Public sphere in Latin America: a map of the historiography

Abstract "Public sphre" is often used by historians of modern Latin America without much concern about its theoretical and methodological implications. Some historians have used it as a model to fit evidence about public debates and politics during the modern period, yet few have engaged it as a theory with deeper methodological and conceptual implications. This article will review the historical literature that has applied Habermas's ideas to Latin American history. Focusing on a few particularly important books, the article will examine potential avenues for research and comparisons. Rather than becoming a new orthodoxy for the study of the region, the theory of the public sphere is establishing a dialogue among historians interested in intellectual phenomena and political discourse (most of them centered on the history of liberalism after independence) and those historians whose interest in social formations have framed their study in terms of hegemony and class domination. The article will argue that a critical use of Habermas's ideas (one that is more systematic about the gender and class exclusions built into the bourgeois public sphere, and that problematizes the connections between the specific development of capitalism in peripheral regions and their embrace of European political traditions) could yield useful results in terms of new research and an inclusive synthesis of recent literature interested in politics, culture and hegemony in Latin America. Notes 1Jürgen Habermas, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry into a Category of Bourgeois Society (Cambridge, MA, 1991). I am indebted to Tom Klubock, Thom Rath, Federico Sor and Mary Kay Vaughan for their comments on earlier drafts. This article was also discussed at the Columbia University's Department of History graduate faculty workshop and at the New School's workshop of Latin American Studies. I thank Karl Wennerlind, Herbert Sloan, Claudio Lomnitz and Paul Gootenberg for their comments. 2The danger, of course, is that of creating 'un Mapa del Imperio, que tenía el tamaño del imperio y coincidía puntualmente con él'. 'El rigor de la ciencia' in Jorge Luis Borges, Obras completas II 1952–1972 (Barcelona, 1996). This map will have Mexico as the centre. It is a result of my background and I hope it can be excused as a geographical convention. 3See Jürgen Habermas, The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity: Twelve Lectures. Studies in Contemporary German Social Thought (Cambridge, 1987), 37. Juan Carlos Portantiero, 'Foundations of a new politics', Report on the Americas, xxv, 5 (1991), 19; Chantal Mouffe and Ernesto Laclau, Hegemonía y estrategia socialista: Hacia una radicalización de la democracia, trans. Ernesto Laclau (Buenos Aires, 2004). 4For Alan Brinkley, 'Democrats need to turn much of their attention away from culture and back toward class.' See Brinkley, 'What's next? The mourning period is over. Now, four simple guidelines for becoming a majority party', The American Prospect Online Edition, January 2004. See also forum on the election in The Nation, 20 December 2004. Available online at: http://www.thenation.com/issue.mhtml?i=20041220. See Jürgen Habermas, 'Discourse ethics: notes on a program of philosophical justification' in Moral Consciousness and Communicative Action (Cambridge, 1990). For the normative implications of the public-sphere model, see Nancy Fraser, 'Rethinking the public sphere: a contribution to the critique of actually existing democracy', Social Text, nos 25/26 (1990). See also Thomas A. McCarthy, The Critical Theory of Jürgen Habermas, first MIT Press paperback edition (Cambridge, 1981), chap. 1; Jürgen Habermas, Ciencia y técnica como 'ideología' (Mexico City, 1993). Implicit in Habermas's idea of 'communicative rationality' is 'the central experience of the unconstrained, unifying, consensus-bringing force of argumentative speech': Jürgen Habermas, The Theory of Communicative Action, vol. 1, Reason and the Rationalization of Society, trans. Thomas McCarthy (Boston, 1984), 10. 5Arthur Strum, 'A bibliography on the concept of Öffentlichkeit', New German Critique, lxi (1994). Habermas refers to 'seminal theories', like those by Freud and Marx, that 'inserted a genuinely philosophical idea like a detonator into a particular context of research' resulting in 'hybrid discourses' that may be criticized from the academic establishment but could generate 'new research traditions'. Jürgen Habermas, 'Philosophy as stand-in and interpreter' in Moral Consciousness and Communicative Action, op. cit., 15. 