Counterpublics and the New Conflicts of the Public Sphere

Introduction

Despite the plurality and diversity within the intellectual tradition known as Critical Theory, the relationship between normative categories and social diagnoses is one of its most important and complex aspects.¹This text is the result of research into the public sphere and political culture that forms part of the Fapesp Thematic Project “Public Sphere and Reconstruction: Constitution of a Reconstructive Paradigm in the Field of Critical Theory,” developed by the Law and Democracy Center at Cebrap. I would especially like to thank Fabiola Fanti and Jonas Medeiros for their careful reading of the first version and their suggestions. In fact, the way in which theory relates to social processes has significant consequences for its critical purpose (MELO, 2017a). This paper seeks to indirectly understand the foundation and uses of critical and normative concepts from the ways they are articulated within social research. Critical concepts must be rearticulated, considering the disputed social and political contexts they seek to understand. With this in mind, I would like to analyze different uses of the concept of the “public sphere,” more specifically, the concept of a “counterpublic,” which has proven to be very fruitful for researching new social conflicts and adequately porous to encompass different political dynamics.

The alternative concept of a “subaltern counterpublic,” developed by Nancy Fraser, has opened up new possibilities for using the category of the public sphere in investigating political and social struggles of subaltern groups, mainly represented, according to the author, by issues such as feminism, racism, and sexuality. I intend to show how the concept of the counterpublic has come to be used in different ways, thus contributing to investigations and research of recent political and social conflicts. However, being used for political diagnoses has meant that the concept of a counterpublic has come to be used both for disputes between groups considered to be progressive and for conservative groups—nowadays often referred to by the general term “new right”—which also understand themselves as a counterpublic within the given political context.

The possibility of being deployed by groups within diverse ideological spectrums and political concerns marks the concept’s reception in Brazil. While theories about the public sphere have been frequently used by sociology, history, and political science studies, the concept of a counterpublic has helped to enrich diagnoses of social and political processes in the Brazilian context. The concept has made it possible to outline power disputes and emancipatory struggles in the formation of the Brazilian public sphere, from abolitionist discourses through the thematization of subaltern popular struggles (Black people, women, peasants, urban workers), the formation of our civil society and porous forms of institutionalized participation, as well as collectively self-organized modes of political constitution and direct action (with new configurations of feminism and anti-racist struggles, student movements as well as groups with conservative agendas).

But what distinguishes these publics? Is it only their social condition or their political and ideological orientation? Does the concept itself depend on the relationship with the “cultural” politics of recognition, or does it also encompass redistributive social agendas? Or do counterpublic differences trace to the social experiences of domination they refer to? In what sense is it possible to say that there is a relationship between domination and the constitution of a counterpublic? Does the concept of counterpublic cease to be a critical category if it doesn’t exclusively apply to social groups with progressive orientations? Only an investigation into the dynamics of disputes within the public sphere—and not a merely abstract analysis—could help answer these questions.

In order to demonstrate that the critical potential of a concept also depends on its ability to adapt to concrete disputes, I intend to present some of the recent uses of the concept of counterpublic. In the first section, I will analyze the concept of the “subaltern counterpublic” as formulated by Nancy Fraser, a concept that has made it possible, within the framework of the debate around the Habermasian theory of the public sphere, to include the more plural and counter-hegemonic character of recent social movements (I). Next, I will try to show that, even though Fraser abandoned the concept of a subaltern counterpublic when updating her diagnoses, other literature has shown that the concept of counterpublic could be used in a variety of ways to describe not only progressive groups but also conservative ones. At this point, I emphasize that the concept, notwithstanding its multiple uses, has not lost its critical role; rather, it has broadened its meaning, becoming of fundamental importance for the production of new diagnoses of our times (II). In our third and final step, I present some more general problematizations of the use of the concept with reference to the Brazilian context, also alluding to recent empirical research in which the dynamics of different counterpublics are reconstructed from different conflicts in the public sphere. I intend to show that the different uses of the concept in Brazil have not been restricted to the original formulation employed by Fraser. Different historical and political contexts have necessitated multifaceted formulations so that the initial progressive sense, which is still important for multiple cases, has coexisted with conservative formations of other counterpublics (III).

Nancy Fraser and the formulation of the concept of subaltern counterpublics

The concept of the public sphere has undergone important changes in contemporary debates (STRUM, 1994; GRISPRUD, 2010). Once considered a critical category, over time, it has come to be accused of being blind to different forms of domination, not inclusive, and not very plural. If we briefly revisit the criticism raised against the concept, especially in the version presented in Habermas’ classic book Structural Change in the Public Sphere, we can understand the conceptual limits he points out.

Habermas’ aim, in his book originally published in 1962, was to investigate the historical trends of the public sphere as a bourgeois category from the 17th to the mid-20th century in England, France, and Germany. He describes the concept’s emergence within liberalism, alongside the creation of a “public sphere constituted by private people putting reason to use” (HABERMAS, 1991, xviii), investigating its subsequent transformations within the welfare state. His purpose is not only a historical account of the concept (although the vast majority of the book is based on historical reconstruction), but also to show where the emancipatory bourgeois ideals, linked to the idea of democracy as self-determination and political self-government of free and equal citizens, came from (Idem, § 13). Moreover, the book’s central thesis is not to present and defend the normative criteria for inclusion and equality among citizens that the public sphere represents, but above all, to show their decay in popular democracies and in the welfare state. The book was written under the paradigm of a critique of ideology, and it is precisely the very concept of the public sphere that Habermas accuses of being used ideologically in the conditions of contemporary capitalism. In any case, the author shows that, from its origins, the public sphere was intended to represent, in some way, the normative principles of inclusion, equality and participation that would mark the project of democratic citizenship and establish the main criteria for a democratic society.

