Crisis of Common Sense

• In Event: Revisiting Policing the Crisis: Race/Immigration, Populism, Culture, and the Media in the Current Conjuncture

Abstract

This presentation will discuss recent iterations of common sense nationalism perfected by the global surge in right wing populism. The justification of erasure, misrecognition and racism is easily established from the compulsion to ‘tell it like it is.’ Whether it concerns the innate violence of Mexican immigrants, seeing terror in immigrant bodies, or building walls, consensus continues to be assured through the mobilization of common sense. In the ontologies of risk used to navigate the global city, markers of foreignness are part of a distributed inventory of common knowledge. In a context of technologized capitalism, digital versions of nativism act in concert with securitization measures adopted by the state. The certainty about risky bodies gain consensus within the digital echo chambers of media. This presentation will examine the critical relevance of Hall’s notion of ‘false coincidence’ and the manipulation of ‘common sense’ in understanding the aggressive digital reproductions of nationalism.

Author

• Radha S. Hegde, New York U