Fact-Checking and Truth-Telling in an Age of Alternative Facts

Zerilli, Linda M. G.

doi:10.16995/lefou.68

Cited by 10 publications

(16 citation statements)

References 5 publications

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“…As we saw in the beginning: survival is unlikely for those who tell the truth. We find a similar thought in Foucault’s parrhesia – a speech act that can be translated as ‘frank speech’ (Zerilli 2020, 9). Parrhesia entails an action through which persons tell their truth against a regime of untruth – even when endangering their lives.…”

Section: ‘It’s the Past We Step Into And How To Repair It’ – Arendt A...supporting

confidence: 71%

“…Asking ‘who counts as proper truth-teller’ (Maxwell 2018, 23; cf. Zerilli 2020, 15) implies disclosing gender binaries inherent in the notion of truth-telling; to answer this political question, gender matters. In what follows, I scrutinize four (gendered) binaries found in truth-telling to show how they rely upon contemporary post-truth discourse and populism: private versus public, philosophy versus politics, factual truths versus opinion, and factual truths versus common sense.…”

Section: ‘If Only We Dare’ – Unearthing Masculinity In (Populist) Tru...mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The easy movement between adamant positions regarding what is ‘true’, ‘natural’ and ‘right’ on one side and the flexibility of truth on the other is a critical feature of contemporary masculinist populism. Shaped by this movement, mere ‘fact-checking’ cannot remedy populist post-truth discourse (Zerilli 2020). Pointing towards alternative facts serves as a strategy to simulate plurality while insisting on the existence of THE people – a homogenized and ‘natural’ community.…”

Section: ‘If Only We Dare’ – Unearthing Masculinity In (Populist) Tru...mentioning

confidence: 99%

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(Post-)Truth, populism and the simulation of parrhesia: A feminist critique of truth-telling after Hannah Arendt and Michel Foucault

Gebhardt

2023

Philosophy & Social Criticism

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Following tropes of light and dark in Amanda Gorman’s poem ‘The Hill We Climb’, the article explores, from a feminist perspective, who counts as a truth-teller. Against the backdrop of Hannah Arendt’s and Michel Foucault’s works on truth-telling, the article theorizes feminist modes of truth-telling. It scrutinizes truth-making in politics while unearthing the andro-centrism in truth-telling. Under the impression of post-truth rhetoric in recent populist landscapes, the article argues for a feminist and intersectional articulation of truth-telling to disclose the gendered and racialized power relations in contemporary masculinist populism.

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Section: ‘It’s the Past We Step Into And How To Repair It’ – Arendt A...supporting

confidence: 71%

Section: ‘If Only We Dare’ – Unearthing Masculinity In (Populist) Tru...mentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: ‘If Only We Dare’ – Unearthing Masculinity In (Populist) Tru...mentioning

confidence: 99%

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(Post-)Truth, populism and the simulation of parrhesia: A feminist critique of truth-telling after Hannah Arendt and Michel Foucault

Gebhardt

2023

Philosophy & Social Criticism

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“…Instead of having a plurality of perspectives or opinions on the same object, this very “shared object” or world is missing (cf. Zerilli 2020, 7).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Can the “real world” please stand up? The struggle for normality as a claim to reality

Wehrle

2023

Philosophy & Social Criticism

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In this paper, I show that a phenomenological concept of normality can be helpful to understand the experiential side of post-truth phenomena. How is one’s longing for, or sense of, normality related to what we deem as real, true, or objective? And to what extent is the sense for “what (really) is” related to our beliefs of what should be? To investigate this, I combine a phenomenological approach to lived normality with a genealogical account of represented normality that sheds light on the social and historical contingency of definitions of normality and their intertwinement with structures of power. It is my contention that such an approach to normality is well-suited to investigate how is and ought are interrelated within subjective experience and practice. This might in turn help overcoming one-sided debates on post-truth, which rely on the strict opposition of objectivity versus subjectivity, universal truth versus subjective experience, facticity versus meaning, or reason versus stupidity. It also sheds light on the ambivalent or contested status of experience within debates of post-truth and feminist theory. I will conclude that post-truth is related to what Hannah Arendt has termed the lack of a common world (i.e., normality), arguing that a plurality of experiences is needed to let the “real world” stand its ground again.

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“…Professors then reacted by assembling by the hundreds at the main campus square, each professor carrying a placard with a number inscribed on it to prove that they are not but a handful. As in Trump's inauguration ceremony, however, counting heads did not shatter the belief in "alternative facts" (Zerilli 2020). Pro-government media raised the stakes: the resistance was organized by thirty-three academics who were undercover "militants affiliated with terrorist organizations" (Ahval 2021).…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

The Struggle for Academic Freedom in an Age of Post-truth

Gambetti¹

2022

South Atlantic Quarterly

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This essay situates the struggle for academic freedom and university autonomy at Boğaziçi University within the broader framework of post-truth. Post-truth is defined as a disinvestment from long-established norms regulating what counts as true, without introducing new criteria in their place. As such, it is a state of constant disorientation. The main argument is that post-truth has a material power basis: it is neither an intellectual problem nor one that can be solved by recourse to liberal rights. By briefly showing how neoliberalism, the New Right, and biopolitical governmentality connect and reinforce each other, the essay then asks what academic freedom can signify given the new game of power. The Boğaziçi resistance, it argues, shows how defending academic freedom cannot solely be an academic matter.

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Fact-Checking and Truth-Telling in an Age of Alternative Facts

Abstract: This article has been peer-reviewed through the double-blind process of Le foucaldien, which is a journal published by the Open Library of Humanities.

Cited by 10 publications

References 5 publications

(Post-)Truth, populism and the simulation of parrhesia: A feminist critique of truth-telling after Hannah Arendt and Michel Foucault

(Post-)Truth, populism and the simulation of parrhesia: A feminist critique of truth-telling after Hannah Arendt and Michel Foucault

Can the “real world” please stand up? The struggle for normality as a claim to reality

The Struggle for Academic Freedom in an Age of Post-truth

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