Given the importance of Habermas’ book and all its developments (including within his own scholarly production), I will limit myself here to pointing out the main elements of disagreement around the historical reconstruction presented.²The most important volume dedicated to analyzing Habermas’ book is undoubtedly Calhoun’s (1992). For a discussion of the book and its status in Habermas’ later work, see also Johnson (2006) and Melo (2015). The following significant exposition of the concept of the public sphere in Habermas’ work will only appear in Habermas 2020, in which some aspects have been reworked, mainly by incorporating some of the criticisms made by feminists. For an analysis of the main feminist criticisms of the Habermasian model of the public sphere, see Melo (2017b). In general, these criticisms emphasize some historical assumptions, which are insufficient due to their partiality, since Habermas would have reduced the concept to the reality of bourgeois civil society in a very specific period of time. As a result, many would end up being “excluded” from the reconstruction of the “bourgeois” public sphere presented, as Habermas himself recognizes in his 1990 Preface (HABERMAS, 1992, pp. 421-461). This would not, for example, be the history of a proletarian public sphere (KLUGE; NEGT, 1993; CALHOUN, 1982) or a public sphere sensitive to gender domination (LANDES, 1988; MEEHAN, 1995).

Nancy Fraser has systematized the limits of the classical, liberal and official concept of the public sphere (according to the terms used by the author herself), mainly because it is a concept incapable of encompassing a more up-to-date diagnosis of new social movements and political struggles in multicultural societies. The concept of the public sphere, according to Fraser, leaves out precisely the alternative forms of public expression, the counterpublics (or more precisely the “subaltern counterpublics”), aimed at combating the dominant version of the public sphere. Fraser states that subaltern groups form “parallel discursive arenas where members of subordinated social groups invent and circulate counter-discourses, which in turn permit them to formulate oppositional interpretations of their identities, interests and needs” (FRASER, 1997a, p. 81). And these members of subordinate social groups are made up of “women, workers, people of color, and gays and lesbians” (FRASER, 1997a, p. 81).

The formation of opinion and will in the public sphere, when considered from the perspective of subordinate groups (affected by the effects of subordination and exclusion from the prevailing public opinion), presupposes a process of dispute between hegemonic and counter-hegemonic discourses. Fraser refers to Gramsci’s concept of hegemony, which allows her to highlight a crucial yet new type of domination that accompanies the public sphere. According to Fraser, the power and domination exercised by civil society groups no longer depend on an openly repressive and explicitly violent form of oppression (which, in modernity, would now only occur in moments of crisis, with wars and dictatorships).

Due to its increased subtlety, domination becomes internalized in the values and opinions of the majority; the mode of domination based on cultural “hegemony” is usually effective to the extent that it relies on the public consent of the members of civil society themselves, creating a kind of consensual subordination. The modern liberal public sphere, in turn, is the political arena par excellence for the self-affirmation of bourgeois civil society, i.e. where this society exercises its hegemonic domination. Thus, the dominant ideas and values, which are legitimized by public consent based on majority opinion, produce the hegemonic form of political domination. The “official public sphere,” says Fraser, is the “prime institutional site for the construction of the consent that defines the new, hegemonic mode of domination” (FRASER, 1997a, p. 76).

Although Fraser’s diagnosis identifies the public sphere as one of the most important hegemonic modes of domination, she also seeks to develop a renewed concept of the public sphere that is useful for a critical theory of democracy, because it is capable of making explicit the emancipatory potential of the public sphere in its counter-hegemonic forms of expression and action carried out by subordinate groups. Because such groups don’t have equal social conditions for participation in political processes (both formal and informal), they form alternative publics to discuss and deliberate on their needs, objectives, and strategies. Therefore, the concept of subaltern counterpublics needs to propose a conception of political democracy that is more inclusive of the social issues, i.e. the reality of stratified and culturally plural societies. For this reason, according to Fraser, the anti-racist movement and the feminist movement in particular, are two examples of subaltern counterpublics that have organized themselves politically around certain experiences of subordination and domination, thus creating alternative spaces of socialization where oppressed individuals have been able to form their own opinions, find public conditions for deliberation and produce counter-discourses for the thematization of their social realities.

A fundamental premise in this description is the idea that counterpublics constitute an opposition to identifiable hegemonic conditions of domination. Faced with institutions (the state, the capitalist market, the family, among others) and cultural values that reproduce androcentric, racist, and sexist orientations, the experiences of subalternity experienced by certain groups are decisive in this context to justify the critical use of the concept. This seems to indicate that only the condition of subalternity conferred on such groups could define counterpublics from a strictly critical point of view—as groups that suffer a certain form of social deprivation, exclusion, and disrespect and, in turn, become capable of reworking their demands from an emancipatory point of view.

