dare to be naive (a reminder to myself of something I seem to be in danger of forgetting)

[sophiaserpentia]

I'm going to make an effort to wean myself out of the echo-chamber of political polemic.

This is going to be difficult, because polemics are so gripping and sticky. Plus, like everyone around me I've been trained to follow the well-worn grooves of popular political discourse. So I'll probably backslide from time to time -- it's hard to avoid getting angry sometimes -- but I want to type this up as a reminder to myself.

Another reason this will be difficult is that I am concerned with analyzing human power dynamics. Discourse and analysis is a way of chopping up experience in order to explicate certain patterns, with the effect that other aspects of reality are excluded. So ultimately every argument is a straw man.

Of late, I've been interested in the emotional wavelength of discourse. By this, I mean that certain strains of discourse seem to float atop the waves of unconscious flow of emotion throughout society. Particular keywords and phrases become triggers for specific kinds of feelings. One who is an astute manipulator can learn how to play or even design and install these emotional triggers in hir audience.

This makes polemic discourse dehumanizing in two ways. The first, is that we find ourselves responding to the emotional triggers in a speech or a text before we can respond to the intellectual content. So it becomes increasingly difficult to really hear what the other person is saying because the negative emotions triggered by their keywords echo inside the brain.

The second is due to the fact that our conscious mind has varying degrees of control over what we do and say. It is not uncommon for people to act in accord with the contours of human power dynamics without being aware of why they are doing so, or even give a good reason for doing it. Even people who have made a life out of examining race or gender politics find themselves perpetuating patterns to which they ideologically object. Polemic discourse is largely concerned with placing blame -- and when you blame someone for something they do not believe they have done (even if they have in fact done it but are unaware of doing so) they get indignant and become incapable of hearing what you are saying. So polemics degenerates into a shouting match where no one hears anyone else anymore.

So it may be more useful to examine human power dynamics through the lens of flows or unfoldings which occur through people rather than from people.

Comments

[metaphorge.livejournal.com]

Very very well said.