Re-imagining the Public Sphere in the Long Nineteenth Century

Summary

The crisis afflicting political discourse in many western democracies

today is often explained in terms of a fragmentation of the

public sphere. This volume critically probes the legacy of Jürgen

Habermas’s ground-breaking study The Structural Transformation

of the Public Sphere and considers how the more recent work of

the Canadian philosopher Charles Taylor can help us conceptualise

the formation of the public sphere as part of a new social

imaginary in the long nineteenth century. Whereas scholars have

traditionally approached the topic in terms of the history of institutions

and technology, this volume considers the vital role played by

art and literature in shaping our understanding of the public sphere

across a range of national and transnational settings. How did the

way the public sphere is imagined change during the long nineteenth

century? And how can these changes be mapped against

a transition from a cosmopolitan concept of the public sphere to

one conditioned by nationalistic thinking?

Keywords

Search publication

Bibliographic data

Copyright year

2024

ISBN-Print

978-3-8498-1967-5

ISBN-Online

978-3-8498-1968-2

Publisher

Aisthesis, Bielefeld

Series

Studien zur vergleichenden Literatur- und Kulturwissenschaft

Volume

9

Language

English

Pages

497

Product type

Edited Book