Democratizing participation through feminisms.
The role of feminist subaltern counterpublics in the expansion of the Basque public sphere

Feminist political theory and the expansion of the public sphere through democratic innovations[Subir]

When referring to the expansion of the “public sphere” in its Habermasian sense, this reference is to the fact that the space in which citizens deliberate on common problems is today more diverse in terms of forms, subject matter and agents, than it was at the beginning of the 20^th century. The concept of public space is used for that space in modern societies where political participation happens through discussions, informal gatherings, literary salons, etc. It refers to the social space in which discussion and participation takes place (​Habermas, Jürgen. 1989. The structural transformation of the public sphere: An inquiry into a category of bourgeois society. Cambridge: MIT Press.Habermas, 1989). In this social space, a way of talking that the author calls “bourgeois” (bourgeois public sphere) has predominated, and this must be enlarged and extended in order to radicalise democracy. In this undertaking of sketching out a new, “post-bourgeois” public sphere (​Fraser, Nancy. 1996. Justice interruptus: Critical reflections on the” postsocialist” condition. Londres: Routledge.Fraser, 1996: 133), Habermas sees deliberation and rational argument as effective instruments. Transparent and plural dialogue and communication constitute his proposal’s central tools.

It is certain that an extension of the public sphere, through democratically innovative apparatuses, is today a noticeable fact. Experiences of e-democracy are increasing and becoming consolidated (​Cardon, Dominique. 2010. La démocratie Internet, promesses et limites. París: Seuil-La République des idées.Cardon, 2010); the number of participatory budgeting programmes has increased in most countries (​Bacqué, Marie. 2005. Gestion de proximité et démocratie participative. Paris: La Dévouverte.Bacqué, 2005); and it is possible to find forums where matters previously considered to be “pre-political” such as gender norms^[5] are nowadays being discussed.

In this context, one of the tasks of Critical Theory is to know under what conditions this expansion trend has taken place and whether or not it has really incorporated those who, throughout history, have had little ability to signify reality on their own terms; or, in another way, those who have had limited symbolic power (​Bourdieu, Pierre. 1977. “Sur le pouvoir symbolique”, Annales. Économies, Sociétés, Civilisations, 3: 405: 411.Bourdieu, 1977). In this regard, although on many occasions the value of Habermas’s conceptual proposal to the theory of democracy has been recognised (​Fraser, Nancy. 1996. Justice interruptus: Critical reflections on the” postsocialist” condition. Londres: Routledge.Fraser, 1996), feminist criticism has also offered many contributions to the notion of public sphere (​Pagé, Geneviève. 2014. “L’art de conquérir le contrepublic: les zines féministes, une voie/x subalterne et politique?”, Recherches Féministes, 27 (2): 191-215.Pagé, 2014). This body of criticism underlines the multiple exclusions motivated by class, gender, sexuality, race, capacity for bodily mobility and age that underlie the “bourgeois public sphere”.

Joan Landes has shown that Habermas’s notion of public sphere conceives language as the only possible form of expression, ignoring others related to the expression of emotions and body language (​Landes, Joan. 1992. “Jürgen Habermas, the structural transformation of the public sphere: A feminist inquiry”, Praxis International, 12/1: 106-127.Landes, 1992). According to Landes, the problem with Habermas’s conceptualisation lies in thinking that the way to occupy the public sphere is neutral and, therefore, universal. Therefore, the German author fails to recognize that the public sphere has been conceptualised against the private-domestic one, and that the public sphere has been mainly occupied by white, heterosexual, bourgeois men. Landes’ view allows a connection with one of the inputs of studies of political intersectionality related to the idea that the praxis of the political expansion of the public space does not take into consideration agents beset by different axes of domination, such as race, gender, age or others (​Cruells, Marta. 2015. La interseccionalidad política: tipo y factores de entrada en la agenda política, jurídica y de los movimientos sociales. Lombardo, Emanuela (dir.), Universidad Autónoma de Barcelona, Barcelona.Cruells, 2015). For this reason, they have fewer opportunities to export their own forms of expression to the public space. The rationale that makes the public sphere neutral is a bourgeois rationality, according to Landes, that does not relate to many women’s life experience (​Landes, Joan. 1988. Women in the public sphere in the age of revolution. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. 1988).

