Philippine E-Journals

Rulers against Writers, Writers against Rulers: The Failed Promise of the Public Sphere in Postcolonial Nigerian Fiction

Ayo Kehinde

Discipline: Literature

 

Abstract:

The term 'Public Sphere', viewed from the perspective of literature, is notoriously a slippery concept, designating, as it does, a form of art, a spirit, a purpose and a tone. For many years, much thought on this topic has been influenced by Jurgen Habermas, who proposes that, in eighteenth-century England, middle-class citizens began to see themselves as effective members of a rational public.