Rethinking The Public Sphere Nancy Fraser Summary

Nancy Fraser does a great job at answering your question, “How can an interaction limited to a few be accurately judged and interfered in by the vast public?” in her article, “Rethinking the Public Sphere: A Contribution to the Critique of Actually Existing Democracy.” Fraser acknowledges the dominant nature of the public and the discussion that takes place in it and suggests that counterpublics are the best way to make the personal political. Fraser examines Habermas’ ideas on the public and private spheres and points out that, “ the official bourgeois public sphere is the institutional vehicle for a major historical transformation in the nature of political domination”(62). The institutionalization of political dominance is concerning to Fraser who

Habermas champions public discussion and the public sphere because it helps create the general will. Ideally, Habermas imagines the public sphere to be a place where everyone and anyone could participate in “unrestricted rational discussion”(59). Fraser questions, “In short, is the idea of the public sphere an instrument of domination or a utopian ideal?”(62). Fraser comes to the conclusion that “both of those conclusions are too extreme”(62) and that “in fact, the historiography of Ryan and others demonstrates that the bourgeois public was never the public”(61). A few people, property-owning white men, cannot possibly judge what the public wants and needs.
To answer your final question, “How political can the private get?,” I would go even further and ask how political should the private get? Due to the dominant nature of the public sphere, Fraser suggests that, “members of subordinated groups-women, workers, peoples of