Iris Marion Young also underlines the aspirations to universality in the form of dialogue involved in the bourgeois public sphere, founded on the false idea that culturally neutral and universal deliberation is possible (​Young, Iris Marion. 1989. “Polity and group difference”, Ethics, 99 (2): 250-274. Disponible en: https://doi.org/10.1086/293065.Young, 1989; ​Young, Iris Marion. 2000. Inclusion & democracy. Nueva York: Oxford University Press.2000). According to the author, the extension of the public sphere based on the use of impartial reason does not allow heterogeneity in the public space. Such a public space excludes, externally or internally, those who traditionally have had no ability to enunciate, and who do not know the dominant linguistic and bodily codes of the public space (​Young, Iris Marion. 1990. Justice and the politics of difference. Princeton: Princeton University Press.Young, 1990; ​Martínez-Bascuñán, Máriam. 2010. “¿Puede la deliberación ser democrática? Una revisión del marco deliberativo desde la democracia comunicativa”, Revista Española de Ciencia Política, 24: 11-32.Martínez-Bascuñán, 2010).

Nancy Fraser has also contributed to the critique of the Habermasian public sphere is. She shares Habermas’ idea that the public sphere is a bourgeois public sphere in which not all social groups have the same capacity to intervene and that this is one of the constituent facts regarding the different imbalances of power between agents. However, in Fraser’s judgement, the German thinker idealizes a form of liberal public sphere that forgets about the existence of non-bourgeois and non-liberal publics who, although with less capability to signify, have tried to create spaces to name the world (​Fraser, Nancy. 1990. “Rethinking the public sphere: A contribution to the critique of actually existing democracy”, Social Text, 25/26: 56-80. Disponible en: https://doi.org/10.2307/466240.Fraser, 1990; ​Fraser, Nancy. 2013. Fortunes of feminism: From state-managed capitalism to neoliberal crisis. Londres-Nueva York: Verso.2013: 19-54). Fraser refers to those marginal publics until the end of the 1990s as “subaltern counterpublics” (​Fraser, Nancy. 1996. Justice interruptus: Critical reflections on the” postsocialist” condition. Londres: Routledge.Fraser, 1996). Later on, she talks broadly of “discursive arenas […] among a wide range of different publics” (​Fraser, Nancy. 2008. Scales of justice: Reimagining political space in a globalizing world. Nueva York: Columbia University Press.Fraser, 2008; ​Fraser, Nancy. 2013. Fortunes of feminism: From state-managed capitalism to neoliberal crisis. Londres-Nueva York: Verso.2013).

Fraser’s fundamental contribution lies in highlighting that, apart from its classism, the public sphere is also permeated by the gender, racial and heteronormative system, and so the dominant form of occupying the public space (male and bourgeois) creates a multiplicity of publics. This idea allows the introduction of the political intersectional perspective, which makes Fraser’s proposal attractive and suitable to the many discriminations against the agent, and the effect that this has on the configuration of that agent’s social position^[6].

To recapitulate, within the critical theory of democratic innovation, the feminist theory warns against the possible exclusions underlying the expansion of the public sphere that, as this text proposes, is currently occurring through DIs. This critique calls attention to, at least, the following risks: the aspiration to universality when occupying the public space; the false neutrality of bourgeois reasoning; wanting to design a supposedly impartial decision-making space; the deepening of the public-versus-private dichotomy; and the invisibilization of other publics. However, as it has been stated above, this theory offers proposals and solutions for the gradual deactivation of exclusion. Nancy Fraser’s proposal, one of the foundations of this essay, must be seen in this light.

Although Fraser’s contribution has been much used and debated on the normative plane, there have been fewer attempts to operationalize the term and to apply it to specific cases with an inductive approach to political reality.

Subaltern Counterpublics And Democratic Expansion[Subir]

Nancy Fraser’s proposal regarding subaltern counterpublics is closely related to an idea that Virginia Woolf brought up in 1929: women need money and a room of their own to write. Woolf helped us make clear, with the figure of “the room of one’s own”, the importance of material and symbolic conditions for writing. Writing, enunciating in one’s own words, considering the social position of agents when it comes to transforming reality is, then, one of the goals of counterpublics. Specifically, for Fraser, counterpublics are: “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” (​Fraser, Nancy. 1990. “Rethinking the public sphere: A contribution to the critique of actually existing democracy”, Social Text, 25/26: 56-80. Disponible en: https://doi.org/10.2307/466240.1990: 67).

Analysing Fraser’s proposal, it can be concluded that the author is concerned, like Woolf, both with material and with symbolic conditions in which individuals find themselves and which affect the ability to enunciate in the public sphere.

