Transnationalizing the Public Sphere

Abstract

This chapter explicates the implicit Westphalian presuppositions of Jurgen Habermas’s public sphere theory and examines that these have persisted in its major feminist, anti-racist and multicultural critiques. It identifies several distinct facets of transnationality that problematize both traditional public sphere theory and its critical counter-theorizations. Habermas’s account of the public sphere rested on at least six social-theoretical presuppositions, all of which took for granted the Westphalian framing of political space. These six social-theoretical presuppositions tie Habermas’s early account of the public sphere to Westphalian framing of political space. In public sphere theory public opinion is considered legitimate if and only if all who are potentially affected are able to participate as peers in deliberations concerning the organization of their common affairs. In effect, then, the theory holds that the legitimacy of public opinion is a function of two analytically distinct characteristics of the communicative process, namely, the extent of its inclusiveness and the degree to which its realizes participatory parity .

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