Between Facts and Norms - Contributions to a ... - Blogs Unpad

486Appendix I4.2Following Arendt's lead, Albrecht Wellmer has underscored theself-referential structure of the public practice issuing from communicativepower.24 This communicative practice bears the burdenof stabilizing itself; with each important contribution, publicdiscourse must keep alive both the meaning of an undistortedpolitical public sphere as such and the very goal of democratic willformation.The public sphere thereby continually thematizes itselfas it operates, for the existential presuppositions of a nonorganizablepractice can be secured only by this practice itself. The institutionsof public freedom stand on the shi£ting ground of the politicalcommunication of those who, by using them, at the same timeinterpret and defend them. The public sphere thus reproducesitself self-referentially, and in doing so reveals the place to which theexpectation of a sovereign self-organization of society has withdrawn.The idea o£popularsovereigntyis therebydesubstantialized.Even the notion that a network of associations could replace thedismissed "body" of the people-that it could occupy the vacantseat of the sovereign, so to speak-is too concrete.This fully dispersed sovereignty is not even embodied in the· heads of the associated members. Rather, if one can still speak of"embodiment" at all, then sovereignty is found in those subjectlessforms of communication that regulate the flow of discursive opinion-and will-formation in such a way that their fallible outcomeshave the presumption of practical reason on their side. Subjectlessand anonymous, an intersubjectively dissolved popular sovereigntywithdraws into democratic procedures and the demanding communicativepresuppositions of their implementation. It is sublimatedinto the elusive interactions between culturally mobilizedpublic spheres and a will-formation institutionalized according tothe rule oflaw. Set communicatively aflow, sovereignty makes itselffelt in the power o£ public discourses. Although such poweroriginates in autonomous public spheres, it must take shape in thedecisions of democratic institutions of opinion- and will-formation,inasmuch as the responsibility for momentous decisions demandsclear institutional accountability. Communicative power is exercisedin the manner of a siege. It influences the premises of