Classe e genere nella sfera pubblica di Jürgen Habermas

Class and Gender in Jürgen Habermas' Public Sphere

Abstract

The bourgeoise public sphere, as it was displayed by Jürgen Habermas in his book The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere, was born in modern Europe as a space of public interest and soon became a space of political opposition to national governments all across the continent. The access to such political arena has always been limited to the men of the middle class and the upper class; women and the working class couldn’t participate in the discussions held in the public sphere. This essay aims to expose the theory that lies behind this exclusion process and show why it is that only rich men were allowed to take part in this elitist and exclusive sphere that posed as representing the whole citizenship, including women and the working class.