Khan 361was and is crucial to the development and maintenance of modern repre-
sentative democracy. However, he has never addressed the effects of such
a public sphere and resulting social discourse on much of the rest of the
world. Habermas himself acknowledges this gap in the New Left Review,
admitting that he has little to say about “anti-imperialist and anti-capital-
ist struggles in the Third World,” although he is “aware of the fact that this
is a eurocentrically limited view.”^3 Critics of Habermas such as Edward
Said and Jean-François Lyotard point out that this lack of engagement
is problematic, not only in terms of recent attempts to apply Habermas’s
claims in a cosmopolitan or transnational context, but also—and espe-
cially—when juxtaposed with Habermas’s “continuing commitment to
what he calls the project of modernity, and thus to the Enlightenment goal
of political emancipation upon the basis of knowledge claims that are, in
some sense, objectively defensible.”^4 Said is perhaps the most directly criti-
cal, calling Habermas “today’s leading Frankfurt theorist” and saying that
“Frankfurt School critical theory, despite its seminal insights into the rela-
tionship between domination, modern society, and the opportunities for
redemption through art as critique, is stunningly silent on racist theory,
anti-imperialist resistance, and oppositional practice in the empire.”^5
s chapter represents an attempt to apply some of Habermas’s Thi
formulations to such an anti-imperialist and cosmopolitan context, in
order not only to examine the effects of the yet-adolescent European pub-
lic sphere on other societies at that time, but also to suggest avenues for
further study, both historical and contemporary, in the nonhegemonic
contexts in which the majority of the world’s population lives. The study
below demonstrates both the usefulness and some of the limitations of
Habermas’s formulation of a public discursive arena in relation to mar-
ginalized and expatriate communities. It also sheds light on the effect of
the existence of the European public sphere on other parts of the world,
and the dangers such a discursive space posed for European political and
cultural dominance during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, even
while it strengthened European representative governance and social
cohesion.^6 Presumably, other historical examples will further clarify the
relative appropriateness of Habermas’s formulation of public spheres in
these contexts.