Feminist Reflections on Habermas

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an Inclusive Political TheoryFeminist Reflections on Habermas's Communicative Action : The Need for

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Feminist Reflections on Habermas’sCommunicative Action The Need for an Inclusive PoliticalTheory

Mojca PajnikTHE PEACE INSTITUTE, INSTITUTE FOR CONTEMPORARY SOCIAL AND POLITICAL

STUDIES, LJUBLJANA, SLOVENIA

AbstractThis article explores critiques and reformulations of Habermas’s concept ofcommunicative action as presented by feminist authors. Numerous articlesconsidering communicative action as developed by Habermas from a feministperspective have been published, but no systematic analysis of thesearguments exists. This article aims to fill the gap by providing an examinationof various readings of communicative action from a feminist standpoint. If,on one hand, the article collects the dispersed feminist critique of communi-cative action and offers insight into feminist argumentation, its aim is, on theother hand, to reflect the critique itself. Therefore, attention is devoted bothto feminist readings of communicative action, as well as to the potentialshortcomings of these readings that are detected by a closer examination ofHabermas’s own works. The article’s aim is also to show how feminist critics,in their interpretations and reformulations of communicative action, focus onan explication of the inclusive elements of communicative action.

Key words■ communicative action ■ experience ■ feminist critique ■ Habermas ■

inclusion

Jürgen Habermas devoted a number of works to the topic of communicativeaction. His theory was widely applied, and yet at the same time it is still in theprocess of being both developed and critically reflected upon. Habermas’s theoryof communicative action appears as an ‘unfinalized, open project’ (Burger, 1988:viii) that the author continues to explore in his later works (see Habermas, 1996,1998, 2001). Emergence, in the sense of the incompleteness of a theory, is essen-tial for an understanding of communicative action, to which the author was

European Journal of Social Theory 9(3): 385–404

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particularly attentive especially in the first volume of his widely cited bookTheorie des Kommmunikativen Handelns of 1981, which appeared in English asThe Theory of Communicative Action in 1984.

Like Habermas’s theory itself, critiques and reformulations of communicativeaction as presented by feminist authors, which will be examined in this article,represent a valuable contribution to the critique of modern society. Numerousarticles considering Habermas’s communicative concept of action from afeminist perspective have been published since the early 1990s. What is missingin contemporary readings of a theory is an analysis combined with critical reflec-tion on the various readings of the concept from a feminist standpoint. Becauseboth Habermas’s opus and feminist critiques of his works date from differentperiods and are at the same time highly dispersed, in this text I will focus on anexamination of feminist critiques of one of the author’s concepts, i.e. communi-cative action. This article will attempt a synthesis, and examination of thefeminist critique of communicative action and at the same time offer an elabor-ate reflection on the critique itself. Therefore, I devote my attention to feministreadings of communicative action, as well as to the potential shortcomings ofthese readings that are detected by a closer examination of Habermas’s ownworks. In general, however, I show that feminist critics, in their interpretationsand reformulations of Habermasian communicative action, do focus primarilyon an explanation of the inclusive elements of Habermas’s theory.

In considering the ramifications of Habermas’s opus and the various forcesthat motivated his writing during different periods, it is important, in interpret-ing his work, to proceed by rising above the ‘dichotomy of objectivism and rela-tivism’, or rather, to actively confront the gap which has always existed and stillexists today, namely, the gap between the idea of a critical theory of society andits practical realization (Bernstein, 1983: 172; 1976: 225). According to thetheory/practice or relativism/objectivism dichotomy, interpretations that treatcommunicative action as an actual, empirical activity, are separate from thoseaccording to which communicative action is an ideal mechanism for social co-ordination. Although Habermas does not argue for the necessity of such a separ-ation, but develops the theory without taking up a position at either pole, andby mutually interweaving them, he is often criticized by feminist authors forgrounding communicative action on too abstract a basis. In examining thefeminist critique of communicative action I proceed from the thesis thatinterpretations of Habermas’s theory must take into account the broader contextin which the theory arose. Critiques from a feminist perspective are also morecredible when this context is considered, as I will show in the sections below.

Habermas began to develop the communicative approach towards a theory ofthe public sphere in the 1970s as a response to the determinism of existentialistphilosophy, which reinforced the image of passive citizens, led by the dark forcesof nationalism and National Socialism after the Second World War. His theoryis a response to the justification of totalitarianism by the argument of manipu-lation (the example of Eichmann), to the ambivalent stance of the post-wargeneration, and to the amnesia and ideology of manipulated memory. The theory

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of communicative action was Habermas’s response to the conventional under-standing of politics which he criticized in Theorie und Praxis; it is a response toconditions in which politics is reduced to poiesis. In this critique Habermas isclose to the example of Hannah Arendt when he opposes the idea of politics asa necessity in the sense of a Machiavellian prince, a Hobbesian ‘physics of soci-etalization’ (Physik der Vergesellschaftung) (Habermas, [1963] 1972: 76) or aLeviathan-like absolutist sanctioning of politics and Schmittian egoism of theprivate subject.

Habermas’s theory is also a response to Parsonian social theory and its insist-ence on ‘reducing social life to the idea of function’ or to the growing ‘hegemonyof administrative research’, criticized by Hanno Hardt in the field of communi-cations during the post-war period in the United States. It implies a critique of asituation in which communication is defined in the sense of the effectiveness andthe ability to process information, when research is conducted in a utilitarian andeven evolutionist atmosphere (Hardt, 1992: 6, 16, 17). Habermas’s ‘communi-cative transformation of critical theory’ (Matus̆tík, 2001: 153) implies takingcollective responsibility for ‘being-in-the-world’. Communicative action is basedon a polyphony of voices, on narrative and experience – in this lies the potentialof a theory which does not just reflect a certain historical period, but is alsorelevant for an understanding of contemporary social and political developments.