6The OED provides two examples of the term, both dated 1992. See entries for 'maternalize' and 'nonsensification', Oxford English Dictionary (available online at: http://www.oed.com/). For the parallel with Weber see Joan B. Landes, Women and the Public Sphere in the Age of the French Revolution (Ithaca, 1988), 10. 7Habermas links the public sphere with his theory of communicative action at a 'fundamental' level: Jürgen Habermas, 'Further reflections on the public sphere', Habermas and the Public Sphere, ed. Craig Calhoun (Cambridge, 1997), 422, 41. Other scholars, mentioned below, have already suggested the need to confront analyses based on Gramsci and Habermas. 8Habermas's initial definition is tentative and contains the diversity of issues outlined above: 'The bourgeois public sphere may be conceived above all as the sphere of private people come together as a public; they soon claimed the public sphere regulated from above against the public authorities themselves, to engage them in a debate over the general rules governing relations in the basically privatized but publicly relevant sphere of commodity exchange and social labour. The medium of this political confrontation was peculiar and without historical precedent: people's public use of their reason.' See Habermas, Structural Transformation, op. cit., 27. See also Jürgen Habermas, 'The public sphere: an encyclopaedia article', New German Critique, iii (1974). On the historical character of the definition, see Moishe Postone, 'Political theory and historical analysis' in Calhoun (ed.), Habermas and the Public Sphere, op. cit. 9James Van Horn Melton, The Rise of the Public in Enlightenment Europe (New York, 2001), 10, 12. 10For similar agendas see E. P. Thompson, The Making of the English Working Class (New York, 1966); Richard Sennett, The Fall of Public Man (New York, 1977). 11Geoff Eley, 'Nations, publics, and political cultures: placing Habermas in the nineteenth century' in Nicholas B. Dirks, Geoff Eley and Sherry B. Ortner (eds), Culture/Power/History: A Reader in Contemporary Social Theory (Princeton, 1994); also published in Calhoun (ed.), Habermas and the Public Sphere, op. cit. 12Joan B. Landes, 'The public and the private sphere: a feminist reconsideration' in Landes (ed.), Feminism, the Public and the Private (Oxford, 1998), 2, 142–3. See also Craig Calhoun, 'Introduction: Habermas and the public sphere' in Calhoun (ed.), Habermas and the Public Sphere, op. cit., 34–5; Seyla Benhabib, 'Models of public space: Hannah Arendt, the liberal tradition, and Jürgen Habermas' in ibid., 92. 13Harold Mah, 'Phantasies of the public sphere: rethinking the Habermas of historians', Journal of Modern History, lxxii, 1 (2000). I owe this reference to Samuel Moyn. 14Habermas, Structural Transformation, op. cit., 27, 55; Melton, The Rise, op. cit.; Daniel Gordon, 'Philosophy, sociology, and gender in the Enlightenment conception of public opinion', French Historical Studies, xvii, 4 (1992), 889, 901; Keith Michael Baker, 'Defining the public sphere in eighteenth-century France: variations on a theme by Habermas' in Calhoun (ed.), Habermas and the Public Sphere, op. cit., 202. 15Roger Chartier, The Cultural Origins of the French Revolution, trans. Lydia G. Cochrane (Durham, NC, 1991); Arlette Farge, Subversive Words: Public Opinion in Eighteenth-Century France, trans. Rosemary Morris (University Park, PA, 1994). See also Landes, Women and the Public Sphere, op. cit.; Keith Michael Baker, Inventing the French Revolution: Essays on French Political Culture in the Eighteenth Century (Cambridge, 1990); Sarah C. Maza, Private Lives and Public Affairs: The Causes Célèbres of Pre-revolutionary France (Berkeley, 1993). 16For a bibliography of the diversity of work, historical and otherwise, inspired by the model see Strum, op. cit. A similar census would probably be impossible today. See also Peter Uwe Hohendahl, 'The public sphere: models and boundaries' in Calhoun (ed.), Habermas and the Public Sphere, op. cit., 108. For an example of these possibilities see Madeleine Hurd, Public Spheres, Public Mores, and Democracy: Hamburg and Stockholm, 1870–1914 (Ann Arbor, 2000). 