Michelle Peterson: Fragmentation

Once again, I find myself wondering what all this debate stuff between modernists and post modernists is all about. I think that we live in more of a post modern society than a modern one, so why does Habermas persist on trying to bring back the modern ways? Clearly, our society is not going to regress back to the eighteenth-century. Poor, poor, Habermas, he needs to find a new hobby.

It’s a good thing that different cultures have their own public spheres and no, democracy should not rely on just one public sphere. It’s silly that Habermas wants equality of access to the public sphere but only one public sphere. That would never work in our modern society. “Visibility” is the key word in this chapter. Distinct public spheres have existed since the beginning of time, but just recently these public spheres have been acknowledged (142). Thanks to spectacle and the media, public spheres are able to acknowledge one another, even if they don’t want to. There is just no escaping that multiple public spheres exist, and this is truly what bothers Habermas. In the eighteenth-century there was not TV, radio, or as much spectacle, so the elite white men in charge were able to ignore the other public spheres. That is just not possible today.

McKee says that modernists believe that “In order for everybody to be equal in public debate . . . they must leave their differences at the door” (145). If this were truly the case, what on earth would they debate about? It seems like Habermas wants people to just agree without having a disagreement. Yet, he wants disagreement because he believes that debates are important, so I guess I’m not really sure what one of his debates would look like.

Habermas thinks that “allowing cultural difference into the official public sphere encourages people to be selfish” (148). But not allowing cultural differences into the public sphere encourage selfishness more so. Habermas’s conflicting views are selfish for only wanting white elite males into the official public sphere. What I do think is selfish is having separate “Nations.” There is a “Black Nation,” “Women’s Nation,” “Queer Nation,” etc. I think that having these separate nations sets each group apart from society as a whole. While I think it’s important to maintain these separate cultures, having separate nations just goes too far to separate all of us.

Finally, Jim McGuigan believes that it was “ideas generated in working-class public spheres that passed into the official bourgeois public sphere in the 19^th century and resulted in working-class people being given the vote” (163). I agree that change starts where there are a people who are willing to fight. Oppression leads to struggles, and where there are struggles there are power struggles. Power is a driving force for the oppressed, so occasionally, when the oppressed suffer for a very, very long time, sometimes, someone in power is finally willing to listen.