A Critique of Communicative Action as a Pure Sphere

Habermas’s communicative action (kommunikatives Handeln) first arose as aresponse to strategic, instrumental action (zweckrationales, prozedurales Handeln).He began to conceptualize the difference between the two forms of action in the1960s, in the works Theorie und Praxis ([1963] 1972) and Technik undWissenschaft als ‘Ideologie’ (1968). Later, he built on the theory by drawing inparticular on a critique of Weber’s rationality in the first and second book ofTheorie des kommunikativen Handelns (Habermas, 1981a, 1981b). AlthoughHabermas acknowledges that communicative action is not a final form of humaninteraction, some critiques of his theory recognize tendencies towards purifi-cation and finalization in the Weberian sense.

The critique of the dichotomy between communicative and strategic actionas formulated by Mary Dietz (1996) is oriented towards the philosophicalconceptualization of language or rather towards a critique of Habermas’s under-standing of validity claims (Geltungsanspruchen) in discourse theory, which havea theological connotation, i.e. they demand either salvation or purification. Theauthor is critical of the sharp distinction that Habermas makes between purecommunicative action and impure strategic action. Dietz argues that such posi-tioning does not capture the reality of interactions in everyday life or, as SusanBickford (1996: 18) believes, the rejection of strategic action obscures thecomplexity of actual political interactions and encourages the understanding ofpolitics and citizenship as a Romantic ideal.

Pajnik Feminist Reflections on Habermas’s Communicative Action 3 8 7




Dietz recognizes the political connotations in Habermas’s theory at the pointof interpretation of action, while the argumentation within discourse theory, inher view, implies the awakening of chivalrous codes of honour of the late MiddleAges and the establishment of an abstract definition of communicative inter-actions. While the Machiavellian prince learns the strategic politics of how notto be open to the argumentative changing of validity claims, Habermas definescommunicative action or rather communicative politics in contradistinction tostrategic, instrumental action. Argumentation with an insistence on the opposi-tion of both positions is placed in the domain of ‘puritanism’. Dietz argues forthe ‘impurity’ of political action and an understanding of communicative actionon the basis of the interweaving and complementarity of strategic and communi-cative action (1996: 22, 23, 26, 27). A similar position is taken by Fred Dallmayr(1991: 149), who characterizes Habermas’s division as ‘dubious’, and by CarolGould (1996: 173), for whom the analytical division is materialized in the separ-ation of different spheres of action.

While critics of Habermas’s theory of communicative action note the creationof too sharp a distinction between communicative and Weberian, strategic orinstrumental action, this distinction, when interpreted in the context in whichHabermas developed the communicative conception of rationality, does notappear flawed. Critics focus on a conceptualization of communicative action thatis based on interaction and includes active listening, and that is not necessarilydistinct from strategic action. This does not contradict Habermas’s theory,especially if we take into account his later works, from the 1980s onwards:Habermas did not advocate communicative action as something ‘cleansed’ of allinterests. On the contrary, he explicitly stressed that discourse is never entirelypure (Habermas, 1988: 303).

Habermas’s distinction is not so much about an a priori insistence on thedichotomy of positions as it is about his critique of the dominant social and socialscience empiricism. He does not deny the presence of interests in communicativeaction, and states that between the two forms of action there exists an ‘analyticallyexplicable connection’ (Habermas, 1982: 267). In his treatment of the understand-ing of power in Hannah Arendt, he also writes that the elements of strategic actioncannot be excluded from the political (Habermas, 1977: 18). Moreover, he stressesthe need for an active understanding of interests that would avoid the Weberianinsistence on strategic rationality, according to which (all) other forms of actionare perceived as ‘specific deviations’ (spezifische Abweichungen) (Habermas, 1981a:6). Deciding between the two actions is therefore abstract, since communicativeaction in the life-world is not just a matter of choice but a communicative, inter-active disposition in the world, which is different from isolation in strategicaction (Habermas, 2001: 102; 1982, 227).





The Theory of Communicative Thinking: An Alternative toHabermas’s Rationality

Although Habermas broke with the monologic tradition, a frequent criticismamong feminist authors is that his theory is too ‘Kantian’. According to thiscriticism, Habermas persisted in the conception of a moral individual who isdisembodied and self-centred – in contrast to a relational and embodied femaleor male individual. Criticisms of the monologic stance of communicative actionare frequent, although a closer reading of Habermas’s theory shows thatHabermas’s individual is not tied to a deeper inner contemplation. Habermas’sindividual is not liberated from communication with others, but is realizedthrough interaction with others (Baynes, 1994: 319).

Jane Braaten (1995) notes that Habermas, with his theory of communicativeaction, distances himself, on the one hand, from the Cartesian philosophy of thesubject, but, on the other, reproduces it with the concept of communicativerationality. In explaining communicative rationality, Habermas becomes overlytrapped in the patriarchy of traditional epistemology, which tries to defend thepossibility of action in the period of the new historicism of late modernity. Braatentries to understand Habermas’s theory through the perspective of feminist reason-ing and feminist epistemology, on which she bases her alternative to communi-cative rationality. She calls it communicative thinking, which is based on twoprinciples: the principle of solidarity and the principle of intersubjectivity.

As an alternative to the technical image of rationality, grounded in Western,Anglo-American theoretical traditions, according to which rational action, to usePlato’s terminology, is reserved for the ‘enlightened’, Braaten advocates a rationalfeminist discourse which is based on the principle of solidarity and linked to theissues of discrimination against women. By defending different forms of rationalaction, she attempts to transcend the bounds of a technical explanation of thesuccess and effectiveness of action, which Habermas also problematized, particu-larly with the critique of strategic, instrumental action (see Habermas, [1963]1972, 1968). The difference between communicative rationality and communi-cative thinking is also explained by the author by drawing on the principle ofintersubjectivity: in Habermas’s communicative rationality, this is too narrowlytied to the linguistic process of accepting and rejecting arguments, or is at least,as pointed out by Dallmayr (1984: 236), not clearly formulated.

