ABSTRACT
Beyond the theoretical quandaries of critique and its complex intellectual history, the public sphere is now suffused with critical discourse, claims, counter-claims, accusations, denunciations, revelations and unmasking. This chapter opens by re-examining critical media studies and Habermas’ idealisation of the public sphere as complementary perspectives. A sustained examination is offered of Mill’s arguments for free speech, which conceptualise the public sphere as a constant contest, where debate is more important than truth; the consequence of observing these discussions is less disinterested objectivity than being drawn imitatively into critique. The analysis then turns to contemporary debates in the public sphere: debates around the centenary of the 1916 Easter Rising in Ireland is interpreted as a historical case that demonstrates anti-colonial critique being replaced by liberal democratic critique of nationalism in terms of ‘historical maturity’. The protests and riots in Charlottesville in August 2017 are then analysed, examining the demand for free speech and the adoption of critique by the populist right. Then major election campaign speeches of Donald Trump are analysed, showing the deployment of unmasking, sceptical and deconstructive styles of critique. Rather than pursue such interminable debates further, the chapter ends with an analysis of how neo-liberal critiques of the welfare state have led to problematic transformations of policy and street-level process, eroding solidarity, trust and the ideal of care. These examples are necessarily brief snapshots, but they substantiate the earlier diagnosis of the problems of critique
