Jürgen Habermas, b. 1921. Doesn't he look like Carl Fredricksen from "Up"?
I'm preparing to write a paper on "intimate publics" without quite knowing what that means. Berlant's introductory essay is still a little less than clear to me, but basically consists of defining the "cultural politics" of contemporary American "patriotic traditionalists," e.g. those who advocate for stronger laws against abortion, against same-sex marriage, and similar elements of an "intimate" sort. This public advocacy for issues we may well declare intimate apparently constitutes what Berlant calls the "intimate public sphere:"
It is in this sense that the political public sphere has become an intimate public sphere. The intimate public of the U.S. present tense is radically different from the "intimate sphere" of modernity described by Jürgen Habermas. Habermas portrays the intimate sphere of the European eighteenth century as a domestic space where persons produced the sense of their own private uniqueness, a sense of self which became a sense of citizenship only when it was abstracted and alienated in the nondomestic public sphere of liberal capitalist culture. In contrast, the intimate public sphere of the US present tense
renders citizenship as a condition of social membership produced by personal acts and values, especially acts originating in or directed toward the family sphere.
Berlant summarizes here the "intimate sphere" that Habermas describes in his 1962 work Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere. No matter how many times I read the passage, however, I still just don't have quite enough grasp of Habermas' original concept to understand how Berlant distinguishes her own concept. How is "a sense of self which became a sense of citizenship" different from the present situation, in which citizenship requires as a condition certain "personal acts and values?"
So to begin, I have read the "Habermas" entry of the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, which took me quite some time even though it is only a starting point! A few notes, arranged in the order of the entry and bibliographically:
The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere [Strukturwandel der Öffentlichkeit],
translated by T. Burger and F. Lawrence. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1989 [German, 1962]. "...a detailed
social history of the development of the bourgeois public sphere from
its origins in the 18th century salons up to its
transformation through the influence of capital-driven mass media. In
his description of the salons we clearly see his interest in a
communicative ideal that later would provide the core normative
standard for his moral-political theory: the idea of inclusive critical
discussion, free of social and economic pressures, in which
interlocutors treat each other as equals in a cooperative attempt to
reach an understanding on matters of common concern."
I'm fascinated by the vision of Habermas as a young man just my age in post-war Germany, dreaming of a world where people could speak freely and truly learn from each other. Chinese thinkers of the May Fourth era, like Shi Zhecun would, appreciate this vision as well. For this alone, I feel Habermas merits much further study. One other thing: it seems important to me that Public Sphere was an early, youthful work, containing much that Habermas would modify. Actually one of the most interesting things to learn in Bohlman's overview is that Habermas' thought lead to many dead ends and unresolved problems. And yet he is still considered "one of the most influential philosophers in the world!"
Toward a Rational Society [Technik und Wissenschaft als Ideologie; Protestbewegung und Hochschulreform], J. J. Shapiro (trans.).
Boston: Beacon Press, 1970 [German, 1968a, 1969]. Habermas considers the 1968 student demonstrations, expressing some sympathy but also deploring its "militant aspects." In a way that I don't quite understand, Habermas re-employed the Aristotelian concepts of techne and praxis to critique science and technology when they became ideologies in and of themselves. I find it very interesting that Habermas distinguishes himself clearly from Marcuse, Horkheimer and Adorno here, because allows more credit to science when he refuses to link it specifically to capitalist society and refuses to see technical advancement as necessarily a form of social domination.
Knowledge and Human Interests [Erkenntnis und Interesse]. Translated by J. J. Shapiro. Boston: Beacon Press, 1971 [German, 1968b]. A continuation of his humanistic defense of science and search for a basis for reason. I like that Habermas is working basically with Enlightenment ideals, and wisely takes a pluralistic approach from the very beginning -- that he is not wedded to Marxism is a welcome idea. "In this transitional phase from Knowledge and Human
Interests to The Theory of Communicative Action,
Habermas's basic philosophical endeavor was to develop a more
modest, fallibilist, empirical account of the philosophical claim to
universality and rationality. This more modest approach rids Critical
Theory of its vestiges of transcendental philosophy, pushing it in a
naturalistic, “postmetaphysical” direction (1988b). Such a
naturalism identifies more specific forms of social-scientific
knowledge that help in developing an analysis of the general conditions
of rationality manifested in various human capacities and powers."
