The Changing Public Sphere in America: The Fragility of Civic Awareness, Common Community, and Electoral Democracy Today

Telos ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 2021 (195) ◽  
pp. 141-150
Author(s):  
Timothy W. Luke
Keyword(s):  
Public Sphere ◽  
Electoral Democracy ◽  
Civic Awareness

scholarly journals Three Phases of the Theatrical Public Sphere in Estonian Theatre

2019 ◽  
Vol 31 (1) ◽  
pp. 73-91
Author(s):  
Eva-Liisa Linder
Keyword(s):  
National Identity ◽  
Public Sphere ◽  
Structural Changes ◽  
Political Theatre ◽  
Cultural Traditions ◽  
The Public ◽  
National Memory ◽  
Theatre Studies ◽  
Civic Awareness ◽  
The Public Sphere

The concept of the public sphere by Jürgen Habermas has inspired humanities and theatre studies. Estonia, as a small post-totalitarian nation state, proves the concept especially relevant as its recent history reveals three different phases of the theatrical public sphere. 1) Theatre as a secret forum. In Soviet times, theatre served as a political and ideological tool, providing a place for keeping the national memory and consolidating society. 2) The active and technical use of the public sphere by newly awakened political theatre NO99 since 2005. 3) The agonistic theatrical public sphere. During the past decade, a whole wave of projects have discussed national identity with concurrent antagonisms: globalization vs nationalism, civic vs ethnic nationalism, the Estonian vs Russianspeaking community. Theatre has commented on two concepts of national identity, e-Estonia and Organic Estonia, innovative digitalization and cultural traditions. The discursive public sphere has led to increased civic awareness and structural changes in the developing democracy, supported integration, and anti-xenophobia in Estonia. At the same time, two main characteristics of the theatrical public sphere have been highlighted: spatiality and political relevance

scholarly journals Jayaprakash Narayan and Indira Gandhi, 1966–74: Before the Rivalry

2022 ◽  
pp. 025764302110691
Author(s):  
Rakesh Ankit
Keyword(s):  
Public Sphere ◽  
Prime Minister ◽  
Status Quo ◽  
The State ◽  
Generational Status ◽  
Primary Material ◽  
Youth Movements ◽  
Electoral Democracy

When the Gandhian Jayaprakash Narayan (JP) gave the clarion call of Total Revolution, Prime Minister Indira Gandhi responded heavy-handedly by imposing the Emergency in India in 1974–5. This all-encompassing duel has dominated politics and political scholarship since. Their domestic clash has established many analytical prisms for the contemporary public sphere in India, particularly personality politics versus people’s power, single party versus coalition grouping, electoral democracy versus authoritarian dictatorship, and student/youth movements versus generational status quo. Simultaneously, it has also highlighted their differences in a way that has served to bury their affinities and agreements—not only on obscure matters. This article seeks to soften this dichotomy on the basis of their correspondence, and complemented by other primary material, to sketch their consensus in an earlier period. It shows that before their break, the socialist JP and the statist Indira Gandhi exhibited complementary stands on national issues regarding Nagaland, Kashmir and Bangladesh. This national nearness complicates their later adversarial politics on domestic issues, adds dimension to our understanding of the mid-1960s and mid-1970s, and contributes to contemporary understandings of their respective places in narratives of the state against society in India.

The Suffering of the Perpetrators: The Ethics of Traumatic German Historicity in Karen Bass's Young Adult World War II Novels

2014 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 64-77
Author(s):  
Doris Wolf
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Young Adult ◽  
Public Sphere ◽  
Childhood Studies ◽  
Historical Narratives ◽  
World War ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Past ◽  
Adult World ◽  
The Public Sphere

This paper examines two young adult novels, Run Like Jäger (2008) and Summer of Fire (2009), by Canadian writer Karen Bass, which centre on the experiences of so-called ordinary German teenagers in World War II. Although guilt and perpetration are themes addressed in these books, their focus is primarily on the ways in which Germans suffered at the hands of the Allied forces. These books thus participate in the increasingly widespread but still controversial subject of the suffering of the perpetrators. Bringing work in childhood studies to bear on contemporary representations of German wartime suffering in the public sphere, I explore how Bass's novels, through the liminal figure of the adolescent, participate in a culture of self-victimisation that downplays guilt rather than more ethically contextualises suffering within guilt. These historical narratives are framed by contemporary narratives which centre on troubled teen protagonists who need the stories of the past for their own individualisation in the present. In their evacuation of crucial historical contexts, both Run Like Jäger and Summer of Fire support optimistic and gendered narratives of individualism that ultimately refuse complicated understandings of adolescent agency in the past or present.

Habermas, Cultural Hegemony, and the Educational Public Sphere

2018 ◽  
Vol 11 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 43-62
Author(s):  
Wisam Kh. Abdul-Jabbar
Keyword(s):  
Public Sphere ◽  
Social Inequality ◽  
Public Space ◽  
Oral Tradition ◽  
Pedagogical Practices ◽  
Cultural Hegemony ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
Arabic Speaking

This study explores Habermas’s work in terms of the relevance of his theory of the public sphere to the politics and poetics of the Arab oral tradition and its pedagogical practices. In what ways and forms does Arab heritage inform a public sphere of resistance or dissent? How does Habermas’s notion of the public space help or hinder a better understanding of the Arab oral tradition within the sociopolitical and educational landscape of the Arabic-speaking world? This study also explores the pedagogical implications of teaching Arab orality within the context of the public sphere as a contested site that informs a mode of resistance against social inequality and sociopolitical exclusions.

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