Manifesto & Public Sphere: Action versus Communication

The article covers the issue of consistency of manifesto texts with a political system underpinned by publicness principles. The ever-increasing production of manifestos witnesses a crisis in the political system which necessitates the investigation of how such texts influence both their readers and public sphere as a whole. The public sphere concept by J. Habermas, perception of policies by J. Ranciere, and dialogue-based approaches of M. Buber and A. Pyatigorsky constitute the basis for analysing structural elements of a manifesto text, and highlighting their core traits shedding light on the relationship between a manifesto text and the public sphere. Through highlighting the three main elements of a manifesto text, i.e. ‘speaking I’, ‘Object’, and ‘Other’, and by clarifying the configuration of interrelations between the elements, the militant message of a manifesto is asserted as the opposite to the dialogue-based foundation of the public sphere. Such texts postulate the necessity both to eliminate the ‘Other’ and to immediately achieve a set objective by way of taking on an active participative position. The latter to be implemented via the ‘speaking I’ replication mechanism, which is expressed through a call for readers to take on the image of the person speaking through the manifesto. Thus, the manifesto becomes both a tool for getting rid of an existing system incapable of satisfying the needs of an actor, and a tool for leveling political space. Manifesto texts demonstrate the monological basis expressed in the postulation of the necessity for action to uncompromisingly transform the world.