Massimo Rospocher, editor. Beyond the Public Sphere

This rich collection of fourteen widely ranging essays revisits the influential theory of public space proffered by Jürgen Habermas in The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry into a Category of Bourgeois Society (1962; English trans. 1989). In that work, Habermas argued for the development of a public sphere as “a space of mediation between authority and the individual” (p. 11), fostered in the social institutions of the bourgeoisie (primarily English and French coffeehouses, lodges, salons, and the like, as well as in print). Habermas's public sphere allowed for open debate and public critical discussion of the state, but increasingly corrupt political and economic institutions would later usurp and control it, transforming it into an “arena of manipulation” (p. 34). The aim of this volume is to undertake a thorough reassessment and critique of Habermas's influential theory, and to offer alternative models. As Massimo Rospocher and Andreas Gestrich point out in their opening essays, the relatively late translation of Habermas's work into English not only prolonged its influence but moved its sphere of engagement from the social sciences to the discipline of history. In that context it has been subject to comprehensive criticism, but it remains, at least in shorthand, the point of reference for the history of communication, the history of the ancien régime, and ideas about the development of modernity. This book calls for historians, especially of early modern Europe, not to rely on easy or reductive notions of the public sphere.

Bourgeoisie · Context (archaeology) · Modernity · Political science · Politics · Private sphere · Public sphere · Social science · Sociology · Subject (documents) · European Political History Analysis · History · Law · Reformation and Early Modern Christianity