On Polarisation

Abstract

Polarisation has become an evermore existent word. Seemingly, the only word that is not polarising is the word “polarisation” itself, that is one thing we are surely all in unanimous agreement.  

Many people view such polarisation which vulnerably escalates the inextricably interlocked interlocutors’ subjectivities as an unproductive and unsolvable ground of ever-flaring tension. 

This paper, rather than claiming to provide one singular grand solution to this polarisation, offers a philosophical analysis of the ontology of polarisation. To do this, it extensively expounds on how polarisation can come to exist in the subject and be sustained, and what polarisation means vis-à-vis the subject. By doing this, this paper provides different dimensions of polarisation per the subject which will help us understand why polarisation has come to exist in the subject in the first place and what can be done to tackle and reduce such phenomena. This paper, thus, offers that polarisation is not an inexorable necessity - as many believe - but is a prejudicially manufactured event that can be de-escalated with the appropriate epistemological approaches. 

Manuscript 

Polarisation has an endless array of ontological possibilities. To begin with, an interpretation for something to be polarising is, for the interpretations of the pronounced thing to be practically maximally divergent. For example, the same term, object or phrase can have maximally antagonistic interpretations by the present subjects. The term “practically” here is utilised only to make the point that polarisation need not be an affair qua facts but instead, is about what manifests on-the-ground irrespective of the veracity of interpretations: one can be theoretically polarised about penguins, if one believes that it constitutes a satanic nuclear armageddon threat to the human species and another believes that it is the most lovely beatific angelic creature in the world in the best possible sense possible. 

Maximal divergence appears at this point to be a surface level thing on first inspection, a term prima facie merely meaning that the significations of a signifier/s for interpretative parties be maximally de facto antagonistic to each other. To understand how such an antagonistic interpretative discrepancy can arise, it is productive to first expound the psychological dynamics at play in terms of the Self and Other. 

For a state of polarisation to persist as polarisation, there must seemingly be the mutual assumption that the state of polarisation has to be the way it is. In fact, the two antagonistic parties seemingly must be mutual that any deescalation is undesirable and that there can be no alternative. Any deescalation here would be to exit polarisation itself: for one to recognise that deescalation is a priority is to exit the polaristic state of mind that the antagonistic polar-Other is absolutely wrong (e.g morally, ethically, epistemically, etc.,), it constitutes an Other to the narrative that deconstructs it which is allowed to introduce itself. This idea of deconstruction will be explored in depth as the paper gradually unfolds and develops. Polarisation par excellence, I propose, must be seen as a state to which there is no alternative, an absolute necessity. 

There probably are already many objections stemming from this simplistic category of polarisation. The solution would be to recognise that this is not about polarisation simpliciter where one is not maximally polarised and is simply performing a “naive” half-hearted polarisation; instead, it is to take polarisation itself to its logical end through its own principles: to be polarised absolutely and not find that to be a polarising (objectionable) state of affairs nor manner of being. 

Polarisation here is not a light stepping-in (to polarisation), but an unrecognized submergence where the Other to the polarised Self is not an unrecognized constant (a true alien Other) but instead a supposedly known enemy; in fact, the enemy. 

The possibility of liminality where one (whose own subjectivity is unrecognised) could be different is itself obstructed as to be open to an Other is itself the betrayal of its sustaining ontological principle, its sine qua non: the narrative of polarisation (viz. that which polarises) is natural. With the demolition of its sine qua non, the subject per the Symbolic auto-deconstructs itself and the possibility of communication comes to exist whose de jure requirement is the possibility of the existence of a common ground (or a maintainable one in actuality) from which a connective bridge could be built or issued:  perhaps we are not Evil and can be communicated with. If there is no such recognition, then there can only be a full-fledged war, for evil itself cannot be cured nor its sanity negotiated with but merely only eradicated.

Polarisation is not a “unique” phenomenon nor is it a betrayal or an aberration of the human subject as many might assume. To understand why, we must explore why we have a natural tendency to naturalise our way of being. Here are several reasons to introduce why:

• To maximize the sense of ontological security in its plethora of facets (e.g. intellectual, survival, self-identity)

• To prevent the possibility of seemingly circuitously - what is practically referred to as - “wasting energy”

• To simplify the hermeneutic landscape and consequently make us be capable of expending less energy (e.g. be more comfortable, peaceful and relaxed)

There are no clear-cut boundaries in this ontological landscape. To understand these relations holistically, I will present an analogy of the mole which will be pivotal for understanding the main arguments of this paper and will be furthermore, something that will form the foundation of this paper. Before going further, I will add the - perhaps silly but not not important - caveat that the mole in the analogy is a quasi-fictional mole intended purposefully to analogically illustrate philosophic points. 

If a mole has dug a singular linear tunnel, the easiest path forward (excuse my pun) for the mole is literally to continue along the same path - given that it is reasonably uninterrupted. It is the repetition of the pre-fixed automated affairs of “non-thinking” that is the most natural for the subject, the continuation of the unthought narrative. A la contra this naturalness, crawling backwards is cumbersome and irritating, to say the least. As the mole pedals backwards, everything that has never before been seen but merely realised (i.e. made real) by the mole becomes visible: the mole remarks “ah, all of this is what I was doing, I never knew”. The mole wakes up from its cumbersome non-thinking automation and realizes the possibility of alternatives: perhaps a path could have been dug an-Other way. The world of the mole and the landscape which exists for it could become unbelievably more complex, or perhaps, “meaningful”. Nonetheless, this is all difficult and is best ignored by the mole for its prejudicial predilection, the soporific calm vis-à-vis its subconscious state. 

