[Commlist] Cfp: The proletarian public sphere as theory and context - special issue Journal of Labor and Society

Call for Papers:
Special Issue Journal of Labor and Society: The proletarian public 
sphere as theory and context; inquiring on practices and structures of 
class formation today
Yiannis Mylonas and Christos Mais (eds.)

The proletarian public sphere is a critical notion developed by 
Alexander Kluge and Oscar Negt (2016) through their seminal work “Public 
sphere and experience, analysis of bourgeois and proletarian public 
sphere”, published in 1972 (transl. 1993). Co-shaped by the time’s new 
left and social movements, the purpose of this work was to criticize 
Jurgen Habermas’ (1991) conceptualization of the bourgeois public 
sphere, by proposing a broader, more dynamic, and class-oriented 
approach to the public sphere. For Kluge and Negt, the public sphere is 
an expanded realm, connected to communicative, political, and 
socio-economic structures (e.g., the capitalist mode of production 
itself) that mediates social experience. The bourgeois character of the 
public sphere produces meanings that organize the experience of the 
proletariat in ways that reproduce bourgeois values, norms, and 
interests, thus publicly destroying the proletarian experience and 
delegitimizing proletarian voices, publicity, and politics.
The proletarian public sphere concept foregrounds the importance of 
symbolic, cultural, and communicative spaces to enable the working class 
to voice and articulate their realities and experiences. This way, the 
working class may become a class in itself, and advance its own 
antagonistic politics in the contemporary moment. This emphasis comes 
today, where labor exploitation has produced abysmal divisions of wealth 
and abhorrent miseries across the world, a process safeguarded through a 
rise of authoritarianism, militarization, and fascism. The working and 
subaltern classes cannot produce social change, “conquer power or 
transform the relations of production, without establishing their own 
cultural hegemony” (Traverso, 2021: 252). To this regard, the 
proletarian public sphere is a research hypothesis, to inquire upon the 
ways that working class representation, voice, mediation, and politics 
emerges today, and a political condition to develop class politics in 
national and transnational contexts.
Half a century after Kluge and Negt’s book release, important, social, 
cultural, political and technological shifts and transformations have 
taken place. The advancement of neoliberal capitalism on a global scale, 
changes in the mode of production and distribution, the domination of 
the digital technologies and platforms across the various fields of 
social, cultural and political life, and the decline of the organized, 
socialist and communist left, formulate a quite different and distant 
context from the one in which Kluge and Negt conceived and eloquently 
described as a “proletarian public sphere”.
For this special issue, we call for proposals that may focus on, without 
being limited to, the following topics and questions:
● Political subjectivity, class formation, and the media
● Working class organizations, radical intellectuals, and the public sphere
● Counter hegemony and antagonistic public spheres
● Popular culture and class
● Subcultures, counter-culture and proletarian experience
● Ecology, climate communication and class politics
● Geopolitics, propaganda, and class struggle
● Imperialism, war, genocide, and counter-public spheres
● (Neo-)Colonialism, neo-orientalism, and counter/racist communications
● Authoritarian neoliberalisms, class, and the public sphere
● Work, exploitation, precarity and the public sphere
● Proletarian cultures today
No geographical restrictions apply, proposals focusing in cases outside 
the Western World (e.g. Central and South America, Africa, Asia) will be 
taken into high consideration.
While historical and theoretical perspectives are of our interest, the 
focus is on contemporary takes on the proletarian public sphere.
We welcome interdisciplinary, theoretical and/or empirical works from 
across the world. Please send extended abstracts (500-700 words) on 
related topics along with a short biography (100-200 words) by June 30, 
2026 (atchristos.g.mais /at/ gmail.com) 
<mailto:(christos.g.mais /at/ gmail.com)>,(yiannis.mylonas.hse /at/ gmail.com) 
<mailto:(yiannis.mylonas.hse /at/ gmail.com)>
Papers due: November 30, 2026
The Special Issue will be published in 2027
*No payment from the authors* will be required.

References:
Habermas, J. (1991). The structural transformation of the public sphere. 
The MIT Press.
Kluge, A., & Negt, O. (2016). Public sphere and experience: Analysis of 
the bourgeois and proletarian public sphere. Verso. (Original work 
published 1972)
Traverso, E. (2021). Revolution: An intellectual history. Verso.

Editors:
Yiannis Mylonas
Associate Professor
NRU-HSE, Moscow
(yiannis.mylonas.hse /at/ gmail.com) <mailto:(yiannis.mylonas.hse /at/ gmail.com)>
Christos Mais
Independent Researcher
(christos.g.mais /at/ gmail.com) <mailto:(christos.g.mais /at/ gmail.com)>


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