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The public sphere: a new theater for international relations

27 janvier, 2010 | Commentaires fermés sur The public sphere: a new theater for international relations

The last declaration of the Secretary of State H.R. Clinton toward freedom of speech and the role of Google within the Chinese civil society may let you think that the public sphere is becoming the new playground of the US strategy of democratic proliferation after the use of the colorful revolutions supported by NGOs.

 In order to understand the main property of the public sphere which is the most relevant for international relations, I summarized the chapter 4: Fragmentation of Alan MC Kee’s book, The public sphere, an introduction (2005, Cambridge University Press). I invite you to completely read this book to explore all the public sphere’s properties (trivialization, commercialization, spectacle and apathy) which are also very interesting.

In today’s talk it is becoming common to hear or say that media and audiences are more concerned by stars, diet tips and sports than real political issues. The purpose of media is to sell ads and they need our vacuum brain to be fulfilled with desire to trigger compulsory buying of useless products and services. The low level of audience’s attention unable it to enter into a rational discussion about the public issues of the polity. Our national culture is becoming too fragmented and the several identity groups are no more able to talk and to hear each other.

 The philosopher J. Habermas defined the public sphere as:”a domain of our social life where such a thing as public opinion can be formed where citizens deal with matters of general interest without being subject to coercion to express and publicize their views.”

 

Modern public sphere during the french revolution (Club des Jacobins)

 This public space is where confrontation of ideas about how the society should work takes place. The mass media enable large population to enter into the public space. From the Greek city states of thousands to countries of several millions, the public sphere is created and sustained by information technologies.

 The difficulty is not coming from the technical infrastructure of the public sphere, like Internet provider and search engine. It is the functional role of the public sphere on issues like modernity.

 From a modern point of view, the society should progress toward more equality, justice, freedom and comfort. The public sphere is where ordinary citizens and associations, the civil society, reach a consensus on how these principles are implemented within the society. The State can design the “adequate” body of laws to organize society in accordance with the people will.

 The first conclusion to be drawn is that public sphere doesn’t make sense in a society where the individual is not the basic unit of the political philosophy. A civil society, different from the State, must exist in order to sustain a public sphere.

 Then, a methodological remark should be made before to analyze the disagreement about the public sphere. In the public sphere there are facts, we can argue on, and there are attitudes that cannot be argued. Attitude is about values and how facts are interpreted. Debate on attitudes is endless discussion.

 For example, there is no rational debate between the modern and post modern attitude on the public sphere. From a postmodern perspective, each human group, based on its shared values and identity, think and communicate about issues differently and we should respect that.

 The Universalist approaches look for equality of individual toward a set of values. On the contrary, new social movements argued that different groups need to affirm their identity. This lead to a multiplication of group identities within the society and it decreases its level of coherence. 

The main consequence of this multiplication of groups’ identities is the depoliticization of the public sphere. There is no more common interest among people. The history of public sphere since the French revolution teaches us that it was built on the dominant bourgeois male culture which excluded other minorities sub cultures, like feminist or working class cultures. The invoked argument is their irrelevancy to common political issues on power distribution. So, the question is does a homogenous public sphere desirable when debate is on power sharing and diversity of identities? From a modern perspective the answer is yes. Because it enables the participants to reach an agreement on shared common background and goals, and it enables the political leaders to act based on a strong legitimacy. On the contrary, post modern thinkers argued that a real debate can only occurred between people who are coming from different paradigms. Then, each side will answer differently to the induced questions: can different cultures communicate with each other? And does the official public sphere deal with the most important issues? From a domestic debate the main critics address to the post modern is that cultural difference make people selfish and less concerned by the global issues of society.

 We can add that from the international relations point of view, if this critic is true, it means that a foreign country’s government can be undermine by promoting a fragmented public sphere.

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