Page 48 - Democracy and the Public Sphere

Discursive Testing: The Public Sphere and its Critics 43

Habermas’s reading of the bourgeois public sphere also evokes a
multiplicity of associations, coffee houses, reading groups and the
like which could only be characterised as a public sphere in the
singular insofar as the opinions which emerged from them were
directed towards each other and towards the same centre of power,
namely the state. But Habermas’s model is based on a series of
associations that were (supposedly) open in principle to all, had

potentially fluid networks of membership and cut across special
interest groups. Leaving aside the question of historical accuracy,
Fraser wants to argue for a model of democracy which emphasises the

importance of groupings and publics which are defined by particular
sets of interests and memberships. A totalised ethic of inclusivity is
not in fact one that sits comfortably with the interests of various
subordinated groups. Her arguments do not (and are not intended
to) deny the importance of that ethic as a foundation stone for
rational public dialogue: if the public sphere is to be conceived as
an inclusive auditorium, Fraser’s remarks point up the importance
of the anterooms around its perimeters, some of which are open and
‘inclusive’, and some of which are reserved for use by specifi c groups.
Inevitably, the theoretical tools for distinguishing between a ‘healthy’
pluralism on the one hand, and parochialism and separatism on the

other are significantly blunted with this concession, though in any

case such reflexive judgments are properly the domain of public
discourse itself. But the normative and sociological value of any theory
of the public sphere depends on acknowledging the signifi cant role
of subaltern public spheres and particularist public ‘sphericules’, to
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use Todd Gitlin’s phrase. This insight is all the more important in
the context of post-national politics (where in any case the nation
state can no longer claim to be a political control centre in the sense
implied by classical liberal and various leftist models of democracy)
and the entropic pressures brought to bear on political processes in
the wake of neo-liberal globalisation, multinational corporatism,
and the rise of ‘postmodern’ identity-based, localised, diasporic and
tactical political movements (see Chapter 5 for further discussion).
A third assumption is ‘that discourse in public spheres should
be restricted to deliberation about the common good, and that
the appearance of private interests and private issues is always
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undesirable’. The principle of restricting public discussion to
matters of ‘public’ or general concern causes problems for a theory
of democracy:

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