Communicative thinking is a concept which reflects the complexity ofeveryday life, and the multiple means of action and which takes into account thediversity of contexts of action. Braaten understands it as wider than communi-cative rationality – this she understands in a somewhat narrow sense as (merely)spoken agreement, achieved by the domination of the superior argument.Consensus, which in Habermas arises from a commonly defined objectivity,assumes ideal, abstract individuals, while communicative thinking considers lifecontexts and memories. Communicative thinking includes ‘imagination andflexibility’ (Braaten, 1995: 156) and relies on forms of action which try to aeratethe stability of social structures. From the standpoint of the organization of





society, communicative thinking does not mean a rejection or abandonment ofcommunicative rationality, but rather an extension of rationality in the directionof conceptualization, which Darij Zadnikar recognizes in Habermas and calls ‘amulti-dimensional (“soft”) theory of rationality’ (Zadnikar, 1995: 9).

Braaten, whose explanation of communicative thinking explicitly draws on apersonal, even physical, feminist perspective, identifies several meanings for thisconcept. Communicative thinking foremost means respecting differences ineveryday life with the inclusion of possibilities for the transformation of conven-tional politics, with the aim of meeting specific needs, for instance, those ofwomen. It advocates the rethinking of the position of different groups of citizensto respect the specificities of life contexts and opportunities. By providing analternative to one-dimensionality and the systematic, unified arrangement ofstructures, it stimulates the multi-dimensionality of expression (Braaten, 1995:156, 157).

Communicative thinking is a response to a technically defined rationality which,in the view of some critics, is still present in Habermas’s theory; it assumes theKantian action of autonomous, rational subjects: we can speak of the success ofspeech acts, according to Habermas, when rational subjects act in order to achievea rational consensus. In this, they are acting according to communicative norms,the rules of universal pragmatics, which assume a communicative competencefor grammatical expression. This rigidly defined communicative rationalityimplies, as expressed in Benjamin Barber’s categories, too thin an understandingof communicative action and in this framework communicative thinking as analternative is of interest.

At the same time, the question arises as to whether, or to what extent, inter-subjectivity and solidarity in the communicative sense are also integral toHabermas’s communicative rationality. In the Foreword to the second edition ofThe Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere, Habermas (1992: 445) defendsan ‘intersubjectivist formulation of the concept of solidarity’ which (also in theabstract) ‘must not suggest the false model of a formation of will à la Rousseau’,according to which it is necessary to first define the conditions under which theindividual can change into the common good. Braaten (1995: 158) also drawsattention to the fact that the concept of communicative thinking is not a rejec-tion of Habermas’s communicative rationality and also asks (but does not offera response) whether communicative thinking can be found within Habermas’sdiscourse.

Feminist Discourse of the Ethics of Care

From the perspective of the feminist critique, Habermas’s discourse theory thatresults in an achieved consensus is grounded purely in external limits and rules.According to Habermas’s theory, anyone can enter into discourse; each personhas the right to speak and be heard. As emphasized by the feminist critique, ruleswhich at the declarative level imply the opportunity for all to participate still do





not guarantee the active participation and inclusion of all the different actors.Communicative action cannot be based only on institutionalized procedures andrules of communication. At the same time it relies on the willingness of indi-viduals to act, in the absence of which the institutionalized discourse rules cannotbe realized. In this context, the ethics of justice for which Habermas arguesremain on an insufficiently declarative level.

Discourse action, according to the feminist perspective, is based on theconcept of the ethics of care, which assumes intersubjective action with others.The ethics of care arises from internal impulses, a desire for action and takingresponsibility for action in the process of discourse formation. Habermas’s rulethat no one is excluded from the discussion is extended by Simone Chambers bya demand for the motivation of individuals for inclusion. Communicative actionas presented by the feminist critique transcends the formalism and procedural-ism of Habermas’s discourse ethics based on language, or rather on the prevail-ing of the better argument, because it assumes that actors are motivated to takeaction and are open to learning about different experiences. Communicativeaction, according to this reformulation, also includes, in addition to negativedemands that enable individuals to speak, a positive demand that they be listenedto (Chambers, 1996: 167–9).

Susan Bickford extends Habermas’s speech action with the concept of politi-cal listening as an activity that does not require self-abnegation or a radicalsuspension of individuals’ own perspective. Rather, in listening, a person mustactively be with others:

Listening is not passive, nor does it require the assumption of substantive sharedinterests or the suspension of strategic motives. Rather, it involves an active willing-ness to construct certain relations of attention, to form an ‘auditory Gestalt’ in whichneither of us, as parts of the whole structure, has meaning without the other.(Bickford, 1996: 23, 24)

Listening in communicative action implies interdependence, in which thespeaker and the listener are different-but-equal. It is a practice of citizenship,which is based on attention to the perceptions of others and at the same time onthe redirection of attention from the subject to the world.

