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Date: Thu, 23 Aug 2001 08:41:02 -0400 (EDT)
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From: "GEORGE E. DEMETRION" <gdemetrion@juno.com>
To: Multiple recipients of list <nifl-povracelit@literacy.nifl.gov>
Subject: [NIFL-POVRACELIT:572] Habermas & Internet
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Colleagues:
I am dforwarding this from the Habermas list. Jurgen Habermas is a major
contemporary social philosopher. Perhaps this will be of interest to
some.
I do wonder if the inmternet does provide such hope as the writer
suggests.
I think there's something there, though it's all in the use.
What do others think?
George Demetrion
___________________________________________________-
>To whom it may have concerned -
>
>Recently a post broached issues to do with JH and the Internet. I
thought
>some of JH's closing comments in his reply in Craig Calhoun's (Ed)
>collection of essays of the _Structural Transformation of the Public
>Sphere_>were relevant here.
Yes, that was me, I am busy following all the helpful leads provided by
the
readers of this list, thanks to all, esp. to the person who pointed out
Antje Gimmler's article, 'Deliberative Democracy, the Public Sphere and
the
Internet' in Philosophy and Social Criticism (Vol 27 #4 2001).
I have some preliminary ideas but I will try to put together a coherent
post
on this topic at a later date. For now I will say that although
Habermas's
Structural Transformation laments the decline of the public sphere he
reminds us of the existence of a glimmer of optimism in Calhoun ed.,
Habermas and the Public Sphere (p.441) when he says (in STotPS),
'it is necessary to demonstrate how it may be possible, in out type of
society, for "the public...to set in motion a critical process of public
communication through the very organisations that mediatize it" (STotPS
p.232)
I take this to be a call to appropriate the weapons of colonisation,
(perhaps best exemplified in this case by the technical capabilities of
computer mediated communication) and use them to rejuvante a still
declining
public sphere, reviving, in the process, civil society and participatory
democracy.
In this I have allies in Arato and Cohen's 'Civil Society and Political
Theory'. It seems to me (though there is very little literature to
support
this) that the internet fits (with problems that will be addressed) into
the
theoretical framework of communicative action and appears to be a very
'live' issue especially when we consider the democratic effectiveness of
the
internet has yet to be adequately exploited and will be affected by the
economic and political imperatives that seek to appropriate it for
themselves.
I would welcome any thoughts on this subject and thank again all who
responded to my original post.
_________________________________________________________________
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