HABERMAS' IDEAL SPEECH SITUATION

[kenneth.mackendrick@utoronto.ca]

On Fri, 27 Oct 2000 13:59:31 -0400 Ralph Dumain <rdumain@igc.org> wrote:

> But isn't much of academic feminist mythology explicitly 
counter-Enlightenment: against rationality, procedures and rules, legalism, 
autonomous individuality, etc., and for the mysticism of communion, empathy and 
similar mythical (and fictional) feminine qualities?

Sure, but this is common enough in most disciplines. "Iron John" isn't exactly 
rationalism par excellence - and let's not forget one of the leading thinkers 
of contemporary mysticism and empathy... Carl Jung. Regarding Habermas, some of 
the most insightful and provocative critique's of Habermas have come from 
feminist theory - notably, Seyla Benhabib's analysis of Habermas's 
appropriation of Kohlberg. One of the things that Benhabib demonstrates (rather 
successfully) is that Habermas assumes that all of our partners in discourse 
are conceptually identical (ie. we all make identical presuppositions, 
regardless of time and place) and that through a procedure, we can, in fact, 
come to a consensus (a symptom she locates in the work of Hobbes, Locke, and 
Rawls). Also, Agnes Heller has further argued that Habermas's procedure is not 
at all an impartial mechanism for the adjudication of validity claims. In fact, 
as Heller argues, Habermas must assume, at least, one shared good - which makes 
havoc for Habermas's entire justification of his program. If procedures do 
privilege certain kinds of discourses - then it is not, in fact, a universalist 
ethic. Both Benhabib and Heller, in my mind, attempt to preserve some key 
elements in Habermas without doing away with either reason or autonomy.

> Has anyone ever applied Habermasian communication analysis to discourse 
within the left itself?

The question of application is an awkward one. Habermas seeks to provide a 
standard for which all discourses can be measured against. The critique of 
ideology, which aims at intelligibility, is always in the service of
clarification and understanding. So, even if we disagree with the details of 
Habermas's analysis, the notion of ideology critique itself, insofar as it 
challenges distorted forms of communication, plays into some sort of 
'communicative ethic' (as far as I can see). For Habermas, the liberal 
democratic model has already instituted the fundamental insights that he seeks 
to illuminate through his discourse ethics. His analysis, then, is little more 
than a point of clarification. So it is difficult to answer the question, "Has 
it been applied?" All criticism which attempts to enjoin solidarity with 
autonomy and democracy is, for Habermas, fundamentally communicative (whether a 
theory of communicative action exists or not).

> How about to African-American discourse?

Paul Gilroy briefly discussed the work of Seyla Benhabib (The Black Atlantic, 
pg. 37). Gilroy also picks up on several of Habermas's ideas directly 
throughout the text - esp. Habermas's notion of the unfinished project of 
enlightenment and the rational potential inherent to existing democratic forms. 
What I regard to be singularily important about Gilroy's work, however, is the 
way in which he illustrates how identity and communication is not merely 
consituted by language. His analysis of music and memory speak to this. But 
also his notion of "the politics of transfiguration" - which draws on the idea 
that inspirational and motivational "utopias" as more complex than linguistic, 
textual and discursive models permit. Here Gilroy picks up on the idea of the 
imaginary which can be found in Benhabib's work (as well as Jameson's) although 
not richly developed. Without a doubt I see the idea of the imaginary as being 
crucially neglected in Habermas's work - which entails not limited "the moral 
domain" to issues of justice and justification - but also entails including 
matters of "a good life" (which Habermas has cut off from 'public' discussion 
through his razor sharp distinction between morality and ethical life)... 

ken