Habermas and Oppositional Public Spheres: A Stereoscopic Analysis of Black and White Press Practices

Drawing upon Jürgen Habermas's discourse-based theoretical approach, this article argues that his thesis regarding the bourgeois public sphere needs to be redirected so as (1) to show how sources of communicative action may have dried up within the bourgeois public sphere and (2) to explore real emancipatory alternatives that spring up as oppositional voices of subaltern groups, oriented to understanding, and expressed in contexts wherein people's upward struggles against power and domination have not yet been completed. In support of the argument, a stereoscopic analysis is conducted that focuses on public sphere practices and counter-practices – specifically those of The New York Times as exemplar participant of bourgeois publicness and the black-owned and operated New York Amsterdam News as its oppositional counterpart.