No Public Sphere for You!

Admittedly, after taking Habermas’s historical odyssey about the formation of the “public sphere” I was left with questions about its connections to power (particularly, white, male power). If, as Habermas theorizes, the public sphere was begotten of the economical developments of capitalism and the “literary public sphere,” which is dependent on one’s level of education and ownership of property, then the public sphere excludes a large portion of the “public”: women, the poor, people of color, and those who were prevented from owning land--again, women, the poor and people of color… Thus, far from articulating the interests of a hypothetical “civil society,” by the author’s definition, the “public sphere” functions instead as a representation of patriarchal white society—essentially another tool by which to consolidate and/or manipulate power and reinforce artificial hierarchies. Thus, there is no true universal “public sphere.” As such, I found the connection to the supplemental reading, particularly Selfe and Selfe article interesting, as I had never truly considered how the “systematic domination and marginalization of certain groups” extended into the use “media literacy” (Selfe 482). In other words, like the illusion of a “public sphere” which represents all of society, but in fact excludes a great portion of it, “media literacy,” via the use of “English as the default language” (490) and its “associat[ion] with patriarchal culture and rationalistic traditions of making meaning,” (491) also excludes a majority of the world’s population, thereby reinforcing artificial hierarchies and consolidating power.