Towards a literary public sphere: the Mercurio Peruano, Lima, 1791

Sharman, Adam

Abstract

This article examines the applicability of Habermas’ concept of the public sphere to the periodical paper the Mercurio Peruano in 1791. It compares the conditions of production of Habermas’ ‘model’ eighteenth-century European bourgeois public sphere to those of a colonial, ancien régime Lima complete with Inquisition censorship. It suggests that Habermas’ literary—rather than political—public sphere, training ground for a critical civic public reflection, is the more fruitful concept. Moving beyond contextualist explanations, it argues that the Mercurio’s Enlightenment meditations on the capital’s ‘civil system’—on its commerce and its cafés—construct the public sphere through and in the productive force of critical reason itself. In its patriotic pages we glimpse both the signs of a ‘modern’ public sphere of civil society in the interstices of formal politics before independence and a reminder that the public sphere, based on a reason that exceeds any determinate historical structure, is never exclusively modern.

Citation

Sharman, A. (2017). Towards a literary public sphere: the Mercurio Peruano, Lima, 1791. Hispanic Research Journal, 18(4), 306-319. https://doi.org/10.1080/14682737.2017.1337880

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: Aug 23, 2016
• Online Publication Date: Jul 7, 2017
• Publication Date: Jul 7, 2017
• Deposit Date: Nov 21, 2016
• Publicly Available Date: Jan 8, 2019
• Journal: Hispanic Research Journal
• Print ISSN: 1468-2737
• Electronic ISSN: 1745-820X
• Publisher: Taylor and Francis
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 18
• Issue: 4
• Pages: 306-319
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/14682737.2017.1337880
• Keywords: public sphere; Mercurio Peruano; Enlightenment
• Public URL: https://nottingham-repository.worktribe.com/output/971366
• Publisher URL: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14682737.2017.1337880
• Related Public URLs: http://www.tandfonline.com/toc/yhrj20/current
• Additional Information: This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis in Hispanic Research Journal on 7 July 2017, available online: http://www.tandfonline.com/10.1080/14682737.2017.1337880.
• Contract Date: Nov 21, 2016