Performative Contingency and Affective Polarization

Recent philosophical approaches to affective polarization have moved beyond purely identitarian and emotivist frameworks, emphasizing instead its multi-dimensional structure. In The Rise of Polarization (2025), Manuel Almagro identifies five core dimensions—identity, emotion, narrative, credence, and linguistic expression—and argues that political attitudes are shaped not only by ideological commitments but also by life-course contingencies, including socio-economic trajectories and biographical exposures that influence partisan attachments. This paper builds on Almagro’s analysis while introducing performative contingency as an additional and analytically distinct dimension of affective polarization. Drawing on Greg Myers’ work (2004), we argue that political opinions should not be understood solely as relatively stable attitudes articulated through linguistic practices, but also as socially enacted within specific discursive contexts that shape whether, where, and how political views are expressed. While Almagro explicitly recognizes the context- sensitivity of political utterances, our contribution consists in making this performative dimension analytically explicit as a distinct aspect of affective polarization. Integrating performative contingency refines the philosophical understanding of affective polarization by highlighting the synchronic contingencies of opinion expression alongside the diachronic contingencies of socialization emphasized in existing accounts. As discussed by Myers (2004), measuring polarization solely through survey responses or public statements risks conflating stable partisan commitments with context-driven performances. Likewise, interventions aimed at mitigating polarization must address not only belief revision and emotional regulation but also the institutional and discursive formats—media architectures, debate structures, and civic forums—that shape the public enactment of political opinion. While performative contingency may not always be the primary driver of polarization, we argue that it constitutes a pervasive and analytically indispensable dimension of the phenomenon.