17See a discussion of the implications of this from the point of view of Mexican history in Pablo Piccato, 'Introducción: ¿Modelo para armar? Hacia un acercamiento crítico a la teoría de la esfera pública' in Cristina Sacristán and Pablo Piccato (eds), Actores, espacios y debates en la historia de la esfera pública en la ciudad de México (Mexico City, 2005). See also Hispanic American Historical Review, lxxix, 2 (1999); Pablo Piccato, 'Conversación con los difuntos: una perspectiva Mexicana ante el debate sobre la historia cultural', Signos Históricos, viii (2002). 18François-Xavier Guerra, Modernidad e independencias: Ensayos sobre las revoluciones hispánicas (Madrid , 2000), 117; Francois-Xavier Guerra, México: del Antiguo Régimen a la Revolución (Mexico City, 1988). 19Carmen McEvoy, La utopía republicana: Ideales y realidades en la formación de la cultura política peruana, 1871–1919 (Lima, 1997), 11; Carmen McEvoy, 'Seríamos excelentes vasallos y nunca ciudadanos: prensa republicana y cambio social en Lima, 1791–1822' in Ivan Jaksic (ed.), The Political Power of the Word: Press and Oratory in Nineteenth-Century Latin America (London, 2002), 37. See also Richard A. Warren, Vagrants and Citizens: Politics and the Masses in Mexico City from Colony to Republic (Wilmington, 2001), 170. After independence, 'Lo radicalmente nuevo es la creación de una escena pública': Guerra, Modernidad e independencias, op. cit., 13, 23, 87. This parallels Benedict Anderson's claim that 'the convergence of capitalism and print technology … created the possibility of a new form of imagined community, which in its basic morphology set the stage for the modern nation', and his focus on American Creole identities as early examples of this process. Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (New York and London, 1983), 46. Concepts like el pueblo or lo público also had a history that illustrated the incorporation of traditional and modern notions, as explored by Annick Lempérière in 'Reflexiones sobre la terminología política del liberalismo' in Carlos Illades, Brian Connaughton and Sonia Pérez Toledo (eds), Construcción de la legitimidad política en México (Zamora, 1999). 20Guerra, Modernidad e independencias, op. cit., 30. See François Furet, Penser la Révolution française (Paris, 1978). For Palti, Guerra's use of Habermas lacked a 'strong' critique of the public-sphere model and failed to recognize Raymond Kosseleck's work as a necessary antecedent. Furet and Cochin were decisive in Guerra's work to strengthen that critique, without embracing 'las teorías multiculturalistas "posmodernas"'. Elías José Palti, 'Guerra y Habermas: ilusiones y realidad de la esfera pública Latinoamericana' in Erika Pani and Alicia Salmerón (eds), Conceptualizar lo que se ve: François-Xavier Guerra historiador, homenaje (Mexico City, 2004), 466. 21See Dena Goodman, 'Public sphere and private life: toward a synthesis of current historiographical approaches to the Old Regime', History and Theory, xxxi, 1 (1992), 8, 12. Guerra's explicit rejection of Habermas's Marxism in Guerra, Modernidad e independencias, op. cit., 86n, 87, 14. For studies inspired by Guerra's insights and a closer connection to local contexts, see Francois-Xavier Guerra and Annick Lempérière (eds), Los espacios públicos en Iberoamérica: Ambigüedades y problemas: Siglos XVIII–XIX (Mexico, 1999). For the public sphere as part of the politicization of new national societies, see Pilar González Bernaldo, 'Sociabilidad, espacio urbano y politización en la ciudad de Buenos Aires (1820–1852)' in Hilda Sabato and Alberto Rodolfo Lettieri (eds), La vida política en la Argentina del siglo XIX: armas, votos y voces (Buenos Aires, 2003), 199. 22Guerra, Modernidad e independencias, op. cit., 12, 101. Such characterization of the socio-economic impact and causes of the revolutions of independence is challenged in John Tutino, From Insurrection to Revolution in Mexico: Social Bases of Agrarian Violence, 1750–1940 (Princeton, 1988); Eric Van Young, The Other Rebellion: Popular Violence, Ideology, and the Mexican Struggle for Independence, 1810–1821 (Stanford, 2001). 23Guerra, Modernidad e independencias, op. cit., 17, 91, 234. The Habermasian focus on 'a new, autonomous, free, and sovereign public' implies a marked alternative from Furet's Tocquevillian emphasis on associations and modes of sociability as the base for a modern public opinion. Chartier, Cultural Origins, op. cit., 16–17. 