Correctly Political

42 Although with variable visibility, the politically correct (PC) increasingly occupies our everyday life, being used in various, more or less, formalised contexts of interaction between individuals. In normal circumstances of collective life, the politically incorrect (PI) is less and less accepted, and to successfully navigate in the complex world of social interaction – for example, in the labyrinthic field of codes associated with work relations – requires a reasonable command of the rules adhering to the PC norm. In certain “sensitive” contexts, the predominance of the PC position reveals all its splendour. We are referring to particularly delicate situations in which the PI is tolerated because it is PI to reprimand the use of PI language. In particular circumstances, a child, a disabled person or someone belonging to an ethnic, religious or cultural minority is allowed to use language conforming less to the procedures imposed by the PC. As long as the informal, as well as the formal, rules of PC are correctly followed, it is irrelevant to know whether the content of our thoughts is adequate or, on the contrary, opposed to the way our actions are perceived. To be accused of hypocrisy or cynicism regarding PC only happens when the cleavage between our actions and CORRECTLY POLITICAL Nuno Faleiro Rodrigues 43 our thoughts is manifested in the former. One of the most common forms of hypocrisy associated with the PC discourse comes from the paternalism expressed through a manifestly exaggerated approach. The ability and autonomy of a subject or group of subjects can be brought into question by the overzealous way in which we follow the rules of political correctness. In that case, the PC becomes a tool to express PI thoughts. In this context, therefore, there is no room to make visible the contradiction between what is said and what is done; there is only the possibility of contradicting what is said by the way it is said. In other words, what is done is what is said. * The PC discourse aims to avoid offending individuals belonging to the more vulnerable layers of society. One of the most common criticisms made to the PC is that it restricts people’s ability to express themselves in a society that aspires to be free, rendering it as a kind of dictatorship of the offended against the remaining members. Bearing in mind that political correctness works by anticipating a potential offence, in order to avoid it beforehand, we can say that the “dictatorship of the offended” unfolds retroactively, from a position situated in a future to escape, i.e., it positions itself from the point of view of the potential offended (who should not be offended). However, this gesture Political correctness: the avoidance of forms of expression or action that are perceived to exclude, marginalize, or insult groups of people who are socially disadvantaged or discriminated against. Google 44 of anticipation tells us that we can only conceive the retroactive position of the offended through the corresponding projective position of the potential offender. For the offence not to take place, a potential offender is enough – one that, through the preventive gesture, identifies a possible offended susceptible of being offended by a certain potential offence. Therefore, the dictatorship of the offended originates in the anticipatory self-positioning of the potential offender, following a logic as virtual as it is circular. The offended, in turn, is caught in the net of the offence to be avoided and has little room to find another position outside this circle: either she was not offended because the mechanism of anticipation and prevention worked effectively (although not escaping from the stigma of the virtual offence); or she took offence for the opposite reasons. There is, in fact, a small subversion allowed to the offended: to not be offended by the offence directed at her. But this narrow opening of freedom will always be dependent on the dominant position of the potential offender. Regardless of the numerous constraints this circularity may bring to the potential offender, it gives access to a discursive territory that belongs to him. It is up to the person with the power to speak to identify his interlocutor as potentially offended, i.e. as someone particularly vulnerable, and prevent the offence from being directed at her. Whether the offence took place or not, the offended is invariably integrated within a social group perceived by the majority of potential offenders as being particularly vulnerable. According to the logic underlying the PC discourse, this group is entitled to not being offended insofar as it is deprived 45 of a voice. Through the preventive act, the offender, who did not become one, is integrated, in turn, within the majority with access to speech. That not said that could have been said belongs to him alone. This way, he is simultaneously the emitter and addressee of the offence that must not take place. The prevention of the offence is directed, therefore, not so much at the potential offended but to the fraternal community of potential offenders. It functions as a cue between peers and, unlike what is often defended, does not aim to structure a more inclusive discourse. It is important to bear in mind that the community of potential offenders does not need to be physically present in a certain discursive situation; what matters is that, even when absent, it makes itself present. More than the numerical criterion, what defines the majority is precisely its ability to be present, even when absent. In the limits established between potential offender and offended, the PC discourse draws a territory of access and visibility regarding