Casting political comprehension problems as technical faults is a partisan act

Evidence

The educator or cultural policy maker is performing one of his most partisan acts when he colludes with the re-signification of real conflicts and contradictions as if they were simply kinks in the communicative chain. Denotative mistakes are not structurally significant. But connotative and contextual “misunderstandings” are, or can be, of the highest significance. To interpret what are in fact essential elements in the systematic distortions of a socio-communications system as if they are technical faults in transmission is to misread a deep-structure process for a surface phenomenon. The decision to intervene in order to make the hegemonic codes of dominant elites more effective and transparent for the majority audience is not a technically neutral but a political one. To “misread” a political choice as a technical one represents a type of unconscious collusion with the dominant interests, a form of collusion to which social science researchers are all too prone. — Hall, Stuart, Essential Essays, Volume 1, 813

Categorization

• XREF: Reinforces Hall’s parallel claim in para 810 that ideological reproduction happens ‘behind men’s backs’; connects to the reader’s inquiry about researchers’ role in hegemony. — connects to: Voter guides are partisan campaign tools disguised as neutral; Partisan defunding incentives partly drove Republican adoption of tort reform — Daryl Levinson and Benjamin I. Sachs, Political Entrenchment and Public Law, 263
• SEED: Angle: how ‘improving communications’ and ‘effective communication’ programs function as disguised political interventions favoring dominant elites.