However, as she herself states, not all counterpublics are positive in democratic terms, since some of these parallel arenas defend anti-equality discourses (for example, anti-feminist or xenophobic groups). Furthermore, it is important to indicate that these counterpublics can be found in very different political-cultural contexts, adapting themselves to the characteristics of the environment. However, I find a potential inherent in Fraser’s concept. It can be considered that the analysis of counterpublics’ discourse allows the obstacles to inclusiveness to be identified from a political intersectional approach that allows access to the point of view of those who experience exclusion in the processes of expanding the public sphere. I consider that intersectional inequality in the author’s approach is intuited based on her vision of “bivalent groups” that suffer from both poor socioeconomic distribution and erroneous cultural recognition. Fraser defines gender and race as paradigmatic bivalent groups, allowing the possibility of visibilizing the new situations of inequality resulting from the overlap of a lack of redistribution (class) and recognition (identity) (​Fraser, Nancy y Axel Honneth. 2003. Redistribution or recognition? A political-philosophical exchange. Londres: Verso.Fraser, 2003: 87).

In her work, the author offers what she considers to be an outstanding example of a democratising counterpublic: the late 20^th century US feminist counterpublic which, through a network of bookshops, cultural production and research realised the constitutive protest function of all such collectives. This community minted a series of concepts such as “sexism” and “patriarchate” to define, in its own terms, the reality as they were experiencing it. In this way, once their needs were identified, they could set out their arguments before other publics with more likelihood of them having an impact. From this it can be deduced that the main, but not the only, function of these arenas is to protest against the pretensions to being all encompassing of the dominant publics, based on the identification and formulation of the group’s specific needs. The validity of these functions has been confirmed in recent studies of the feminist and women’s movement in Spain in the field of labour (​Ruiz García, Sonia. 2015. “Power and representation: feminist movement challenges on work”, Revista Española de Ciencia Política, 39: 195-220.Ruíz García, 2015), and in France in the field of reproduction (​Contamin, Gabriel. 2007. “Genre et modes d’entré dans l’action collective. L’exemple du mouvement pétitionnaire contre le projet de Loi Debré”, Politix. 78: 13-37. Disponible en: https://doi.org/10.3917/pox.078.0013.Contamin, 2007).

However, Fraser is aware that these alternative publics might have different functions according to the society in which they are located. In egalitarian multi-cultural societies^[7], counterpublics would seek to support the ideal of participation and deliberation, since for this task the existence of multiple publics, who can offer their different visions of a social reality, is desirable. In stratified societies, in which the “basic institutional framework generates unequal social groups in structural relations of dominance and subordination” (​Fraser, Nancy. 1996. Justice interruptus: Critical reflections on the” postsocialist” condition. Londres: Routledge.Fraser, 1996: 148), counterpublics have two functions: “On the one hand, they function as spaces of withdrawal and regroupment; on the other hand, they also function as bases and training grounds for agitational activities directed toward wider publics” (​Fraser, Nancy. 1996. Justice interruptus: Critical reflections on the” postsocialist” condition. Londres: Routledge.1996: 151).

Like Fraser, I believe that societies that are called democratic are on the road to becoming multi-cultural egalitarian societies and, therefore, these counterpublics have multiple functions: protest, withdrawal and regroupment; the construction of meanings and interpretations; and the elaboration of emancipatory strategies.

The Basque society, which is the subject of this article, is situated on this continuum between stratified and egalitarian society. There, as will be argued below, counterpublics have both a protest and a democratising function.

Becoming counterpublic: Revaluation of the public, the importance of emotion and the search for models[Subir]

Three major reasons have been detected as motivations for the sixteen women to join or form a FSC. These women linked these motivations to some kind of “contradiction”^[11] they had experienced in their lives.

The first contradiction is related to the public-versus-private dichotomy. All the women agreed that, as in other areas of their lives (work, school and family), in the DI they took part in, they experienced the confrontation of a private/domestic sphere – considered to be a women’s domain and less appreciated socially – and a highly regarded public sphere, in which the presence of men has predominant. This contradiction connects with the feminist critique of the theory of democracy according to which the systematic gender division of space has created a domestic image of women, far from public life, which blocks the citizenship status of many of them (​Pateman, Carole. [1992] 2012. “Equality, difference, subordination. The politics of motherhood and women’s citizenship”, en Carver, T. y C. Sanuel, Carole Pateman: Democracy, feminism, welfare. Nueva York: Routledge.Pateman, 2012).

