Subaltern Counterpublics Research Articles

Robert Cassanello. To Render Invisible: Jim Crow and Public Life in New South Jacksonville.

Immersed in the specific experiences of African Americans in Jacksonville, Florida, Robert Cassanello, in To Render Invisible: Jim Crow and Public Life in New South Jacksonville, assembles a nuanced narrative detailing the transformation from Reconstruction, when African Americans experienced relatively unrestricted participation in the public sphere, to the Jim Crow era of the early twentieth century when legally constructed restrictions dictated separate spaces based on race. From this decades-long contested campaign to render African Americans publically invisible, Cassanello argues, a black “counterpublic” emerged to push against the erosion of once-democratized public space. Cassanello constructs his interpretation within a social theory framework informed by theorists such as Jürgen Habermas, the pioneer of conceptualizing the public sphere; Nancy Fraser, who posited the particular analytical category of subaltern counterpublics; and Henri Lefebvre, who wrote about the social construction of space as a reflection of society's social stratification. Using the analytical frames of these social theorists, Cassanello interprets an extensive array of traditional archival sources such as newspapers, court records, manuscript collections, census data, as well as municipal, state, and federal documents. And he positions his sophisticated argument historiographically within the long civil rights movement.

The civility of social capital: Public relations in the public sphere, civil society, and democracy

Scholars have analyzed public relations’ role in democracy via proxy concepts like the public sphere and civil society. However, some have critiqued the public sphere on grounds of equal access and portrayed civil society as a guise for first-world imperialism. These critiques have implications for the role of public relations in the public sphere and civil society. This article suggests the normative role of public relations in democracy is best perceived as creating the social capital that facilitates access to spheres of public discussion and in maintaining relationships among those organizations that check state power. To that end, the paper argues that social capital does much to advance public relations theory and prescribe the role of public relations in democracy. Several implications for public relations from a social capital perspective are offered, including the creation of generalized societal trust, the building of cross-cutting or “weak” ties, the engagement of media on behalf of subaltern counterpublics, and the (re)creation of community or a fully functioning society.

Expelling the Victim by Demanding Voice

This article traces how Roma are crafting and changing their representation in the media and thus discursively moving from passive victims to active subjects by engaging in strategic framing and advocacy. I focus on public discussions of the French expulsion of Roma in the summer of 2010. The nature of the coverage and the engagement of Romani voices mark a shift away from the traditional trope of Roma as criminal, victim, or absent. This is part of a shifting process where Roma use media as a political tactic, even to mobilize transnationally as a subaltern counterpublic. This article demonstrates how the tactic of counterframing is employed within Romani and mainstream English-language media and how Roma engage in media activist strategies to shift the frame away from demands for Roma to prove their worth as humans to the need for members of the European Union to prove they are not engaged in systemic economic, political, and social human rights abuses.

Performance and Activism: Grassroots Discourse After the Los Angeles Rebellion of 1992 (review)

