Abstract
This article discusses the differences between “public space” and “public scene” in the debate between Jürgen Habermas and Jacques Rancière to characterize politics. Is public opinion always part of a political rationality where a subject sets his opinion to the test of others, to convince them? Is the maintenance of this public space a question of explanation? To reflect about this question, we will seek to see how this public space has been characterized by both authors. With the first we will see historically this characterization, and what was the role of mediatization. With the second, we will try to see to what extent this public space is only a space of scenes, of a political scene; and what is its meaning. One wonders in what sense the German philosopher, nowadays, in the era of new media, would he revisit his analyzes of 1962? Would he rather stretch this public space to the point of making it possible to distinguish an “a-critical” public space (a space for comments and other interactions) from a critical public space? In this case, what would be left of this conceptual “coup”? There are already enough elements to consider that a space, even if it is “public”, either of one hundred and forty signs on Twitter, or a few paragraphs for comments on Facebook, does not necessarily guarantee an improvement of democracy, a proximity of general interests. Perhaps the definition of this space as a space of scenes, as Rancière says, can better help us to think that a commentary always creates “a multiplication of people”. It is in the confrontation between these two analytical perspectives that we seek to develop this article.
Keywords:
Public space; Political scene; Mediatization; Habermas; Rancière