This contradiction has been strongest in the case of the women over 30 years old and it has been most clearly stated by mothers. Women situated at this intersection see in motherhood a social institution that “swallows” women into the domestic space, excluding them from the public sphere for two reasons. Firstly, because in the domestic sphere women exercise skills linked to the emotions and care tasks that are not valued in a context of discursive ability, like the public space. Secondly, because expansions of the public space do not have a planned structure for “not making a women feel guilty if she wants to take a child, who makes a noise during meetings. Often when I do it, they give me dirty looks, as if they are asking me to take responsibility for him” (Jane, aged 36)^[12]. It has been found that the mothers’ detachment from the participatory spaces lasts for the first two years of the baby’s life. During this period, women are disconnected from the DI, neglecting the participatory skills valued there. Afterwards, there is no “reinsertion mechanism” that facilitates their return to the participatory space. The result is that many women opt to stop participating in DI spaces and decide to dedicate themselves to caring for their children.

However, one of the women highlighted her experience of that contradiction. She found in a feminist space, like Woolf’s room, the chance to think about other models of motherhood and ways of coming to agreements regarding care, which made her participation easier:

This contradiction was also found in the sexual division of labour that occurred in the DI spaces. All the sixteen women agreed that they felt uncomfortable when they saw a gender division of tasks reproduced in spaces that were claimed to be democratic. While men carried out public coordination tasks, women carried out a executive-relational work. This has also been revealed in other studies of the women’s participation in social movements (​Falquet, Jules. 2005. “Trois questions aux mouvements sociaux «progressistes» apports de la théorie féministe à l’analyse des mouvements sociaux”, Nouvelles Questions Féministes, 24 (3): 18-35. https://doi.org/10.3917/nqf.243.0018.Falquet, 2005; ​Contamin, Gabriel. 2007. “Genre et modes d’entré dans l’action collective. L’exemple du mouvement pétitionnaire contre le projet de Loi Debré”, Politix. 78: 13-37. Disponible en: https://doi.org/10.3917/pox.078.0013.Contamin, 2007; ​Surprenant, Marie-Eve. 2013. Les femmes changent la lutte. Quebec: Éditions du remue-ménage.Surprenant, 2013). The interpretation is that this gender division is carried out based on a stretching of women’s domestic function into the public sphere; what has created discomfort for many women involved. Those who constitute a FSC have identified executive-relational tasks as essential, but have seen a problem in their lack of socialization among men and in the way these tasks are undervalued. Simone (aged 40) puts it in this way:

Simone saw that, within the DI, women were systematically expected to take charge of tasks related to care, without these being socialized or valued. She needed to put forward this criticism and transform the structure of the DI apparatus in which she was participating and so she joined a FSC. It is possible to see here clearly the regrouping function of counterpublics.

The second contradiction relates to the reason-versus-emotion dichotomy, and has been particularly demonstrated by women under 30. This consists of perceiving there are physical as well as verbal methods of expressing oneself in the public sphere. These physical methods include very important relational elements that many women say they feel comfortable with, and which are undervalued in or absent from the DI apparatus. A direct connection can be seen here with the critique that Joan Landes makes of narrow conceptualizations of the public space that identify language as the only possible expression in it. After analysing the narratives of the women participating in counterpublics, what became clear was not only the invisibilization of other forms of expression, such as bodily ones, but also the discrimination of all uses of knowledge that are considered non-expert. In one of the focus groups made up of women under 30, the following was said:

Detecting that there is no place for those emotional expressions in a space where a debate is expected based on the exclusive use of reason and the strongest argument, has motivated women to create a FSC in which they can give a recognised place to emotions and relationships.

In the participatory observations carried out, notes were taken on the different body positions. From there, it became clear that women showed more affective and relational attitudes than men. And they did so through physical mechanisms of inclusion, such as: smiling at those entering, as if they have been invited to participate; giving a hug at the beginning and end of the meeting; nodding and giving eye contact to the person taking part; or stroking someone’s arm to show support.