Reviewed by: Performance and Activism: Grassroots Discourse After the Los Angeles Rebellion of 1992 Hillary Miller Performance and Activism: Grassroots Discourse After the Los Angeles Rebellion of 1992. By Kamran Afary. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2009; pp. 262. When all of the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) officers charged in the brutal beating of Rodney King were exonerated with a "not guilty" verdict in April 1992, protests enveloped the city, leaving behind a toll of fifty dead, 2,000 injured, and damages nearing $1 billion (4). In Performance and Activism, Kamran Afary explores the performative aspects of these protests, emphasizing the voices of activists who struggled to transform unrest into social change. As a reporter for a local radio station in Los Angeles during the 1990s, Afary saw firsthand how their calls for justice and revolutionary, democratic social change dissipated behind the mainstream media's coverage of interethnic violence. Making extensive use of interviews and other archival materials, Afary recovers the "rhetorical arsenals" of these activists to illustrate the methods by which they developed new counter-public spaces and counter-narratives (161). In his introduction, Afary provides the rationale for his distinctly interdisciplinary methodology, which employs critical race theory, cultural studies, media studies, urban studies, and performance studies. This variety of theoretical lenses adds depth and texture to the frozen, still-life tableaux of the riots that have dominated the narratives of this period in Los Angeles's history. He reviews literature related to the uprising, as well as theories of postmodernism and the global city, acknowledging prominent sociologists who have taken this sprawling city as their subject (for example, Theodor Adorno, Mike Davis, and Saskia Sassen). Using the lens of performance to examine multiple public spheres, Afary argues that grassroots organizations, such as gang truce collectives and court-watch groups, developed new forms of cultural expression that created what political theorist Nancy Fraser refers to as "subaltern counterpublics," in contrast to the notion of a single public sphere. In these spaces, Afary explains, people from subaltern groups can "enact their identities and speak in their own voices relatively (but never totally) freely from forces of domination" (28). His second chapter, "Toward a Historical Political Economy of Los Angeles," tethers theories of cultural production to political economy, reading the rebellion in terms of both its ideological function in public discourse and its relation to the larger criminal-justice system. It also lends specificity to his profile of the city—particularly its shifting demographics, mass immigration, and economic growth—and lays the foundation for his later shift to the "local" (specifically, the Watts and Compton areas). After providing his theoretical grounding and sociological framework, Afary focuses on the gang truce movement in chapters 3 and 4. Although it was often misinterpreted by members of the LAPD as threatening, the gang truce movement offered what Afary, following anthropologist Victor Turner, refers to as "healing rituals." One example was the organization of "gang truce parties," a new form of urban festivity "comprised of a series of rich improvisatory rituals and ceremonies that symbolized a community's willingness to deal with rapidly changing political situations" (73). Gang truce negotiations "grew into a multifaceted movement throughout the 1990s, where performances and creative presentations of the self became even more pronounced" (89). These "creative presentations of the self" included the public telling of stories by former gang members, the emergence of new graffiti celebrating the truce, the wearing of clothing that symbolized friendship among gangs, and the playing of music once identified with rival gangs. In chapter 5, Afary focuses on organizations like the LA4+ Committee and Mothers Reclaiming Our Children (or Mothers ROC), composed of mothers, sisters, aunts, grandmothers, and their supporters. These women monitored the judicial system in order to "build a movement that would offer their sons a chance for exoneration or a more equitable sentence" (122). Members educated themselves about the legal process, attended court sessions, and mentored friends and relatives of the men on trial. Afary claims that, in their seemingly simple acts of watching trials and collaborating with lawyers, they established a counter-public space, creating "one of the most successful grassroots responses to the injustices of the court system...

Eat, Swim, Pray

Eat, Swim, Pray

Zelig in the Jungle: Neozapatismo and the Construction of the International Indigenous Subject

This article argues that as an inclusive social movement, the National Liberation Zapatista Army (EZLN), opens diverse critical challenges to unilateral interpretations of globalization—via the construction of communicative action undertaken by international alternative social networks. There is a subversive potentiality in the very concept of globalization as possibility: on the one hand, globalization should be appropriated as rejecting absolute truths of what it is supposed to mean to be globalized; on the other hand, it should provide spaces for the communicative action of subaltern counterpublics in which different human groups interact, discuss diverse topics and create social networks. Likewise, the article argues that the subject is the main agent of liberation, wherein no identity determinant dominates another—class, race, sex, ethnic group, gender—but the subject is the quintessential vanguard—as a plural collectivity—of social struggles forging a potential solidarity against diverse forms of domination. Therefore, if the Neozapatista experience has a lesson, it is precisely its initiative to transform the international indigenous subject—as well as other oppressed identities—into a catalyst for claims of unity in difference.

The Public Policy Pedagogy of Corporate and Alternative News Media

This paper argues for seeing in-depth news coverage of political, social, and economic issues as “public policy pedagogy.” To develop my argument, I draw on Nancy Fraser’s democratic theory, which attends to social differences and does not assume that unity is a starting point or an end goal of public dialogue. Alongside the formation of “subaltern counterpublics” (Fraser), alternative media outlets sometimes develop. There, members of alternative publics debate their interests and strategize about how to be heard in wider, mass-mediated public arenas. I address the normative implications of this non-unitary, multiple-publics model for news journalism, analyzing how current conventions in mainstream news journalism (e.g., “balance” defined as “airing two extremes”) can restrict public debate and impoverish the public policy pedagogy on offer. I illustrate my arguments with a case study of media coverage of the creation and implementation of a social justice curriculum in British Columbia, Canada.