According to this description, emancipation depends on the democratic expansion of the public sphere and the possibility of interaction between members of the public. However, conditions for inclusivity are not met unless alternative counter-discourses and perspectives can be presented with their own arguments and demands. Thus, a democratic public sphere depends on the struggles and free expression of counterpublics; without them, the perspectives, interests, and opinions associated with privileged social agents would tend to monopolize discourses in the public sphere. It follows that the “proliferation of subaltern counterpublics means a widening of discursive contestation, and that is a good thing in stratified societies” (FRASER, 1997a, p. 82), because “arrangements that accommodate contestation among a plurality of competing publics better promote the ideal of participatory parity than does a single, comprehensive, overarching public” (FRASER, 1997a, p. 81). Fraser deploys an important distinction between a singular public (relatively homogeneous and therefore culturally dominant) and a multiple public (in principle open to multicultural societies). Plural contestations and a multiplicity of public arenas are crucial conditions for egalitarian societies, which should have no class distinctions and no gendered and racial divisions, and should allow for contestation and negotiation between a variety of publics.

We should not imagine that opinion formation presupposes uncontested adherence to the values and wills of the majority. Even in the informal sphere of opinion formation, anchored in diverse and unequal modes of socialization, the multiplicity of audiences stems precisely from the variety of experiences and the social and cultural conditions of existence. Values and institutions that reproduce the hegemonic traits of a culture that is androcentric and racialized, unequal and unjust, clash with other worldviews and counter-hegemonic aspirations, which find a place in alternative modes of socialization and participation in public life.

Broadening the diagnosis of counterpublics in the North American context

As I have tried to show, the original iteration of the concept of subaltern counterpublics was linked to Fraser’s dual intention of producing a diagnosis of structural forms of social domination and identifying counter-hegemonic modes of political action in the public sphere. However, Fraser seems to have slightly altered her understanding of the role of the concept of the counterpublic due to three new elements, which, in my opinion, are connected in some way in her texts. The first two relate to new political diagnoses, more specifically to an ambiguity of social struggles today. The third element represents rather a theoretical reason: Fraser no longer seems to base her concept on the Habermasian paradigm. Instead, she locates a constitutive separation between the economy and society at the heart of her theory, resulting from a new approach that references Karl Polanyi (2001). These have changes resulted in the author abandoning the concept of the subaltern counterpublic in the description of her most current diagnosis—but, as I will try to show, other authors do not see any incompatibility between the concept and changes generated by recent economic and political crisis.

In the first case, especially with regard to gender struggles, Fraser has often highlighted the “unhappy marriage” between feminism and neoliberalism that has been consolidated over the last two decades (FRASER, 2008, 2013). Criticizing the centrality of the concept of recognition and cultural identity politics, Fraser called on critical theory and social movements to take up redistributive themes in order to be able to face the negative consequences of neoliberalism by offering some degree of social protection. In the second case, in the more current context of discussions following Brexit and Donald Trump’s victory in the US, Fraser was even more emphatic in her attempt to offer a renewed diagnosis (FRASER, 2017; FRASER; JAEGGI, 2018). The achievements of the new progressive social movements—which have advanced since the 1960s around issues of diversity and inclusion of minorities, recognition of minoritarian identities, and empowerment of subaltern groups, among others—have not been able to block the unwanted effects of capitalism, which have only intensified, according to Fraser, in financial capitalism. This is a criticism that Fraser aims more directly at the left, which has consequences for the concept of the counterpublic. The novelty of this renewed diagnosis is that Fraser identifies that today, other social groups (not directly characterized according to what would traditionally be emancipatory and progressive ideals) have reacted politically both to the consequences of the financial crisis (since 2008) and to the political conduct of certain redistributive social policies (mainly under Barack Obama). This means, on the one hand, that such agency is no longer solely in the hands of counter-hegemonic groups but has been expanded to include other groups that have also been affected by financial capitalism. On the other hand, it means that the social and political advances resulting from the demands of minority cultural groups can be ambiguous.

This is not to say that, in the face of a diversified social stratum, certain minorities—such as women and Blacks, for example, who made up subaltern counterpublics—were no longer affected by the economic and political crisis. Rather, that the new crisis has also affected other groups. As not only Fraser but much recent literature on the subject has noted, a portion of these groups is unemployed, including a considerable number of white men who could not directly benefit from some of the current redistributive social programs and aspired to a more radical political and institutional change compared to what they perceived of their surroundings (CROWLEY; MANZA, 2017). Despite having mobilized an incredible number of protests and demonstrations by left-wing groups, the conditions of the economic and political crisis also mobilized a “new right,” which proved to be quite organized both in terms of civil society and the political system.

From the point of view of a more offensive political strategy on the left, Fraser went on to stress even more radically the need to overcome culturalist and minority perspectives—without ever giving up the autonomy and plurality of the movements—in favor of a “new coalition,” less concerned with the specificity of the different groups affected and more with the commitment to “fight for all.” Only in this way would it be possible to achieve “a new alliance of emancipation and social protection against financialization” (FRASER, 2017).

In one of her most recent works, written in the form of a manifesto, the author emphasizes the importance of making gender agendas compatible with broad demands for redistribution. Against the backdrop of her analysis, Fraser claims that the side effects produced by financialization have generalized the scope of those affected, providing a unique possibility of a coalition between the demands of progressive and conservative social movements (ARRUZZA; BHATTACHARYA; FRASER, 2019). This manifesto calls for the left to be able to respond to the economic and political crisis by also including “non-minority” groups and opening up a dialog with potential conservative voters, i.e. feminism needs to speak to the 99% of those affected by the crisis.³Against right-wing populism and the demands of “progressive neoliberalism,” Fraser defends a “progressive populism” as a broad political project that combines demands and perspectives across the board, generally aligned around radical redistributive policies.

