Unpacking Popular Culture from the Lens of Public Philosophy

This chapter explores the philosophical connections between ‘popular culture’ and ‘public philosophy’. Regarding the socio-political experience of South Asia, both offer a dynamic and varied array of phenomena. The first part of the chapter defines popular culture in terms of the social and political connections it tries to establish. It revisits the idea of the public as theorized by Habermas in his seminal text, The Structural Transformation of Public Sphere, followed by some crucial criticisms, particularly from the sites of feminism and post-structuralists. Subsequently, it gives a contemporary account of public philosophy. In this, it compares two strands of scholarship on public philosophy—one that looks upon its task as a pedagogical tool and the other that envisages it as a civic freedom. It points to the striking similarities between the theorization of popular culture and public philosophy, where both remain categorized in the discursive margins of their domains. In conclusion, this chapter considers how popular culture theory shapes our knowledge of politics, which is based on a politics of recognition as much as critical pedagogy and the field of redistributive justice.