moved always in pursuit of profit and in search of techniques and means of enhancing this business of profit making. This is the face of the people, the common, i.e., a face that would be recognized as that of the people by the authority. The techniques and means enabled the bourgeoisie to move across space and time with great speed, including mail, press, telegraph, telephone, etc., invented in and through this new movement, changed the way people can modify and transform their relation to others. That is, the use of the new means of communication effected a change in the relations. The effect is new institutions such as parliamentary democracy with its increasing dominance of the commons, and the modern impersonal, formal state, which has no content other than what the powerful agents in its proximity have given it. That is, the modern state is an abstract space, which the modern bourgeoisie needed for negotiating its private (in the sense of privileged) interests. Again, i.e., the state is an excuse for modern bourgeoisie not to appear itself as the public authority. Bourgeoisie does not identify itself with the state. It wanted to remain as the public whose private interests the state is pleaded to protect. This in another sense means that state in principle, i.e., in abstract, should treat the whole of people as private in so far as the latter is not abstracted. (By abstraction one means drawing out rationalizable features from sensible events or states of affairs. Rationalisability is claimed to be universalisability.) So in the redefined sense, public is that realm of the people, i.e., the private people, at which they can abstract so as to communicate with the state. Public is the level of abstraction of the private in relation to the state. Since state has not content it absorbs all abstractions. From this point of view, the negotiation space of the private people became the public. Hence, public are the people, nay the face of the people, who are private; because this is the level of abstraction at which the private can negotiate with the state. From the abstract point of view of the state, the people are the public which can enter in to the epistemic register, meaning which can be known, communicable, reasonable; the people are, for the state, also private, which resist theorizing, are not reasonable and not communicable. Since private is not an abstraction the state cannot address it. For, there is no private language. Private is the figural, standing irreducibly against the abstract. In order to speak, the private has to save a face in the public, earn recognition from the state.
When the people are generalized, i.e., when the term is used to refer to the whole, it has two implications: (i) it does not distinguish with in the private, and (ii) the motivation for abstracting the public itself should come as a private move. That is, there is no a priori level of generality at which the public can be conceived. In other words, there is nothing beyond the private, other than the virtual order of abstraction, to be claimed as public. The act of selecting from the private the features that characterize the public is an arbitrary act. If we theoretically accommodate the private/public dichotomy we may fail to appreciate the arbitrariness of the public. In fact, the modern bourgeoisie created the public in its own image. The meaning of private for the bourgeoisie remained the same in its entire occurrence. This is because private is defined in relation to the public, which as a matter of fact is derived from the private. The historical public is an abstraction from the modern bourgeoisie’s social practices. The language of dichotomy conceals or suppresses this history. The private/public model is tailored to suit the rational negotiation of interests that would invariably favor the group that has at its disposal the technical means, material resources and institutional support. Ironically, it is the contradiction or incompatibility of the private/private which is more striking and which resists any rational resolution. What we call private is a multitude of perceptions, views, or images that are mutually incommensurable and represent different practices that will not lend themselves to any abstraction. There will, then, be no public. Incommensurable principles of practices leave every thing social as indeterminate.
I may conclude this note by citing a case of how the modern bourgeoisie abstracts from the private for its own benefit. The private practice of modern bourgeoisie is production of wealth for which it needs not only freedom to engage in production but should be able to protect the claim on natural and human resources to the extent of using the latter in producing wealth. Modern bourgeoisie is a private person; so is the worker. But abstracting the labor legitimizes the claim of the former on the worker. The public addresses the labor in abstract. Worker’s movement, especially under the left ideologies, fought against this alienation of labor from the worker, by making counter claims of generalized people and humanity. According to Marx, labor cannot be alienated from the being of the worker. The worker’s being is her social being. By abstracting, one can fix the value of labor, independently of the social being of the worker. That is, the worker’s life is private and is therefore of no interest to the state.
"Public sphere"