Changing Perceptions of the Public Sphere

Christian J. Emden, David Midgley

• Publisher: Berghahn Books
• Year: 2012
• Print ISBN: 9780857455000
• eBook ISBN: 9780857455017
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: 20th Century History
• Index: History

Initially propounded by the philosopher Jürgen Habermas in 1962 in order to describe the realm of social discourse between the state on one hand, and the private sphere of the market and the family on the other, the concept of a bourgeois public sphere quickly became a central point of reference in the humanities and social sciences. This volume reassesses the validity and reach of Habermas's concept beyond political theory by exploring concrete literary and cultural manifestations in early modern and modern Europe. The contributors ask whether, and in what forms, a social formation that rightfully can be called the "public sphere" really existed at particular historical junctures, and consider the senses in which the "public sphere" should rather be replaced by a multitude of interacting cultural and social "publics." This volume offers insights into the current status of the "public sphere" within the disciplinary formation of the humanities and social sciences at the beginning of the twenty-first century.

Table of contents

• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction: Changing Perceptions of the Public Sphere
• Part I — Publics before the Public Sphere
• Chapter 1 — A Public Sphere before Kant? Habemas and the Historians of Early Modern Germany
• Chapter 2 — Kunigunde of Bavaria and the "Conqest of Regensburg": Politics, Gender, and the Public Sphere in 1489
• Chapter 3 — Publicizing the Private: The Rise of "Secret History"
• Part II — Thinking about Enlightenment Publics
• Chapter 4 — Private, Public, and Structural Change: The German Problem
• Chapter 5 — The Second Life of the "Public Sphere": On Charisma and Routinization in the History of a Concept
• Part III — Cultural Politics and Literary Publics
• Chapter 6 — Probing the Limits: The Contribution of Literary Writing to Defining the Public Sphere
• Chapter 7 — Habermas Anticipated: The Eighteenth-Century Public Sphere as "Theater of the World"
• Chapter 8 — Karl Kraus and the Transformation of the Public Sphere in Early Twentieth-Century Vienna
• Bibliography
• Contributors
• Index