DEI in a Time of Unravelling: the Impossible Task of Mobilising Polarisation

A piece co-written with an AI trained in a ‘meta-relational paradigm’, to “scaffold the process of metabolising polarisation – to move between hardened positions, loosen what has become rigid, and compost what no longer serves generative engagement.” They find that “if politics is primarily about securing entitlements for those deemed exceptionally deserving – whether due to ‘merit’ (in right-wing framings) or ‘historical or systemic disadvantage’ (in left-wing framings) – then the political field becomes an ongoing contest over who qualifies for the next distribution of privileges, protections, or reparations.” As this pendulum swings, “coercion breeds reaction. Suppression builds pressure. And every time the pendulum swings back, it does so with greater force, because the unresolved tensions of the previous cycle have only been deferred, not metabolized.” Instead, we are encouraged to “move beyond reaction and into recognition of our own implication in the very dynamics we seek to resist… toward a politics of entanglement… altering the conditions that make such conflicts inevitable.”