Feminist authors attempt to define discourse as the ethics of care in contrastto Habermas’s abstract rationalist discourse of the ethics of justice. Habermas’sdiscourse theories are frequently criticized because of their universalistic tenden-cies, which are reflected in the privileging of the all-encompassing consensualideal. The dangers of collectivization of consensus can be found in the paternal-istic implications that imply the abandonment of heterogeneity and difference,and appear when attempts are made to universalize Habermas’s theory to all ofsociety, something for which the author himself did not explicitly argue. Theineffectiveness of transferring discourse action from individual groups to societyas a whole does not mean the impossibility of realizing discourse action inpractice (Habermas’s critics often use the argument that his theory is not trans-ferable to practice), but shows the necessity of understanding discourse as an





open, multiple concept. Habermas ‘does not deny that discourse requires aninterest in mutual understanding, but he never deals fully with the possibilitythat citizens might generally lack such an interest [for common action] or notpossess the competencies to pursue such an interest’ (Chambers, 1995: 176). Or,as Carol Gould notes, ‘although Habermas asserts that everyone is free to enterinto the discourse of the public sphere and to be heard, there are voices that aremute in this discussion’ (1996: 175).

The reasons for the lack of interest in or capacity for interactive communi-cative action which, according to the feminist critique, require particular atten-tion can be found in the dominant forms of instrumental, ‘strategic bargaining’,which today is the most frequently used method for achieving consensus in thepublic space, and which is also reflected in the dominant speech customs. Indi-viduals can also be put off by fear, past experience, and another reason for lackof participation can also be found in the restriction of communicative action torational verbal expression (Chambers, 1995: 176; Gould, 1996: 176).

The concept of the ethics of care offers interesting emphases which are basedon the treatment of communicative action as an inclusive concept. Despite this,it seems that the shift from an ethics of justice, on which Habermas bases hisdiscourse theory, to an ethics of care is based more on a critique of the modernpractice of public debate, which is becoming a synonym for the trading of ideasamong elites with the aim of achieving the dominance of a specific idea, as criti-cized by Habermas, than on a critique of Habermas’s theory. It is in this contextthat Chambers (1995: 176, 177), who argued for public debate as a ‘democra-tized forum’ in which understanding proceeds through the theorization of differ-ence, the opening of possibilities for action, the inclusion of excluded voices, thepoliticization of the depoliticized, the decentralization of decision-making, and soon, should be understood. The implementation of this kind of political discourserequires discursive action, which is less a matter of institutionalized rules in theHabermasian sense than of political culture, which implies active engagement inpublic debate, cooperativeness and a willingness to take responsibility.

Inclusive Political Communication: Three Moments ofPolitical Narrative

Inclusion is a criterion of political legitimacy that implies the ability to transcendindividual interests not by negating those interests but through interacting with,listening to, and responding to others. Inclusive political communication isdeveloped by Iris Marion Young (2000) as an attempt to extend the Habermasianconcept of communicative action to a theorization of responsibility of the indi-vidual towards others and an openness in the sense of publicity. The theoriza-tion of inclusion requires an expansion of communicative action from rationalargumentation towards other forms of expression and articulation. Thecomponent of the inclusive in communicative action relates to the inclusion ofembodied forms of expression: emotion, metaphor, expressiveness etc., i.e.





expression that contains, using Arendt’s terminology, the ability to discover truth(Arendt, [1961] 1985: 54).

The viewpoints expressed, the opinions and demands of individuals andgroups, and especially of minority/marginalized groups, are often unheard orconsidered unimportant. At the same time, formal rules according to whichminority groups have public relevance, and according to which their opinionsshould be actively heard, do not produce the necessary actual (empirical) publiclyand politically acknowledged relevance of these groups. Inclusiveness thus is notbased so much on a liberal ideal of an all-inclusive democratic potential, butconnotes a more inclusive communicative action.

Gender, racial, or cultural differences, or differences that arise from the differ-ent needs of various groups of individuals are often marginalized. The result ofHabermas’s normative assumption of the equal value of the use of the speech actfor all remains at the level of the ideal and can have exclusionary consequencesin practice. Habermas’s discourse, which assumes the freedom and equality ofindividuals in public debate and includes the principle of reciprocity of perspec-tives in the public sphere, is, as Carol Gould (1996: 172) notes, attractive butproblematic. The difficulties appear especially in the treatment of difference:generalized interest as the result of Habermas’s discourse deliberations does notsufficiently take into account differences between individuals and groups that arepublicly active. In Habermas’s theory, difference is recognized merely as ‘thepresence of the different and no more than this’ (Gould, 1996: 177; see also1990: 18). At this level there is a discrepancy between the normative discoursemodel of the public sphere, which is based on universalistic principles (opennessand equality of access, participation, etc.), and attempts to theorize differencesrelated to the recognition of difference, the protection of particularity, and so on.

Gould argues for a redefinition of Habermas’s communicative action thatwould validate differences. She places differences as a point of departure fromwhich she wishes to go beyond Habermas’s theorization of differences as acommodity of discussion or as expressions on which the status of the private isnecessarily imposed. According to this interpretation, Habermas’s theory treatsdifferences only as material that can be manipulated, or as a marginal privacythat does not appear in the public sphere as potentially redefining public action(Gould, 1996: 172, 173).

The stability of what appears to be unquestionable norms of rational, argu-mentative articulation on which communicative action, according to Habermas,is based, tends towards the exclusion of emotive expression. This being the case,Young proposes an expansion of communicative action to include three modesof action: (1) greeting and public acknowledgement; (2) affirmative rhetoric; and(3) narrative and situated knowledge.