We can see in this second moment that, although it is possible to recognize the centrality of more conservative groups in reacting to economic crises and inadequate political representation, the condition of subalternity does not have to be necessarily attributed to such groups. Let’s remember that when she originally developed the concept, Fraser herself did not include conservative groups in the definition of counterpublics, leaving it open as to whether there would be a necessary condition of subalternity among such groups.⁴Although Fraser claims that progressive groups can be anti-democratic, she did not explicitly mention conservative groups: “I do not mean to suggest that subaltern counterpublics are always necessarily virtuous: some of them, alas, are explicitly antidemocratic and antiegalitarian; and even those with democratic and egalitarian intentions are not always above practicing their own modes of informal exclusion and marginalization. Still, insofar as these counterpublics emerge in response to exclusions within dominant publics, they help expand discursive space” (FRASER, 1997a, p. 82). This also leaves the relationship between subalternity and the conservative nature of social groups unanalyzed.

Recent studies have shown that the concept of the counterpublic has moved beyond Fraser’s definition. Faced with the need to understand the most recent contexts of dispute in the public sphere, the concept of counterpublics can be used not only in the case of progressive groups, but also in the case of those with more conservative agendas and visions, whose contestations were not formed solely due to their subaltern condition. The perception of conflicts, difficulties of public expression and cultural and social devaluation can also be determining factors for certain groups to consider themselves as counterpublics, that is, as groups that offer alternative perspectives to a dominant worldview, as we can see in the work of Michael Warner (2005) and Freya Thimsen (2017).

If we consider Warner’s thesis, the objective and material condition of subalternity, which is still a characteristic of struggles against power and a decisive aspect of progressive approaches, should not be the only conceptual justification for the formation of a counterpublic. Such formation would largely depend on the perception of certain groups in relation to their “subordinate status” (WARNER, 2005, p. 119), given a certain cultural status. According to his argument, such a perception (which is constitutive of subordinate groups in general, not just subaltern groups as such) could generate contexts of conflict and hostility. For Warner, in this sense, not only feminists or LGBTQ groups could be considered counterpublics, but even groups with an openly conservative position could be considered counterpublics.⁵To cite one example contrasting with the progressive characteristics of subaltern groups mentioned by Fraser, Warner says that Christian fundamentalists in the United States could be considered counterpublics, since they adopt public stances that conflict with the liberal values that are also widely shared by American society (WARNER, 2005, p. 119). Following the same line of reasoning, Freya Thimsen investigated the formation of a counterpublic made up of supporters of Donald Trump, people who, according to progressive criteria, would not qualify as subaltern but who have radically different ideas from those disseminated by the mainstream public sphere and defend such ideas in a way that is also at odds with the form of expression used by the public which has access to this public sphere. It is of fundamental importance to note that the members of a given public perceive that their mode of expression has this subordinate status and that this is the reason for their exclusion from wider contexts, thus pointing to the existence of a counterpublic. The important book Strangers in Their Own Land, by Arlie Russel Hochschild (2016), also allows us to corroborate the argument of self-perception of subordinate status in another way, since the “deep stories” analyzed by the author point to counter-discourses and expressions of indignation by groups that consider themselves excluded from the interests of the government and directly affected by the economy.

These considerations show that Fraser’s definition is not sufficient to cover all the possibilities for the constitution of counterpublics in our political midst. For this reason, the production of new diagnoses also implies a necessary renewal of the conceptual framework used. As Warner asks, what constitutes “against” or “in opposition” in the phenomena described by Fraser? “There would be no difference,” says the author, “between counterpublics and any other publics. Fraser’s description of what counterpublics do […] sounds like the classically Habermasian description of rational-critical publics, with the word ‘oppositional’ inserted” (WARNER, 2005, p. 118). Counterpublics are not simply an “alternative” to an official public (alternative themes, alternative discourses, alternative press, etc.), they are subordinated (or “treated with hostility”) because their way of existing and manifesting itself in society usually comes into direct conflict with dominant cultural forms, and this is due to the properly “poetic-expressive,” often radical, way in which counterpublics place themselves in the public sphere (WARNER, 2005, p. 120).⁶This is why Warner’s book focuses on the constitution of queer counterpublics.

It is possible to argue that “subalternity” as a category is used to understand the social status of certain individuals and groups that find themselves in “objective” conditions of domination, whereas subordination would mainly refer to the feelings and perceptions of certain groups who consider themselves excluded from a dominant public sphere. However, we can understand that the distinction between subalternity and subordination is appropriate because it helps us to consider in recent debates the political differences between groups with conflicting ideologies (left-wing groups versus right-wing groups, progressive ideals versus conservative ideals), differences that are central to the current diagnosis of the public sphere in many countries. Conservative groups (including right-wing populist parties) have re-entered the political arena because they now see themselves as the new under-represented. Therefore, in order to produce an adequate diagnosis of this complex political state of affairs, Fraser argues that “we need to understand what those who voted for them [conservative parties] were so upset about—what they were determined to put an end to” (FRASER; JAEGGI, 2018, p. 204). Because today, right-wing populist movements are “rejecting the whole package,” that is, they are forming a counterpublic that aims at the economy (financialization) and cultural hegemony (constituted by progressive politics for recognition), which, according to their own narratives, have “diminished their chances—and those of their children—to live good lives” (FRASER; JAEGGI, 2018, p. 205).

