Historians Response To Habermas

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Journal of Communication Inquiry
DOI: 10.1177/0196859904266499
2004; 28; 217 Journal of Communication Inquiry
Andrej Pinter
Public Sphere and History: Historians Response to Habermas on the "Worth" of the Past
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10.1177/0196859904266499 ARTICLE Journal of Communication Inquiry Public Sphere and History
Andrej Pinter
Public Sphere and History:
Historians Response to Habermas
on the Worth of the Past
This article deals with contested links between the public sphere and history. In
particular, it presents a challenge faced by cultural, social, and political histori-
ans to use history in clarifying the Habermasian notion of the public sphere.
According to the early theory of Jrgen Habermas, history is a necessary ingre-
dient of theoretical conceptualization of the public sphere. Recent research into
the history of the public sphere questioned some interpretations of facts on
which Habermas based his early theory, but emerging historians perspectives
on the nexus between history and theory of the public sphere uncovered other
problems. The role of history in building theories of the public sphere is one such
issue. In his later work, Habermas evaded this problem. This article also
addresses a third aspect of the problem, which is developed within the history of
communication. From this perspective, the history of the public sphere appears
much more diverse, dynamic, and ambiguous. According to this position, his-
tory appears instrumental in preserving the plurality of possibilities and altern-
ative intellectual routes.
Keywords: public sphere; history; Habermas; critical theory; historians of
communication
Public sphere is usually defined as a realmof free and intelligent communica-
tion about contested public concerns and uninhibited exchange of opinions
about these concerns (e.g., Habermas 1996; Hardt 1996; Hohendahl 2000;
Keane 2003; Mah 2000; Peters 2001). It is established as a prominent concept
of social and communication research, drawing together different theoretical
approaches. It is considered a useful tool for explaining social change as well
as other complex social and communication processes in the present-day
democracies. In its Habermasian form, the public sphere is paradigmatically
associated with discussions on democracy and its shortcomings. In particular,
it links with attempts to renovate the modernist tradition in social and political
theory (see Jay 1985; Dahlgren 1991; Fraser 1992).
217
Journal of Communication Inquiry 28:3 (July 2004): 217-232
DOI: 10.1177/0196859904266499
2004 Sage Publications
Recent literature on the public sphere identifies many controversial issues,
but among the most contested is the nexus between the public sphere and his-
tory. This idea is not only focused on the rich intellectual history of the idea of
the public because the elements that permeate contemporary publics and pub-
lic spheres are often historical in nature; for example, in the German
Historikerstreit, where the Habermasian notion of the public sphere extended
into a practical application (Habermas 1998). In addition, various histories of
the public sphere suggest that intellectual contexts in which present concep-
tions and assumptions associated with this problematic concept developed
were not unambiguous (e.g., Habermas 1989; La Vopa 1992; Peters 1993;
Hardt 1998). The public sphere therefore enables comprehensive overviews of
the intellectual heritage built into the practices of the present-day democracies.
Closely related questions have appeared in the recent literature: What does
the public sphere say about our past? If there are immediate links to the past
through the concept of the public sphere, what are they? These questions are
derivative from Habermass own formulation of the issue. He often asked,
Can we learn fromhistory? (Habermas 1998, 3-15). Obviously, his question
was directed more to the public sphere at large, although it also can be rightly
addressed to the theorists or historians of the public sphere. The question has a
theoretical significance, whereas links between history and theory of the pub-
lic sphere deserve closer investigation.
This article presents a challenge of the cultural, social, and political histori-
ans to the Habermasian perspective on the nexus between history and theory of
the public sphere. After publication of his early theory in English (Habermas
1989), critical literature developed one typical response to his work into a
comprehensive historization of the public sphere. Historians explored
within a programmatic outline some alternative explanations (e.g., Warner
1990; Eley 1992; La Vopa 1992; Barry 1995). Implicit in these debates were
diverging conceptions of history. Whether related to these debates or not, it is a
fact that Habermas later abandoned his version of a developmental conception
of history as an immediate backbone of his theory of the public sphere. His
newtheory of the public sphere explicitly denies any reliance on a philosophy
of history (Habermas 1996, 288). Because of this transformation, the chal-
lenge of cultural, social, and political historians of the public sphere remains
unanswered. From the perspective of the critical social theory within which
Habermass work is positioned, the question of whether (and to what extent)
theories of the public sphere can draw from history remains open.
