Publicness beyond the public sphere

Abstract

This paper contends the public sphere is a restrictive approach to public action. Despite the dysphoric development of the public sphere in post-modern societies, public action and communicative activity can easily be discerned if one recognizes that rational-critical deliberation is not the exclusive means to exercise it.
I propose to separate what is an historical and idealized construct – the public sphere – from the socio-anthropological principle – publicness.
The former consubstantiates a specific normative principle of legitimate political decision-making, as well as a peculiar space of communication and an ensemble of specific publics. The latter cannot be reduced to the strict formulation of the public sphere. Publicness is, first of all, a matter of cohesion and consensus on values in a society, reached through a communicative process that occurs in almost every social interaction. It does not absolutely depend on a capital Public or on a public sphere model to emerge and be felt by all members of a society.
By tracing a brief panorama in the three main models of the public sphere (Habermas, Arendt, Negt & Kluge’s models), the paper suggests going beyond the public sphere by envisioning publicness as a socio-anthropological principle characterized as being an empirical reality, as being pre-political and pre-institutional, as well as a process linked to social imaginaries.