Political fragmentation weakens easy left-right orientation

Evidence

And perhaps avoiding the laundry list is especially compelling since the fall of communism and the rise of identity politics; fundamentalism and ethnic self-determination'' has made it so hard for bewildered citizens to tell what is left” or right'' and orient themselves in an easy, automatic way (and maybe that is why many intellectuals who once simply called themselves leftists have become ^ to coin a term ^ public sphere-itarians,” who seeks, as Chantal Mou¡e puts it, “the extension and deepening of the democratic revolution initiated two hundred years ago”3). Focussing on the public sphere transforms the search for a static product ^ that laundry list of facts or beliefs ^ into a search for a process, a process of conversation that cultivates or impairs citizens’ abilities to talk, think, and imagine together. — Nina Eliasoph, “Close to home”, 10

Categorization

• DEFINE: Frames the pivot from substantive political positions (a ‘laundry list’) to procedural public-sphere talk as a response to ideological disorientation.
• corroborated: 5 independent passages support this claim — Nina Eliasoph, “Close to home”: The work of avoiding…, 10
• XREF: connects to: Political unity is strengthened rather than weakened by divergent attentions — Yves Citton, The Ecology of Attention, 347

Related

• Political unity is strengthened rather than weakened by divergent attentions (similarity 0.78)

Broader Connections

• Political unity is strengthened rather than weakened by divergent attentions #contradicts (0.80) — Yves Citton, The Ecology of Attention, 347