Community Think Tank

The concept of digital counterpublics is especially useful in understanding the exclusionary practices of dominant discursive spaces as well as the alternative spaces that have emerged to circulate experiences of sexual violence against women. Feminist theorist Nancy Fraser critiques Jürgen Habermas’ seminal theory of the public sphere as a utopian bourgeois masculinist model, which served to legitimate racial, gender and class domination by the bourgeoisie.[1] Moreover, she contests that inherent in this model is the assumption that “public interest” does not include certain private interests of citizens, particularly those relating to “domestic or personal life, including sexual life.”[2] Systemically excluded from public debate, issues of domestic privacy were silenced from public discourse. In many cases, these included the so-called “private” concerns of subordinate groups, which were confined or “enclaved” to specific discursive arenas that were deemed appropriate for discussion.[3] As a result, neither state nor market actors were held accountable for these issues by means of publicity. This systemic exclusion, in turn, reproduced structures of domination and subordination. Fraser’s argument can be viewed within the context of sexual violence, in that this issue has traditionally been viewed as a private, personal matter and excluded from dominant public discourse. For instance, sexual abuse has traditionally been silenced or discussed within a limited number of institutional settings, such as legal, psychological or social work frameworks. Though there are limited formal restrictions that censor the discussion of these private issues in public forums, there remain informal strategies of exclusion that restrict their discussion.

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As an alternative model, Fraser proposes the concept of multiple, competing publics, which she terms subaltern counterpublics. Inherited from Gayatri Spivak’s term subaltern[4] and Rita Felski’s term counterpublics[5], subaltern counterpublics refers to “parallel discursive arenas where members of subordinated social groups invent and circulate counterdiscourses, which in turn permit them to formulate oppositional interpretations of their identities, interests, and needs.”[6] In response to the systemic exclusion of marginalized groups, counterpublics emerge as forms of “sustained discursive contestation” to counter dominant discourses.[7] Fuelled by a plurality of publics with multiple perspectives, these alternative arenas provide rich forums to discuss the “private” issues excluded from dominant public arenas. Building on Fraser’s model of subaltern counterpublics, queer and social theorist Michael Warner defines counterpublics as spaces that come “into being only in relation to texts and their circulation.”[8] From Warner’s perspective, these social spaces do not exist a priori. Rather, they are brought into consciousness through the continuous circulation and interaction of texts, forming spaces “of discourse organized by discourse.”[9] Key to this definition is the circulation of alternative texts and idioms that constitute counterpublics and serve to respond to the dominant public’s ideological limitations. An example of a contemporary discursive space embodying the concept of counterpublics is the Arabic hashtag الغاء_308#, which translates to #308Removed. Widely circulated among Middle Eastern Twitter users in 2017, the hashtag referred to Article 308 in Jordan’s Penal Code, which foregrounded laws that reduced the punishment of men who committed crimes against women.[10] Included in the article were laws that allowed perpetrators of rape to avoid legal punishment if they married their victims as well as reduced sentences for perpetrators who murdered women “to cleanse family honour”.[11] As preliminary steps were taken to abolish the controversial legal clause, the resulting hashtag #308Removed trended on Twitter, resulting in over 3,500 tweets within a 24-hour period.[12] Invented as a means to contest dominant public discourse surrounding violence against women, #308Removed became a counterdiscourse for marginalized groups to redefine public interest. Alongside women’s and human rights activists, the wider Twitter-sphere crafted oppositional interpretations of women’s identities and needs; namely that women are autonomous, equal members of society entitled to legal protection from sexual and physical abuse. Through the continual interaction and re-negotiation of these texts, a space emerged in which “private” issues of sexual and physical violence against women were legitimated as valid issues of public debate. In this sense, the space created through the circulation of a hashtag acted as a counterpublic of discursive contestation.

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In many ways, social media platforms are a key element to the circulation of counterdiscourses in counterpublics. Drawing on a globalized network of transnational users, the scale and interactivity of current social media platforms is unprecedented.[13] As media policy academic Petros Iosifidis asserted in 2011, “if Facebook were a country it would now be the third most populous on earth after China and India.”[14] Providing an immense, global platform for intercommunication, these decentralized, self-organized spaces facilitate collective participation in public discourse while operating independently of state actors. Iosifidis maintains that such digital platforms can provide the ideal basis for counterdiscourses, precisely because of their ability to hold institutions, governments and politicians accountable for their actions.[15] .[16] As a self-organized social media platform, Twitter provides a rich terrain for the circulation of counterdiscourses, through which the #308Removed counterpublic was able to emerge. Employed by approximately 330 million international users in 2017[17], Twitter’s interconnected social network allowed the issue of Article 308 to gain widespread media attention, resulting in coverage by various global news outlets. Operating independently of state actors, Twitter was used as a media platform (along with many others) to hold the Jordan government accountable by means of publicity. As a counterpublic, #308Removed circulated various counterdiscourses that contributed to the collective of action of government lobbying, with the goal of abolishing the legal article.[18]

