Universal and affective: the Public Sphere in Feminist Political Thinking

Abstract

In this article we propose to return to the notions of public and universality in the so-called Critical Theory, in order to rethink the relation between politics, affects and women. For these purposes, we will analyze the famous The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere of J. Habermas, the first systematization of the notion of public sphere, understood as the scope of rational and universal debate which excludes the private-affective. Later, we will focus on the criticism of this study made by the feminist revisionism of the eighties (Joan Scott, Joan Landes, Mary Ryan, Carole Pateman). These authors found a connection between the theoretical exclusion of the affects (from the public sphere) and the political expulsion of women. We will see that Habermas’ own Theory of Communicative Action opens the possibility of thinking the rationality present in the expression of affections, desires and feelings. The main aim of this work is to start a tradition of reflections for a truly universal public sphere theory (Nancy Fraser, Iris Young, Seyla Benhabib).