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

Mediatization and virtuality in human sciences: An announced crossroads 53 2. On neoconservatism in culture Today, however, as a direct consequence of the wide- spread growth of neoconservatism in culture - which, on the one hand, invests heavily in criticizing cultural modernization as the cause of the crisis and contemporary uneasiness, and, on the other hand, adheres to radical social modernization, updating the “functional needs of the State and the economy” (HABERMAS, 2015, p. 69) -, we are faced with the crossroads that involve the protagonism of the present time, especially in the realm of the humanities. In other words, in the same inten- sity in which real-time investments are radicalized - in which the so-called anticipation regimes, also characteristic of the neocon- servatism of culture, predominate - there is a retraction of its virtuality, which, historically, has driven various reflections on the so-called humanities. The proposition starts from the double strife fueled by current conservatism. On the one hand, it attacks the gains of cultural modernization as “collective learning pro- cesses” (FREITAG, 1995, p. 139), which would include the rule of law itself, the expanded public space, and the process of con- stant democratization. On the other hand, it adheres to the most radical in terms of economic liberalism, reinforcing the diffu- sion of financial capital, the market of emotions, the weakening of class identities and generalized entrepreneurship. According to Habermas (2015), unlike the old conservatism, which was totally opposed to the novelties of modernity, in the name of traditional life forms, the new conservatism makes a program- matic alliance with unfinished modernization processes. Like the old conservatism, it continues to face cultural moderniza- tion , but as a way of justifying the increase in social modern- ization. That is, neoconservatism reverses the game of causes and effects concerning the diagnosis of the contemporary crisis (QUIROGA; CASTRO, 2020). For him, the cause of the economic and social problems lies in the symbolic disintegration of com- mon inheritances, weakened by the process of cultural modern- ization, which we now have to restore. In this case, not only the intellectual activity, the base of the expanded public sphere, is now being discredited, and it is necessary to “cultivate the tra-