Conservative outcry has created a dynamic of conflict in the public sphere marked by cultural and social reactions to progressive positions, a kind of culture war against the hegemonic currents of emancipatory movements (feminism, multiculturalism, anti-racism, LGBTQ rights, etc.), and in defense of “old-fashioned” family values. In other words, this dynamic can be understood as a conservative insurgency against progressive policies based on the reactionary logic of groups that are not accounted for by cultural and identitarian policies. This leads to the perception, on the part of certain conservative groups, of an economic and political crisis in which the “other” groups (the so-called “subalterns”) are considered privileged in some way (either by redistributive policies or by a type of “progressive” cultural hegemony).

Although the reaction against progressive achievements, especially since the 1960s, varies, the attempt to overcome the progressive paradigm with conservative populist demands has been understood by many authors as a backlash.⁷In many countries, right-wing populism has produced conflicts interpreted as moments of backlash within a cultural war. Important studies on this topic have mainly been published in the USA (FALUDI, 2006; ABRAJANO; HAJNAL, 2015; NORRIS; INGLEHART, 2019). Sometimes called “cultural backlash” or even “white backlash,” and always linked to broad phenomena such as Brexit, Donald Trump’s victory or other forms of “authoritarian populism,” this concept refers to a specific process of reaction to the achievements of certain groups and issues in the public sphere.

The current backlash has two important consequences for the conflict between counterpublics in the public sphere: on the one hand, according to some interpretations, it points to real problems of social suffering experienced by large parts of the population, drawing attention to the need for broader and more robust redistributive policies. On the other hand, it has produced a new right-wing counterpublic that reacts to a public sphere that they consider to be too plural and socially liberal. These conservative counterpublics (always indicating their subordinate role in the current political culture according to their own self-perception) are organized around more conservative themes, such as “excessive” affirmative policies for Afro-descendants and women, the “victimization” of groups that make demands based on their subalternity, the misrepresentation of public morality and Christian customs, etc. Examples include the violent reaction to the US Supreme Court decision that guarantees the fundamental right for same-sex couples to marry, and the xenophobic discourses against immigration always appealing to threats of terrorism. In both cases, these emphasize a strictly economic agenda (from a neoliberal perspective) and radicalize moralistic and conservative discourses directed against the moral grammar of recognition and identity politics.

In analyzing this context of conflict, Fraser considers right-wing populism one of the most important counter-movements of the present, which, along with some radical progressive struggles, form “anti-neoliberal forces” that “[reject] the neoliberal project and […] its hegemony” (FRASER; JAEGGI, 2018, p. 195). The conservativism of these movements should not obscure the importance of new grammars of contestation and their relevance for a critical theory of politics because they are part of the suffering, indignation, and aspiration generated by the social crisis. As Fraser says, “right-wing populists do have genuine grievances, which deserve to be validated. And reactionary populist movements are responding to a real underlying crisis, which also requires acknowledgment” (FRASER; JAEGGI, 2018, p. 199). However, Fraser’s current considerations around the economic and political crisis have not been accompanied by an update on the concept of the counterpublic. This task has been carried out by other authors, who have made it possible to use the concept in a different and expanded way in an attempt to update the diagnosis of the conflicts that currently exist in the public sphere.

Therefore, although conservative contestations are expressions of counterpublics and, for this reason, should be included in any attempt to understand current conflicts in the public sphere, it seems clear that this approach creates some normative difficulties. If left and right, or progressive and conservative, are movements that represent a society’s struggle against the side effects of the capitalist economy, then we need to know whether neoliberalism is, in fact, a central common opponent of the two groups, whether both movements are really united in the aim of bringing the neoliberal project to its end. In addition, many of the right-wing movements are, in fact, radically anti-democratic, and perhaps only a minority defends a protectionist project since many, when it comes to the economy, defend pro-market positions. Even so, the notion of a conservative counterpublic does not make the critical use of the concept problematic since it is the central task of critical theory to adequately analyze political conflicts.

Counterpublics in the Brazilian public sphere

Subaltern counterpublics and right-wing publics refer to different demands, perspectives, ideologies and interests, but both play a decisive role in the formation of a critical theory of politics grounded on social research. Undeniably, we must identify important differences between publics formed around progressive social issues and those concerned with neoliberal views on the economy and conservative views on customs, or between the social subalternity of some groups and their self-perception. Nonetheless, the use of the concept of the counterpublic to describe non-progressive positions does not diminish its empirical-descriptive potential.

If critical theory can’t just apply to new contexts concepts originally created to describe other social and political realities, then conceptual reconstruction must be carried out in view of changes in the diagnoses of the time. The concept can and must be modified for its proper use in social research (MELO, 2017). Therefore, Fraser’s recent work should not lead us to think that she is defending conservative groups against progressive social demands. In fact, she is helping us understand how the genesis of categories with a critical function occurs and how we can investigate other real-life conflict dynamics, such as those that occur in Brazil for example.

The role of subaltern publics and their relationship with a hegemonic culture has been highlighted in research concerning the public sphere in Brazilian history. According to Fernando Perlatto’s research, since the 19th century Brazil has two different and co-existing types of public sphere. The first is called the “selective” public sphere because only certain agents from the cultural, economic, and political elites have been able to participate in it and to publicly debate their topics of interest. However, at the same time, there exists “subaltern” public spheres formed by “different spaces of sociability in which the subaltern segments sought to organize themselves” (PERLATTO, 2015, p. 123). From abolitionist and anti-racist discourses, through popular struggles by subaltern sectors, from the organization of peasant leagues to social movements linked to women, blacks, environmentalists, land and urban reform, subaltern public spheres have historically been established in Brazil through disputing worldviews formulated by the official public sphere; they “sought to resist hegemonic discourses in different ways” (PERLATTO, 2015, p. 139).