In this article, I propose to answer the question from a different angle.
Because of a lack of receptiveness for theoretical abstraction in the work of the
historians of the public sphere, I argue that it is possible to answer the above
question from the perspective of historians of communication. The relevance
218 Journal of Communication Inquiry
of the work of Hardt (1992, 2001), Peters (1993, 2001), McLuskie (2003), or
Splichal (2003) is supported by their similar connection with the legacy of crit-
ical social theory and historically minded research. Implications from the
work of Hanno Hardt seemparticularly appropriate for this task. The question
about the nexus between theory of the public sphere and its history is answered
from the angle of communication historians by way of pointing out the diver-
sity of approaches that in the past shaped our present conceptions. Present
notions of the public sphere, which preserved their significance in political and
theoretical terms, emerged from a plurality of perspectives and claims that in
the past competed for a prevalence among alternatives. History of the public
sphere from this angle reminds us of the plurality of possibilities and alterna-
tive intellectual routes. From a theoretical perspective, it is informative to
explicate the history of the public sphere because this approach does not
narrow the range of imminent decisions and alternatives.
Historization of the Public Sphere
All recent discussions of the term public sphere refer to the work of
Habermas, especially to his seminal text Structural Transformation of the
Public Sphere (1989); when such discussions deal specifically with the nexus
between the public sphere and history, this book, and to some extent Habermass
other texts, predictably become their primary point of departure (La Vopa
1992; Brooke 1998; Mah 2000; Beaud and Kaufmann 2001).
1
Although Struc-
tural Transformation of the Public Sphere (in fact, its English translation from
1989) is justly credited for popularization of the public sphere concept and
also for its illuminating historization, Habermas invented neither. The idea of
the public sphere or the public realm is already present in many major social
theories throughout the twentieth century (Peters 2001; Splichal 2001). More-
over, discussions about the idea of the public as a specific realmof the nascent
liberal states clearly extends to the beginnings of modernization in advanced
Western European societies (Koselleck 1988; Habermas 1989). For some, the
problemof the public realmis an even older inheritance. According to Hannah
Arendt (1958), modern understanding of the public realm derives from the
ancient Greek heritage. According to Sennett (1979, 4-6), on the other hand,
the late modern public may be compared to the characteristics of the late
Roman society and its own anomalies.
The notion of the public sphere has, one can argue, a rich intellectual as well
as experiential history and is thus entitled to systematic attention froma histor-
ical perspective. Awareness that conceptions of the public sphere and social
processes emergent in this realmdepend on the dialogue with the past is vital.
Since the eighteenth century, prominent thinkers whom are still cited today
Public Sphere and History 219
with reference to the public sphere began to develop systematic theories of the
public (e.g., Rousseau, Kant, Hegel, Kirkegaard, Nietzsche, Tocqueville,
Bentham, J. S. Mill, Tnnies). For most of them, the realmof public was inex-
tricably bound with its historical contextespecially for Hegel, Kirkegaard,
Marx, and Tnnies. After a pause in the early twentieth century, when the pre-
vailing positivist attitude of the social sciences in general, and of mass commu-
nication in particular (Hardt 1992, 77-122), led to the neglect of history,
social research was ready in the late twentieth century to embrace social phe-
nomena, such as the public sphere, within its historical perspective.
Recently, a substantial push for a theoretical return to the past transforma-
tions of the public sphere resulted from extraordinary social changes in the
Eastern and Central Europe, culminating in velvet revolutions of the late
1980s and early 1990s. Later, the unrelenting tide of popular movements and
democratization spread to Latin America and also to the Far East; this contrib-
uted to a certain globalization of this notion and its normative assumptions.
2
In fact, renewed interest in Habermass work on the public sphere falls within
this period of general enthusiasmfor social change and theoretical reformism.
