ABSTRACT
The main effect of postmodernism with regard to the public sphere has been to replace the "universal" with the "specific" intellectual. Postmodernism has articulated social movements based on identity with poststructuralist discourses aimed at dismantling the presuppositions of the liberal public sphere: the free and rational subject who enters a neutralized public arena predicated upon disinterested discussion. To a great extent, the Habermasian turn in cultural studies defines itself against the project of Michel Foucault, who, among postmodern thinkers, has done the most to address issues of power and political struggle. Nancy Fraser's theory of counterpublics, which was largely responsible for introducing the issue of the public intellectual into cultural studies, is an attempt to reconcile Jurgen Habermas and Foucault. Foucault needs sovereignty to avoid the appearance of a wholesale abandonment of any claims to emancipation and an unqualified embrace of neoliberal, postmodern individualism.