In Perlatto’s historical investigation, the counterpublics and the the official public sphere are not constituted in isolation from one another. Quite the opposite. The author starts from the assumption that there is a constant relationship between the two elements, even if the way they relate is not exactly characterized by a dialogic form, but rather “in a conflictual way,” because “historically, the communication between them has been unequal, with the former constantly seeking to build a hegemonic discourse over the latter” (PERLATTO, 2015, p. 123). For this reason, confrontation and opposition depend on the mode of participation and expression of subaltern groups, which are not determined by traditional institutional criteria. The subalterns’ participation occurs through “new skillful performances of resistance and manifestation” (PERLATTO, 2015, p. 136).⁸Perlatto states that “music and religion have perhaps been the main forms of expression and socialization of the popular sectors of Brazilian society in their search for the construction of subaltern public spheres” (2015, p. 138). Only in this way, continues the author, “have the popular sectors in Brazil been able to resist the hegemonic imposition constructed in the selective public sphere, managing to establish, at certain times, subaltern public spheres, which, despite not being able to raise their demands to the elitist public sphere or dispute the hegemony of society, have been able to generate other discourses, anchored in a popular culture full of innovative strength, creativity and potential” (PERLATTO, 2015, p. 133).

The contexts in which the concept of subaltern counterpublics has been used date back to different historical moments. Perlatto recognizes the importance of Eder Sader’s approach, a reference point in studies of popular movements and the public sphere in Brazil, whereby he pioneered the Habermasian concept to think about new forms of political organization in the 1970s. Sader shows how re-democratization was decisively marked by the “emergence of new social actors who sought to put pressure on the selective public sphere to make their voices heard and on the press for achieving their interests” (PERLATTO, 2015, p. 138). The point of departure is Sader’s methodological approach consisting of examining the link between new social movements in Brazil (those that took place from the second half of the 1970s onwards) and the daily life of the working class. He claims that his research’s objective was defined according to the “ways in which social movements opened up new political spaces, reworking themes of everyday experience” (SADER, 1988, p. 18). Sader, therefore, sought to investigate how experiences in alternative public spheres opened up new political spaces, allowing people to rework different issues of their everyday experience, which, for the most part, given the authoritarianism of the dictatorial government, were expressed by traditional institutions.

Sader starts with the ambiguous (often negative) and transformative impact of urbanization on people’s daily lives and the lack of political freedom imposed by the military dictatorship, in order to investigate the creation of new spaces for socialization and self-organization as he analyses the political configuration resulting from the experiences and ways of life consolidated during that period. The working class, fueled by negative everyday experiences and motivated by a deep distrust of institutions of the authoritarian political system, ended up establishing a subaltern and self-organized political culture that valued autonomy: “The repudiation of the established form of political practice, seen as manipulation, was matched by the desire to become ‘agents of their own history,’ taking into their own hands the decisions that affect their conditions of existence. With this, they broadened the notion of politics, as they politicized multiple spheres of their daily lives.” (SADER, 1988, p. 312) In this sense, Sader’s approach is quite particular, as it emphasizes that the struggles for justice referred to different histories and experiences, and how social movements were concerned with their own autonomy.

But even after the end of the dictatorship, even with reasonably stable democratic institutions, the concept of subaltern publics was used with the aim of democratizing the main democratic state institutions. Leonardo Avritzer and Sérgio Costa argue for a comprehensive and multi-faceted idea of the public sphere to elucidate what they consider to be the core of the democratic challenges to be faced in Brazil, namely a mode of “relationship between the state, institutions, and society, showing that in these intersections dwells, precisely, a democracy-building movement” (AVRITZER; COSTA, 2004, p. 704). The authors’ aim is to reinforce that, alongside the construction of democratic institutions (free elections, an active parliament, freedom of the press, etc.), “the validity of democracy implies the incorporation of democratic values into ‘everyday practices'” (AVRITZER; COSTA, 2004, p. 704), thus enabling the democratization project to be understood from the bottom up, that is, from the everyday dynamics of the informal public sphere towards the political system.⁹This analysis involves applying Habermas’s “circulation of power” model of the public sphere (1996). The original formulation of the model, which aims to understand how pressure from civil society and social movements in the public sphere could democratize the political system’s floodgates, was reinterpreted by Habermas based on Peters (1993). For an analysis of the Habermasian model, see Melo (2015). This argument presupposes that democratic transformation cannot remain confined to the institutional sphere. For this reason, taking up Sader’s reflections, they argue that democratic theory must consider the genesis of political processes in everyday social and cultural relations.

