Once upon a time in the west: Or, the rise and fall of the (bourgeois) public sphere, as told by Jürgen Habermas

Jürgen Habermas’ famous description of the public sphere, and its central place in liberal democracy, has unfortunately become a normative model, both within arts and politics. However, as this article argues, Habermas’ proposition is not only historical, but was retrograde from the outset, and now functions more as a blacking of political action than an enabler, and must be contested in terms of counterpublic formations and experiences, as well as criticized from its insistence on rationality and negotiation in an era of post-political consensus within the former public sphere.