If historization means that social phenomena are interpreted and investi-
gated against their historical backdrop, recent literature on the public sphere
cannot be uniformly described relative to this concern. Links between the pub-
lic sphere and history are explored in at least three different ways. One could
also elaborate for a fourth, which I will also mention below, but this link devel-
oped mostly outside the literature on the term public sphere, however central
this point was initially for its popularization.
Following Habermas, historically oriented research of the public sphere
focuses on one or more of the following themes:
1. The public sphere is a historical phenomenon that emerged no later than in the late sev-
enteenth century. In advanced societies of Western Europe, the public sphere epito-
mized trends of the nascent urban culture and declining feudal authorities. This theme
revolves around locating the public sphere in history.
2. The idea of the public sphere exemplifies progress of enlightened reason that tried to
free human subjectivity from the constraints of authoritarian traditions. In its present
form, the public sphere preserved certain values and hopes that evolved throughout the
Enlightenment and are still relevant today. This point guides historical investigations of
normative assumptions of the public sphere.
3. Contested meanings of the public sphere lie at the core of enduring disputes and contro-
versies about politics, society, rationality, and public life in general. Theoretical concep-
tualizations of the public sphere necessarily integrate diverse, even contradictory, ideas.
This theme revolves around the history of ideas and the point that the public sphere is
embedded in diverse views of modernity.
There is also a fourth, and perhaps most ambitious, theme with respect to
the nexus between public sphere and history, although its presence is no longer
so pervasive in the vast literature on histories of the public sphere. There the
public sphere figures as (4) a model for the reconstruction of political, social,
or intellectual history. Although the early work of Habermas is clearly an
accomplishment in this direction, subsequent historical analyses of the public
sphere rarely took up further exploration of this idea. The notion of public or
the public sphere as a reconstructive model is located far outside the special-
ized literature and did not develop in direct response to Habermas. The works
of Raymond Williams (1971), Hannah Arendt (1958), Richard Sennett (1979),
Benedict Anderson (1983), John Keane (1991), John Hartley (1992), or
Charles Taylor (2002) may exemplify this fourth theme; here, ideas are devel-
oped more or less independently of the early Habermasian theory of the public
sphere. In some sense, such appropriations of the public sphere (or public-
ness) for explaining complex and large-scale social transformation are inher-
ently polemical and comprehensive, but they are simultaneously quite elusive
and difficult to compare because of their broad and sometimes rather loose def-
initions of what is public. More detailed discussion of these works exceeds
the scope of the present analysis.
Various approaches to the historization of the public sphere turned out to be
very productive. By and large, they are heavily indebted to Habermas (1989,
1992b). In the early 1990s, debates in which public sphere was framed in its
historical perspective centered mainly on the chronological precision of
Habermass analyses (Baker 1992; Eley 1992; Barry 1995; Brooke 1998; Mah
2000). Cultural, political, and social historians attempted to showthat it is pos-
sible to locate an enlightened, liberal public sphere of urban citizens already
much earlier than Habermas had argued (La Vopa 1992). Whereas Habermas
(1989, 57-73) claimed that the public sphere emerged at the turn of the eigh-
teenth century, historical material shows that elements of rational debate and
publication oriented toward consensus on contested issues existed throughout
the entire seventeenth century (e.g., Barry 1995, 223).
Locating the public sphere in history led to discussions about its diverse
normative assumptions, which were articulated either theoretically or through
practices of public appearance and communication (Eley 1992; Fraser 1992;
Beaud and Kaufmann 2001). Studies also emerged featuring past discussions
on the contested notions and assumptions of the public life and were presented
as uncertain and dynamic exchanges through which some of the present con-
ceptions developed. These analyses present past insights not as given but as
evolving in the surrounding social and political context, thus further illuminat-
ing their veiled dimensions (e.g., Pesante 1995; Hohendahl 2000; Splichal
2003). Few researchers of the public sphere, however, attempted to transform
this growing body of knowledge into new models of societal modernization
and transformation of feudal structures of power under the aegis of the liberal
ideology of publicity, the ffentlichkeit. Habermass early theory remains
unparalleled in this respect.