Mediating solidarity

With the apparent increase in the number of alternative political media, political pluralists are again faced with the question: does the proliferation of subaltern counter-publics lead to a multiplication of forces? Fragmentation in political culture is fuelled by the rise of identity politics that focuses on consumption not production. Party allegiances and class alliances give way to more fluid and informal networks of action. Postmodern theorists celebrate fragmentation because it allows the recognition of diversity in political desires, acknowledges difference between individuals and debunks the myth of homogenous political units leading ultimately to liberation. But for political efficacy there must be more than the apparent freedom that comes with embracing difference and diversity. This article argues that if we accept the description of society as fragmented, in order to create a viable political community then solidarity is crucial. In a global economy, solidarity can be mediated through new communication technologies but the challenge is to articulate the politics online with actual movements and struggles on the ground.

Finding a home in the public sphere, challenging the social representations of politics: A case study of McGill University’s Women in House Programme, 2001–2005

This paper examines young Canadian women’s conceptions of political power through qualitative interviews with participants of the McGill University’s Women in House Programme, 2001–2005, which documented the women’s first-hand experiences of shadowing women parliamentarians. I examine the female students’ social representations of political power within the Parliamentary process, and notably, how their internalisation of the influence that gender plays in shaping their own interest in engaging in formal politics. In spite of high levels of political knowledge and direct exposure to the political system, these young women continue to accept the dominant political and social discourses that portray them as excluded from the public sphere on the grounds of their gender, age, and in some instances, ethnicity and social class. I also explore how young women conceptualise and understand the social networks, and forms of capital and resources which are associated with access to the elite political community.Drawing on Nancy Fraser’s theory of subaltern counterpublics, I argue that young women are in need of women-only spaces such as the Women in House programme in order to develop the sites of dialogue and deliberation needed to create counter-discourses that will enable them to challenge the discursive representations of social power within contemporary Canadian political processes. This paper draws on social psychological approaches and makes an important empirical contribution to the political science literature about the engagement and public participation of an under-represented political group.

Recognition, Redistribution and Representation in Capitalist Global Society

Nancy Fraser is a Henry A. and Louise Loeb Professor in the Departments of Philosophy and Political Science of the Graduate Faculty of the New School for Social Research, New York, USA, and is considered one of the leading theorists within the 1990s recognition theoretical turn. She works with analyses of contemporary societal developments from a normatively informed position. Her analytical framework is applicable to current, empirical studies of struggles about recognition and she relates them to classic struggles of redistribution. Her thinking is located in the intersection between feminist theory, critical theory and post-structuralism. In Justice Interruptus (1997a) Fraser identifies a shift in the grammar of political claimsmaking, where struggles for recognition are becoming the paradigmatic form of political conflict and struggles for egalitarian redistribution are declining. In her view, however, recognition and redistribution present two analytically distinct but empirically interrelated reasons for struggle in capitalist, post-Fordist societies, namely struggles about socio-economic (re)distribution, and struggles about cultural recognition such as identity politics. Based on this insight, she outlines a new dual theory of justice encompassing both redistribution and recognition in contrast to the liberal canon of, most notably, John Rawls (1971)1 and Charles Taylor (1994).2 Fraser's accomplishments include the prestigious Tanner Lectures at Stanford University and the Spinoza Lectures at the University of Amsterdam, as well as numerous books and articles, of which Unruly Practices (1989), Justice Interruptus (1997a) and Redistribution or Recognition? A Political-Philosophical Exchange (2003) are the most notable. This last book was written along with Axel Honneth, the successor of Jurgen Habermas at Johann-Wolfgang-Goethe University, Frankfurt am Main, and the director of the Institute for Social Research (Institut fur Sozialforschung) as the result of an ongoing debate on the concept of recognition its relation to justice, ethics and social theory. Fraser has also been involved in influential debates with several feminists concerning her theory of justice and the uses (and abuses) of post-structuralist theories (Benhabib et al., 1994; Butler 1997; Young, 1997; Fraser, 1997a, b, c). Expounding a feminist critique of critical theory and introducing the alternative concept of 'subaltern counter publics', she has discussed the male bias of the concept of the public sphere with several other representatives of critical theory, including Jiirgen Habermas (Fraser, 1997a). A lot more could be said about Fraser's work and her theoretical enquiries, but why not let her talk for herself. This interview was undertaken in May 2003 when Fraser visited the

