|
that folk would invest positive affect from information that is symmetrical with their views and tend to exclude dissonance isn't exactly rocket science.
the claim is close to a "duh" point.
it is self-evident that there has to be a kind of affective dimension to information gathering--melanie klein called it "epistemophilia" which i think is a nice word so i write it down here. if there was no affective register like this, we would not be functional at all.
politics being a type of information about the world (mostly experience-distant information and ways of thinking about collective control in these contexts) it kinda follows.
but i dont think all political committments are therefore equivalent: there is considerable variation at the level of overarching ideological relation to dissonant information: a hypothetical trotskyiste might find all information that revolution is not about to break out everywhere under the heroic leadership of a particular trotskyiste organization problematic...an american conservative of the total hardline stripe would have an equivalent problem with information that indicated there were structural problems with the american economy, say.
both share a political disposition toward information that reinforces a sealing-off of sources---for the trot the notion of being surrounded by the bourgeois press, for the us hardline conservative, the notion of being-surrounded by the "liberal media"....[[btw this cuts in all kinds of directions...these are only examples]]
these are kinds of meta-investments, organizing committments that provide information sorting and selecting with its own charge. if your political viewpoint leads you to a kind of facile suspicion of all sources which do not operate from a viewpoint similar to your own, you are going to run into problems that a more open view will not. the problem with the more open view is that it requires work to read critically--self-enclosing views enable one to avoid that work.
you can link how the political subject is defined to this: for example if the center of your politics is a question of identity, then information which indicates threats to that identity--however these threats end up being construed--is going to be a problem for you. etc etc etc....
so it is self-evident that there is an affective register that plays out across political viewpoints. but it does not follow that therefore all political positions are identical. nor does this claim make "partisanship"--however that is defined--arbitrary---the claims is circular. obviously this is the case. nor does it follow that all types of political committments are equal--there are different politics of information that follow from different political positions.
so.....
__________________
a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear
it make you sick.
-kamau brathwaite
|