Icipants, the article will analyse the interviews with a small, purposive sample of breast cancer survivors to develop an understanding of the significance of the expressive arts used in the informal public space of workshops.BackgroundHabermasian theory Habermas’ dualistic model of society differentiates between `system’ and `lifeworld’ (Habermas 1984, 1987). The system world comprises the formally organized social relations steered by money and force. The lifeworld is the shared common understandings, including values that develop through face-to-face interactions over time in various social groups, from families to communities. The system world is grounded in instrumental rationality oriented to strategic control, in contrast to the lifeworld’s communicative rationality oriented to understanding. Habermas’ construction of the relationship between lifeworld and system alerts us to a form of rationality grounded in subjectivity, out of which discursive democracy can be developed (Williams and Popay, 2001). The potential of communicative rationality is at the heart of Habermas’ optimism for the modernity project and sets him apart from his predecessors who were preoccupied with the destructive effects of system domination. Communicatively rational social interactions are coordinated through the exchange of three types of validity claim: factual (objective world), normative understandings (social world) and speakers’ truthfulness (subjective world). These claims are brought forward for evaluation and negotiation on the basis of the unspoken?2014 Macmillan Publishers Ltd. 1477-8211 Social Theory Health Vol. 12, 3, 291?12Quinlan et alcommitment to the three values of truth, rightness and authenticity, respectively. Truthfulness claims, for Habermas, are assertions of aesthetic self-expression. Unlike factual and normative claims, truthfulness claims cannot be justified linguistically. Rather, their rationality is grounded in a more global, mimetic form of communication: the imitative type of interaction that is inherent in the development of human consciousness and endemic to artistic creations. Works of art, Habermas asserts, `are the Doravirine chemical information embodiment of authenticity claims’ (Habermas, 1984, p. 20). By portraying what is difficult to GS-4059 cost express in words, the arts collectivize analysis and synthesis of our shared experiences, enlighten us as to our true selves, and illuminate life itself ?in short, the arts help reconstitute our communicative competencies. Habermas’ work is not without its critics. His notion of communicative rationality has been widely criticized as a utopian ideal, and feminists have charged him with gender-blindness in his overly simplified differentiation between material and symbolic reproduction (Fraser, 1995). State-provided healthcare is a good example that defies the binary of system and lifeworld: it requires communicative action and processes of social integration to coordinate the service to human material needs by preventing and treating disease. Perhaps in response to his critics, in his later work Habermas moderates the binary of symbolic and material reproduction and theorizes discursive democracy as an intervention of the lifeworld into the system world. Moving his notion of a public sphere away from the romanticized idea of the bourgeois public sphere, Habermasian scholars offer a more general notion of `receptor’ sites within the institutions of civil society (Cohen and Arato, 1992) where public opinions are co.Icipants, the article will analyse the interviews with a small, purposive sample of breast cancer survivors to develop an understanding of the significance of the expressive arts used in the informal public space of workshops.BackgroundHabermasian theory Habermas’ dualistic model of society differentiates between `system’ and `lifeworld’ (Habermas 1984, 1987). The system world comprises the formally organized social relations steered by money and force. The lifeworld is the shared common understandings, including values that develop through face-to-face interactions over time in various social groups, from families to communities. The system world is grounded in instrumental rationality oriented to strategic control, in contrast to the lifeworld’s communicative rationality oriented to understanding. Habermas’ construction of the relationship between lifeworld and system alerts us to a form of rationality grounded in subjectivity, out of which discursive democracy can be developed (Williams and Popay, 2001). The potential of communicative rationality is at the heart of Habermas’ optimism for the modernity project and sets him apart from his predecessors who were preoccupied with the destructive effects of system domination. Communicatively rational social interactions are coordinated through the exchange of three types of validity claim: factual (objective world), normative understandings (social world) and speakers’ truthfulness (subjective world). These claims are brought forward for evaluation and negotiation on the basis of the unspoken?2014 Macmillan Publishers Ltd. 1477-8211 Social Theory Health Vol. 12, 3, 291?12Quinlan et alcommitment to the three values of truth, rightness and authenticity, respectively. Truthfulness claims, for Habermas, are assertions of aesthetic self-expression. Unlike factual and normative claims, truthfulness claims cannot be justified linguistically. Rather, their rationality is grounded in a more global, mimetic form of communication: the imitative type of interaction that is inherent in the development of human consciousness and endemic to artistic creations. Works of art, Habermas asserts, `are the embodiment of authenticity claims’ (Habermas, 1984, p. 20). By portraying what is difficult to express in words, the arts collectivize analysis and synthesis of our shared experiences, enlighten us as to our true selves, and illuminate life itself ?in short, the arts help reconstitute our communicative competencies. Habermas’ work is not without its critics. His notion of communicative rationality has been widely criticized as a utopian ideal, and feminists have charged him with gender-blindness in his overly simplified differentiation between material and symbolic reproduction (Fraser, 1995). State-provided healthcare is a good example that defies the binary of system and lifeworld: it requires communicative action and processes of social integration to coordinate the service to human material needs by preventing and treating disease. Perhaps in response to his critics, in his later work Habermas moderates the binary of symbolic and material reproduction and theorizes discursive democracy as an intervention of the lifeworld into the system world. Moving his notion of a public sphere away from the romanticized idea of the bourgeois public sphere, Habermasian scholars offer a more general notion of `receptor’ sites within the institutions of civil society (Cohen and Arato, 1992) where public opinions are co.