History of the Public Sphere and
Critical Theory of Democracy
An implicit dispute between Habermas and the historians of the public
sphere relies upon the difference in understanding the role of history in the
epistemic quest for new knowledge. Habermas is no historian, but in his early
study he used history to present certain theses about the development and
demise of an enlightened public sphere. Historians engage the problem as
experts on historical detail but are less receptive to theoretical abstraction (see
Kramer 1992, 236-39). The debate between Habermass early notion of public
sphere and historians response to it can be summarized as a tension between
normative and descriptive aspect of social theories. For Habermas, there is an
important difference between howthings are and howthey should be. For his-
torians, facticity as unveiled with historical research is in fact normative.
The logic of Habermass argument as presented in his Structural Transfor-
mation (1989)based on his assessment of flaws in the evolving German
democracy of 1960s (Habermas 1989, 219-22; 1992a, 81)is as follows:
There is much to be improved in the mass democracies of liberal welfare
states. Part of the problem is due to a grand antinomy in that states seek legiti-
macy with reference to the enlightenment standard of public government, but
publicity has also become eroded by the powers of capital and unfettered econ-
omies of the mass media. To improve democratic conditions, Habermas (1989,
17) suggested returning to the ideas that the enlightened public used in the past
when it successfully claimed possession over emancipatory forums of public
debate and reasoning. In other words, Habermas (1989, 233) called to refash-
ion effects of the transformed public sphere. In his analyses, the public sphere
was located in an era of dynamic public life where free discussion was the most
apparent form of sociability. Habermas (1989, 89-140) was also able to trace
his assumptions about public sphere to the social and political philosophy of
the time.
The underlying conception of history in this argument was, like for Hegel or
Marx, given objectively. The past, according to this view, already contained a
vision of the desired future. Arefeudalized public sphere of mass democracies
was a distortion of a historically grounded vision and a sidestep in the progress
of liberal ideals (Habermas 1989, 231-35). This circumvention could be
observed, Habermas (1989) proposed, through the (un)working of critical
publicity. He was concerned that the public sphere of industrially advanced
societies that progressed towards increasing plurality of interests might lose
the antagonistic edge of competing needs (p. 234). Democratization there-
fore could be evaluated through relations of conflict and consensus and the
way critical publicity helps to give agencies wider autonomy in reaching
consensus through the questioning of authorities (p. 250).
To appreciate the historicist motifs in this argument, Habermass allegiance
to critical theory is central. On one hand, his book was intended as a move
away fromthe historical materialismof the earlier generation of Frankfurt the-
orists, yet it still depended on its broad outline of the philosophy of history.
Habermas said in a later recollection,
Only to a superficial glance would it have appeared possible to write Structural
Transformation along the lines of a developmental history of society [italics
added] in the style of Marx and Max Weber. The dialectic of the bourgeois pub-
lic sphere, which determines the books structure, wears the ideology-critical
approach on its sleeve. (1992b, 442)
But Habermas already admitted a decade earlier in one of his written inter-
views that the book was an attempt to continue the Hegelian and Weberian
Marxism of the nineteen-twenties with other means [italics added] (1992a,
148). There may be little difference in his statements. But it seems that, what-
ever Habermas chose as new means for his departure from the tradition
within which he worked, he certainly did not depart radically in Structural
Transformation from the ideology of historical progress.
Habermass dialectics of the enlightened public sphere suggests a develop-
mental logic of a cherished past and a demonstrably impaired present on its
way to a dimfuture; he even talked explicitly about the framework of his his-
torical and developmental model of the public sphere (1989, 248). In his thor-
ough revisions of this early theory, Habermas did not renounce his underlying
acceptance of developmental logic operationalized by a highly selective
reconstruction of history (1992b). For instance, any attempt to incorporate
feminist critiques of exclusion into the liberal ideology of the public sphere,
either in its early enlightenment vision or its contemporary form, should be
obvious as an invalidation of a linear analysis of the historical subversion along
the lines of what is proposed in Structural Transformation. Yet Habermas
insisted on the contrary. A mistake in the assessment of the significance of
certain aspects does not falsify the larger outline of the process of transforma-
tion [italics added] that I presented (1992b, 430).