The Theory of Communicative Action. Vol. I:
Reason and the Rationalization of Society [Theorie des kommunikativen Handelns. Vol. 1:
Handlungsrationalität und gesellschaftliche
Rationalisierung.], T. McCarthy
(trans.). Boston: Beacon Press, 1984 [German, 1981, vol. 1]. The first "mature" work that Bohlmann dwells on at some length. Habermas becomes interested in speech-act theory as well as Chomsky's notion of communicative competence, and returns to his own tradition for another round of large-scale readings:
his Theory of Communicative Action (TCA), a
two-volume critical study of the theories of rationality that informed
the classical sociologies of Weber, Durkheim, Parsons, and neo-Marxist
critical theory (esp. Lukács, Horkheimer, Adorno). ....The
problem with pessimistic social theories of modernity is that they miss
the cultural dimension of modernization due to a one-sided, primarily
instrumental conception of rationality....[Habermas's] criticism of modern societies turns on
the explanation of the relationship between two very different
theoretical terms: a micro-theory of rationality based on communicative
coordination and a macro-theory of the systemic integration of modern
societies through such mechanisms as the market (TCA, vol. 2).
In concrete terms, this means that Habermas develops a two-level social
theory that includes an analysis of communicative rationality, the
rational potential built into everyday speech, on the one hand; and a
theory of modern society and modernization, on the other (White 1989).
On the basis of this theory, Habermas hopes to be able to assess the
gains and losses of modernization and to overcome its one-sided version
of rationalization.
This last part is very important to me, because I picture Yang Jiang as a very pragmatic, pluralist, open-minded writer herself, and I think to understand how she and similar minds react to their treatment by the Chinese Communist Party, we have to give them credit as agents attempting to engage with the system. What I don't understand yet, however, is how this grand, critical social theory can help us unpack literary texts. However, I'm almost there. Key elements include:
- The performative attitude. I need to link this back up to Culler's discussion of how performativity was applied in thinkers from Searle to Butler. In Habermas' vision, it is the "attitude" of speakers who are doing their best to achieve mutual understanding. This motivation underlies Yang Jiang's prose style, I'm just sure of it. She wants to remember the Communist era in such a way that the large-scale system of Communism is only a subset of a larger story of Chinese humanistic values. A basic distinction is thus that Yang Jiang's writing is always a "communicative action," in distinction to "strategic action" which may apply to desires and fears to -- cf. Frye's basic distinction between tragedy and comedy. Following Frye, however, I don't expect any literary text to be totally lacking in "strategic action."
- Validity claims (Geltungsanspruch) "In opposition to the positivist fixation on fact-stating modes of
discourse, Habermas does not limit intersubjectively valid, or
justifiable, claims to the category of empirical truth, but instead
recognizes a spectrum of “validity claims” that also
includes, at the least, claims to moral rightness, ethical goodness or
authenticity, personal sincerity, and aesthetic value (TCA 1:
8–23; 1993, chap. 1)." I'm particularly interested in the elements of that list, all of which are extremely high priorities in Chinese writing. This means that we can understand the universe of Chinese literature as a "sphere of validity," a "dialogical context." This must be close to what Berlant constructs in her idea of "cultural politics," modeled with an "archive." Further involved here is the division of any speech act that is a communicative action into three "world relations" : "(a)
expresses an inner world (an intention to communicate a belief); (b)
establishes a communicative relation with a hearer (and thus relates to
a social world, specifically one in which both persons share a piece of
information, and know they do); and (c) attempts to represent the
external world." I don't understand this theory actually, but I'm heartened by the inclusion of sincerity and expression of inner world as a factor in it. These are indeed the keys to understanding life writing. - "System" and "lifeworld." Large-scale contexts for speech acts. I don't know enough about these, or the possible relation to more familiar cultural studies terms like "cultural politics." But by treating democratic institutions specifically as systems, Habermas tries to describe society at its best, to nudge us there eventually. I really want to harness some of that philosophical power if possible. When Habermas wrestles with Gadamer's hermeneutics, he takes on the issue of objectivity and avows, contra Gadamer, that the social theorist must take a side. We must envision the "proper" design of democratic institutions. "Democratic institutions, if properly
designed and robustly executed, are supposed to ensure that the law
does not take this pathological form but is subject to the deliberation
of citizens, who thus author the laws to which they are subject (see
sec. 3.4)." Note that here what comes to mind is that I must understand as completely as possible the Anti-Rightist campaign, as well as the cultural scene after 1989, in order to really unpack the context of Yang Jiang's 1990s essays on life in the late 1950s. What Habermas steers us toward here is some statement on the health of a society. His fear that certain lifeworlds like markets and bureaucracy can supplant communication and strangle the life of citizens, for example, calls to mind Foucault for Bohlmann, but for me calls to mind the poignancy of books like Yiyun Li's The Vagrants. More on this fecund aspect of Habermas' communication theory soon, I hope.