24Guerra, Modernidad e independencias, op. cit., 52, 99. Guerra's emphasis on culture fits well with older visions of 'Latin American culture' as something clearly identifiable; for Edmundo O'Gorman, this common identity meant that the influence of the United States is negligible in the emergence of a Latin American political culture. Edmundo O'Gorman, 'Hegel y el moderno panamericanismo', Letras de México, ii, 8 (1939). See Charles Hale, 'Edmundo O'Gorman y la historia nacional', Signos Históricos, ii, 3 (2000), 17, 24. Absent is a problematization of neo-colonialism as an informal and subordinate mode of entering modernity. See Tulio Halperín Donghi, The Contemporary History of Latin America, trans. John Charles Chasteen (Durham, NC, 1993). 25McEvoy, La utopía republicana, op. cit., 11. 26McEvoy, 'Seríamos excelentes vasallos', op. cit. For similar insights, to be examined below, see Ángel Rama, The Lettered City, trans. John Charles Chasteen (Durham, NC, 1996). 27McEvoy, 'Seríamos excelentes vasallos', op. cit. 28Rafael Rojas, La escritura de la independencia: El surgimiento de la opinión pública en México (Mexico City, 2003), 17, 34, 35, 62. 29 ibid., 35. See also Fernando Escalante, Ciudadanos imaginarios: Memorial de los afanes y desventuras de la virtud y apología del vicio triunfante en la República Mexicana: Tratado de Moral Pública (Mexico, 1993). For recent studies of monarchist sentiment in Mexico see Erika Pani, Para mexicanizar el Segundo Imperio: el imaginario político de los imperialistas (Mexico City, 2001); Elías José Palti (ed.), La política del disenso: La 'polémica en torno al monarquismo' (México, 1848–1850) … y las aporías del liberalismo (Mexico City, 1998). If in the end the new nations rejected liberal monarchism, explains Rojas, it was because of the revolutionary logic of insurgency and the consequent loyalist response, but not because of any inherently democratic feature of the new public sphere. Rojas, La escritura, op. cit., 49. 30José Antonio Aguilar, 'Dos conceptos de república' in José Antonio Aguilar and Rafael Rojas (eds), El republicanismo en hispanoamérica: Ensayos de historia intelectual y política (Mexico City, 2002), 63. See McEvoy, 'Seríamos excelentes vasallos', op. cit., 43. 31For the 'tradición republicana' as the centre of a long-term political history of Mexico that stresses local and corporative representation over democracy and equality, see Alicia Hernández Chávez, La tradición republicana del buen gobierno (Mexico, 1993); Antonio Annino, 'Ciudadanía versus gobernabilidad republicana en México: Los orígenes de un dilema' in Hilda Sábato (ed.), Ciudadanía política y formación de las naciones: Perspectivas históricas de América Latina (Mexico City, 1999). For a similar perspective (the intellectual history à la Cambridge, invoked by Aguilar), see Gordon, 'Philosophy, sociology, and gender', op. cit., 883–5, 888, 891. 32Elías José Palti, 'Las polémicas en el liberalismo argentino: Sobre virtud' and Aguilar and Rojas (eds), 'Republicanismo y lenguaje' in op. cit., 167. 33Elías José Palti, La invención de una legitimidad: Razón y retórica en el pensamiento mexicano del siglo XIX (Un estudio sobre las formas del discurso político) (Mexico City, 2005). 34Elías José Palti, 'La transformación del liberalismo mexicano en el siglo XIX: de la opinión pública al de la in Sacristán and Piccato (eds), Actores, op. cit.; see also Carlos and (eds), y sobre la ciudad de México (Mexico City, Brian Carlos and Sonia Pérez Toledo (eds), La de la legitimidad política en México (Mexico City, 1999). On France and public see Baker, Inventing the French Revolution, op. cit.; concept in la Révolution française (Paris, Farge, Subversive op. cit. La invención de una op. cit., Elías José Palti, 'La del prensa y política en la República (México, 4 Palti, 'La transformación del op. cit. Guerra, the of discussion to the in a that links private and public and as in is Guerra, Modernidad e independencias, op. cit., For similar in see Palti, 'Las op. cit. The mode of public provides a useful for the recent interest in the history of from its to the of in the of See Jaksic (ed.), op. cit. also Elías José Palti, in La política del op. cit.; Palti, 'La del op. cit.; and Elías José Palti, y el político mexicano en de la República in (ed.), op. cit. On the interest in the history of the in Latin America see in the also op. cit.; de la prensa en el (Mexico City, Ángel (ed.), y la prensa del los 23, y de (Mexico City, 2001); y en del siglo XIX and de de en de de 'Las de la El discurso político y El de las y la opinión del in Sabato and Lettieri (eds), La vida política en la op. cit., José Elías Palti, studies on the emergence of a public sphere in Latin Latin American Review, 2 On the political of