Subsequent to Structural Transformation, Habermas developed a theoreti-
cal program for a defense of modernity, an unfinished project. This dictum
still implies the logic of historical development and progress akin to the
Hegelian philosophy of history. Two most revealing projects about this under-
lying motif that Habermas published in defense of modernity were his theory
of communication action and communicative approach to explanation of
social evolution (e.g., Habermas 1979). Habermass own concept of history,
which, according to Jay (1985, 131), developed in these works, was anything
but antievolutionary.
3
This important aspect, which is consistent with the theoretical aims of
Structural Transformation, should be contrasted with a later development of
Habermass theory. Recently, he proposed a different conception of the nexus
between history and the public sphere. His newtheory of the public sphere no
longer relies on a conception of practical reason. Instead, he nowturns to com-
municative reason and action.
In the demanding conditions of fair procedure and the presuppositions of com-
munication that undergird legitimate lawmaking, the reason that posits and tests
the norms has assumed a procedural form. . . . This approach does not need a
philosophy of history to support it [italics added]. It is premised simply on the
idea that one cannot adequately describe the operation of a constitutionally
organized political system, even at an empirical level, without referring to the
validity dimensions of law and the legitimating force of the democratic genesis
of law. (1996, 288)
Fromthis newangle, history of the public sphere is worth little in viewof its
present conceptualization or need for criticism. Rather than concluding the
contested issue and making a definite statement regarding different ways of
historization of the public sphere in recent theories, Habermas decided to
evade the question altogether. Historization of the public sphere has, fromthis
new perspective, little theoretical significance for a comprehensive critical
theory of democracy based on the notion of the public sphere. Any theory of
the public sphere embedded in the above arguments may find history useful
merely as a vehicle of discursive formation of opinion on the level of individ-
ual citizens. In this newconception of the nexus between the public sphere and
history, the worth of the latter is defined in a negative sense.
If history plays a didactic role at all, it is as a critical authority that informs
us that what our cultural legacy had up to that point considered valid is no lon-
ger tenable. Then history functions as an authority that demands not so much
imitation as revision (Habermas 1998, 11).
The public sphere should feed on interpretations of history for the sake of
preventing its own amnesia. History that is thus redefined as an alarming
device for detecting contested issues can no longer provide explanations of
historical change. Instead, it is on a par with other sources of generating public
attention. Robust visions of future are, according to this conception, inherent
in the constellations of the present communicative actions. Current problems
maybe the onlymeans available for explainingthe course of societal evolution.
How Much Can Theories of the Public
Sphere Learn from History?
Habermass theory of the public sphere changed substantially in the years
since its translation and publication. In addition to a different role assigned to
history, other substantial amendments were made (Habermas 1992b, 1996).
Chronology and details of this change are illuminating, but they surpass the
concern of this article. It is not clear, however, whether his changed under-
standing of history relates to appropriation of the term public sphere by the
cultural, political, and social historians in recent literature. The shift from a
theory of public sphere that is based on a modified materialist philosophy of
history to a theory of public sphere that builds on discursive theory of lawand
links with deliberative theory of politics is motivated by many complex theo-
retical and empirical considerations (kerlep 2002). However, this shift
exposes, within the limits of the present analysis, three broader perspectives on
the role of history in theorizing the public sphere.
One such perspective is advocated by historians of the public sphere, to the
degree that it is possible to condense this approach as homogeneous. Two fur-
ther perspectives derive from different conceptualizations of the nexus
between the public sphere and history in the works of Jrgen Habermas. Both
positions proposed by Habermas are flawed on the topical question about the
worth of history in theorizing the public sphere, and the historians challenges
to these positions should be considered carefully.
Neither of Habermass positions can provide an answer to the question,
How much can theories of the public sphere learn from history? According
to the early theory of Habermas, this is a misguided question as investigation
of history leads the formation of future. Theorists should instead ask how
much of the past has been forgotten. The second conception suggests that one
can learn from the past as much as present theoretical concerns allow; in most
cases, this makes past experience obsolete and irrelevant. Put more bluntly,
according to the first view, history is an omnicompetent judge of present con-
dition; according to the second, the present is an omnicompetent judge on the
relevance of history.
