Communicative Action's Democratic Deficit

MARTIN PLOT

International Journal of Communication

USC Annenberg Press

Lugar: Los Angeles; Año: 2009 vol. 3 p. 825 - 852

1932-8036

In this paper, I develop a critique of Habermas’ concept of communicative action. My critique is based on the concept’s inability to grasp the complexities of democratic politics and democratic political action. I first show that the central seed of this inability is to be found in his early masterpiece, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere. This genealogical beginning is followed by a more conceptual critique of communicative action’s dichotomist foundations, its moralization of speech act’s theory, and its incorporation of the dyad’s dialogue as the elementary form of human communication. During this conceptual critique, I present a different notion of how the strategic and communicative dimensions of action intertwine in political action proper. Revista indexada en: —Thompson Reuters Social Sciences Indexing to include — SSCI — SCI — ISI — EBSCOhost (EBSCO) — Elsevier — Genamics Journal Seek (GJS) — Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) — Google Scholar — International Association for Media & Communication Research (IAMCR) — IGT Knowledge Center — Scholarly Exchange — Univerciencia — And others