speech. Strictly speaking, the preventive gesture does not take us to the virtual plane of the possible – what can but should not be said – but to the actual manifestation of what was not said through what is said. Within the PC logic, it is not enough to anticipate and prevent the occurrence of the offence; it is essential, through the use of manifestly non-offensive language, to make that preventive gesture perceptible to the remaining potential offenders. The PC mechanism strives, as it were, to make that absence visible. * Therefore, the PC discourse implies the identification of groups in society that, according to the of- 46 fender, are more exposed to acts of discrimination and prejudice. Without a particular target, the PC position lacks direction and intentionality. In its relation to the offence that will not come, political correctness situates itself between two sociocultural phenomena that are not extraneous to it. On one side, it can be seen merely as a particular variant, perhaps an intensified form, of politeness cemented among members of a society that strives to be civilized and regards gratuitous offences unjustified. As much as PC critics stress its overzealous control over the use of speech, they are always in a weak position when their critique is advanced through the relativization of the content of the offence. The offence is always relative, and against a general perception among the potential offenders about what is offensive or not there is not much that can be done. On the other side, the PC discourse finds its limit in the growing terminological sanitation pervading the contemporary institutional world, from the state machine to labour relations management. The hygienization of language is expressed in multiple processes of life management. It assumes, nonetheless, two distinct facets: a commercial and a bureaucratic dimension. On the one hand, we face a “softer” sanitary inclination, manifested in euphemistic processes of concealment of the violence intrinsic to the commercialisation of everyday life, particularly in labour relations. In this regard, note how deregulated and low paid work is increasingly performed by “technicians, collaborators and consultants” of all sorts who, more often than not, carry out repetitive, menial, low-skilled tasks. On the other hand, we face a “strong” bureau- 47 cratic sterilization of language that does not intend to terminologically soften a given reality, but expresses a position of power according to the cruel refinements of the world of administration. In this case, the terminological arbitrariness reflects the violence resulting from the arbitrariness inherent in the state’s position of maximal power, hence its typical penchant for strong irony, or even sadism. It is precisely such position of strength that surfaces in such type of terminological dissonance. To refer to torture as “Enhanced Interrogation Techniques” or to designate significant cuts in pensions “Extraordinary Solidarity Contribution” are examples of the sadistic-bureaucratic strand. In this manner, the PC discourse is enclosed by three distinct domains: underneath, and in a more diffuse way, by the “civic politeness” required when dealing with the more vulnerable groups of society; laterally, and in a more specific way, by the two mechanisms of linguistic deflection of violence that colonize our lives. In the latter case, political correctness is situated between the informal, but direct, concealment pertaining to the usual linguistic softening of the violence of the commodification of everyday life, and the formal, but indirect, uncovering, manifest in the bureaucratic marking of state force. As a generic and preliminary hypothesis, we can consider that political correctness performs a double discursive operation, being positioned between the informal direct concealing and the formal indirect uncovering of economic-bureaucratic violence. * On a first level, the effectiveness of the PC dis- 48 course results from the normative intersection between what is said and the contextual situation (using the right words in the right place). Linguistic form and content are far from irrelevant, but are clearly insufficient to clarify the stages resulting from the discursive process. Furthermore, the interpretation of what is said requires a first, usually unconscious, reading of the discursive situation that, as we have seen, cannot be reduced to the identification of the potential offended by the potential offender. The direction and intention we attribute to the PC are, thus, the result of a subterranean interpretative movement that conjures up a situation, summoning potential offended individuals and the community of potential offenders (that makes itself present, even if absent). Before being a cause, the use of the PC speech is the effect of a number of preceding topical norms and readings. Of course, this is a generic requirement for any communicative practice, but nonetheless necessary for PC to unfold between the contextual reading, the manifestation of the prevention of the offence and its actual perception. In the normative position it produces regarding what should, or should not, be said and heard, the PC mechanism establishes a practical relation with the available linguistic instruments, being a kind of manual on how to use language in particular contexts. Its robustness results, in this sense, from the consistency formed between norm and “use”. Insofar as it manifests a set of communication rules that regulate our discursive actions, the PC discourse takes the structure of a practice that acquires the predominant form of a practice of speech. 