What emerges fromhistoriansviews on the role of history in theorizing the
public sphere? It became apparent through historical analyses of the public
sphere that this concept enables integration of entirely different, even contra-
dictory, perspectives. Impressive theoretical diversity is clear from biblio-
graphical records (Strum 1994; Hohendahl 2000, 124-79). Other upshots are
also academic achievements and are attributable, in whole or in part, to the pro-
lific literature in which the concept of the public sphere has been framed in its
historical perspective. Mah (2000, 156-68) mentioned spatialization of the
public as a consequence of the historians approach to the concept; he argued
that the historians spatialization of the term is . . . in keeping with the aim of
recovering and empowering neglected social groups (p. 163).
4
Another such contribution of the historical approach is pluralization of cul-
tural and ethnic experiences linked with the concept. Habermass initial
account is focused primarily on three most advanced societies of the West:
England, France, and Germany. Subsequent studies recognized historical and
theoretical significance of other contemporary societies for a discussion of the
public sphere, for instance, Italian states, Switzerland, the Netherlands, the
Mediterranean, and the United States (e.g., Warner 1990; Barry 1995; Ryan
1992; Wolff 2001). Slightly different in this literatures contribution was its
systematic attention to language. Habermas consistently claimed the public
sphere is a discursive formation (1989, 1992b, 1996). It seems natural that this
aspect is reflected in the languages and codes established through public life.
Habermas himself emphasized the importance of this aspect by investigating
German, French, and English uses of words like public, opinion, and publicity
(1989); many others furthered this insight (Warner 1990; Keane 1991; Baker
1992; Peters 1993; Barry 1995).
Admirable contributions of cultural historians response to Habermas not-
withstanding, there is much reason to be critical about the way theoretical con-
cepts are used in their works. Historians rarely acknowledge that investiga-
tions of the past are motivated and shaped by concerns for the present and
sometimes even by concerns for the future. In the initial response to Habermas,
historians sought to correct his factographic mistakes (Baker 1992; La Vopa
1992). With the exception of Eley (1992), cultural and political history was
relatively disinterested in the vividly disputed normative implications of the
concept. Kramer (1992, 239) formulated this problematic concern with the
question, Howcan historians research and write about the past within the dis-
ciplinary constraints of their profession and also develop the critical engage-
ment with the present that Habermas work calls for and demonstrates?
Historians responses to the theory of the public sphere for more than a
decade lacked answers to the question of howto link historical and theoretical
insights and how to define historical knowledge as a resource for theoretical
analysis and critique. The implicit suggestion in this response was that theo-
rists should not do history, and it was only recently abandoned when the two
aspects, theory and history, became important components of historians
research (Mah 2000, How 2001, Bradley 2002).
Such flaws in theorizing links between history and theory of the public
sphere can be made very plain by using the history of communication, rather
than cultural or political history, as an entrance to the historical investigation of
the concept. The work of Hanno Hardt (1996), John Peters (1993, 2001), and
Slavko Splichal (2003) is illuminating in this respect. These scholars offer not
only a different angle on the historical contexts in which the public sphere
developed but also a different angle on historization as a process. If one returns
to the classification of the four predominant themes in studies that historize the
public sphere, one should note that historians of communication contribute
substantially to the second and third theme. The history of communication is
not itself able to pinpoint where in the Western history a rational, enlightened
public sphere emerged. It can offer, however, a great insight into debates that
surrounded in the past emergence of key theoretical concepts. The history of
communication can also fruitfully map out various normative implications of
such theoretical concepts. In some sense, the history of communication is con-
cerned precisely with the rich tradition of disputed ideas and possible devia-
tions fromthemthat were forgotten some time in the past. Communication his-
tory, to borrow a phrase from Peters (1993), is concerned with the paths not
taken in subsequent communication research. As also argued by McLuskie
(2003),
Relatively submerged conceptions in the history of communication studies
often stand as an alternative set of perspectives on communication waiting to be
mentioned and developed. Some provide a basis for more critical, more human-
istic, lines of inquiry for the academy, its students, and others. (p. 26)
That history is central to theoretical investigation of communication is a
characteristic point of Hanno Hardts work (1979, 1992, 1996, 2001). His
understanding of history as a framework of experience also falls within the
larger area of critical social theory that attempts to merge the study of societal
progress and improvement of the human thought with historical evidence
(1992, 1998, 2001). But within this framework, Hardts conception of the his-
torically informed theorization appears in strong contrast to both the early and
late scholarship of Habermas. Early Habermas searches for roots of large
social transformations in history, whereas Hardt clarifies past intellectual con-
troversies and theoretical expectations for a better understanding of our
present conceptions.
