To Moderate

To moderate—the word resounds as a soft imperative. I hear its appeasing nature, the implicit authority the moderator is given to bring instances into dialog and at the same time to pacify their relationship, to soften the passage between the one and the other. Secondly, I can’t help but connect the moderator to my object of study: the medium. A moderator is a medium of sorts, with diverse techno-culturally determined ways of operating and performing. Ideally, she has gained techniques allowing her to be neither too present nor too absent in the exchanges she moderates; similar to a medium diffracting rays of light, redirecting them, slowing them down, so their spectrum may become perceptible to the senses. But does she want to slow down or redirect anything? A medium can also be an in-between that connects what is separated. Or it can provide a frame for what is happening by which it constrains and conditions it. Prima facie, there seems to be a certain distance, a detachment in a moderator’s performance, as she frames the discourse of others without having to speak in her own name. On the other hand, my mind also wanders to the referee in a mixed martial art fight, my sport of predilection. In that case, the moderator quickly moves between the blows, avoids them, yet intervenes when a fighter is down before too much damage is done. She has an obligation to fairness, to render what is due to each part. It carries more responsibility and engagement than it might initially seem.