The Caring Public Sphere: Reframing the Concept in an Era of Care Crises

Abstract

This article reframes the public sphere concept by bringing it dialogue with feminist theories of care. Care ethics foreground vulnerability and interdependence, suggesting that vulnerability is a shared condition and that we are all dependent on each other in order to survive. This helps to rethink the role of the public sphere within the democratic system, as a space not only for opinion formation, but also for the development of citizens with the necessary skills and dispositions to take care of the issues discussed in public. A focus on care also aids in reconsidering public affairs as issues that are intimately connected with needs and vulnerabilities; listening as an act of care; the processing of emotions as a key function of the deliberative process; and personal testimony as an important type of argumentation. The concept of care further helps in refinining the universal access principle by highlighting the importance of intimate spaces, where participants feel safe to be vulnerable, and of how these multiple publics can be interconnected through mobilising relationships of interdependence. Finally, it allows us to consider “care work” for communication infrastructure, including both media technologies and people’s bodies, as a constitutive part of the public sphere.