The aim of discussing three modes of communication is in the addition ofdimensions that extend political communication, or rather, do not limit it to theachievement of consensus on the basis of spoken, rational argumentation.Moreover, the three modes of communication are not realized in the publicsphere through the negation of argument as a form of communication, but





contribute to ‘enriching both a descriptive and normative account of publicdiscussion and deliberation’ (Young, 2000: 57). They also imply a criticalresponse to a mistrustful attitude towards the expressive, which, at least since thetime of Descartes, has meant equating the expressive and the subjective gener-ally with a lack of clarity and an absence of reality:

(1) Among communicative expressions, greeting implies a recognition of indi-viduals in their particularity. Greeting is a communicative moment, a publicacknowledgement, which is not based on Levinas’s ontological ethics or onTaylor’s politics of recognition. These belong, in Zolo’s terminology, in thesphere of ‘Christian ethics and humanistic culture’. This produces a stan-dardized rationality that is actualized through the privileging of certainforms of action and the exclusion of other forms (Zolo, 1992: 31, 37).Acknowledgement is a political moment, which in Habermas’s speechpractice adds the expression of speech, its manifestation. Greeting is anexpression of acknowledgement of discourse or communicative equality,which implies the possibility of establishing interactions on the basis of trustand listening. ‘Communicative political gestures’ (Young, 2000: 61) repre-sent the recognition of others via discursive inclusion that is neither merelypro forma nor an end goal of communicative action, but rather the initialmoment of political interaction. This moment indicates that communicativeaction comprises more than merely that which is expressed with argumentsand which relies on articulation and coherent linguistic formulation, butalso other discursive signs.

(2) Affirmative rhetoric is another form in the typology that implies a wideningof the concept of communicative action. Young argues for changing theunderstanding of rhetoric, or rather for transcending Platonic interpret-ations that arise from the difference between rational speech and action.According to these interpretations, rational speech is based on universalis-tic, unemotional/non-expressive and neutral argumentation, while rhetoricis based on strategically directed communication, meaning the achievementof a goal by using strategies of manipulation. Leon Mayhew (1997: 37) statesthat Habermas’s rhetoric is an ‘indirect force’, and that Habermas ‘assimi-lates’ rhetoric with force. The separation of the rational from the irrationalin Habermas pushes aside emotion, imagination, and playful forms ofaction, which are regarded as not worthy of attention. Rhetoric in communi-cative action, in contrast, includes three aspects of communication: (1) theemotional tone of the discourse (its content is uttered with fear, joy, angeror other expressions of passion); (2) the use in the discourse of figures ofspeech (such as metaphor, puns, along with humorous, ironic, etc. styles);and (3) forms of making a point that do not only mean speech, such as visualmedia, signs, banners, street demonstrations, and guerrilla theatre (Young,2000: 65).

The reformulation of rhetoric in communicative action implies a recog-nition and rethinking of conflict, in which certain groups of citizens can be





excluded, owing to ‘non-standard’ modes of expression. Rhetoric relates toreflexiveness in the sense of active listening to various speakers. It brings inclu-siveness into communicative action since it is based on the active recognitionof the specificity of context and the positioning of political actors. An under-standing of rhetoric by means of inclusion in communicative action meansthat rhetoric ‘becomes a feature of political expression to which we ought toattend in our engagement with one another, rather than an aspect ofexpression we try to bracket in order to be truly rational’ (Young, 2000: 64).

(3) Narrative and situated forms of knowledge represent the third way to expandthe conceptualization in the direction of inclusiveness. This form implies anactive response to conditions when the experience and the values of themajority influence minority discourse by means of domination, repression,devaluation or demanding change in the sense of a necessary compatibilitywith the dominant paradigm. Narration and storytelling mean illuminatingveiled perspectives and empowering the excluded to speak. They alsorepresent a challenge to the supposedly neutral, unbiased, and standardizedprinciples of valid legal norms. These forms of narrative show, explain anddescribe experience that has been silenced; they bring expression of exclusion,discrimination and injustice, in which, as Hannah Arendt would say, there isa public action as a performative action, for appearance and discovery, forSelbstdarstellung as active presence, and not for action which has some finalproduct (Arendt, [1961] 1985: 153; 1978: 29). Story-telling is an importantstrategy for the uncovering of injustice and systemic mistakes whose victimsare marginalized groups, for example, migrants – in situations whereexclusion cannot be explained through universal argumentation.

An exhaustive critique of Habermas’s communicative action such as thatprovided by Young contributes to the explication of the inclusive in communi-cative action. In attempting to reflect on this critique, the question arises as towhether inclusiveness is really the blind spot of Habermas’s theory. Or rather, ifwe turn the question around, which elements of his theory could be treated aselements of inclusiveness? The criticism set forth by Young and many othercritics is that Habermas’s communicative action excludes interests, desires, andso on. The author’s rejection of the monologic categorical imperative and accep-tance of intersubjective forms of the principle of universality indicate thatHabermas’s theory can nevertheless also be interpreted in the sense of inclusive-ness; it shows that perhaps we are not dealing so much with the exclusion of theexpressive but rather with the emphasis on the capacity for communicativeexpression/action also of the expressive.

Habermas also explicitly argued that communicative action is always inter-mingled with specific features of the life-world and that these features in theplural make up the world as a whole. While feminist critiques take Habermas totask because communicative action does not include particularisms, Habermasalso explicitly states that it is these particularisms without which the worldcannot be conceived of as a whole, in the sense of communicative action





(Habermas, 1988, 305, 306). In his response to critics, he argues that the vali-dation of individual specificities does not contradict collective action as suggestedby these critics.

The Theory of Communicative Experience

Another reformulation of Habermas’s communicative action from a feministstandpoint is presented by Lenore Langsdorf (2002), who proposes a reconstruc-tion of communicative action based on Dewey’s concept of aesthetic experience.1

Experience which is accompanied by knowing implies communicative engage-ment. Action in the Deweyan sense differs from Habermas’s communicativeaction as the representation of objects that we name based on abstraction fromcontextual appearance. According to this comparatively sharp interpretation,Habermas’s theory is relatively narrow and traditionalist, representing a rigidepistemology that demands reconstruction. At the centre of reconstruction,whose aim is to contribute to a more insightful theory of communicative action(Langsdorf, 2002: 157), the author calls for a different conception of knowing,which is wider than that of validity claims expressed through language, and isbased on knowing as inquiry.