The sixteen women whose biographies were taken also raised a third contradiction. Both, younger and older women agreed in equal measure that the expansion of the public sphere followed to the codes of a dominant class which they did not feel represented them. This coincides with Young’s (​Young, Iris Marion. 1989. “Polity and group difference”, Ethics, 99 (2): 250-274. Disponible en: https://doi.org/10.1086/293065.1989) critique of the aspiration to universality with which the forms of occupying the public space are presented. Their statements make clear that the design of DI apparatuses does not always allow diversity within (​Young, Iris Marion. 1989. “Polity and group difference”, Ethics, 99 (2): 250-274. Disponible en: https://doi.org/10.1086/293065.Young, 1989). This seems to be due to the fact that those who design an apparatus do so with a participation in mind that is adapted to their own social position and they present it as universal, discounting other possible social positions. Although not deliberately, those who project do so privileging their own social position – which is generally a dominant position or one of a “discriminated elite” (​García De León, María Antonia. 1994. Elites discriminadas. Barcelona: Anthropos. García de León, 1994)^[14] – and social norms and codes. This helps to explain why, in most cases, spaces show little diversity, as described by a woman in one of the discussion groups (Marta, aged 31):

In the direct observations, data were collected taking into consideration the persons who joined in the group on the days of observation. The results support the idea that, in general, groups are uniform and highly adapted to social norms:

The lack of diversity was noted by all sixteen women. As they said, there was an absence of valid references or models within the DI space on whom they could model behaviour in order to create their own. In their various ways, the lack of diversity is related by them, in terms reminiscent of Young, to the existence of a dominant model for participating and discussing. This model is generally represented by men and is one that they do not identify or feel comfortable with. As one of them put it, “they have had to fight to put their views forward”, “they have had to raise their voices excessively” to be heard and that “has made them feel uncomfortable” (Simone, aged 40). Faced with this situation, the sixteen women have found in the FSC they belong to an opportunity to discover other subjectivities and different ways of doing things; to share doubts; and to name elements that limit their freedom.

It is important to point out that the absence of identified diversity has not, up until now, allowed the emergence of the intersectionality notion on the apparatus’s agenda; nonetheless, this is clearly a practical expression of the idea of political intersectionality. Criticism of uniformity means that participants from the FCP affirm, in the majority public – hegemonic public –, the existence of axes of domination such as social class, race or educational level which block participation in the particular way it is offered. In one way or another, this reveals the form of the normative subject for whom, according to these counterpublics, the apparatuses are designed. The data available do not reveal the extent to which these reflections are considered in the majority public when those constituting the counterpublic are not present. With the consolidation of DIs, studies into this matter will be very relevant.

The consequences of feminist subaltern counterpublics: Extension of the notion of participation and changes in structuring the apparatus[Subir]

It is possible to gather the consequences that parallel arenas have had for the processes of enlarging the public sphere through DIs into two major groups: the consequences on the specific women’s participatory projects, and those related to the structure of the DI apparatus. Considering these consequences, it is also possible to see what kind of functions these counterpublics have had.

Regarding the impact on the participatory projects, these arenas have allowed to problematize the political meaning of many negative feelings that women previously felt privately and individually with regard to their participation and which were related to forms of “internal exclusion”. Arguably, then, these counterpublics had a therapeutic effect by making available the space and time needed to reflect; this space is what is referred to by the figure of “a room of one’s own”.These publics offered the chance to state that participation has a race, a gender, a class, an age and a dominant sexuality. In other words, these arenas have allowed the integration of the political intersectional viewpoint into participation with a questioning of the so-called universality of participation in those innovative spaces. This questioning has been undertaken in terms of the presence/absence of diversity, revealing, as we have seen above, the most objectified aspects in which oppressive structures are materialized. Yet it goes further, and has also emphasized the embodied elements of the oppression carried out by such structures, such as embarrassment, fear and discretion. So, they have given a political reading and an interpretation in terms of domination of some social facts that seem to be “natural” and which are often linked to the agent’s personality. Other embodied elements worth mentioning include feeling nervous when talking, that they are not offering anything when they take part or that they are not up to the situation; shaking; blushing; and perceiving the obligation to leave to one side their emotions in order to make their speech more legitimate. These counterpublics have given political value to embarrassment, fear or nervousness and use them to initiate a contrast and experimentation space for women, where they can practise “sorority” and find models to follow (​Lagarde, Marcela. 1990. Los cautiverios de las mujeres. Madrid: Horas y Horas.Lagarde, 1990).

