Bodily felt integrity: the anarchic core of communication in Jürgen Habermas's democratic thought

• Published in: Distinktion (Aarhus) Vol. 22; no. 3; pp. 277 - 298
• Main Author: Lysaker, Odin
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Aarhus Routledge 02-09-2021; Taylor & Francis Ltd
• Subjects: anarchic core of communication; bodily felt integrity; Communication; deep divisions; Democracy; disagreements; feelings; Habermas, Jurgen; Human dignity; Immigration; Jürgen Habermas; Nationalism; Political communication; Political discourse; Populism; Rationality
• ISSN: 1600-910X; 2159-9149
• DOI: 10.1080/1600910X.2021.2014629

Today, deep divisions run through many societies and their political discourses on contested issues such as populism, nationalism, immigration, and integration. Such divisions strengthen already existing polarizations created by various dynamics between reason and affect. In this article, I, therefore, introduce the term anarchic core of communication. In doing so, I contribute an alternative reading of Jürgen Habermas's democratic thought. Here, I show the significance of both disagreements and feelings in his works. I depart, then, from those Habermasians and non-Habermasians claiming that Habermas appeals only to consensus and rationality. Within this Habermasian framework, therefore, I reconstruct what I conceptualize as the moral ideal of bodily felt integrity. This is a threshold above which not even the anarchic core should be morally accepted to misrecognize individuals' embodied dignity. In result, I propose that my idea of bodily felt integrity is relevant to judge how much anarchic communication societies can recognize and remain democracies.