The mole faces many ontological barriers. If the mole decides to start a new path, it must first ask the ontological question: why this over any other? If this new path has been pursued, it is difficult - the mole is not used to this angle or position of digging, never mind that there is no pre-built pathway where the mole feels as a whole (e.g half of its body may fall out of the new inchoate pathway); the subject appears to need an ontological readjustment. The mole feels odd. The important question is, why did this happen in the first place, why did the mole choose to do Otherwise?

There are many legitimate answers to this question; however, the most relevant and viable answer fundamentally is, through resistance. We will gradually explore why. 

It is only through resistance or perhaps la résistance that one comes to recognise oneself, where in turn, the subject’s nakedness isolates itself in its indeterminability. One can see here the parallel between the psychoanalytic picture of the infant’s yet-to-be Self who becomes to itself, a Self (a false Self vis-à-vis Lacan), an “I” after it encounters/realises an other as an Other. To put it another way, it is only by the Other “offering resistance” (Ruiz, Eros, 8) to oneself that “writing” (Eros, 9) - referring to the relations of pen and notepads - or any form of positive recognition can come to exist; if there was no resistance it would simply be pure “conquest and annihilation” (ibid.,). The mole digging itself through the world finds meaning only insofar as there is resistance (viz. digging itself is an act which integrally - definitionally - requires resistance, the mole is a resistance animal par excellence) but the recognition of that meaning can only appear insofar as it is not a mere “offering [of] resistance” (Eros, 8), but a resistance to the Self as all that is. 

Naturalisation here is not an “empty” unitary phenomenon, nor is it just a simple prejudice or a tendency of prejudice in people that prefer to be ignorant of others/Others that ought to be (on moral grounds) or even can just be “fixed”. Just like the mole would prefer to be “undisturbed”, the subject likewise would prefer to not assume that there is or could be an  Other (outside of the current way of being); everything had and has to be this way, there ontologically exists no alternative. 

The ontological phenomenon of naturalising is holistic. This is not to state that “there is no alternative” as Margaret Thatcher once famously coined. There is, in reality, no end to this analogy. Eventually, the metaphor of the analogy extricates itself out of it.

The framing via the analogy here is to merely show its dimensional substantiveness and its brief ontological dimensions. The nature of drives is in reality not uni-dimensional nor a unitary force that simply “drives”, for example, one could get “bored” of the same-old and look for alternatives in ways of being, similarly, one could be neurotically ambivalent or vacillating in an deliberately unhealthy way, or additionally, be in a pursuit of knowledge (a pursuit of “truth”) irrespective of what this might dangerously or uncomfortably entail for the subject; but this is not to say that the dimension of the drive per analogy is inoperative individually in all of these cases. I am stating that this ontological dimension is an ineluctable arrangement in our whole ontology that “emerges” in various degrees and qualities: we can all slip into it at times. 

For something to be natural in the sense articulated above is not a mere claim of determinism per se, rather it is the more substantial claim that there is a fixed necessity to everything that exists. The only way such a necessity can exist in the world is for everything to be an essentiality, that everything - in one sense or another - has a fixed essence. Perhaps there can be shifts in location and change in the general composition of things like a mosaic, but no fundamental change at the individual micro-level, for essences cannot - by definition - change or be altered. 

Essentialism makes the “why?” go away because it just is. It is the fantastical end-point of physics, for example, where the last constituent element is found and no further exploration nor justification is needed, it just simply “is”. Any opposition here to the essential “it” is not a mere opposition; there can be no genuine opposition as such. The opposition, if taken sincerely, amounts to an attack on the very subject itself, maliciously intending to break down the subject’s being in the world (not necessarily in Martin Heidegger’s sense).

There exists no basis for objections as only and solely itself is its very own condition; there can be no other thing absolutissime! Thus, essentialism ontologically blocks the possibility of communication. An objection is not an objection that can be dealt with vis-à-vis the Other that objects: there is no Other, such is a false existence, a disingenuous mendacious power play of sorts. Absolute resistance, thus, is the only path ontologically (where essentialism is omnipresent) where “modification that the irruption of otherness inescapably entails” (Eros, 18-19) upon the Self is absolutely blocked. 

There follows the only logical conclusion, the (ideal) absolute destruction of the Other, unless that is practically unaffordable or unrealisable. 

The Facilitation of Polarisation

Polarisation is multidimensional and produced through an infinite plurality of relations and neither is there a singular type of polarisation. The conception of polarisation thus far sketched, is of a particular kind, a polarisation that is polarisation par excellence: polarisation as itself, driven to its end via its own principles. It is a theoretical polarisation where only itself eo ipso exists, necessarily as a pure thing. This paper will explicate why this is so as it gradually progresses.  

The sketched concept is (necessarily) not in the form as it appears in the intersection of practical living where collective plethorae inevitably perpetually coincide and alter each other. It is not, for example, exactly identical to the mutually provoking “state of nature” per Hobbes of seemingly inexorable escalating tension. In such cases (and to make sure, there can be no such context-free cases), the rising of (potential) hostility takes place recognitionally through a dialectical Othering in real life: the mole is not by itself. The same likewise applies to the popular example of “polarising economic inequality” in political cartoons where the visible (and actual) wealth of the neighboring magnate increases proportionally to the decrease in one’s actual (and visible) wealth. These are not exactly cases of polarisation: it is not necessary that these by themselves are cases of polarisation. These may occasionally be polarising, but are not themselves, exactly cases of polarisation. Part of the reason why these are so is because they take place in “real” life where unmitigatedly, real identities come to the fore. The reason for why these are not exactly cases of polarisation will become clearer as we slowly progress throughout this paper until the final section - these examples are only presented here to be kept in mind as a useful compass throughout this paper. 

Polarisation par excellence, like the logic of the mole, is a linear trajectory that maximises itself. It is driven and is in the logical domain of “pure” drive only insofar as there is no recognition per the Symbolic, for the domain of language or the logic within and of that system, is necessarily dialectical: to know something by bringing it into the field of language is to do it via a (relevant) Other, for example, it would be impossible to know x if one has never seen or experienced not-x, one would notice x but never “know” x.

