An Interactionist Perspective on Counterspeech in Polarized Societies

• In Event: Civic Counteraction: Listening, Speaking, and Deciding in Polarized Times

Abstract

Several normative political theorists have investigated proposals for addressing perceived threats to the democratic system and the harm caused by certain forms of speech. Yet, developing a more persuasive response to deteriorating public political communication, which nurtures systematic disinclination to engage with political opponents, requires that we turn our eyes to the normative question of how institutions should cultivate links between citizens who disagree on moral and political issues. This paper argues that calls for “more speech”, which travel at least from Dewey and Brandeis to contemporary organizations that support the search for a common ground between citizens with different viewpoints, should be read as an invitation to engage discursively with one another. And, in this tradition, engaging discursively with one another is not understood, I demonstrate, as one of the ways to approximate truth. It is a way to contain patterns feeding divisions and the perception of political instability. In the light of this analysis, I then offer a revised conceptualization of the purpose of counterspeech. Specifically, counterspeech should be about developing opportunities to create positive links that can contribute to limiting the significance of those in-group identification patterns feeding divisions and hostility. Against this backdrop, I argue that we should not judge different forms of state-driven counterspeech primarily on their capacity to deal with the effects of bad speech; rather, even in those cases in which forms of state-driven counterspeech may be particularly effective in preventing, containing, or blocking the negative effects of bad speech, we should consider the extent to which they can contribute to making citizens use their capacity to constitute new links through language use.

Author

• Corrado Fumagalli, University of Genoa