Imagens e contra-imagens do estado": considerações sobre a sociedade civil em Gramsci e Habermas

The theme of civil society has resonated significantly in the analysis of social science studies and has long been the center of public opinion, applied to a vast range of contexts, significances and political ideological connotations. Starting with such an unstable theoretical scenario, our research proposal scrutinized two civil society analysis traditions. Embodied by Antonio Gramsci and Jürgen Habermas, these politically conceptual differences are significantly divided into distinct interpretations of the relationship between the state and civil society. On one side, in Gramsci's work, we observe civil society as historically constituted through "molecular expansion of the state", organizing itself during its obligatory constitutive moment. On the other, Habermas shows us a civil society instituted from the structural differentiation process of society developed due to the contradiction existing between the different ways the state administration is organized, the economy and daily social interaction (in which it is found). As a consequence, civil society is no longer seen as a political arena and the hegemonic catalyst of the state, but as a social arrangement destined to increase the viability of the ethical and dialogical reconstruction of social life. It follows that the understanding of the distinctions between both models of civil society become crucial in the measure that they are divided in relation to the delineation of acting agents, fighting strategies, and to the objective of their actions.Despite the existence of analytical dissonance, we intend to outline the common points between both these civil society analysis traditions whose conflicting political action models lead us to a greater understanding of our contemporary political scene. This will be done starting with the systematization of both selected authors' principal categories, and through the introduction of the "contra-hegemonic public sphere" concept