Affective (counter)publics as a critical concept: rethinking affective publics from the history of Chinese Americans in the Exclusion Era.

This article critically develops the concept of affective publics by situating it within critiques of Habermas's public sphere theory and examining it through the historical lens of Chinese American experiences during the Exclusion Era. It argues for expanding the concept beyond its common association with networked digital technologies to include pre-digital affective circulations, the role of affective counterpublics shaped by intersectional power dynamics, and the inherent ambiguity and fragility of affective (counter)publics. Using Chinese American diasporic networks and press as examples, the article highlights how affective publics and counterpublics are relational, shaped by race, gender, and power, and how they function both to reproduce and resist social inequalities. Ultimately, it proposes a human-centered, historically grounded, and critically nuanced understanding of affective (counter)publics as vital for analyzing the affective dimensions of politics, identity, and social change.