In this sense, Virginia (aged 28) declares that having a discussion about “the fear of beginning to participate” and making that matter visible has allowed its problematization and the creation of strategies that she decided to use whenever another woman participates for the first time in the apparatus where she belongs to:

As Virginia explained, sorority follows a course of putting oneself in the place of another (a place in which she had already been), putting care at the heart of actions (caring for the other) and building alliances among women. The intention is to create “positive relationships” and make “existential and political alliances” among women with the aim of “contributing to the social elimination of all kinds of oppression” (​Lagarde, Marcela. 2006. “Pactos entre mujeres y sororidad”, Aportes para el debate: 123-135. Disponible en: http://www.asociacionag.org.ar/pdfaportes/25/09.pdf [Consulta: 13 de febrero de 2017].Lagarde, 2006: 126). In this case, gender and age intersect in her explanation of exclusion within a DI apparatus, in that she identifies bodily dispositions of domination such as feelings of nervousness and uses reflexive thought about these in order to develop strategies of resistance.

An important part of this work of interpreting and resignifying, which ultimately is own’s own interpretation of their participatory experiences, has broadened the notion of participation. There is a tendency in Political Science and Sociology to distinguish social, political, citizen and community participation without leaving a place to forms of participation linked to domestic care, such as organisations of parents when taking children to school, or participation in a scout group (​Cunill Grau, Nuria. 1999. “La reinvención de los servicios sociales en América Latina”, Revista del CALD Reforma y Democracia, 13: 1-29.Cunill, 1999). None of the sixteen women had any doubts when it came to identifying their time at school or in scout groups as participation. Pilar explained how, for them, participation covers everything that affects and influences the construction of society, and not only what has results in terms of policy.

There is a clear implication in the use of such a broad definition of participation in the sense that it includes activities traditionally invisibilized or as Landes suggests, other forms of expression, demonstrating their value. Furthermore, it makes it possible for people who have traditionally been excluded from making any kind of socio-political contribution to be defined as participating agents.

With respect to the consequences in the DI, it is important to mention that these arenas have not always managed to introduce the topics and forms that women wish to express into the wider public. Only one of the fifteen analysed here showed a notable change of agenda and structure due to the action of these parallel arenas. This was one of the two observed cases where the counterpublic was founded within the DI from the very beginning, which at least partly explains the counterpublic’s achievement on this matter. Two visible consequences have been detected in this experience: a broadening of the topics tackled within the apparatus, incorporating new ones traditionally linked to the domestic sphere (such as care or the mood of the participating agent); and the transformation of the apparatus’s structures.

An example of the need to name reality on one’s own terms is found at one of the assemblies that the researcher was able to attend:

The way of tackling a matter (degrowth) in this case left out a topic that the FSC considered vital, namely, the crisis in care. Here, there is an FSC within the apparatus that allows those who belong to it, after working on the matter internally during weekly meetings, to bring to the dominant public their opinion with enough “energy” so that their point of view becomes part of the apparatus’s agenda. Evidence that this DI’s agenda has been changed can be found in the fact that currently, both in the manifestos and in the public statements produced by this innovation apparatus, it is not possible to talk about degrowth without mentioning the crisis in care. Like the FSC of the 1970s referred to by Fraser, in this case interpretations of reality have been carried out that include concerns and viewpoints excluded by the majority public. These interpretations have also given place to the formulation of concepts that can be used to name reality (e.g. the care crisis).

Furthermore, in this same case, it is possible to detect a change of structure motivated by a previous diagnosis by a feminist counterpublic. This counterpublic identified a gender division of labour in the apparatus and a level of domination by those who know the linguistic codes of the rational debates, identifying the presence of people who

At the initiative of the FSC, a strategy was undertaken to strengthen participative spaces which recalls that strategy used by US feminists in the 1960s (​Phillips, Anne. 1991. Engendering democracy. Cambridge: Polity Press.Phillips, 1991: 120-46). In this new apparatus, dynamics were promoted with the goal of socializing speaking, including appropriate amounts of time and turns, and problematizing personal emotions and moods. A method was designed that involved cards that made the space more dynamic. Each participant was given three coloured cards at the beginning of the meeting on which were written the following messages “I want to ask for/make a clarification”, “this is off topic, return to the matter in hand” and “I want to talk/ask a question” (see figure no. 1). During the meetings the cards were used to intervene in the debate.

In summary, these counterpublics have not only had positive consequences in terms of liberation and inclusiveness for the women and other social groups who belong to them, for example, by creating spaces for discussing topics considered to be domestic and therefore “pre-political”; but they have also managed, in cases where the counterpublic was formed within the apparatus, to make these topics pass onto the apparatus’s political agenda without their discourse being capitalized on by outside agents.