49 * In what sense can we state that the PC discourse is primarily a practice, if we position it as a set of partially latent norms or rules? Is it a code of social conduct or its practice? A box of discursive tools or a pre-established set of rules? Norms and actions can be interdependent but they are not the same thing. When we suggested that the PC discourse operates as a mode of use of language, we should bear in mind that “mode” and “use” are structured by practice. There is no form independent of practice and practice is the main formalizer and formatter of the PC discursive “tool”; it is the agent that joins norm and action. In this regard, one should bear in mind that the formal deployment of PC terminology in the world of administration does not require a set of previously established rules (even if sometimes, and increasingly so, the right to non-offence is justified and grounded according to the letter of the law and the Constitution). Since it is not necessary to formalize the form via bureaucratic or legal means, it is not possible to make reference to a code of conduct without the manifestation, through “use”, of its conformation. Some norms can be inferred from their practice (such as, for example, the greater tolerance towards political incorrectness when voiced by a member of the target group of PC discourse) and, at a second stage, conclude that they gain a life of their own within the legal and pseudo-legalistic spheres. But no rules survive irrespective of their use. Practice produces norms that, in turn, condition practice. This perspective presents the PC discourse as naturally resulting from the consolidation of habits and a “world 50 view” common to the society from which it stems. Here, we face an organic image of the relationship between mode and use that is, in effect, (re)produced by practice. Taking such path does not allow us to reduce the discursive practices associated with the PC to a specific mode of use of language, since the former are also a “mode of production” of a certain perception of discourse. Practice produces the surface through which the apparent natural and organic dimensions of discourse shine. * The practical relationship between mode and use brings us to the core of a second question that should not be neglected: the PC discourse operates on the surface of perception. We had already suggested that, within the PC mechanism, the presence of a cleavage or disagreement between action and thought is not relevant since its effectiveness requires the conformity between action and normative procedures, validated through the perception of third parties (potential offenders). Therefore, it is meaningless to conceive the PC discourse in terms of action, if by action we mean an individual response to (external and internal) given stimuli, irrespective of their intersubjective visibility. The hypocrisy associated with political correctness does not only emerge when the dissonance between PC action and PI thought becomes visible; it emerges also through the fissure that can be opened between visible PC actions and imperceptible PI actions, that is, amid the visibility and opacity of what is said and done. The PC discourse requires the perception of others to exist but it is not completely transparent. The speaker 57 phenomena that, when inscribed within a given situation, occupy a predominant position in our everyday life. Hence the importance of terminology within the PC discourse, linking discursive “good practice” to the correct use of the right term for a given situation. The term performs here the role of condensation point, that is, of fetish. In a sense, the ideological efficacy of the PC depends more on the invisible occupation of a given discursive space than on its illusory character (conversion of violence into offence). Doing away with class antagonisms and relations of violence performed at the level of linguistic content plays a crucial role, but it is of little worth if that exclusion does not also occur through the domination of the space where that content is voiced. Ideology follows the maxim “if you repeat a lie often enough, it becomes the truth”, because its “truth” is forged in the space occupied by repetitive utterance. What is more, the assaults aimed at the PC discourse prove its predominant position within a given discursive space. The most common criticisms made to the PC, usually coming from the liberal right, accuse the guardians of political correctness of being a kind of “language police” (usually belonging to the liberal left), that seriously hinders freedom of expression. No matter how pertinent this debate is, it boils down to the right to offend or not to be offended within liberal societies, excluding the possibility of considering a subject of violence beyond the subject of the offence. The premises of the debates around political correctness are, from the start, informed by the territory occupied by the PC discourse within the public space. In this sense, they are an instrument for its 58 reproduction. Likewise, we should not consider political incorrectness as opposed to political correctness, but as a deviation from the norm that keeps it alive. Thus, the occupation of a discursive space does not result from the slow, natural cementing of acquired habits, small rituals and ways of interacting; it requires persistent and active reiteration, which cannot be carried out without a whole material apparatus of circulation, dissemination and resonance, that is, without a full media and communication machine that produces, reproduces and amplifies it. Therefore, the topographic model mentioned before to does not function solely within the subjective field, since it is enveloped by a material, objective apparatus that ultimately gives it a body and a soul.