From this point, the encyclopedia entry becomes more and more difficult, and I suffer for not having learned well other theories of democracy, such as those of John Rawls and T. Scanlon. I can see that Habermas is not interested in meaning as an absolute concept, but rather as a feature of "argumentative demands." From here Bohlmann goes on to an outline of Habermas' analysis of argumentation in general. As we go through this, Bohlmann begins to concentrate more and more on the theoretical underpinnings of democratic institutions, and the continuing debate over their potential for success. There is room in this theory for rhetoric, as well as for sincerity claims:
“truthfulness claims,” as it is sometimes translated) are
the prime example. These are claims an actor makes about his or her
interior subjectivity: feelings, moods, desires, beliefs, and the like.
Such claims are open to rational assessment, not in discourse but by
comparison with the actor's behavior: for example, if a son
claims to care deeply about his parents but never pays them any
attention, we would have grounds for doubting the sincerity of his
claim. Note that such insincerity might involve self-deception rather
than deliberative lying.
Thus it seems that the truthfulness issue of life writing comes out as a small subset of Habermas' work. As I considered Habermas' distinction of moral rightness and truth, of ethics and dignity, I wondered again about an idea first presented to me by Rob Gifford, of all people: that the basic claim of authenticity within the Chinese intelligentsia rests on their relationship to the peasants. I need to go back to this idea, possibly by looking up Gifford's travelogue on China again. Meanwhile, here's an example of Habermas' analysis procedure:
Tom's pursuit of a career in medicine, one need not show that
medicine is a career everyone must follow, but only that such a career
makes sense, given Tom's personal background, talents, and
desires. One can also examine Tom's career choice from a moral
perspective, but in that case one need only show that anyone in his
circumstances is morally permitted to pursue medicine. At the
rhetorical level, finally, the scope and depth of agreement differs
according to the type of claim. Moral rightness claims and empirical
truth claims are justified by reasons that should be acceptable to a
universal audience, whereas ethical claims are addressed to those who
share a particular history and tradition of values.
More scattered notes:
maturation involves the growing ability to integrate the interpersonal
perspectives given with the system of personal pronouns; the endpoint
of that process coincides with the capacity to engage in the mutual
perspective-taking required by (U).
The anthropological line of
argument focuses on identity formation, drawing on the social
psychology of G. H. Mead. In broad agreement with Hegelian models of
mutual recognition, Mead understands the individual's development of a
stable personal identity as inextricably bound up with processes of
socialization that depend on participation in relationships of mutual
recognition. Habermas (ibid., 195–215; 1990b) extends this
analysis to respond to feminist and communitarian criticisms of
impartialist, justice-based moralities. According to the standard
critiques, such moralities assume an implausibly atomistic view of the
self and thus fail to appreciate the moral import of particularity and
cultural substance: particular relationships between unique
individuals, on the one hand, and membership in particular cultural
communities or traditions, on the other.
Societies are stable over the long run only if their members
generally perceive them as legitimate: as organized in accordance with
what is true, right, and good.
Habermas has further developed his views on the relation between
philosophy and faith in his dialogue with Cardinal Ratzinger (who would
become Pope Benedict XVI)(2006b; German ed., 2005a). There he notes how
much Western philosophy owes to its Christian heritage, which
philosophers assimilated by developing ideas of “responsibility,
autonomy and justification; history and remembering; new beginning,
innovation, and return; alienation, internalization, and incarnation;
individuality and community” (2006b, 44; trans. amended). The
Christian idea of human beings as created in the image of God has been
especially important for Western moral-political theory, which
translated the religious idea into the secular view of persons as equal
in dignity and deserving unconditional respect (ibid., 45). This
assimilation of Christian ideas does not gut their substance, however.
In fact, religious communities still harbor potentials of meaning from
which philosophy can learn—potentials that have “been lost
elsewhere and that cannot be restored by the professional knowledge of
experts alone” (ibid., 43). As examples, he refers to the
“differentiated possibilities of expression” and
“sensitivities” regarding “lives that have gone
astray, societal pathologies, the failure of individual life projects,
and the deformation of misbegotten human relationships” (ibid.,
trans. amended). In acknowledging that religious modes of expression
can harbor an integral cognitive content that is not exhausted by
secular translations, Habermas seems to have located the boundaries of
his methodological experiment in demythologization. He thus calls for a
dialogue in which secular and religious forms of thought mutually
inform and learn from each other.
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