The Indian Public Sphere: Histories,Contradictions and Challenges

Abstract

This article traces the complexities inherent in the formation of the public sphere in India and how this can be seen as impinging on specific kinds of media discourses. After highlighting a few of the apparent contradictions in the Indian public sphere, the article builds on the insights offered by Partha Chatterjee, Kuan-Hsing Chen and Walter Mignolo to argue the case for the need to reconceptualise the concept of the public sphere in order to make it more suitable for the Indian context. Using media reports on terrorism and terrorist activities in India and the diverse conceptualisations of terrorism that underpin them as examples, this article demonstrates the exercise of symbolic power by the state and the media, and how this is indicative of the contradictions intrinsic to the public sphere in India.

Get full access to this article

View all access options for this article.

References

Ali

2001, ‘Evolution of Public Sphere in India’, Economic and Political Weekly, 30 June.

Benhabib

1994, ‘Deliberative Rationality and Models of Democratic Legitimacy’, Constellations, vol. 1, no. 1, pp. 26–52.

Boradorri

(ed.) 2003, Philosophy in a Time of Terror: Dialogues with Jürgen Habermas and Jacques Derrida, University of Chicago Press, Chicago.

Buck-Morss

2003, Thinking Past Terror: Islamism and Critical Theory on the Left, Verso, London.

Chatterjee

1990, ‘A Response to Taylor's “Modes of Civil Society”’, Public Culture, vol. 3, no. 1, pp. 48–60.

Chatterjee

2004, The Politics of the Governed: Reflections on the Political Society of Most of the World, Columbia University Press, New York.

Chatterjee

2008, ‘Democracy and Economic Transformation in India’, Economic and Political Weekly, vol. 43, no. 6, pp. 53–62.

Chen

K.-H.

2010, Asia as Method: Towards Deimperialization, Duke University Press, Durham, NC.

Dean

1996, ‘Civil Society: Beyond the Public Sphere’, in Rasmussen

(ed.), The Handbook of Critical Theory, Blackwell, Oxford.

10.

Dean

2003, ‘Why the Net is Not a Public Sphere’, Constellations, vol. 10, no. 1, pp. 95–112.

11.

Habermas

1991, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere, MIT Press, Cambridge, MA.

12.

Habermas

1998, Between Facts and Norms: Contributions to a Discourse Theory of Law and Democracy, trans. Rehg

, MIT Press, Cambridge, MA.

13.

Harindranath

2011, ‘Performing Terror, Anti-Terror, and Public Affect: Towards an Analytical Framework’, Continuum, vol. 25, no. 2, pp. 141–51.

14.

Harindranath

2013, ‘Counter-Terrorism as Contested Terrain: Performative Contradictions and “Autoimmune Disorder”’, in Pisoiu

(ed.), Arguing Counterterrorism: New Perspectives, Routledge, London.

15.

Harindranath

Khorana

2013, ‘Civil Society Movements and the “Twittering Classes” in the Postcolony: An Indian Case Study’, South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies, pp. 60–71.

16.

Held

1980, Introduction to Critical Theory: Horkheimer to Habermas, University of California Press, Berkeley.

17.

Kaviraj

1997, ‘Filth and the Public Sphere: Concepts and Practices About Space in Calcutta’, Public Culture, vol. 10, no. 1, pp. 83–113.

18.

Kolas

2010, ‘The 2008 Mumbai Terror Attacks: (Re-)constructing Indian (Counter-)terrorism’, Critical Studies in Terrorism, vol. 3, no. 1, pp. 83–98.

19.

Murthy

2011, ‘Twitter: Microphone for the Masses?’, Media, Culture & Society, vol. 33, no. 5, pp. 779–89.

20.

Retort 2005, Afflicted Powers: Capital and Spectacle in a New Age of War, Verso, London.

21.

Sanson

2008, ‘Facebook and Youth Mobilization in the 2008 Presidential Election’, Gnovis, vol. 8, no. 3, pp. 162–74.

22.

Sengupta

2011, ‘Anti Corruption Movement and the Youth in India’, http://ingene.blogspot.com/2011/04/anti-corruption-movement-and-youth-in.html

23.

Sengupta

2011, ‘The Anti-corruption Movement as a New Media Campaign’, http://shubho.posterous.com/the-anti-corruption-movement-as-a-new-media-c (no longer available).

24.

Zizek

2008, Violence: Six Sideways Refections, Profile Books, London.