Excursus: The Official Uses of Print

 

One of the main criticisms of Jürgen Habermas's theories about the formation of the public sphere concerns its social essence. For Habermas, the public sphere was rooted in the class interests and identity of the “bourgeoisie,” by which he meant those people of new, capitalist wealth—merchants, financiers, manufacturers, slavers, and the like—people whose status in society did not rest upon the ability to rule land and the people who tilled it. This social essence expressed itself in a variety of ways; politically and ideologically, it meant that the new public sphere was fundamentally antagonistic toward “representational” culture—the hierarchical configuration of power that prevailed prior to the emergence of the public sphere. For him, it was a fundamental conflict between a system of culture and power based on authority and another based on the public exercise of reason. Habermas was quite explicit about this.

Because it turned the principle of authority against the established authorities, the objective funciton of the public sphere in the political realm could initially converge with its self-interpretation derived from the categories of the public sphere in the world of letters.

The model can be challenged on both grounds—that the public sphere was both more heterogenous socially and multivalent politically than Habermas would have allowed. The public sphere did not always stand in an adversarial relationship to the state; on the contrary, the relationship between the public sphere and the state was often mutually supportive and beneficial.

The image at right illustrates the potential benefits of the public sphere to state power. It is a pamphlet, published by the government of the Duchy of Württemberg in the southwestern German town of Stuttgart in 1784, containing the names and descriptions of 197 “chiselers, gypsies, murderer, highway robbers, burglars of churches and markets, thieves of the day and of the night, counterfeiters, false money-changers” wanted by authorities throughout southwestern Germany—not just in the Duchy of Württemberg, but in neighboring jursidictions as well. The purpose of this pamphlet, though was hardly to promote the free exchange of ideas or the public use of reason. It was, rather, to apprehend criminals who had taken advantage of the fragmentation of political authority in southwestern Germany to elude capture, trial, and punishments. Here, the instruments of the public sphere did not work against the interests of the state, but powerfully to their advantage.

Source: Andreas Blauert & Eva Weibel, Gauner- und Diebeslisten: Registrieren, Identifizieren, und Fahnden im 18. Jahrhundert (Frankfurt: Klostermann, 2001)