The Rise of Right-Wing Counterpublics and the Current Crisis of Democracy: Nancy Fraser, Michael Warner, and the Brazilian Reception of Counterpublic Studies

• Grant number: 25/08707-3
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Scientific Initiation
• Start date: August 01, 2025
• End date: July 31, 2026
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - Political Science - Political Theory
• Principal Investigator: Rúrion Soares Melo
• Grantee: Ana Carolyne Myckaely Julio
• Host Institution: Centro Brasileiro de Análise e Planejamento (CEBRAP). São Paulo , SP, Brazil
• Associated research grant: 19/22387-0 - Crises of democracy: critical theory and the diagnosis of present time, AP.TEM

Abstract

The concept of subaltern counterpublics coined by Nancy Fraser was created as a way of pointing to the existence of multiple publics excluded from the dominant bourgeois public sphere. Fraser's public sphere is constituted as a discursive and deliberative political arena of civil society, where multiple publics coexist and confront each other. Michael Warner adds a fundamental definition to the concept of counterpublics, removing the centrality of "subalternity" and placing at the center of the understanding of the concept the opposition between dominant and subordinate publics, that is, the perception, on the part of the counterpublics themselves, that they are in a relationship of domination. The objective of this research proposal (linked to the FAPESP Thematic Project 2019/22387-0, which has a line of research focused on counterpublic studies) is to investigate the reception of the debate for recent studies on right-wing counterpublics. We will problematize the "non-virtuous" and "performative" character of counterpublics (whose conceptual reference refers to studies by Fraser and Warner) with a view to investigating how recent literature has understood the emergence of right-wing counterpublics in Brazil.