IN THE NAME OF THE PUBLIC: The Principle of Coextension and the Theoretical Error in the Concept of the Public Sphere - Softcover

Inhaltsangabe

When someone says that the public sphere is in crisis, what exactly are they saying?
They may be saying that access to political communication has narrowed. They may be saying that the quality of the reasons exchanged has deteriorated. Or they may be saying that power can no longer justify itself before citizens. The three claims require evidence of completely different kinds, may be true or false independently of one another — and are expressed in the same sentence, as though they were one and the same thing.
This book shows that they are not. Beneath one of the most influential expressions in contemporary political theory lie three distinct objects: a space of communication, a procedure of discussion, and a title of legitimacy. No one has ever said how these three fit together. From that omission arises an invalid inference that has been repeated for more than sixty years: a fact is established about the first, and a conclusion is drawn about the third, without any premise licensing the move.
The demonstration spares no one and is not directed at any single author. The same operation is found in eleven traditions that disagree with one another about virtually everything else — from Marxist critique to systems theory, from feminist critique to the designers of international democracy indices. Eight of them were written against the text to which the error is usually attributed.
The result is unsettling, and it is the heart of the book: when public opinion is invoked to demand obedience, there is no norm determining who is authorized to speak in its name. And an empty place does not remain inert — it becomes available to whoever gets there first and has the loudest voice.
With real cases on every page — a manifesto by intellectuals, international indices that disagree about the same country, experiments on social media, a jury trial, a citizens’ assembly selected by lot, a historical controversy in which both sides commit the same error — the book gives the reader a tool that cannot be unlearned: before drawing a conclusion, say which of the three you are talking about.

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