Crises of democracy: critical theory and the diagnosis of present time

• Grant number: 19/22387-0
• Support Opportunities: Research Projects - Thematic Grants
• Start date: May 01, 2021
• End date: April 30, 2026
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - Philosophy
• Principal Investigator: Rúrion Soares Melo
• Grantee: Rúrion Soares Melo
• Host Institution: Centro Brasileiro de Análise e Planejamento (CEBRAP). São Paulo , SP, Brazil
• Associated researchers: Adriano Márcio Januário ; Amy Rebekah Allen ; Arthur Oliveira Bueno ; Bianca Margarita Damin Tavolari ; Bruna Buranello Sekimura Nicodemos ; Camila Rocha de Oliveira ; Christopher F. Zurn ; Daniela Xavier Haj Mussi ; Dagmar Wilhelm ; Duarte Rolo ; Fabiola Fanti ; Felipe Gonçalves Silva ; Flávio Marques Prol ; Frederic Louault ; Georg Walter Wink ; Iagê Zendron Miola ; Ina Kerner ; Inara Luisa Marin ; Ingrid Cyfer ; Isabelle Aubert ; Joaquim Eloi Cirne de Toledo Junior ; John Abromeit ; Jonas Marcondes Sarubi de Medeiros ; José Del Ben Neto ; Leonardo Martins Barbosa ; Luciana Silva Reis ; Magali Bessone ; Marcio Moretto Ribeiro ; Mariana Giorgetti Valente ; Mariana Oliveira do Nascimento Teixeira ; Mário Augusto Medeiros da Silva ; Natália Neris da Silva Santos ; Paulo Henrique Yamawake ; Raphael Cezar da Silva Neves ; Regina Stela Corrêa Vieira ; Ricardo Crissiuma ; Ricardo Ribeiro Terra ; Rúrion Soares Melo ; Sergio Costa ; Talita Cristina de Oliveira ; Virgínia Helena Ferreira da Costa ; William Scheuerman
• Associated research grant(s): 24/15955-0 - Crises of democracy: Critical theory and diagnosis of the present time, AV.EXT; 23/09187-8 - 27th World Congress of Political Science, AR.EXT
• Associated scholarship(s): 24/17890-3 - Encoding and Decoding Algorithms: Stuart Hall and the Racial Debate in New Media, BP.PD; 24/19037-6 - BOLSONARISM AND FAR-RIGHT IN THE BRAZILIAN AMAZON: AN ETHNOGRAPHIC STUDY IN TIMES OF DEMOCRACY CRISIS, BP.PD; 24/17905-0 - Reconfiguring Meanings: Counterpublics, Production, and Circulation of Feminist and Anti-Feminist Books in PostFeminist Times in Brazil, BP.PD; + associated scholarships 24/17889-5 - Counterpublic studies and the need for a post-Habermasian theory of communication, BP.PD; 23/09306-7 - The ambivalences of a Project of radical democratization by means of Habermas' theory of public sphere, BP.DR; 24/07847-3 - Neoliberalism and digital politics: An analysis of socioeconomic, regulatory and electoral impacts, BP.PD; 23/18033-4 - From colonization to circulation: public sphere and diagnoses of the time in Jurgen Habermas work, BP.DR; 24/09274-0 - Concentration of economic power and the crisis of democracy: digital platforms, BP.IC; 24/01109-0 - Concentration of economic power and the crisis of democracy in Brazil: work and the public sphere in the age of platformization, BP.PD; 24/07117-5 - Radical feminism: counter-public discourses on Twitter/X., BP.IC; 24/07623-8 - Brazilian publishing dynamics and the rise of right-wing movements (2005-2022), BP.IC; 24/06423-5 - Implications of the concentration of economic power for democracies., BP.IC; 24/00816-5 - VOTING IN PUBLIC CONSULTATIONS ON THE E-CITIZENSHIP PLATFORM AND VIRTUAL ENGAGEMENT: an analysis of the role of Twitter/X in digital social participation, BP.IC; 22/08521-9 - Spontaneity and subjectivation of domination: the actuality of Theodor W. Adorno's critical theory of music, BP.PD; 24/00155-9 - Dictatorship of political correctness: the rhetoric of the new right on Brazilian YouTube, BP.IC; 23/16131-9 - Political Theory of Fascism, BP.PD; 22/05147-9 - Social pathologies and inequality: social philosophy, redistribution and recognition, BP.PD; 23/14853-7 - Judiciary and the Weimar democracy crisis in Franz Neumann's diagnosis, BP.IC; 23/05004-6 - Feminist protests since 2010: the emergence of a new feminist activism in Brazil, BP.IC; 23/04917-8 - New feminist activism in Brazil: a qualitative analysis of the counterpublics underlings, BP.IC; 23/04535-8 - The discourses of the right-wingers on the internet (2012-2018), BP.IC; 23/04650-1 - The criticism of PT and the left in the mainstream press: from "mensalão" to the end of the Bolsonaro government, BP.IC; 23/04458-3 - Brazilian publishing dynamics and the rise of right-wing movements (2005-2022), BP.IC; 23/04919-0 - Balance of the debate regarding the new feminist activism in Brazil, BP.IC; 23/00208-2 - The big center in the crisis of Brazilian democracy, BP.PD; 23/00187-5 - Juridification and crisis of the Weimar democracy in the diagonsis of Otto Kirchheimer, BP.IC; 22/12842-5 - LAW, DEMOCRACY AND COMMUNITY-BASED POLICIES: a socio-legal study of the favela of Paraisópolis response to the covid-19 pandemic, BP.IC; 21/00898-3 - Form of understanding in The Theory of Communicative Action, BP.DR; 21/04486-1 - Social democracy and democratic stability: a case study of the SPD (1919-1933) and of the PT (1988-2016), BP.PD - associated scholarships

Abstract

The goal of this project is to investigate the crises of democracy departing from the notion of diagnosis of present time typical of Critical Theory. This goal implies the simultaneous and interconnected tasks of investigating the intellectual heritage of Critical Theory from the perspective of questions that are being presented by the current crisis of democracy (the reconstructive moment) and to interpret the current situation through empirical investigations that are based upon categories that were developed by this intellectual tradition (the "updating" moment). Therefore, this project proposes two subprojects, internally vinculated to each other: (i) the first aims at reconstructing classical studies of various Critical Theorists in their multiple dimensions (empirical and theoretical), having as its focus the political theory and, more precisely, the specific understanding of democracy of this tradition, both at the time of the crisis of the Weimar Republic and the rise of nazism, as well as in the context of the post second world war, in a world divided by two superpower countries and defined in other countries as a mass democracy of a new kind; (ii) the second intends to update hypotheses and categories of the Critical Theory intellectual heritage to understand the current crisis of democracy and the simultaneous crisis of theories of democracy, with a focus on the distinctive nature of the concept of public sphere in the theoretical-critical contributions, as well as on the correlate categories of counterpublics and its economic, cultural and political dimensions. (AU)