Post-Truth and Politics: Departing from the Thought of Hannah Arendt
ICI Berlin Presents a One-Day Conference
Saturday, April 29, 2017
Berlin, Germany
1:30 pm
This event occurred on:
Full Program: CLICK HERE
In 1967 Arendt published an article on “Truth and Politics” in the New Yorker in response to historical exigencies that resonate with those presented today by the so-called “post-truth society.”
While acknowledging the inevitable implication and interminable contest between truth and politics, Arendt attempts to make the case for a rigorous separation of truth-telling from political praxis, which is nonetheless supposed to operate within the framework afforded by factual and scientific truth. Today, given the intensifying political, and especially bio-political, consequence of the sciences, it is no longer clear that such a distinction is tenable. Since Arendt wrote, the involvement of politics and epistemology, of power and knowledge, has undergone an intensive interdisciplinary investigation, which has transformed the university, especially in the humanities. Interrogating this entanglement of truth and politics, we will ask whether it is true, as some have claimed, that the university is responsible for “post-truth” on account of the relativism it is now perceived to propagate. Or are such claims themselves symptomatic of the problem – fueling the widespread disaffection with established institutions especially those supposed to speak the truth?
As alarm is raised about the attrition of factual truth and the preponderance of “lying in politics,” to cite another essay of Arendt’s, we propose to consider the theoretical and historical precedents for such tendencies as well as the significance of the cultural and technical changes in the dissemination of news brought about by social media. Beyond the university and the media, rational-scientific and factual truth, we may finally reflect on the peculiar kind of truth-telling Arendt attributed to poetry.
Full Program: CLICK HERE
In 1967 Arendt published an article on “Truth and Politics” in the New Yorker in response to historical exigencies that resonate with those presented today by the so-called “post-truth society.”While acknowledging the inevitable implication and interminable contest between truth and politics, Arendt attempts to make the case for a rigorous separation of truth-telling from political praxis, which is nonetheless supposed to operate within the framework afforded by factual and scientific truth. Today, given the intensifying political, and especially bio-political, consequence of the sciences, it is no longer clear that such a distinction is tenable. Since Arendt wrote, the involvement of politics and epistemology, of power and knowledge, has undergone an intensive interdisciplinary investigation, which has transformed the university, especially in the humanities. Interrogating this entanglement of truth and politics, we will ask whether it is true, as some have claimed, that the university is responsible for “post-truth” on account of the relativism it is now perceived to propagate. Or are such claims themselves symptomatic of the problem – fueling the widespread disaffection with established institutions especially those supposed to speak the truth?
As alarm is raised about the attrition of factual truth and the preponderance of “lying in politics,” to cite another essay of Arendt’s, we propose to consider the theoretical and historical precedents for such tendencies as well as the significance of the cultural and technical changes in the dissemination of news brought about by social media. Beyond the university and the media, rational-scientific and factual truth, we may finally reflect on the peculiar kind of truth-telling Arendt attributed to poetry.
An ICI Berlin event, organized by Benjamin Lewis Robinson, in collaboration with Bard College Berlin and the Hannah Arendt Center at Bard College in New York. The event, like all events at the ICI Berlin, is open to the public, free of charge. The audience is presumed to consent to a possible recording on the part of the ICI Berlin.
If you would like to attend the event yet might require assistance, please contact Event Management.
Location:
ICI Berlin
Christinenstr. 18/19, Haus 8
10119 Berlin
Germany
Program
If you would like to attend the event yet might require assistance, please contact Event Management.
Location:
ICI Berlin
Christinenstr. 18/19, Haus 8
10119 Berlin
Germany
Program