ABSTRACT

Habermas examines the possibility of reviving bourgeois critical publicity in late capitalist societies and democracies, but finds such attempts regressive and unrealistic. Habermas’s ‘project of Enlightenment’ reconstructs a public sphere wherein critical reason establishes the democratic practice of rational agreement in matters of public affairs. Habermas’s narrative of modernity and rationalization in his later works makes an exploration of the notion of public sphere. The Habermasian/Modernist understanding of the public sphere postulates a society which constitutes itself on the basis of rational consensus. Today, any discussion of democracy is likely to raise questions about the structural patterns of the public sphere and the identity of the subjects who engage in it. In the contemporary world of globalization, cyberspace and cyberculture, micro-public discourses often detract and dismantle global public discourses. In this post-modern condition, cyberspace and virtual reality seem to provide an augmented, de-territorialized political domain for future democracy.