Beyond the Semantic ‘Big Bang’: Cultural Sociology and an Aesthetic Public Sphere

This article argues that cultural sociology should take heed of conceptual and policy ambiguities that developed within British and Australian cultural studies. However, it also proposes that cultural sociology might build on the underdeveloped common ground between Frankfurt critical theory and cultural studies. Habermas’s notion of the ‘literary public sphere’ is taken as a useful point of contact between these fields. This literary public sphere thesis is reconstructed in some detail and its fate in recent debates is explored. Habermas’s concept of the contradictory institutionalization of political public spheres is applied to the literary public sphere thesis.The article proposes that the examination of differing modes of contradictory institutionalization of literary and political public spheres might aid comparison not only of nation-states’ differing policy practices but also of intellectual traditions such as cultural studies as well.Throughout, the article advocates the relevance of a cultural production perspective to research on aesthetic public spheres.