Hardt (1992, x) argued that any overviewof the history should focus on the
resources for the betterment of contemporary democracies, for the improve-
ment of society. In this sense, his three important books on the social theories
of the press and on the critical study of communication are structured as inves-
tigations of inspiring visions of a better human condition (Hardt 1979, 1992,
2001).
For Hardt, historically minded research also is one that inspires the con-
struction of a sense of understanding the course of ideas, mainly about com-
munication but also about other related phenomena or ideals that interest the
scholars of communication (1992, xi). In this sense, his own study of the intel-
lectual traditions within which media, communication, and journalismstudies
have developed grew out of a hope to find a vision of theory as an instructive
and useful instrument in a search for conditions which allowindividuals to live
a truly human existence (1992, xv). History, according to Hardt, is not a mere
opportunity for celebration but an opportunity to cater to the need of informed
self-reflection.
Here the link between history and theory is defined much more clearly than
in the works of cultural, political, and social historians of the public sphere.
One may learn fromthe past that which may shed a critical light on the present
human condition. Past experiences are indeed instrumental for the buildup of
theoretical critique. On the other hand, the past is not defined as an omni-
competent guide to the future. Historical investigation, according to Hardt and
other communication historians, clarifies the fuzziness of developmental pro-
cesses through which present notions and ideas were established. It does not
provide a clear-cut, unilinear abstraction that was sought by the early
Habermas in the heritage of the Enlightenment. In some sense, history, accord-
ing to Hardt, appears instrumental in preserving the plurality of possibilities
and of alternative intellectual routes, rather than a tool for narrowing down the
range of imminent decisions and alternatives.
Such conception of the nexus between the public sphere and history is, in
fact, quite different fromthe one advocated by a pessimistic reading of the crit-
ical theory of society. As Adorno and Horkheimer (2002, 245) put it in one of
their unfinished philosophical fragments, if one thinks of history as comple-
mentary to a consistent theory, or as something one can construe, then such
history cannot be good, but only horrific. Habermass recent diversion from
this position led in a different direction. He denied the role of the past in con-
ceptualizing present theoretical concerns with respect to the public sphere.
Recent communication history, conversely, shows how the worth of the past
may be preserved without denying the epistemic role of history.
Conclusions
After the big revolutions in the eighteenth century, social and political
thinkers spoke more systematically about the relationship between history and
theoretical reason. This is also a specific historical era in which Habermasian
theory recognizes the blossoming of the public sphere. The notion of history is
thus unavoidably connected to the emergence of the public sphere and also to
its subsequent conceptualizations. After paradigmatic social change in that
era, theoretical reflections centered on a realization that the present moment
may have cultivated powerful means to break with the past and to realign the
expectations for the future with the achievable progress of humanity. However
large the reflections of history had been looming to the philosophers of the
Enlightenment, it was only possible to articulate them within the public
sphere. Whatever the future had in store was to be unveiled in public.
The notion of the public sphere has presently developed into a catalyst of
contemporary social thought, but it retains a productive and theoretically con-
tested link with the human history. From the vast literature on the public
sphere, one can argue that its links with the past are charismatic. In its histori-
cal perspective, the public sphere ignites discussions among social and politi-
cal theorists, historians and practitioners. Indeed, historically oriented
approaches to the public sphere compete with other methodologies that find it
useful. However, even scholarship about the public sphere that does not explic-
itly address its various links with history makes use of the insights that were
formulated in historians debates on the concept (e.g., Fraser 1992).