The democratic project envisioned by the authors involves informal practices of opinion formation and public participation in associative spheres since such a project depends, above all, on the mediation between such practices and the possibility of their institutionalization (to find institutional ways of penetrating the state). They are also concerned with showing that a porous and vibrant public sphere that addresses a multiplicity of concerns—in view of different interests and needs—is a necessary condition for political legitimacy.¹⁰It is worth noting that, in Perlatto’s analysis, the conflicts in the public sphere between dominant publics and subaltern counterpublics make it necessary to reduce the centrality of institutionalized procedures for civil society participation. There is, above all, “the need to expand the democratization of the public sphere, not only through the institutionalization of democratic procedures capable of giving vent to ‘rational’ arguments but also through mechanisms that make it more porous to the values, demands, claims, and manifestations of subaltern sectors. The idea behind this perspective is the need to expand channels that allow the potential of the world of life that exists here, historically manifested mainly through performances and ‘hidden discourses’, to manifest itself in a renewed public sphere” (PERLATTO, 2015, p. 123). For this reason, a subaltern counterpublic, in the sense used by Nancy Fraser, is fundamental for the shaping of public will and also for enriching political deliberation itself on multiple decision-making levels.¹¹In addition to Nancy Fraser’s subaltern counterpublics, Avritzer and Costa also take up other elements that could correct and complement Habermas’s model of the public sphere, such as the notions of “new publics,” taken from Jean Cohen and Andrew Arato (1991), “diasporic publics,” which refer to Paul Gilroy (2001) and “deliberative publics,” whose general references are found in Schmalz-Bruns (1994) and Epple-Gass (1992). Democratic processes of institutionalization must necessarily include “social agents who represent groups traditionally excluded from the public sphere, but who, at the same time, highlight the limits of the established public sphere and claim their right to be part of it” (AVRITZER; COSTA, 2004, p. 722).

All of these analyses have taken the idea of subaltern counterpublics directly from Nancy Fraser in order to produce a critical theory of democracy. It is no coincidence then that the groups considered subaltern in Brazil were constituted, according to this literature, around progressive demands, such as increased enfranchisement, the expansion of the political grammar of justice, human rights, and the recognition of differences. However, as we argued, the concept of counterpublics, following approaches already used in other countries, has been used in recent social research not only in relation to progressive demands. In order to understand its multifaceted use, it is necessary to understand that the current characterization of counterpublics in Brazil depends on the relationship with broader diagnoses and events. My central hypothesis is that the current uses of the concept of counterpublics in the Brazilian context are connected to a very specific context, namely the period characterized by “Lulism” (SINGER, 2012) and a broad project for society based on “social development” (NOBRE, 2013a). Even the social advances made during this period, the outcome of a combination of income redistribution and economic growth, did not prevent indignation and revolts against the administration. There was dissatisfaction with the quality of public services, the precariousness of jobs, low racial and gender inclusion and urban violence, among others. Much of this dissatisfaction surfaced in the June 2013 Revolts (MELO, 2017c).¹²Here we follow the interpretation of Nobre (2013b). For a review of the literature on the June 2013 Revolts, see Medeiros (2017a).

The underlying diagnosis, which has been used to explain the hypotheses of the emergence and constitution of counterpublics in Brazil today, is centered on the more general idea that counterpublics are formed as a reaction and opposition to a certain political and cultural hegemony. In this sense, both progressive groups and groups configured around a liberal-conservative alliance have been counter-hegemonic to Lulism and to a political project concerned with social development— groups, in other words, that have remained dissatisfied with the achievements and proposals of the administration. In the case of criticism from progressive groups this is because they fall short of a radically democratic project, and in the case of conservative groups, because they carry out a broad project for society considered to be “left-wing,” in which redistributive policies are combined with inclusive agendas for recognizing differences. These groups formed as counterpublics and sought to expand their alleged under-representation in the public sphere through confrontation and opposition.

The establishment of these counterpublics is a crucial element of a critical diagnosis regarding processes of political dispute. This implies understanding their characteristics, political strategies, their various interests and also the political cultures that support them (between groups on the left or the right, with progressive or conservative ideologies, and their variations according to class, race, and gender, as well as with their ambiguities and intersectionalities). They can be counterpublics formed by new feminist collectives (MEDEIROS, 2017; MEDEIROS; FANTI, 2019), by students who, between 2015 and 2016, occupied hundreds of public schools across Brazil (MEDEIROS; MELO; JANUÁRIO, 2019) or by the liberal-conservative militancy of the new Brazilian right (ROCHA, 2019). It is worth highlighting specific constitutive characteristics of these counterpublics, considering the central role played by the internet: disputes between different virtual groups, reactions channeled through digital media, and the consolidation of opposition discourses, generating confrontations around various public controversies (NERIS; VALENTE, 2018).

These examples allow us to see a multifaceted use of the concept of counterpublics, which largely dialogues with Fraser’s initial formulation and with Warner’s approach. Reflections on structural transformations in certain counterpublics have already been developed in the Brazilian context. Jonas Medeiros is dedicated to understanding the specificity of the new forms of counterpublics made up of black feminists by showing the structural changes that have taken place in the transition from “popular feminism” to “peripheral feminism” (considering, above all, collectives with artistic and cultural practices) (MEDEIROS, 2019). The most recent configuration of feminist counterpublics is constituted by fewer institutionalized practices, as digital counterpublics and mass self-communication have replaced some of the feminist NGOs networks with non-partisan collectives and religious pluralization which has modified the way in which counterpublics are rooted in the daily life of urban peripheries. These aspects were analyzed by Medeiros based on the “discursive matrices” of peripheral feminism formed by black counterpublics.¹³The author’s theoretical framework refers not only to the concepts of a “discursive matrix” (Eder Sader) and a “subaltern counterpublic” (Nancy Fraser) mentioned above, but also to that of a”discursive field” (Sonia Alvarez). Alvarez’s work is also crucial to the production of a concept of a feminist counterpublic appropriate to the Brazilian context. For an analysis of the feminist “discursive field,” see Alvarez (2014).

