Communicative excess and the liminal civil subject: techno-symbolic mediation of the civil sphere in Lima, Perú

Gauna A.; Palomino-Flores P. · American Journal of Cultural Sociology (2026) · DOI: 10.1057/s41290-026-00294-y

Resumen

This article addressed the subjectivation gap that Civil Sphere Theory (CST) has left unexamined: how individuals are formed as civil subjects, in this case through technological apparatuses. Drawing on 26 semi-structured interviews conducted in Lima, Peru, in 2023, and analyzed through a theoretically sensitized thematic approach, we ask what the smartphone—understood as an Agambenian apparatus of narration—does to the subjective foundations of civil life. The results show that it both extends the reach of civil life and unsettles the subjective conditions that sustain it, through the same acts and often at the same time. Four thematic blocks organize the findings. The first documents a new civil individualism alongside a dependency to the apparatus. The second traces how the amplification of voice paradoxically erodes epistemic authority. The third shows how civil binary codes (sincerity/calculation, trust/suspicion) resist the moral clarity the framework expects of them at some point. The fourth reveals a tension between citizens’ capacity to hold institutions accountable and the ritualized denunciation that depletes institutional legitimacy. From these findings we develop two concepts. Communicative excess as the condition in which the civil sphere’s communicative infrastructure is so saturated that effective institutionalization of discourse becomes structurally hard to achieve. The liminal civil subject describes the actor this produces, caught between autonomy and dependency, authenticity and cynicism, empowerment and alienation. We argue that this specific form is intensified by the prior institutional fragility of Global South civil spheres. © The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Limited 2026.

Instituciones: Universidad Peruana de Ciencias Aplicadas