Langsdorf distinguishes Dewey’s praxeological understanding of knowing andexperience from Habermas’s epistemic understanding. She uses reconstruction totry to go beyond Habermas’s adoption of traditional forms of argumentation,with the aim of looking for alternative forms of expression that are inclusive.Inclusiveness is possible through the realization of difference and through thetranscendence of recognizing ‘winning’ arguments as opposed to the conditionof those who, as a result of being pressured into consensus, are not able to assertthemselves.

Habermas’s communicative action as linguistic expression overlooks non-verbal and body language; his theory thus reconstructs a model according towhich knowing is a stable object. Dewey does not conceptualize knowing in thetraditional sense of recognizing an external object and the linguistic abstractrepresentation of this externality. His conception of communicative action istransformative and not representative in the sense of Habermas’s theory oflanguage. Communicative experience transforms, not represents, and it encouragesus also towards a practical, non-argumentative experience and non-linguisticforms of action. For Dewey, art as experience is based on shifting, movement andchange. His experience is not separated from communicative action, nor is itindependent in the sense of ideas, as Locke and Hume theorize; experience iscommunicative action.

The realization of experience does not bring about a Habermasian consensus;Dewey’s concept of experience, therefore, enables thinking that is not trapped inthe exclusion–inclusion dichotomy in action. As Dewey ([1934] 1958: 40) says,there are ‘no genuine initiations and concludings’. Experience shifts and changes,resulting in changes, but not necessarily in the sense of progress and building on





that which was previously known. Dewey’s experience is emotional and incontrast to language (the use of words) in the Habermasian sense, which can beused to manipulate; it is based on intelligence2 – not in the sense of intellectualthought, but communicative action (see Dewey, [1934] 1958: 41, 42, 46).Langsdorf interprets Deweyan pragmatism as being concerned primarily withhow any process aids in melioration, rather than with what may be demonstratedabout the nature of its components. ‘The subject-matter of pragmatic aestheticsdiffers from that of traditional, analytic aesthetics: it concerns the work of art,rather than the art object; the dynamic experience that is artistic creation, ratherthan the static product of that activity’ (Langsdorf, 2002: 152).

Reconstruction as conceived of by Langsdorf is based on an extension ofHabermas’s cognitive-instrumental and moral-practical rationality with the treat-ment of Dewey’s experience. It appears that practical disposition in the conceptof communicative experience represents an original addition to rather than areconstruction of Habermas’s communicative action. Reconstruction, as Langs-dorf promises, seems too ambitious a formulation for the sharpening ofcommunicative action at the point of expanding linguistic action to communi-cative experience. Habermas’s language is not based on rationality in the senseof non-recognition of expressive action, a finding which the author herself arrivesat. Habermas also explicitly advocated linking together of cognitive, the moraland the expressive in mutual action (Habermas, 1982: 262).

Habermas would also be hard to categorize as a ‘traditional’ epistemologist oras an advocate of knowing as imaginary ideas. If he is, then it is worth consider-ing Dallmayr’s characterization of Habermas as a communicative epistemologist,who is also interested in knowing in relation to experience and whose theory hasmade an important contribution to the discovery of the connections betweenknowing and experience (Dallmayr, 1991: 133; 1972: 79). Habermas’s rationalityis thus not merely linguistic rationality, but is closely connected with knowing(Wissen, epistemé). In connection with knowledge, Habermas’s Rationalität as hehimself puts it, ‘has less to do with the possession of knowledge than with howspeaking and acting subjects acquire and use knowledge’ (1981a: 8). In responseto his critics Habermas has himself explained that his understanding of reasonor rationality is not as removed from the world as the critics claim. In thiscontext, he talks of rationality as employing knowledge rather than of the rationalas a predicate for the use of knowledge (Habermas, 1982: 234).

A Corrective to Rationality as Linguistic Action: SymbolicExpression

Habermas’s rationality introduces a critical shift from the contemplative ration-ality of consciousness, from the concept of the Enlightenment which reducespraxis to techne. Rationality implies not only self-actualization, it also connotescommunicative/discursive action. In the words of Bernstein (1983: 172), it is ashift from the ‘theory of instant rationality’, which is based on the illusion thatin principle we can always know in advance how we should behave, and that this





behaviour will be in accordance with certain generally accepted (fixed) norms.Communicative action is based not only on the achievement of agreement(Verständigung), but even more on understanding (Verstehen) as a process. Insteadof ‘inter-consciousness’ as an individual project of self-actualization, Habermasestablishes intersubjectivity as a project for the realization of plurality. If withinthe paradigm of consciousness, plurality exists as the context which enables self-actualization, then plurality in communicative action is realized and revealed.Habermas’s theory connotes embodied communicative action and not ‘interpre-tative indeterminacy’, which, according to Benhabib, is not just an ontologicalshortcoming but a constitutive element of the alienated paradigm of conscious-ness (1986: 243).

Habermas’s model of dialogical rationality is based on practising and realiz-ing rationality in spoken practice, in which Habermas’s speech (Sprache) isdiscourse, which is understood more broadly than merely articulated validityclaims as linguistic expression. Rationality is not limited to relationships towardsthe external objective world, but operates as an analogical transference (Dallmayr,1991: 137) to other forms of knowing, which are not based solely on rationalvalidity claims.