But there are different perceptions of what the past may contribute to the
contemporary theoretical reflection. The early theory of Habermas implied
that historical transformation of the public sphere contained a blueprint of its
future development (1989). But Habermas recently found it most instructive to
investigate the dialectics between the horizon of experience and subsequent
disappointments or negative experiences (1998, 10). This position led him
into the thesis that history plays no epistemic role in constructing theory of the
public sphere (1996). Thus, he does not directly answer the challenge of histo-
rians of the public sphere but, in many respects, evades it.
At the start of this article, I proposed to compare the work of cultural, social,
and political historians of the public sphere with the history of communication
research. Since historians of the public sphere did not solve the problem
implicit in the link between history and theory, the insights of critical commu-
nication history clearly illuminates the flaws of their research. Communica-
tion history solves the contested nexus between history and the public sphere
in a most inspiring way: it preserves the plurality and dynamism of the past
debates from which present ideas emerged. The history of communication
attempts to reconstruct academic public spheres through the history of ideas
of the past and to provide theoretical means of informed self-reflection or
critique for the present purposes.
There is an important bias in both fields of historical research that makes it
impossible to generalize even more broadly this insight. Historians of the pub-
lic sphere and communication both share a fortunate circumstance in that their
research places social communication and democratic life at the center of
attention. The public sphere has the role of an angel of historya role
sought by another prominent critical theorist, Walter Benjamin (1968, 215). In
the last chapter of his Imagined Communities, Benedict Anderson (1983) sim-
ilarly uses this poetic allegory and suggests that according to his theory, the
angel of history is hidden in the complex processes of social communication in
the past that led to the flourishing nationalisms and their political charge. To
the theorists and historians of the public sphere, the angel of history is already
there. Habermas unveiled it but then left it in the past. The challenge of histori-
ans of the public sphere therefore can be condensed into one contested ques-
tion: howto understand and use this unveiled potential and what to do with it in
theory.
Notes
1. I was able to locate with a recent survey of online databases of academic journals more
than 100 peer-reviewed articles published in the past dozen years wherein the connection of
terms public sphere and history appeared in the title or abstract; EBSCOhost database produced
101 hits with these two keywords (last verification of this result, December 16, 2003). Only
some of these references are used in the present text. The situation is perfectly described by Har-
old Mah (2000, 153), who pointed out that one of the most significant historiographical devel-
opments of the last decade has been the revival of an early work by Jrgen Habermas, his
Strukturwandel der ffentlichkeit, translated into English as The Structural Transformation of
the Public Sphere.
2. For an informative list of references concerning non-European public spheres, see the
work of Arthur Strum(1994, 201-2) and his colleagues (Hohendahl 2000, 177-79); see also the
work of Avritzer (2002) for a systematic application of this concept to the Latin American social
and political context. Democratization processes mentioned above were not interpreted through
theories of the public sphere alone, however; similar concepts were also widely used, as for
instance a more specific notion of the civil society (e.g., Hahnand Dunn1996; Bradley2002).
3. It is interesting to note that Habermass theory of social evolution received similar objec-
tions as his early theory of the public sphere. How(2001, 178) summarized these objections into
four groups: eurocentrism, gender bias, opportunistic attitude toward historical evidence, and
fallacious application of ontogenetic level to phylogenetic level of development.
4. It seems to me that the termspatialization, which Mah(2000, 156) usedto describe histori-
ans response to Habermas is not very accurate, as the realm of the public is featured in theo-
retical literature long before the appearance of Habermass work. Also, in his later works,
Habermas emphatically emphasized spatial aspects of the public sphere (1996, 360-66). But the
point that historians brought to attention various neglected social and political actors, subjects,
so to speak, in and of the public sphere, while investigating historical validity of the concept, is
well placed. Barry (1995, 221) wrote in this sense, I think with more precision, about the shift of
focus from structure to transformation in historians response to Habermas; this shift
enabled him to study more closely social agency and means of expression in public. Joseph
Bradley (2002, 1095) put it similarly: European and American historians have used the concept
of public sphere and its derivatives as categories of analysis to examine the constitution of indi-
vidual and group identities, the relationship between the individual and the state, reform move-
ments, the construction of citizenship (especially by those denied it), political culture, and the
realms of public and private life. See also La Vopa (1992) and Brooke (1998) for similar points.
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Slovenia.

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