Democracy as Performance: Can Deliberation Survive the Politics of Spectacle?

In a world saturated by images and spectacles. Democracy is increasingly unfolding as a performance rather than a practice of collective reasoning. The democratic endeavor has long been tied to the promise of deliberation; the idea that legitimacy arises when citizens freely exchange arguments, exposing power to the discipline of reason. Jürgen Habermas (1989) has encapsulated this ideal in his conception of the public sphere. The viability of this ideal is being eroded as a consequence of publicity and public performance. This transformation brings up the question: Can deliberative democracy survive under conditions of performance politics?