Mediatization, polarization, and intolerance (between environments, media, and circulation)

Polarization as a structure of intolerance (a communicational issue) 291 disappears. The rupture is the cessation of the communication process 4 . The rupture, in itself, insofar as it simply would make cease the work of articulation by removing opposites, would no longer characterize a polarized situation. If the type of urgency, objective or strategy was no longer a dimension of debate, the distance between both pole participants would also eliminate the axis of difference. But a characteristic of polarization, in ad- dition to the growing unfeasibility of interactions that makes some adjustment between differences, is the impossibility of re- moving the “coexistence” between opposites. On certain issues in the social sphere, both sides have something to say, some per- spective to defend in a space of action that they cannot escape. This interaction, thus structured , is what justifies the term “polarizing”. For this very reason, polarization is structur- ing: the actions, propositions, behavior, often with those hatred characteristics mentioned above, are not simply emotional oc- currences of intense disagreement - they are structured and driven by this double and contradictory condition of partici- pants (as individuals or as collectivities formed by such a per- spective) in a situation of inevitable interaction, which do not articulate their differences and refuse mutual recognition. They are at the same time in a rupture and cannot stop interacting . With that, the polarizing code of differences becomes a kind of super code, which equalizes all other codes present, making them unimportant, and imposes itself as if it were full and sufficient, dispensing with any interpretive reflection - in - cluding those that would be required by the facts. What I char- acterize as “super code”, in my communicational perspective, is a standardizing process that aims to dispense with any need for flexible adjustment to the changing circumstances and ac - tions in progress, canceling or overcoming the diversity of other shared elements. This rigidity completes the structure of intolerance: the inferential work, necessary for communi- cation, disappears, preventing the fine adjustments that make interaction feasible. 4 Although it is not the only way. Indifference, simple non-recognition, boredom, lack of common goals, problems, as well as the stiffening of inflexible codes, can be factors of a communicational absence.