The european public sphere

In recent (and not so recent) debates about the possibility of an European public sphere a very disquieting assumption has become at home in the mind of scholars - namely that national public spheres exist and the only challenge we are facing is internationalizing them on an European level. This leads some researchers to resort to analysis of media content to assess what topics are being reported on and whether we can abduce the internationalisation of national public spheres from the internationalization of content in the media. The problem with this approach is that the non-existence of a public sphere forms a blind spot: media will always report on something, ergo: there will always be a public sphere. The fact that has gone unnoticed is that today media have hardly anything to do with the public sphere at all. As a radical democratic ideal - and that is how in my oppinion the concept should be treated if it is to have any critical potential - the public sphere is not something at home in political institutions, negotiations with interest groups (in fact in his earliest work on the public sphere Jürgen Habermas conceived of this as the very negation of the public sphere, although he later modified this position), and reporting by the national media, the majority of their content consisting of information by institutional sources. The public sphere is at home in the day to day delibeartions of citizens - this is what the positioning of the public sphere in the life-world by Habermas in Theory of communicative action means. If conceived in this way it is questionable whether the media today form an integral part of the public sphere - rather they seem to be affiliated with the other of the public sphere, with political institutions. It is the non-existence of a public sphere at all and forces that hinder its development that should be the basis for reflection.

Critics of Habermas' conceptualization of the public sphere are among those that are to blame for this predicament. Those (among others Nancy Fraser and Negt and Cluge) that have sought to reconcile the lofty nature of the idea with the putrid reality of the world have done so by sacrificing the former to the latter. The fact that the manifestations of the public sphere did not live up to its ideal of universality is undisputable. But this is exactly the very core of the critical potential of the idea: it encompasses a promesse de bonheur, a hope and promise of a better world. The fact that ideological forms of the bourgeoisie, its culture, exhibited universalist tendencies was the soil on which critiques of the actual exlusiveness of bourgeois society caught a foothold. This was the promise of the bourgeoisie that justified its rise to power: that the liberation from aristocratic rule was to be a universal one. When Negt and Cluge talk about a proletarian public sphere they negate the very idea and ideal of the public sphere, namely that it, as Habermas had put it "stands and falls with the principle of universal access." As soon as we can talk about specific public spheres we are already negating the potential for a public sphere to exist at all. When faced with the chasm between the ideal and reality we must not try to fit the ideal onto reality, we must not break the mirror that reminds us of our blemishes - that is the way of the political order the idea of the public sphere was launched against. In fact the mirror that best reflects our blemishes is the one that serves us best: an idea of the public sphere where all citizens might freely engage in debate and form informed opinions on public matters that the state will be obliged to listen to when making decisions. The point of this image is not that it could ever be achieved, it is exactly in the function of a reflection of society on itself by which its faults are revealed that its emancipatory potential is realized.

Understanding the public sphere in this way does not mean that we make it inaccessible to empirical study. If the ideal can not be fully realized - and even this can not be said with certainty as Marcuse teaches us - the extent to which it is can be studied. While universal access might not be possible in its purest form (even in perfect social conditions we would find some individuals who through purely idiosyncratic reasons would not be able to participate - for an Adornian as myself control of idiosyncrasies, or the non-identical, would constitute the very neagation of an emancipated society) the degree to which it is realised can be the object of empirical research. The same applies to quality of deliberation (a recent article by Todd Graham in Javnost - The Public is a very good example) and the impact of deliberation on decision making of the political system. Identifying these emprical criteria of the public sphere is the first step that should be followed by explanation: what factors impact universality of access, quality of deliberation, impact on decision making. Only after this task is completed the question of whether a European public sphere can be formed and under what circumstances can be answered - but this question might as well turn out to be besides the point.