One of which is Habermas' charicterization of the public sphere as a dispassionate “space for people’s public use of their reason” apparently unaffected by emotion.

I hope we won't evict passion quite so easily here. 

The second is Habermas’ claim that the public sphere emerges out of educated elites’ inconsequential disputes over art and literature, disputes that only become significant when their norms and institutions are adapted to provide the spaces and methods for political dispute (Josh appears to ascribe to this theory here.)

Habermas says “critical debate ignited [in English coffeehouses in the late 17th century] by works of literature and art was soon extended to include economic and political disputes, without any guarantee…that such discussions would be inconsequential."

My beef is with the firm distinction between literature and art, on the one (inconsequential) hand, and economic and political disputes on the (consequential) other.  Any serious student of seventeenth century literature, for example, knows that political and economic disputes were taking place in the literature itself and you could very well get yourself thrown in jail for writing the wrong thing.  You couldn't just talk about something being pretty or well-written if you tried. 

On this, Habermas is just wrong. This is a small point in the grand scheme of things--one that would only stand out to a student of the intersection of seventeenth century literataure and politics--but as someone interested in literature's role in the making of political theory, I can't help but make it.

I find it unlikely that Habermas read Satan’s famous political choice in Milton’s Paradise Lost —“Better to reign in hell than serve in heaven”— before distinguishing the literary and the political so completely.  

  My plea: let's not talk about politics and art like they have to be different animals.