No funeral bells

Public reason in a 'post-truth' age

Bibliographic Data

ID5773831
AuthorsSheila Jasanoff (0000-0002-0488-8698, Harvard University, corresponding author), Hilton R Simmet (0000-0002-4126-8447, Harvard University)
Year2017
Volume47
Issue5
Pages751-770
Publication date2017-10-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueSocial Studies of Science (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0306-3127 • E-ISSN: 1460-3659
PublisherSAGE Publishing (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1177/0306312717731936
PMID29034796
OpenAlexW2765927687
LanguageEN
Citations received159
References cited23

The label 'post-truth' signals for many a troubling turn away from principles of enlightened government. The word 'post', moreover, implies a past when things were radically different and whose loss should be universally mourned. In this paper, we argue that this framing of 'post-truth' is flawed because it is ahistorical and ignores the co-production of knowledge and norms in political contexts. Debates about public facts are necessarily debates about social meanings, rooted in realities that are subjectively experienced as all-encompassing and complete, even when they are partial and contingent. Facts used in policy are normative in four ways: They are embedded in prior choices of which experiential realities matter, produced through processes that reflect institutionalized public values, arbiters of which issues are open to democratic contestation and deliberation, and vehicles through which polities imagine their collective futures. To restore truth to its rightful place in democracy, governments should be held accountable for explaining who generated public facts, in response to which sets of concerns, and with what opportunities for deliberation and closure

Deliberation · Framing (construction · Foucault, Power, and Ethics · Rhetoric and Communication Studies · Social Science and Policy Research

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