Networks, Politics, and the Literary Public Sphere: The Foundation of Modern Democracy in Taiwan (1970s–1990s)

Anson Au

doi:10.1177/2158244020927414

Abstract

This article examines how literature is a networked social space of political repression and resistance, refracting broader contestations over national sovereignty, self-determination, and identity. Politicizing the traditionally apolitical “world of letters” in Habermas’s Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere, this article employs a novel analysis of the influence that the literary public sphere wields over political consciousness. Using the historical case of Taiwan’s literary networks from the 1970s to the 1990s, this article asserts that the literary public sphere produces a rational-critical generalization of knowledge and exposure to dissonant perspectives that invigorates civil society by creating intelligentsia. Through intelligentsia, ideas within the Taiwanese literary public sphere birthed powerful Dangwai parties that instituted democracy, informed their platforms, and ushered in a new wave of political elites. The Taiwanese case demonstrates how civic tasks can predict political tasks with enough force to stimulate a unique postcolonial political consciousness and spark a revolution.

Highlights

One of the most important achievements in the study of the public sphere has been to interrogate its influence on democratic political practice in social life (Fraser, 1990)
We owe a great deal of this achievement to The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere, wherein Jürgen Habermas (1962/1989) conducts a historical sweep of 18thand 19th-century England, France, and Germany to trace the development of the public use of rational-critical thought
Much less attention has been devoted to the literary public sphere, and in particular, how it impinges upon the development of rational-critical thought (Anheier & Gerhards, 1991; Crossley et al, 2004; McKee, 2006)

Summary

Introduction

One of the most important achievements in the study of the public sphere has been to interrogate its influence on democratic political practice in social life (Fraser, 1990). The preoccupying theme of his theoretical concern in STPS, and read through his other works (Habermas, 1985, 1987, 1996), is an inquiry into the conditions that facilitate communicative rationality as pertinent to deliberative democracy Central to his discussion is the introduction of the public sphere and its relation to external forces that impinge on the use of rational-critical thought. Existing investigations of the literary public sphere and critiques of Habermas’s public sphere have heavily focused on the constitution of private individuals that comprise the sphere Such discussions have adopted the literary public sphere as part of explications on poetics (Randall, 2008), the disconnection of the private identity from the public sphere These lines of inquiry have generated interesting insights on the social bases of identity, but largely treat the literary public sphere in disconnection from the political sphere, despite its importance to the public sphere in STPS

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