see McCarthy, Critical Theory of Jürgen Habermas, op. cit. de la de de at the Sobre la de la de México: 'Las en la ciudad de México del siglo XIX a la Mexico op. cit.; Carlos A. in Latin America, and Carlos y del in Illades, Connaughton and Pérez Toledo (eds), op. cit. After independence, the influence of to in the nineteenth On and the see Charles E. P. and his a Hispanic American Historical Review, 4 for B. of the and in Eighteenth-Century Mexico (Stanford, E. in Mexico 2004). op. cit. focus on without a reference to Guerra, in and the politics of Latin American history in the century' in G. (ed.), the Political in Latin American Essays from the (Durham, NC, 2001), 41. Guerra's not mentioned in that and his México: del a la op. cit., an English It is not to the of a but the of together the mentioned in these be evidence of op. cit. and Luis Fernando de la cultura política de la ciudad de in Sacristán and Piccato (eds), op. cit. For a critique of the in the model of the public sphere see Francois-Xavier Guerra and Annick in Guerra and Lempérière (eds), Los espacios op. cit., The not to Habermas's view of modern and its Habermas, Theory of Communicative Action, op. cit. analyses of the of those links see Peter or and national politics, Hispanic American Historical Review, 2 de la of and during the (Durham, NC, 2000). similar of the public-sphere model from the perspective of intellectual history see A. 'The the and the of in eighteenth-century French Historical Studies, xvii, 4 (1992), Gordon, 'Philosophy, sociology, and gender', op. cit., Aguilar que Aguilar, 'El op. cit., La escritura, op. cit., The of those is the of they and the of at of José de For a useful of central in Mexican ideas about and see Mexican La escritura, op. cit., and the social context of created is a by of See Chartier, Cultural Origins, op. cit.; and in London, (London, Michael The of the and the Public Sphere in Eighteenth-Century America (Cambridge, MA, 1990); Melton, The Rise, op. cit.; Pablo Piccato, The of in the of the Mexican Public Sphere (Durham, NC, Structural Transformation, op. cit., op. cit.; Palti, 'Las op. cit. at I would with the that was the concern of the Mexican public in the nineteenth Pablo Piccato, The of op. cit. See for Sarah C. From to Citizens: and Politics in (University Park, PA, 92. his critique of and Habermas's work, notes the of and of as to the critical discourse that a Habermasian model would in and op. cit., Guerra's see Annick la (Paris, Public Private and in America (Stanford, op. cit.; John The and the The Revolution in Palti, op. cit.; and Antonio Annino, 'El Los y los orígenes del liberalismo en in and (eds), y México: de de (Mexico, 2002), 'The of a public sphere in Latin America during the of Studies in Society and History, 2 (2000), This is the first systematic of the public-sphere model in Latin America published in On the of see in (ed.), and Society in America during the Age of Revolution (Wilmington, 2001). For a in this see B. and local an into early Latin American social in (ed.), the The of Social History see Eric Van Young, in (ed.), op. cit., A similar for the of the English public sphere in and political Journal of Modern History, 4 On and Paul in of (Berkeley, 1993). and de political in Journal of Latin American Studies, 2 Politics in the Age of of and in Hispanic American Historical Review, 2 and Van Young, The Other op. cit. op. cit., y la y sobre política y de op. cit. See the Tulio Halperín Donghi, Revolución y de una en la Argentina (Mexico, the Rama, 'the had … from a of in their into a more that a of as a but Rama, The Lettered City, op. cit., On see de en la in Ángel Rama, La en América The of the that into were an example of the of public by but also a of new as in earlier of the Latin American 'La como in Ángel Rama, La del I have evidence of any exchange between Habermas and was published in in two in it is that their a concern about the of is reference to Habermas in had German in to be to in the can an See Ángel and 2001), The Lettered City, op. cit., See also José Luis las y las ideas (Buenos Aires, Buenos from to (New York, On the Claudio Mexico: An of Nationalism 2001); Antonio and François-Xavier Guerra, la siglo XIX (Mexico City, 2003), was also a to the See y de en América Latina E. 'El de la esfera e en la del de la ciudad de México, in Sacristán and Piccato (eds), op. cit. in that by and Luis Fernando for of the of the public sphere, and y in Carlos and (eds), y sobre la ciudad de México (Mexico City, 2