The domain of identities (e.g., words, concepts, thoughts, etc.,) cannot be logically linear - qua identities - as identity can only be founded on difference/s. Words are not isolated things which become or are full in themselves (like essences), to the contrary, words gain their meaningful existence in virtue of being differentiated from other “things” in experience, for which a linguistic experience and understanding of the world is essential. The meaning of words are relational, not independent. This means that every time one speaks or thinks anew (e.g. utters a new different sentence or an idea), the whole “chain of signifiers” (as Lacan famously termed it) shifts and alters. Absolute polarisation is a theoretical construct that depends on the absolute ossification of this chain, a practical impossibility. 

Maintaining the chain of polarisation where the (Symbolic) “world” is impossibly frozen is to not enter into language except to (impossibly) reiterate the same signifiers. Such an (impossible) model of being means in reality, the complete absence of existence; it is impossible to absolutely block change. The epistemic structure of language is hostile to an essentialist worldview.

It can now be stated:

For polarisation par excellence to be facilitated, the subject must be extricated from language. 

By the italicisation of “language”, it is suggested that words rather than maintaining their abstract qualities as being shiftable and alterable become natural concrete things, full in themselves; in this world, a word can mean no Other (thing). 

The neuroticising possibility of difference where perhaps a word can mean Other-wise, and the concomitant ontological uncertainty vanishes away; in its stead, we see mere action, or more accurately, reaction. In this psychotic subject par excellence, there is no communication because everything is naturally concretised: there can be no repression nor any space for an Other, the essence ipso facto fills “itself” fully and absolutely; the possibility of different communication is “foreclosed”. 

The essence of the extrication from language requires thus the naturalisation of words where the drive can smoothly flow through without interruption (viz. an Other) in its singular (Symbolic) drivenness. There can be no Other in the channel à la mole. 

It is the singular narrative on a deliberately prejudicial channel that facilitates and itself does the active channeling of the singularity; in fact, it is like the mole that produces, sketches, maps, and determines (i.e. realises) the possible determinations of the Self, if it could do it - somehow magically - without itself doing any of the ideal work. In this sense, the relative passivity of watching and listening to channels, whether it be talk radio or “talking heads” on television, prejudicially does the difficult resistive work of terrain-drilling which in reality oftentimes reveals Other possibilities: the reality of self-digging is dirty, it reveals all sorts of difficulties and unexpected hurdles which perturbs the Self. Without prejudicially singularising channels which deliberately avoids the necessity and possibility of self-digging, this perturbation of the Self and with it, the necessity to “think for yourself” - as it is often colloquially referred to - emerges, and with this, the recognition of the Self through the limit qua the Other and border of the, so-far, Self. In such events, there can remain no more space for naturalisations and essences at the point of contact through the inevitable deconstruction of the Self (viz. all collisions deconstruct the collided object in one way or another unless it is itself an unbreakable singularity, an essence). 

A great portion of media is deliberately designed in this way, for it to be a soporific pre-judicial entertainment where one neither needs to think nor recognise; it is not an uncommon occurrence to see supposed unbiased or the famous appellation “objective” so-called “News” blasted on in old day care homes designed for relaxation and entertainment. Such media are the prejudicial extensions of the ontic philosophies (but more accurately, the ontologies as essences) of the Self. 

Only a very few popular political media sources, proportionally speaking, entertain the evermore necessary and uncomfortable duality (at least) of perspectives, an Other to the narrative. When was the last time we saw a media source that was authentically structured for and in the form of debates? Perhaps capitalism does not render itself possible to this - an argument indeed, for the public ownership of media. If the media is primarily entertainment, who would bother making it profitable or at the least, sustainable? 

To the degree to which the real world can facilitate such smoothness, an absolute echo chamber of silky smoothness where one never wakes up, polarisation will be a common theme that seemingly endlessly exacerbates itself.

Polarisation and the Self’s Soporific Facilitation through Media

Vis-à-vis the media, a practical solution of sorts has been provided: 

To reduce the silky smoothness of channels and allow possibilities for perturbation that shake, alter and deconstruct the subject, which places the subject in a vulnerable naked indeterminacy where the only way out is to “think for oneself” (i.e. make self-determinations rather than mere Self-determinations). 

Such an act is only a potential start to the brutal merciless complexification of the world, not a peaceful escape from the uncomfortable indeterminacy and vulnerability that difference provokes. 

To say that the media is primarily responsible for this polarisation is not to, however, say that the possibilities for communication a la contra polarisation rests solely in transforming or resisting anaesthetising media - of which itself there are many different legitimate approaches. There can be no such ceterus paribus approaches.

The specific approach to reducing polarisation by discontinuing the soporific “smoothness” of prejudicial media is an approach based on the analysis of drive-formation qua Self. This approach vis-à-vis the analogy of the mole, however, problematically makes it appear (though materially untrue) that the creation of an-Other pathway leaves the previous path fully intact, identical to what it always was; this is incorrect. The entry into or the partaking in an-Other path itself changes all paths prior to it. It is not merely that the mole sees differently from its current position (that those paths appear differently), it is that any fundamental change (as Other) in the underground changes the conditions, qualities, and structure of all that is, per the underground. Applied per the mole, the mole creating new Other paths enriches the contents of the underground itself more through aeration, soil-mixing and soil-drainage, and helps the mole become healthier, than if there was just to be a singular non-Othered path. In this way, the discontinuation of smoothness also necessarily changes all that is along with all that was.

