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From: Mark Cenite <Mark.A.Cenite-2@xxxxxxxxxx>
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Date: Fri, 20 Feb 1998 18:43:16 -0600
I know how you fans of Foucault hate that normalizing universalizing
totalizing fascistic positivist psychology, but . . .
I'm studying press coverage of the Cunanan case as part of a dissertation
on the popularization and vulgarization of psychoanalytic discourses.
Using a critique you may recognize from the _History of Sexuality, Vol. 1_,
I'm observing how Cunanan's sexuality was cast as causal principle for his
actions (or at least as somehow causally informing those actions). A
scholar who has used attribution theory (from experimental psychology) in
his media research has pointed out that one could make the case that
journalists/audiences made what is referred to as the fundamental
attribution error: a tendency to attribute behavior, especially negative
behavior, to a disposition (e.g., homosexuality, or something about it)
rather than to circumstances (e.g., Cunanan was in a fight with an early
victim over something mundane like money, then fled and needed a different
car, etc. etc.).
What do you think of my hypothesis that now that "perverse" sexuality has
been "implanted" in the subject (History I, pp. 36ff) and is viewed as a
causal principle with general and diffuse effects (e.g., History I, p. 65),
there is a tendency to make "the fundamental attribution error"--to
attribute behavior (inappropriately) to (homo)sexuality?
Be merciless--
-m.