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

Sharman, Adam

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Authors

ADAM SHARMAN adam.sharman@nottingham.ac.uk
Professor of Latin American Studies and Critical Theory



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 Mar 28, 2024
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.

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