Among the many critics who attempt to show the limitation of Habermas’scommunicative action to speech as linguistic expression, and who thus interpretHabermas’s Sprache literally, Johanna Meehan (2000: 42, 43) critically reflects onthe tendency towards linguistic socialization, i.e. a formalistic rigidity and limita-tion of non-verbal forms of action. From this standpoint she argues for an exten-sion beyond linguistic expression with the inclusion of non-linguistic forms ofinteraction. Benhabib, in contrast, attempts to interpret Sprache more broadly,and looks for non-linguistic action within Habermas’s theory and not outside it.Habermas’s communicative action as speech and linguistic action is realizedthrough ‘linguistic mediation’, which connotes interaction as variable action, andlinguistic formulation as action which can be undermined or changed and under-standing as a process which is open to revision and reinterpretation. She inter-prets communicative action as an interactive process as well, not reduced to speechin the sense of linguistic utterance, but including body language, mime, soundand other forms of non-linguistic or ‘linguistically articulable modes of communi-cation’ (Benhabib, 1997: 58). Communicative action can include different groupsof people, for example, children or the handicapped, by means of the comple-mentarity of rational, spoken argumentation with other forms of speech.

Habermas himself explicitly says that, in contrast to what he is often accusedof, communicative action is not based solely on rationality in the sense of speechacts, but also on symbolic expressions (symbolische Äußerungen) (Habermas,1981a: 8). Habermas’s rationality is not tied only to the speech act, which canbe correct or mistaken, effective or ineffective. Habermas also stresses that ‘I donot identify either action, social action or communicative action with speech-acts’ (1982: 264). He attributes great importance to discourse formation –‘discourses are islands in the sea of practice’ (1982: 235) – but communicativeaction is not limited to discourses as linguistic expression. Simone Chambers, for





example, recognizes a wider understanding of Habermas’s speech when she says,‘Speech is more than a verbal naming of things; speech is action’ (1996: 6).

Argumentative speech (argumentative Rede) as a key component of Habermas’srationality as well as a wider theory of communicative action is based more onlexis than on praxis, although Habermas at the same time stresses that it is notbased exclusively on a speech situation as a verbal expression. In this context healso acknowledges that his theory of argumentation is in the initial phase ofdevelopment, and, by saying this, informs us that it does not offer final answersand that his purpose is not to exclude expressive action from speech action, buton the contrary, to define communicative action in such a way that it will includeboth, by assimilating action to speech, and interaction to conversation (seeHabermas, 1981a: 96), but by means of supplementation (not exclusion). In thisframework argumentation is defined more broadly, as a reflexive continuationtowards the understanding of directed action. Within discourse theory, argumen-tation is conceived of as a reflexive form of communicative action, which assumesreciprocity in everyday life and which can be thought of outside the privileged/non-privileged dichotomy only in the context of communicative action (seeHabermas, 1981a: 25; 2001; 140, 141).

Argumentation also does not imply, as critics assert, the prevailing of thebetter argument, which has the effect of force and silences the action of others.As Chambers stresses, Habermas’s argumentation rules as part of his widertheory of communicative action, are not ‘logical necessities’; nor are they basedon ‘transcendental ultimate ground’, but on ‘hypothetical ultimate ground’ toinclude fallibility (1996: 112, 113). Habermas understands argumentation notonly as joint action, but also as the enabling of action. He stresses an under-standing of argumentation that would prevent the dominant imposition of acertain action or the assertion of a given argument by force. Argumentation isdesigned to prevent some from suggesting or prescribing to others what is goodfor them. It is designed to make possible the autonomy of will formation(Habermas, 2001: 71).

Habermas’s communicative rationality (kommunikative Rationalität), incontrast to cognitive-instrumental rationality (kognitiv-instrumentelle Rational-ität), is thus not tied exclusively to the demand for argumentation in a speechsituation as a linguistic expression. Habermas stresses the meaning of other formsof action, among which, for example, he cites desire, feeling, and mood. Ration-ality, and indeed communicative action in general, are defined more broadly thanjust speech acts, as the ‘disposition of speaking and acting subjects’ or as inter-action, interpersonal verbal or extra-verbal action (Habermas, 1981a: 22, 86).While he is criticized for preferring verbal to non-verbal action, and although thebulk of his theory of communicative action is devoted to a treatment of the speechact as lexis, Habermas, a decade before he began the systematic development ofthe theory of communicative action, wrote that linguistic expression, expressionin various forms of action, and ‘embodied gestures’ are not opposed to but arerather complementary forms of action (Habermas, 1970: 210), or rather non-verbal forms of action that suit the use of language (Habermas, 1982: 234).





The Ideal Speech Situation as a Thought Experiment

A number of critics (Thompson, 1984; Zolo, 1992; Alejandro, 1993; Dietz,1996; Gould, 1996) have criticized Habermas for an idealized projection ofsociety. They see idealization in particular in the ideal speech situation, accord-ing to which equal participation in the public sphere remains at the level of anideal projection. In his written responses to these critics, Habermas has explainedthat the theory of communicative action is not a plan for an ideal society of thegood life. Interpretations that take him to task for this kind of idealization havebeen characterized by Bernstein (1983: 192) as a misunderstanding of Habermas’sideas. Responding to critics, Habermas has reacted sharply to the frequent accu-sations which appear ‘in the most peculiar contexts’ and asserted that his theoryof communicative action – where it is focused on validity claims – implies a‘rationalist utopian society’: ‘I do not regard the fully transparent society as anideal, nor do I wish to suggest any other ideal’ (Habermas, 1982: 235; emphasisin original). On the contrary, Habermas conceived of the theory of communi-cative action as a response to metaphysical or epistemological attempts toproduce the ultimate foundationalism or to ‘reconstruct the normative founda-tions of critical theory’ (Zadnikar, 1995: 32).