When the mole’s unrecognised smoothness comes into a retrospective recognition as it-used-to-be-so-smooth, the mole’s very path itself necessarily becomes altered and restructured. The unrecognised smoothness which used to be a “non-variable” (in the equation) now becomes an explicit variable in the equation, an obstacle of sorts needing to be taken into account, changing the formula and its consequent result for the being of the subject.

The disturbance of the mole’s soporific smoothness is not a disturbance ex nihilo; the act of disturbance is brought into existence as disturbance only insofar as it is an Other to all that is, the ossified Self. Importantly, this disturbance is not a neutral affair in any sense: it is not the mere slowing down of the train, so to put it. It is a holistic ontological moment that leads to and itself is of transformation; the Other transforms the Self through “their mutual gazing” (Eros, 22). The Self becomes a variable, a seeming obstacle in the world of all that is. The Self becomes a variable that can, in principle, be imagined to be without, a non-necessity; the naturalistic “drive” facilitating the essentialist worldview becomes just a possibility among others.

With the disturbance of the mole, there is a synchronous transformation of all that is, but furthermore, with this, there is the recognition, a stoppage, in the unrecognised all-that-could-be as all-that-was-supposed-to-be qua nature. With the perpetual perturbation of the drive (e.g. misdirecting, “stopping”, reducing, etc.,), the subject eventually becomes conscious of the drive itself that conditions, structures and makes the Symbolic universe of the subject: these neurotic experiences bring forth the awareness of the Symbolic “misfiring” of the drive where an Other cannot be admitted but is frequently mistakenly quasi-admitted (brought forth into consciousness) and thus questions the positivity of the seemingly dangerous maximisation of the drive.

With these experiences, the necessity of one’s worldview breaks down as polarisation itself becomes recognised for what it is itself in and through its true ontological domain: a maximisation of the drive’s uninhibited and unmitigated expression with the (necessarily) myopic unbOthered Self as its unquestioned constitutive ground. 

Polarisation can now only sustain itself if it becomes necessary in reality under its grinding brutal practicality upon the subject where mere survivalist action is mandated. The capitalist motto such as “time is money” or the idea of hustle culture where one is compelled to endlessly urgently work themself contributes to polarisation. Liberation here for these capitalist subjects appears as cases of unnecessary oppression.

In order to prevent the subject from falling into the naturalised rut of thinking, the subject must be left alone from the immediacy of the practical world which oftentimes affords no creative latitude: space must be given to the subject to allow an authentic reconfiguration of possibilities.

Polarisation and the Perfect Infant

Polarisation thus far, was deemed the maximisation of the myopic Self’s prejudice where the Other becomes “evil”. We can reiterate that theme to see what it - eventually - practically entails:

Polarisation requires an enemy to be facilitated (viz. not self-discovered) at an epistemic- ontological distance, not a mere enemy but an enemy absolutissime. 

Polarisation does not take place in a vacuum. The drive cannot be a pure silky smoothness where the drive flows through without resistance; there can be no pure passing-through. If there is absolutely no resistance, there is no Other, no difference, at all (e.g. there is nothing for the mole to dig); in this “world”, there can be no Self as there is no Other. Life itself disappears along with experience.

This pure unrecognised passing-through cannot happen as if there is a pure passing-through (a boundaryless event), it will be a paradoxical and impossible travel through what already was. The active act of travelling itself will be a - contradictorily - inactive act itself. Polarisation is, however, not a return to a state of pure nothing, it is neither a simple “return to death” nor a desire to do so. 

Polarisation is de facto the “psychotic” exclusion of the Other where the infant is incapable of having a “discourse of the Other”.

In Simone de Beauvoir’s (translated) own words interpreting Hegel, “the subject posits itself only in opposition; it asserts itself as the essential and sets up the other as inessential, as the object” (De Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 27). This is the “natural” state of affairs per language (vis-à-vis Lacan). Maturing involves understanding that perhaps the Other can be correct and the Self, perhaps not so, or at the least, vastly imperfect.

Polarisation is the narcissistic infantile aggrandisement of the Self since time immemorial, it is the smooth (as affordable and maintainable in reality) narcissistic growth (a necessarily facilitated one) that affirms the Self positively and rejects the Other as an absolute negativity. 

Just like how “the categories masculine and feminine appear as symmetrical in a formal way on town hall records or identification papers” (The Second Sex, 25) whereas in reality, the woman is regarded as “the Other” (The Second Sex, 26), “Adam’s ‘supernumerary’ bone” (The Second Sex, 25); St. Augustine believed “Evil … has no substance at all; for if it were a substance, it would be good” (Upenn Augustine: Confessions, Chapter. XII), such that for him “there is no such thing as evil” (Augustine: Confessions, Chapter. XIII). Evil, for St. Augustine is a privation, a lack of substance, a lack of perfection. 

In these conceptions, we get to find the binary of Other and Self at play (in one level of analysis or another), not as difference, but as the Other as a lack of the Self, itself a perfection (or a standard of perfection), immaculateness itself with (definitionally) no lack/Lack (per Lacan). In particular, the theistic conception of God (popular in the medieval periods) as perfection is the philosophical subconscious articulation of the prejudicial psychological relation of Self and Other rather than an actual analysis of reality (e.g. psychology, hermeneutics, sociology, etc.,).

Polarisation taken to the ends of its own principles, is necessarily such a polarisation. It is a polarisation that is - necessarily - omnipresent, a polarisation that is polarisation par excellence. In this polarisation, equality of Others in any way in one’s experience is blocked as it breaks down polarisation, and importantly, this equality is not merely about commonalities or similarities simpliciter, as Davis suggests; this equality itself is an introduction as an Other to the Self-narrative of the (ideally imagined) absolutely perfect Self and Other. 

Absolute polarisation is thus a fiction (though it may sometimes “appear” behaviorally real in the form of violence) that can only be proximally created and maintained by a hierarchical mediatic system where the Other must be caricatured at an epistemic-ontological distance where self-thinking does not reach. This leaves the possibility of communication, in principle, always open. 