The concept of counterpublics has, therefore, been crucial in diagnoses of current conflicts between dominant publics and excluded social groups (workers, blacks, women, among others) and the formation of an alternative associative life (websites and forums for members of subaltern groups, where they can discuss, thematize and formulate their own perspectives autonomously). However, the actions of counterpublics have also created new conservative reactions. Therefore, we need to understand the nature of these conflicts in the public sphere according to their ideas, arguments, campaigns, and protests, seeking to investigate how they are influencing broader public debates and political struggles. After all, right-wing populist parties have come to power in many countries around the world, making conservative political cultures explicit worldwide, leading to legal and institutional changes and determining the central features of a generalized crisis of democracy (MOUNK, 2019).

Political and social theories need to consider that the composition of the public sphere has led to increasingly intense, sometimes violent, disputes between progressive and conservative groups, infiltrating both institutional arrangements and everyday social relations. A critical theory of democracy, therefore, must produce a comprehensive and situated diagnosis of the conflicts that mark our political culture today.

• 1
  This text is the result of research into the public sphere and political culture that forms part of the Fapesp Thematic Project “Public Sphere and Reconstruction: Constitution of a Reconstructive Paradigm in the Field of Critical Theory,” developed by the Law and Democracy Center at Cebrap. I would especially like to thank Fabiola Fanti and Jonas Medeiros for their careful reading of the first version and their suggestions.
• 2
  The most important volume dedicated to analyzing Habermas’ book is undoubtedly Calhoun’s (1992). For a discussion of the book and its status in Habermas’ later work, see also Johnson (2006) and Melo (2015). The following significant exposition of the concept of the public sphere in Habermas’ work will only appear in Habermas 2020, in which some aspects have been reworked, mainly by incorporating some of the criticisms made by feminists. For an analysis of the main feminist criticisms of the Habermasian model of the public sphere, see Melo (2017b).
• 3
  Against right-wing populism and the demands of “progressive neoliberalism,” Fraser defends a “progressive populism” as a broad political project that combines demands and perspectives across the board, generally aligned around radical redistributive policies.
• 4
  Although Fraser claims that progressive groups can be anti-democratic, she did not explicitly mention conservative groups: “I do not mean to suggest that subaltern counterpublics are always necessarily virtuous: some of them, alas, are explicitly antidemocratic and antiegalitarian; and even those with democratic and egalitarian intentions are not always above practicing their own modes of informal exclusion and marginalization. Still, insofar as these counterpublics emerge in response to exclusions within dominant publics, they help expand discursive space” (FRASER, 1997a, p. 82). This also leaves the relationship between subalternity and the conservative nature of social groups unanalyzed.
• 5
  To cite one example contrasting with the progressive characteristics of subaltern groups mentioned by Fraser, Warner says that Christian fundamentalists in the United States could be considered counterpublics, since they adopt public stances that conflict with the liberal values that are also widely shared by American society (WARNER, 2005, p. 119).
• 6
  This is why Warner’s book focuses on the constitution of queer counterpublics.
• 7
  In many countries, right-wing populism has produced conflicts interpreted as moments of backlash within a cultural war. Important studies on this topic have mainly been published in the USA (FALUDI, 2006; ABRAJANO; HAJNAL, 2015; NORRIS; INGLEHART, 2019).
• 8
  Perlatto states that “music and religion have perhaps been the main forms of expression and socialization of the popular sectors of Brazilian society in their search for the construction of subaltern public spheres” (2015, p. 138).
• 9
  This analysis involves applying Habermas’s “circulation of power” model of the public sphere (1996). The original formulation of the model, which aims to understand how pressure from civil society and social movements in the public sphere could democratize the political system’s floodgates, was reinterpreted by Habermas based on Peters (1993). For an analysis of the Habermasian model, see Melo (2015).
• 10
  It is worth noting that, in Perlatto’s analysis, the conflicts in the public sphere between dominant publics and subaltern counterpublics make it necessary to reduce the centrality of institutionalized procedures for civil society participation. There is, above all, “the need to expand the democratization of the public sphere, not only through the institutionalization of democratic procedures capable of giving vent to ‘rational’ arguments but also through mechanisms that make it more porous to the values, demands, claims, and manifestations of subaltern sectors. The idea behind this perspective is the need to expand channels that allow the potential of the world of life that exists here, historically manifested mainly through performances and ‘hidden discourses’, to manifest itself in a renewed public sphere” (PERLATTO, 2015, p. 123).
• 11
  In addition to Nancy Fraser’s subaltern counterpublics, Avritzer and Costa also take up other elements that could correct and complement Habermas’s model of the public sphere, such as the notions of “new publics,” taken from Jean Cohen and Andrew Arato (1991), “diasporic publics,” which refer to Paul Gilroy (2001) and “deliberative publics,” whose general references are found in Schmalz-Bruns (1994) and Epple-Gass (1992).
• 12
  Here we follow the interpretation of Nobre (2013b). For a review of the literature on the June 2013 Revolts, see Medeiros (2017a).
• 13
  The author’s theoretical framework refers not only to the concepts of a “discursive matrix” (Eder Sader) and a “subaltern counterpublic” (Nancy Fraser) mentioned above, but also to that of a”discursive field” (Sonia Alvarez). Alvarez’s work is also crucial to the production of a concept of a feminist counterpublic appropriate to the Brazilian context. For an analysis of the feminist “discursive field,” see Alvarez (2014).