Bad Guys and Bag Ladies: On the Politics of Polemics and the Promise of Ambivalence

The call for papers suggests a certain “loss of innocence” with regard to how media scholars view the nature of digital technologies and their potential role in societies today. As the editors write, “Just a few years ago, many scholars celebrated digital technology for its potential to flatten hierarchies and strengthen civic life. Today, many of the same observers are writing about the darker sides of digital culture.” While this may be true, given the ways in which digital technologies are pervasively used for surveillance, misinformation and so forth, there is also something to be said about the politics of polemics, of pitching a celebratory account of technology against a supposedly more “critical” one. What I want to do is to take the opportunity offered by this inaugural issue of 2K to reflect on polemics and neatly dressed straw men as rhetorical strategies used in scholarly argumentation. My goal is to argue for the virtue of ambivalence in thinking and writing about the nature of digital technology. Far from being agreeable or a cop-out, the ambivalent position means having to negotiate an ongoing tension without necessarily finding resolution. The kind of ambivalence I have in mind is not about occupying an indifferent position. It’s not an “anything goes” attitude, nor does it involve compromise. Ambivalence isn’t a lack of belief, but rather the ability to “stay with the trouble” of questioning basic assumptions and to be transparent about them