To further explore and expand on this theme of the infantilised Self and the relation between mediatic reality and unmediated reality, we must now go into the land of practical confrontation where polarisation can dismantle itself. 

The Facilitated World’s Encounter with the Non-Facilitated World

Contemporary polarisation is chiefly the result of artificially prejudicially manufactured media spaces; however, the solution to this polarisation does not remain merely in the mediatic space. The media presents a particular - deliberately and necessarily limited - picture of reality and thus carves out a particular way of being for the subject, but unless mediatic space (e.g. virtual reality) is omnipresent, that if it is even infinitely extendable, then mediatic space cannot fully cover unmediated (or imperfectly mediated) reality nor absolutely prevent the subject from entering into it: 

mediatic space can be deconstructed through the subject’s contact with unmediated reality.

Unmediated reality, here, is not the notion that there is a part of reality where the media does not have the effect of rose-tinted glasses; in fact, the principle above would itself be a contradiction with that notion. It is merely the claim that there is a part of reality that is capable of being a proper ground for testing the soundness of the subject’s Symbolic logic. To put it another way, it is a part of reality, a terrain of experience, where the mediatically created worldview and the subject’s locus in it encounters the unmediated reality that it supposedly knows. To understand this encounter and the potential for depolarisation therefrom, a brief picture of Daryl Davis, an incredible “individual” (true to the word “individual”), will be sketched. 

Davis is an African American jazz musician born in Chicago in 1958, who throughout the 80’s - after his bachelor degree in music from Howard University in 1980 - and well into the 21st century, managed to personally convert over 200 official Ku Klux Klan members, including the “Grand Dragon Robert Kelly” (Duwe, Daryl Davis: The Black Musician Who Converts Ku Klux Klan Members) himself. He did this, seemingly miraculously (especially given our current context), by personally associating and meeting with them, or as Dwane Brown (How One Man Convinced 200 Ku Klux Klan Members to Give Up Their Robes) put it, “by simply sitting down and having dinner with [them]”. Most notably, he did not meet these (explicitly known) KKK members in any official capacity nor with any pretense of security or, so to speak, moral superiority or emotional outrage. Davis met them in his plain capacity as a black-skinned African American “full time [jazz] musician” (Davis, Klan We Talk), naked in his humanity, looking to find an answer to his age-old question ever since his age of 10: “how can you hate me when you do not even know me?” (ibid.,).

When Davis was 10 years old, living in Massachusetts, he attended a “club scout” (ibid.,) march from his school. While marching, what was supposed to be a proud and peaceful march of solidarity turned upside down; little Daryl, an innocent small vulnerable black kid standing out amongst the white kids in the march suddenly “began getting hit with bottles … rocks and debris from the street” (ibid.,) by unknown white “spectators” (ibid.,), and Daryl was “the only scout getting hit” (ibid.,). Unaware of racism at that age, Davis went back home and to his utter shock, learnt from his parents that all that violence directed at him was merely due to his skin pigmentation. This experience irreparably changed him, as he remarked, “studying race relations became my obsession” (ibid.,): “how can you hate me when you do not even know me?” (ibid.,). 

Many would notice that this concisely formulated question by Davis himself is an object of direct inquiry in this paper. What Davis did is he compelled the phantasmagoria, the manufactured narrative via the white cultural silos, to be brought forth into the terrain of reality where its veracity, as a practical matter of fact, is compelled to be tested to at least some degree, and consequently necessarily deconstructed: there can be no perfect narrative, a perfect immaculate objective picture of reality, an essence as is. 

Davis believed that “ignorance” (as he reiterates ad infinitum) is responsible for this, because:

“ignorance breeds fear; if you do not keep that fear in check, that fear, in turn, will breed hatred, because we hate those things that frighten us; if you do not keep that hatred in check, that hatred, in turn, will breed destruction” (ibid.,) 

Along the same line, in another interview, he also states “Hate stems … from fear, for fear of the unknown” (ibid.,). 

It appears, for Davis, that “ignorance” is mainly problematic because whatever we do not know can be anything; to utilise Lacan, the unknown can be traumatic vis-à-vis the Real (as that which escapes the Symbolic, the terrain of knowledge) that can break down the subject of the Symbolic. The fear of the unknown that challenges the subject’s (split) being in the Symbolic, causes us to reject it absolutely: the Real “cannot” exist. Davis gets one crucial element of analysis wrong. There is no “ignorance” simpliciter, ignorance neutrissimum, nor ignorance absolutum in language vis-à-vis Lacan. 

What is at play for essentialist thinking of white nationalism with the radical (Black) Other is not ignorance simpliciter, to the contrary, it is a maximally prejudicially fabricated Other against the Self which is falsely claimed or “believed” to be “known”: a maliciously deliberately constructed Other which is constructed to be “evil”. To put it more specifically, the problem is the epistemically false belief that one knows x when one simply does not. Actual ignorance here functions as an aperture which assists the possibility of pre-judicial propaganda due to the ontological Otherness that exists as the non-white (viz. non-self) Other. Ignorance does not itself do the primary work, as Davis appears to claim, but primarily serves as an assistive function in this particular case. There needs to be more work. 

Davis called himself a “barrier breaker”, and to break down barriers, one must “Always keep the lines of communication open with your enemies” (Davis, You never know when an opportunity might arise to catalyze change) because “When two enemies are talking, they are not fighting”. Davis furthermore argued that the fundamental act of talking is de-escalating because it builds “commonalities”: it helps recognise commonalities and similarities between and of the interlocutors.  One is likely to see this kind of language as one that is couched in humanism. Sadly, humanism has been - quite understandably - guilty of underestimating differences between humans due to the umbrella-like category of “human” which de facto unifies as One. It is important to remember once again that the building of commonalities, like the notion of equality in the previous section, does not take place in a neutral non-context. 