Habermas uses the ideal speech situation for the re-thinking of communi-cative action, and so the concept appears of much greater value than if comparedto the interpretations that see it as a mechanism for the projection of the idealsociety. It is true that, despite the rejection of action in practice from the idealspeech situation, it also appears as an anticipation of communicative action:

The ideal speech situation is neither an empirical phenomenon nor a pure construct– it is a reciprocally manufactured . . . assumption in discourse. It can be differentfrom the actual state of things, but it is nevertheless a fiction which is operative . . .in the process of communication. (Zadnikar, 1995: 34)

Habermas’s communicative action is not a projection of an ideal speech situationor the good life in the absolute sense. The ideal speech situation at the same timeis not a priori separate from practical action, as some authors have criticized. Forexample, we do not arrive at a valid consensus only in conditions of the idealspeech situation in the sense of its unpredictability in practical action, sinceconsensual decisions are an integral part of everyday life (Habermas, 1982: 272).The theory of communicative action is a result of Habermas’s efforts to recon-cile the tensions between his commitment to an ideal speech situation, and hisawareness of the counterfactual status of everything even approximating idealspeech (Balbus, 1984: 27). Different forms of action not merely imply effectivespeech acts, but are more broadly connected with different forms of expressingthe truth (Wahrheit) or ‘cooperatively seeking the truth’ (Habermas, 1981a: 19),which is defined as the understanding of responsibility. Habermas’s theoryperceives responsible citizens as seekers of truth, in which truth in a process isnot an objective, transcendental aspect of some metaphysical reality.

Validity claims, which some critics interpret as insensible to the validation ofdifference, are understood by Habermas in the communicative sense as statements





about truth, in which truth depends on ‘affairs in the world’. Trans-subjectivevalidity claims (transsubjektive Geltungsansprüche) do not have the status, as somehave claimed, of trans-subjectivity as imaginary unworldliness, of a distant ideal,which in communicative action, as in the ideal speech situation, cannot berealized. On the contrary, trans-subjectivity for Habermas implies worldliness,action-in-the-world or ‘from the perspective of the life-world’ (Habermas, 2001,25), which has importance not only for the acting individual but also for theobserver.

Conclusion

An attempt to provide a synthesis of combined with a critical reflection onfeminist readings of Habermas’s communicative action concludes with the obser-vation that feminist authors aim to express communicative action as a moreinclusive concept of citizen activity. Critiques and reconceptualizations fromfeminist standpoints provide a useful insight that helps explain communicativeaction not just as a theoretical concept, but also as a concept that can be used toexplain the (dis)functioning of the public sphere in contemporary societies. Tosynthesize the criticism of communicative action as has been done in this article,five reproaches provided by feminist critique can be made. According to these,Habermas has done the following:

(1) purified communicative action from interest, and placed it in the field offiction (Gould, 1990; 1996; Dietz, 1996);

(2) provided a monological and technical understanding of rationality (Braaten,1995);

(3) grounded communicative action in a proceduralist ethics of justice(Chambers, 1995; Bickford, 1996; Gould, 1996);

(4) promoted speech acts as the only genuine form of communicative action(Gould, 1990, 1996; Meehan, 2000; Young, 2000);

(5) abstracted communicative action from contextual appearances by ground-ing it using a narrow epistemological tradition (Langsdorf, 2002).

The ambivalence of feminist critique of Habermas’s communicative action isevident, as has been demonstrated in this article, through a combination ofvarious attempts at reconceptualization combined with the disclosing of the politi-cal dimensions of the concept of communicative action itself. Feminist critics whoargue for the changing of communicative action in the direction of greateropenness and inclusivity put forward the following alternative suggestions:

(1) a principle of complementarity of communicative and strategic action;(2) a theory of communicative thinking together with intersubjectivity as a

corrective;(3) a feminist discourse of the ethics of care instead of a Habermasian ethics of

justice;





(4) expressive, political narrative as a supplement to rational expressions;(5) the theory of communicative experience combined with the corrective of

rationality as a purely linguistic action, and a critique of the ideal speechsituation.

If the majority of critics opt for a need to thematize inclusivity in relation tocommunicative action, some authors recognize dimensions of public/politicalengagement in Habermas’s theory itself. Both an exploration of Habermas’stheory as well as a closer reading of feminist critiques, as I have shown, point tothe fact that elements of inclusivity can also be found in communicative actionas it was developed by Habermas (see Habermas, 1981a, 1982, 1992, 2001).Therefore, the most valuable contribution of feminist critiques of Habermas’scommunicative action lies in the explanation of and emphasis placed on the needto seriously thematize communicative action as an open and inclusive mode ofpublic engagement. Despite occasionally providing too sharp an interpretationof Habermas’s concept, thus excluding a broader contextual reflection, feministcritiques remain a valuable contribution to the understanding of communicativeaction as a concept that, although frequently used, is still in need of furtherexploration.

Notes

1 The starting point for the author’s reconstruction is the Habermasian three-worldreference system: (1) the objective world of empirical reality; (2) the social world ofinterpersonal relationships; and (3) the subjective world of individual experience. Theauthor concentrates on the critique of Habermas’s theory of communicative action aspresented in the 1976 essay, ‘What is universal pragmatics?’ For more on the critiqueof Habermas’s pragmatism, see Aboulafia et al., Habermas and Pragmatism (2002).

2 For example, see Dewey (1929]1960), where the author equates intellect with action.His concept is comparable with the intellect in Arendt ([1961] 1985).

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■ Mojca Pajnik, PhD is a scientific counsellor at the Peace Institute, Institute forContemporary Social and Political Studies in Ljubljana, Slovenia. Her currentresearch interests include the phenomena of the public, the public sphere andcitizenship in their transnational forms. Address: The Peace institute, Institute forContemporary Social and Political Studies, Metelkova 6, 1000 Ljubljana, Slovenia.[email: mojca.pajnik@ mirovni-institut.si] ■





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Feminist Reflections on Habermas

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