After a boom in the 1980s and 1990s, the notion of the public sphere seems to have slipped into a theoretical outside position and near discursive invisibility. In the cultural field, a growing tendency to address partial public spheres, communities and new audiences paved the way to cultural political programs. The concepts of "culture for all" and "cultural democracy", initially created as emancipatory tools, have shifted in a neoliberal context of customer orientation and the fetishisation of audiences, so that the public sphere becomes a means of social control. Now that new transnational (counter-) public spheres are emerging, what are their political and theoretical implications?

with Roger M. Buergel, Kathrin Busch, Eve Chiapello, Alex Demirovic, Nancy Fraser, Oliver Marchart, Jim McGuigan, Ruth Noack, Stefan Nowotny, Nick Stevenson, et al.

Kunstraum der Universität Lüneburg
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