Communication between subjects who are de facto enemies breaks down polarisation for an unfathomable complexities of reasons. Building bridges and recognizing contentual commonalities is without a doubt, a part of the equation, but not of specific value for this paper. I will here specifically deal with polarisation that is epistemically false and false because of prejudice and being pre-judicial (via the Self), where direct communication breaks down the possibility of illusory essentialism. 

To take an example, just like exploring the world itself in the form of the furthest atomic constituents of material existence, the further one can perceive the reality and complexity of it, it shows itself not as an independent isolated object (viz. as an essence) nor does it make sense for it just so simply be. Furthermore, in all past cases, the further one could see and investigate, the more one could find reasons that could not be explicitly nor clearly found before. It appears that there must always be a reason for something (the “principle of sufficient reason”); to assume essentialism, is to reject the possibility, or perhaps more specifically, necessity, of a further exploration, requiring simultaneously the assumption of an omniscient immaculate subject, an essence as such. 

Direct communication breaks down this fixed subject as essence through the inexorable bombardment of “too much”. Such a “too much” provokes the subject in its fixed caricature of prejudice and pre-judiciousness through the liminality of what already “exists”: there is no pre-fixed operative protocol to “think” that can sufficiently work in this reality. It compels the subject to (by definition) think for oneself if one wants to remain in an authentic relationship to reality (which they falsely believed they previously were in). One can still be a broken automaton of a puppet, repeating the same lines in a neurotic fashion, but such a mode of being is not sustainable.

When the subject is provoked in the liminalities through direct communication as such, the limits, the borders and boundaries loosen up through the bombardment of too much Otherness. The essences simply are utterly inadequate and incapable of providing (explanatory) power, they break down in the face of reality: there must be more … much more that explains!

  What was ossified becomes unfixed and malleable, allowing the possibility of new information to be integrated. In this vulnerable journey, nobody can hold the subject’s hand through its entirety; only the subject themself can brave through it, compelling self-integrity and resistance against the battalion of Others that threatens to destroy the Self (viz. false-Self). For the subject to healthily survive, the subject must travel themself through an ineluctable perpetuity of trial and error, articulating themself simultaneously - in whatever degree possible - a comparatively more veridical conception of the Self and Other. There can be no hiding from this, for everything that is repressed shows up as repression is necessarily “repression of a truth” (Interview with Jacques Lacan): the truth itself will speak through the subject whether it is unbearable or not in one fashion or another. There can be no absolute repression that keeps the subject healthy as a detached entity from the world (of experience).  

Breaking down barriers per Davis, is not a pure breaking down (viz. the breaking down of communication-resistant barriers) where once the “barriers” are broken, our common naked “humanity” meets each other and antipathy and hostility seemingly magically dissolves. This breaking down of barriers, is not the mere breaking down of resistance to communication (for evil must not be communicated with but only - ideally - exterminated); instead, it is the reality, the truth, of this Other who is not a mere enemy nor merely “a” enemy”, but, “the” Enemy that compels the false-Self to be broken down (viz. deconstructed) and reconstructed. It is the breaking down of all that is, for the subject. 

For this breaking down of barriers to be possible, “the lines of communication [must be] open with your enemies” qua polarisation. This is because such an act retains the possibility of allowing the insulated Self that was prejudicially manufactured, to be in contact with reality. To the degree to which the development of technology can insulate us from reality, to provide a soporific entertainment where we all pleasurably sleepwalk through life, is the degree to which this world is, perhaps, civilisationally unsustainable, unless we can create separate “worlds” (however this may be - seemingly impossibly - done).

To further explore the ontology of mediatic space and its relationship to the possible epistemic areas of deconstructive contact, we must now examine the popular assumption about the mutuality of polarisation (that both parties are responsible for increasing hostilities), as it will provide insightful sources for further analysis. 

Polarisation Polarises, Polarising the non-Polarised

In popular socio-political discourse, polarisation is frequently seen as an immutable contemporary fact of wider social intercourse. At the same time, it is also viewed as an ineluctable emergence whose presence, responsibly lies in the inextricable discourse that flows out from the polarising inter-locked interlocutors. It appears in such cases that there is no way out but pure accelerationism until both lay there naked post-nuclear. 

Prima facie, the interlocutors seem equally responsible for this violent feat. At second glance, however, there appears to be something larger than them that is responsible for this seemingly inexorable rupture. They are using words to communicate but they are not really communicating: words serve as a recognisable pretense for a false communication hellbent on annihilation; the proper coordinates have been hit and the enemy has been properly and judiciously located through the “right questions”, all that is left is the ammunition and their exit. 

The preceding picture frames the event as a bi-partisan affair where both parties are equally responsible in equal manners for nuclearisation; however, just because there is an equal bodied representation in the physical arena of communication, it does not ipso facto follow that both are equally responsible for it. To see why, let us briefly return to Davis. 

The particular polarisation of play for Davis is white nationalism or more accurately white-everythingism where the nation is the limit of the practical discourse (where everything not-Self as an Other bad nation - that ought to be enslaved - is where those Other ought to belong, “hell on Earth”). This polarisation is where the black skin as an essence a la contra the white skin as an contrary unrecognized natural non-thing (where the white skin plays the role of an essence) polarises the “white” subject through its supposed “annihilation”. 

