Publics, Politics and Participation

Maroon 301

builds on the Habermasian model but produces a critical intervention
by arguing for a “historically situated morality [Sittlichkeit] against an
abstract universal morality [Moral].”^3 Habermas cites this stance as an
interpretive error. Yet it is precisely Benhabib’s insistence on the situated
nature of public spheres that gives us the analytical compass necessary to
engage meaningfully with the contemporary realities of modern Muslim
publics. We must be able to understand the nuances, rationalizations and
understandings that shape the differentiated identities of citizens who
occupy the public sphere by focusing on the situated nature of everyday
life. Emphasizing the civic body’s moral conscience, Benhabib argues that
the negotiated sociality of the public sphere is situated in political and, as
such, necessarily historic space whose form is characterized by practices
and actions:

Between the basic institutions of a polity, embodying prin-

ciples of the morally right, and the domain of moral interac-

tions in the life world, in which virtue often comes to the fore,

lie the civic practices and associations of a society in which

individuals face one another ... as public agents in a political

space.^4

e emphasis in feminist critical theory on historically situated Th
publics whose moral beliefs adhere differently in specific cultural and
political contexts is mirrored in the interdisciplinary work of scholars
concerned with modernization projects in whose realizations public
spheres emerge. Scholars have argued that modernization is best under-
stood as localized processes informed by discourses of power.^5 This chap-
ter adds to those studies while contributing to a growing body of work
concerned with the experiential quality of the moral terrains on which
Muslim social actors are affected by and inform national and local proj-
ects of social transformation.^6
tizens within the public sphere exist as bodies marked by catego-Ci
ries of identification, including status, gender and class.^7 We must con-
sider how such marked bodies are granted or denied the right to speech
and participation in the public. We are called to understand the degree
to which everyday practices can be political actions, such that the pro-
duction of the public sphere includes the direct pursuit of institutional