Rumbling on performativity_Frits Simon

an elaborated version of this theory it is verified that if people are not coerced to show
a certain attitude and are aware of what they are doing, they tend to change their
behaviour towards the exhibited attitude, even if this attitude is not their own in the
beginning of the process (Cooper, 2007).
I assume that for the members of the coordination team working together for a long
time and discussing a subject during a period of four months the avoidance of cognitive
dissonance can help to understand what happened. I think taking a long period of
time implies a process of taking little steps towards each other’s opinions, and steps
taken are hard to be undone. The discomfort felt by anyone to recall a given commitment
leads to commitment with conclusions and recommendations in which different
but not reconciled perspectives can be found. Unknowingly we as the members of the
coordination team built ‘a trap’ by agreeing piecemeal to each other’s perspectives.
Evaluation
Apart from physical force the human body appears to have other effective ways which
underpin agreement. The body itself is powerful in unconsciously reducing differences,
as underpinned by neurocognitive findings (Koch, 2004; Lamme, 2010; Ramachandran,
2005). Concerning the content of the conclusions this implies that it appears that an
equalisation of differences is taking place which is amplified in time through a process
of irreversible commitment. Although I could conclude that my perspective on openness,
fed by the concept of co-creativity and wisdom of the crowd, has got dominance,
this conclusion is contradicted by the rather reifying and thus incompatible recommendations
the coordination team makes. Contagion and the avoidance of cognitive
dissonance help to clarify how prefab webs (Homan, 2001) or repetitive patterns
aspects of relating (Shaw, 2002) are produced and preserved. These social psychological
bodily ‘provisions’ embedded in the autopilot characteristics of the modern strategic
mental make-up made that no member of the coordination team has been determining
unilaterally the conclusions and recommendations.
4.6 A strategy of a ventriloquist?
I wrote that in general my job implies that I prepare conclusions which have to be
drawn by the members of the executive board. My advices should have noticeable
impact on policy and on what happens next. In a bit of a malevolent perspective on my
work this preparing could be interpreted as a way of framing the mind of my superiors.
In practice this framing would imply that the work done together with the members
of the coordination team would be a manipulative prefabrication of the way the
members of the executive board should look at the policy of the UAS. Given the stipulated
ongoing battle between a social systems-change discourse and a co-creative
discourse within the UAS, my advice is somewhere located on that battlefield. Framing
then can be seen as a part of the weaponry to make a stroke.
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