The black skinned subject does not view the white skinned subject in a like manner. Polarisation here is an ideally (i.e. as ideas) and philosophically one-sided affair. Polarisation is always present, perhaps not noticeable or visible as the white-skinned subject who has gone through polarisation makes the world “in his own image” where blackness is removed. The world-making itself is the making of polarisation for the Self-ish (or more accurately, of Self-ism) “white” subject. The black-skinned subject involuntarily enters the whitened world. The physical encounter of the “Black” subject where the skin pigmentation serves as the signifier is where the signified world (viz. the Symbolic) “collides” in its totality. The polarisation here is where polarisation shows itself in its visibility. And, most importantly, given that the essences as signifiers are highly visible (to say the least) in this case of polarisation, polarisation shows itself in the material sphere evermore as an “obvious thing”.

One clear principle that we can gain from this brief analysis of polarisation vis-à-vis skin pigmentation as the primarily visible signifier, is that the Other and Self subjects’ becoming polarised is not necessarily a mutual affair; nonetheless, polarisation polarises the Other: if weapons start being raised, whether in verbal (e.g. demonisation/dehumanisation) or material form or fashion, the atmosphere itself polarises irrespective of the Other, and compels the Other to defensively take up hostility-promoting arms (which are initially intentionally taken up as a defensive measure). 

This is why for polarisation to be most effective (i.e. for it to lead itself to its own conclusions), the weapons must be as extensive (e.g. size and capability) as possible. The longer the epistemic-ontological distance between the Self and the Other is facilitated by the weapon per the Self, the easier it is (in all of its dimensions) for the Self to annihilate the Other. The increasing of this epistemic-ontological distance can be facilitated in a number of ways, here are just a few:

• increasing “soporific” mediatic space where there is a complete non-existence of any Other that truly Others the Self, but a merely facilitated one.

• increasing hierarchical sectorised bureaucratic communication where concrete reality gets severely diluted and prejudicially narrowed through its rationality of expeditious information processing.

• increasing bubbled physical and social environments or spaces of the Self; likewise, limiting spaces of Others where they can exist or be a certain way. 

A relevant example of the malicious limiting of the space of Others would be the state of African slaves (civilians shackled and forced at gun-point and compelled onto destitute abhorrent social-Darwinist  slave-ships) in the pre-civil war period of the United States of America. The Others were falsely manufactured through the conditions of slavery: the slaves were maliciously assigned and given tremendously limited spaces for any type of endeavour that would allow them to be different to their manufactured realities. They were also manufactured to be a false Other vis-à-vis the signifier “black-skin” but at the same time, they were mostly only visible to the Self (the white slave-owner) when they were performing their fundamentally limiting slave-roles: the Otherness became a (reified) fact. The Other, in their honest capacity in the privacy of their confines were most often, ignored. 

What all of these three methods of facilitating epistemic-ontological distances do is create an epistemic distance between the radically Othered subject and the Self.  

Polarisation does not require the Other, necessarily; the manufactured epistemic-ontological distance can do the job. Polarisation can be facilitated if polarisation is from the start, a mutual affair, but this is not generally the case. A la contra the common belief that polarisation is the fault of all guilty parties involved, polarisation itself has a conservative bias. Here is why. 

When an infant is born and brought forth within reality (perhaps as the “reality principle” of Sigmund Freud might suppose), the infant becomes severely vulnerable: it is slowly and unbearably anxiety generating. The whole world at times appears as an alien enterprise where one’s infantile omnipotence vanished a long time ago; as Freud might put it: the warm “oceanic feeling” (Civilization and its Discontents, 2) washes away from the subject leaving oneself cold, isolated and vulnerable. Vis-à-vis Melanie Klein, the subject who feels unbearably vulnerable and powerless might eo ipso perceive the world to be a potentially violent persecutory place; furthermore, if this “persecutory fear” (Envy and gratitude and other works 1946-1963, 15) continues to be “too strong” (ibid.,), the subject cannot afford to clearly (substantively) think but engage perpetually in idealistic splitting. For the subject, everything that could constitute or be an Other, something different which I have no power over in any sense (e.g. epistemic) or is antithetical to my strength or power is regarded a priori “bad”, whether this be an external or internal limitation of mine. Everything that is not my Self - which must be protected against omnipresent persecuting enemies (i.e. Others) - must be destroyed as it is simply, “bad/evil”. The Self here becomes (identificatorily) a pure goodness (with the extrication of all that is “bad/evil” from the prior Self) that must be unconditionally defended. 

The important part for Klein is that this state of the subject, which she terms the “paranoid schizoid position”, is never something we irreversibly or irretrievably grow out of; we all - sometimes quite veritably - return back to it in varying degrees during our moments of vulnerability: the position constitutes an ineluctable ontological foundation.

With proper facilitation and assistance, the subject can grow beyond this myopic false-Self and include Others that were once excluded, edifying and strengthening the subject in all the best ways possible (e.g., epistemically, intellectually, socially, etc.,). Whereas one was before focused on the Self’s surface-level skin pigmentation as the signifier, now the fixation of the Self qua the white skin has been “surpassed”; likewise, the fixation on one’s own family, ethnic group, or nation as the Self can be moved past to include Other social relations, cultures, and nations. All of these necessarily require one to go beyond what already is.

This is where the epistemic difference between conservatism and progressivism as subjective states shows themselves:

Progressivism, by its nature as a state of subjectivity that tries to progress beyond what already is, is substantially more likely to run into the necessity of self-thinking as the soporific linearity (of the drive) - qua the Self - perpetually ends and gets interrupted.

A person who is more conservative in temperament, personality or experience is less likely to have entered into or encountered this domain of self-thinking that uncomfortably ruptures the - given for granted - ontological safety/veracity of the Self.

Nonetheless, none of these progressive or conservative subjectivities exist in a supposed “objective” vacuum: signifiers do not exist context-independent for “there is nothing outside the text” as Jacques Derrida once famously put it. To the contrary, we all in the occidental world exist - more or less - in a patriarchal context.