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Furthermore, social media platforms facilitate the emergence of counterpublics, in that they provide a discursive arena for empathetic interconnectivity. Penelope Kemekenidou argues that technological tools such as social media platforms provide a “hyperconnected” space that facilitates empathetic relationships.[19] Though public discourse is addressed to a nonidentified viewership, the subjectivity of the speaker on such platforms resonates among a wide audience through a sense of collective identity.[20] Creating a web of shared experiences, mainstream social media platforms allow private experiences of marginalized individuals to be heard and validated by others who share similar experiences.[21] The sense of empathy that results from these interconnected experiences becomes a form of community building and a mode of collective opposition to dominantly circulated narratives. In Kemekenidou’s words, “if we empathize, we mobilize.”[22] Granting “social relevance to private thought and life”, social media networks that facilitate interconnected empathy become significant platforms to circulate the counterdiscourses that structure counterpublics.[23] As an interconnected social media platform, Twitter weaves together shared experiences among its users through the circulation of hashtags. For instance, one of the most widely used hashtags of 2017, #MeToo gained a successful following precisely because of its facilitation of empathic relationships through shared experiences. Prior to its evolution into a hashtag, the phrase “Me Too” was employed as a discursive tool to support women of colour who experienced sexual assault.[24] Coined by American activist Tarana Burke, the words were conceived of as a way to express solidarity with women who spoke of their sexually abusive experiences.[25] Affirming “Me Too” indicated that one shared a similar experience and “could release survivors from the shame they felt and serve to empower them – especially in minority communities.”[26] Similar to #IAmJada, the hashtag #MeToo was circulated on social media platforms by survivors of sexual abuse alongside testimonials of their personal experiences. As millions of Twitter users circulated the hashtag, a sense of interconnected empathy emerged through the participants’ shared experience of sexual trauma. The hashtag was re-circulated by wider social networks to publicly express support for survivors, gaining widespread media attention, and leading to government lobbying efforts to change regulations concerning sexual abuse.

 

 

[1] Nancy Fraser, “Rethinking the Public Sphere: A Contribution to the Critique of Actually Existing Democracy,” Social Text 25/26 (1990): 62.

[2] Ibid., 71.

[3] Ibid., 73.

[4] Gayatri Spivak, “Can the Subaltern Speak?,” in Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture, eds. Cary Nelson and Larry Grossberg (Illinois: University of Illinois Press, 1988), 271-313.

[5] Rita Felski. Beyond Feminist Aesthetics: Feminist Literature and Social Change (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1989).

[6] Fraser, “Rethinking the Public Sphere,” 67.

[7] Ibid., 71.

[8] Michael Warner, Publics and Counterpublics (New York: Zone Books, 2005), 66.

[9] Ibid., 68. Warner refers to this discursive process as “autotelic circularity”

[10] “Jordan MPs vote to scrap rape law loophole,” BBC News, last modified August 1, 2017, http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-40793049.

[11] Ibid.

[12] “#MeToo, #TakeAKnee and #Covfefe: Hashtags that dominated in 2017,” last modified December 27, 2017, http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-42251490.

[13] Petros Iosifidis, Global Media and Communication Policy (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011), 37.

[14] Ibid.

[15] Ibid., 35.

[16] Ibid.

[17] “Twitter: number of active users 2010-2017,” Statista, accessed April 10, 2018. https://www.statista.com/statistics/282087/number-of-monthly-active-twitter-users/.

[18] “MeToo, #TakeAKnee and #Covfefe.”

[19] Penelope Kemekenidou, “Empathic Cyberactivism: The Potential of Hyperconnected Social Media Networks and Empathic Virtual Reality for Feminism,” American Studies Journal 61 (2016), accessed April 5, 2018, doi: 10.18422/61-05.

[20] Warner, Publics and Counterpublics, 77.

[21] Kemekenidou, “Empathic Cyberactivism.”

[22] Ibid.

[23] Warner, Publics and Counterpublics, 77.

[24] Jessie Kindig, introduction to Where Freedom Starts: Sex Power Violence #MeToo, ed. Verso Books (Verso Books, 2018), 17. Interesting discursive tool in that it is abstract and doesn’t require further explanation. This raises issues as to the varying degrees of sexual assault, and the solidarity for issues experienced differently.

[25] Ibid., 17.

[26] Burke and Adetiba, “Tarana Burke Says #MeToo,” 23.