The reproduction of canonical silences
Re-reading Habermas in the context of slavery and the slave trade
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 12918211 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Wendy Willems (0000-0001-5439-1332, London School of Economics and Political Science, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2022 |
| Volume | 16 |
| Issue | 1 |
| Pages | 17-24 |
| Publication date | 2022-12-06 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Communication Culture and Critique (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1753-9137 • E-ISSN: 1753-9129 |
| Publisher | Oxford University Press (OUP) (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1093/ccc/tcac047 |
| OpenAlex | W4311707654 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 19 |
| References cited | 45 |
Recent discussions on “decolonizing” knowledge production have often foregrounded the importance of centering “marginal” perspectives, which is crucial but insufficient as it risks leaving the canon untouched. Jürgen Habermas’ book on the bourgeois public sphere is one of the most frequently cited and debated canonical texts in media and communication studies. Drawing on the case of London’s coffee houses and newspapers, this article argues for a critical re-engagement with canonical thinkers. It examines what the emergence of a bourgeois public sphere in 17th- and 18th-century England looks like if we re-read it within the context of slavery and the slave trade. The article demonstrates that race does not simply provide another “prism” to examine the bourgeois public sphere but instead enables and is constitutive of it. The reproduction of canonical silences through the continued circulation of influential texts has implications for how we conceptualize racialized publics in contemporary times
Aesthetics · Art · Bourgeoisie · Context (archaeology · Media studies · Newspaper · Political science · Politics · Public sphere · Reading (process · Reproduction · Sociology · Critical Race Theory in Education · Gender, Feminism, and Media · Race, History, and American Society · Gender Studies · History · Law
Race as a discourse of power
Decolonizing the public sphere(s)
Affective (counter)publics as a critical concept
Truth-making, slavery and advertising in early Anglo-American newspapering
The Caring Public Sphere
“We Want Entire Freedom
PSB Radio and the Public Sphere in South Africa
AI Adoption in South African Newsrooms
Why AI Technosolutionism Harms Democracy and Deliberation
A Missed Opportunity? How Lifestyle Journalists Think About Inclusion in Their Work
Dismantling the colonial politics of knowledge production in the Global South
News Translation as Media Work in Agency Journalism? Evidence from United News of India Urdu
Four concepts to think from the South
Hashtag mourning and moralized affect
The ethics of the everyday
Unlearning Communication for Social Change—A Pedagogical Proposition
Why Palestine as communicative epistemology
(Dis)Affordances
Media reparations
Capitalism and Slavery
Coffeehouse Culture in the Atlantic World, 1650–1789
Atlas of the Transatlantic Slave Trade
Misogynoir Transformed
On decolonial revisions of modern social theory
Transnationalizing the Public Sphere
The Palgrave Handbook of Media and Communication Research in Africa
Dark Matters
CommunicationSoWhite
Diversity, media and racial capitalism
Decolonizing Critical Theory
The (Black) Elephant in the Room
The public sphere as an essentially contested concept
Of Experts and Tokens
CommunicationSoWhite
Mapping Interventions
How useful to eighteenth-century English studies is the paradigm of the ‘bourgeois public sphere’
Spectacularized and Branded Digital (Re)presentations of Black People and Blackness
Against canon
The virtual sphere
Postcolonial Interventions in the Rhetorical Canon
Whose pedagogy is it anyway? Decolonizing the syllabus through a critical embrace of difference
Routledge Handbook of African Media and Communication Studies
Dear Science and Other Stories
Television and the Public Sphere
Provincializing Hegemonic Histories of Media and Communication Studies
Dismantling the Western Canon in Media Studies
Media and Public Spheres
Racialized modernity
Decolonizing Post-Colonial Studies and Paradigms of Political-Economy
The Internet, Public Spheres, and Political Communication
The New Public Sphere
The Early American Public Sphere and the Emergence of a Black Print Counterpublic
Colonialism and Modern Social Theory
Decolonizing Methodologies
The Frankfurt School and the young Habermas
| Unique citing works | 19 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 6,33 |
| Citation span | 2023 - 2026 (4) |
| Citation velocity | current |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 19 |