Nostalgic Post-truth: Towards an Anti-humanist Theory of Communication

Abstract

Today’s most prominent discussions of post-truth are united by a kernel of nostalgia, framing the present time as one of cognitive and moral decay and as open to abuse by populists. Meanwhile, this chapter demonstrates that the true object of nostalgia is, instead, the detached and disembodied rational Cartesian subject. Hence, instead of diagnosing the problems facing today’s societies, the mainstream discourse on post-truth manifests close affinities with its own object of critique—(frequently nostalgic) populism. Instead of focusing on a singular truth that has to be made great again, the political landscape postulated in this chapter is one populated by a multitude of truth-utterances, interrelating with each other on a groundless terrain without the possibility of an ultimate fixed order or grounding truth in what is conceptualized as the tragic domain of politics. Only then, it is argued, can a truly pluralist account of political discourse be embraced.