Abstract

Jurgen Habermas, G. Thomas Goodnight, Nancy Fraser, Jean Francois Lyotard, and Hannah Arendt partially represent the range of interests in the public sphere as a construct used to designate symbolic borders between realms of communal authority and personal sovereignty, define collective and particular interests, delimit appropriate modes of behavior, and organize relations among those who are strangers to one another. Among the problematic points discovered in these theories are the derision of modes of discourse other than rational-critical debate, the maintenance of boundaries between public and private spheres of life, the supposed uniform character of the public sphere, the imperative to reach consensus in public disputes, the drawbacks of a structural analysis of the public sphere, the limitations of postmodern theory when confronted with opposition, conflict, and indeterminacy, and the use of ancient, elite models of public life as standards by which to measure contemporary public life. ;The central tenet of a rhetorical theory of the public sphere, in comparison, asserts that public spheres are discursive constructs and the relations they embody exhibit characteristics attributable to the rhetorical discourses that form them. Public spheres are sites of ongoing rhetorical experiences in which people who are engaged by events and issues that they perceive affect them in a collective manner, attempt to persuade others to act in accordance with a common sense of some aspect of the shared world. ;If one considers public spheres to be rhetorically constituted, then modes of purposive, influential, addressed discourse include far more than the formal argumentative strategies of disinterested interlocutors. Additionally, the persistent opportunity for collective action, despite impediments to the unrestricted exchange of information and expression of opinions, is made apparent. Furthermore, the manner in which people variably require or resist the widespread discussion and exposure of issues and identities, indicates the contested nature of that which is public and private. Likewise, a rhetorical theory of the public sphere will correlate the vitality of a democratic state with the conditions of communication that include, but are not restricted to, the strategies by which particular voices solicit and are accorded the most legitimacy