Being conservative in the contemporary patriarchal context is to be particularly inclined to follow an authoritarian, or more accurately, “strong man” style of leadership where one ought to not self-think (i.e. think “independently”) or colloquially put, “think for oneself”, but follow and be obedient and subservient to the masculine leader’s command and directives and in turn, adopt His way of thinking as long He shows the “correct” and appropriate series of - not necessarily epistemically relevant - masculine attributes. The soldier in the military march need not to think but merely automatically perform the benevolent compulsion.

Progressive individuals, in contrast to this, are less likely to be authoritarian minded and are likely to be more non-conformist. In being so, they are more likely to be curious about the specific “contents of the book, than its cover”. This is not to say that progressive people, needless to say, are necessarily self-thinking, this is a ludicrous claim. They can, like the conservatively minded, easily follow ideological lines, if they are given their appropriate soporific media. 

It is in the senses of these briefly portrayed states that polarisation is not a mutual affair but chiefly an affair of those who in conservative fashion resist any types of change or differences. Those who self-think or be progressive in epistemic approach, do not find the myopically limited Selves of the conservative epistemic approach polarising; but, conservatives do find the differences polarising.

We can understand now that if we take the definition of polarisation as one of mere increasing aggressive hostility - as many do - this is an inaccurate decision. There is hostility from progressives directed against conservatism in the manner of progressives being against a regressive way of thinking (e.g. thinking in a religious fashion) in contrast to theirs (e.g. enlightenment rationality). Nonetheless, this hostility is not a case of polarisation because it is understandable: polarisation par excellence is the inability to communicate and the necessity to exterminate vis-à-vis the ossified essences of Self and Other. The reverse does not hold true because the essence per the signifier “religious” has been ossified and fixed and any signifier that is operative as or in fact is, a negative prefix to it is “sinful” (i.e. evil). What does cause polarisation is, however, the raising of weapons when communication becomes absolutely blocked. What this does is it brings polarisation to a new domain where the abstract (viz. signifier) is embodied. This makes it a different kind of polarisation where one’s life is non-negotiable.

All of this provides for a prima facie shocking twist in our understanding of polarisation:

non-violent mass protests with a diverse array of protest signs (aimed against a single 

phenomenon) are depolarising.

This might be quite a surprise for many, and quite understandably so. This is because many of us misconstrue the event of public mass protests with its contextual climate of polarisation: public mass protests are viewed as part of its ineluctable equation leading itself to its end. Furthermore, some find the diversity of signs undesirable as - they believe - it leads to a weaker diluted form of protest where the message is not “driven home”. Both beliefs are inaccurate, and we will soon see why, based on what has already been articulated. 

Public non-violent mass protests, in contrast to polarisation, bring forth reality to the subjects in their soporific, fortified castles of solitude (Self) rather than epistemically sheltering them from it; to bring back a familiar analogy of mine, such protests rock and disturb the pleasurably sleepwalking infantile mole. It inexorably confronts them in an unfamiliar soporific context where no immediate automatic reflex is affordable (i.e. legitimate). 

This is also why the diversity of signs in a civil mass protest is crucial and indispensable as it does not allow a single mediatically manufactured false-response to shield them from reality which will allow them to consequently register the civil protest as mere (malicious) violence. The diversity of signs properly makes explicit unarticulated reality to the degree to which there is a broad representation of it.

Public non-violent mass protests also add another crucial dimension. They - through their non-violence - show themselves in their vulnerable humanity and dispel the prejudicial myth of being Enemies. This is not to deny the paradox of civil mass protests where the degree to which the protests are compelled to be visible is pro tanto dangerous to the protested who are evermore likely to view the protests as executory violence; the traumatic threat of radical deconstruction is not desirable. This is however not to say that such violence is ipso facto de jure impermissible. It is important to remember that mass protests are indeed violent, violent in the philosophical sense of the word, but, justifiably violent against an unjustifiably violent system. Needless to say, a contextually-minded approach must always be taken.

If we briefly look back at Martin Luther King Junior’s civil disobedience movements, a great portion of the physically violent resistance against them on public streets took place through - deliberately - violent police-dogs released by the police and water cannons by the fire departments. One can see these as different cases of creating epistemic distance between the insulated Self and the Other which is vulnerably being obstructed by civil mass protests: for example, the dogs themselves allow epistemic distance as well as the official job position, “police” which technically fights against - illegal - crime.

In this paper, we have fundamentally proposed two approaches to polarisation that can help combat the seeming inevitably of polarisation. First, is the so-called balanced media approach. Second, is civil public mass protests (with a diverse array of signs). The second is the main alternative that remains if the media landscape is legally, politically, or socially untenable - presumably, the democratic political alternative of voting is not viable if the media is totally subsumed by propagandistic malicious Self(ism) media. Nonetheless, it is crucial to remember that the second approach of civil mass protests is not a viable long-term solution due to their systemic impermanence (viz. untenability). 

Underpinning the philosophy of polarisation in this paper is the conviction that polarisation is not a neutral unknowing, for example, as claimed by Davis where ignorance is seemingly just ignorance simpliciter, but to the contrary, polarisation is about a soporifically (prejudicially) manufactured false knowledge of an Other that can be broken down by a proper experience of reality. Most importantly, this view has not been posited in thin air but through extensive articulation of the ontological dynamics per the subject in polarisation par excellence (i.e. pure polarisation) where essentialism reins qua the infantile Self and Other where any deconstruction becomes - by ontological definition - an impossibility. 

This approach, coined polarisation par excellence, that has been expounded is of valuable and indispensable use to further analyses of different types of polarisation which rest outside of the specific ambits that have been articulated in this paper; for example, these could be applied to economic inequality as polarisation, gender differences (e.g. transgender vs cisgender) as polarisation, and much more. Each application, in my estimation, will prove fruitful if done with proper care. 

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