Citizenship in a time of empire: the World Social Forum as a new public space

Under conditions of neoliberal globalization, structural adjustment and the war on terror, the progressive expansion of modern citizenship, both in its substance and geographic reach, is increasingly in question. Yet, popular demands for democratization, rights and participation are exploding worldwide. This article argues for shifts in focus in the study of citizenship from states, institutions and the national scale to cultural practices in civil society at multiple scales in order to discern and theorize emergent citizenship practices under conditions of ‘empire’. The article examines the World Social Forum as a new kind of public space, ‘placed’ but transnational, and giving rise to a transnational subaltern counterpublic. Through its practices, this counterpublic is forging a new paradigm of citizenship.

Teoria crítica, democracia e esfera pública: concepções e usos na América Latina

In this article we analyze the construction of the concept of public sphere within critical theory, discussing its recent reformulations and reinterpretations. Our primary aim is to focus on contributions that emphasize the increasing importance of new publics, subaltern counter-publics, diasporic publics, and deliberative publics in contemporary democracies. We seek to outline a broader concept of public sphere in order to offer an adequate instrument for analyzing the simultaneous cycles of democratization and structural adjustment in Latin America.

White-on-White: The Overbearing Whiteness of Warhol Being

In his essay “Warhol Gives Good Face: Publicity and the Politics of Prosopopoeia,” Jonathan Flatley persuasively argues that the use of a Pop aesthetic allowed Andy Warhol to gain access to the public sphere and “bring himself and his friends inside it as active participants.”1 For Flatley, Warhol's Factory—which might be understood as Warhol's counter-Hollywood—and its products functioned as “queer versions of what Nancy Fraser has called subaltern counterpublics.”2 As such, the Factory as well as the Pop aesthetic allowed “outsiders” like Warhol and others from his milieu to “acquire a public persona … [and] participate in ‘utopias of self-abstraction’ that enable us to feel as if we have transcended our particularity”3 However, it is worthwhile to complicate our understanding of Warhol's counterpublic by recognizing that in terms of chromatic makeup, Andy got what he wanted. Just like the Hollywood he adored, his own public sphere pretty much retained a white-on-white cast. Using Flatley's essay as a starting point, I hope to show that the access to self-abstraction was unevenly distributed, even within Warhol's counterpublic.

Practicing Democracy in the Margins of School: The Teenage Parents Program as Feminist Counterpublic

Many barriers to realizing a vision of inclusive and deliberative democracy exist. But even in stratified societies, one can find relatively safe discursive arenas within schools where members of subordinated groups can explore who they are and want to become and can prepare to voice their needs, concerns, and issues in wider public realms. Nancy Fraser (1997) conceptualizes such arenas as “subaltern counterpublics” capable of expanding our “actually existing democracy.” Drawing on ethnographic data, this article analyzes the Teenage Parents Program as a feminist counterpublic within a Canadian public high school. It argues that youths need to learn to recognize the power of dominant as well as alternative or oppositional discourses and to articulate and strategically pursue their needs and interests.

Rethinking the Black Public Sphere: An Alternative Vocabulary for Multiple Public Spheres

Many theorists propose that there are multiple, coexisting “subaltern” counterpublic spheres. However, most discussions of these subaltern counterpublics rely on group identity markers to differentiate between these spheres and do not provide alternative means for distinguishing between subaltern public spheres. This essay presents an alternative vocabulary for multiple public spheres through an exploration of the history of the African American public sphere. Three types of marginal publics, enclave, counterpublic, and satellite, are defined as examples of how we might incorporate considerations of the kinds of resources different publics have available to them. This vocabulary facilitates more flexible descriptions of publics that are normally defined by identity and allows for more comprehensive comparisons across public spheres.

Performance and the celebration of a subaltern counterpublic

By documenting the creation of a production based on the history of the Women's Center of Carbondale, Illinois, this essay explores difficulties in celebrating, through means of performance, an organization that exists because women are beaten and raped every day. First, we examine how the members of the Women's Center community make sense of their relationship to the dominant culture by forming a parallel or subaltern counterpublic through the formulation of a counterdiscourse. Second, we examine our scripting and staging decisions as the products of our simultaneous immersion in the multiple cultures of the dominant public sphere, the academy, and the Women's Center.