Vol. 16/2023
No. 2. Theorie und Wahrheitskrise
Brichzin, Jenni; Kronau, Felix; Zey, Jakob [Publishing editor]
Content
Scientific article
Editorial: Theorie und Wahrheitskrise / Brichzin, Jenni [Autor:in] … – 2023
Brichzin, Jenni; Zey, Jakob; Kronau, Felix
Pages: 1-11
Scientific article
Prolegomena towards a political concept of truth
Posselt, Gerald; Seitz, Sergej
Abstract:
Countering the widespread view that truth and facts have lost their relevance for politics in a supposedly post-truth age, the article argues that the appeal to truth in the political sphere fulfils multiple functions and is articulated in various forms. However, political philosophy and theory have so far largely neglected the truth-politics relation. The article takes a first step toward remedying this desideratum. To this end, a cartography of political truth forms is developed along five fault lines: truth as foundation and defoundation, truth as coercion and freedom, truth as virtue and scandal, truth as secret and transparency, and truth as knowledge and practice. This allows to describe the workings of truth in the political in a differentiated way without reducing it to purely epistemological, moral or powerpolitical issues.
Pages: 12-25
Scientific article
Truth and democracy : political epistemology according to Hannah Arendt
Brichzin, Jenni
Abstract:
While the popular ‘post-truth’ diagnosis has met with serious (and often justified) academic criticism, completely dismissing current truth challenges means running the risk of overlooking one of today’s highly topical tasks: the study of the relation between truth and democracy. Following Hannah Arendt, this paper proposes a Political Epistemology aiming at analysing the connection between orders of thinking and the social order. Arendt herself particularly focused on epistemic orientations towards ‘factual truths’, the role and the mechanisms of what she calls ‘reality loss’, and its connection with a totalitarian social order. Political Epistemology, understood that way, opens up new paths for investigating the role of truth in contemporary society – for example, by shedding light on specific mechanisms of reality loss as they play out in the Trump presidency, the Covid pandemic, and the war in Ukraine.
Pages: 26-38
Scientific article
Conspiracy ideology, rationalism, competition : elements of a theory of post-truth politics
Schindler, Sebastian
Abstract:
The expression ‘post-truth’, named ‘word of the year’ in 2016, describes a recent transformation of political discourse. According to common definitions, appeals to emotions have become more important than facts. My article takes issue with this diagnosis. Specifically, I aim to reveal that widespread assumptions about post-truth are marked by two flaws. First, I argue that post-truth politics is not only associated with a relativization of facts (as is often assumed), but also with ideological assertions about a certain type of ‘fact’ (such as notably the existence of conspiracies). Second, I argue that it is not postmodern and constructivist theories that we need to grapple with to understand the sources of the phenomenon (as is often assumed), but instead rational or “rationalist” theories about actors and their self-interests. A clear understanding of these two fallacies opens a new perspective on the nature and the sources of post-truth politics.
Pages: 39-47
Scientific article
Passionate epistemologies : debates on migration between emotional critique and the critique of emotions
Unrau, Christine
Abstract:
In debates regarding the ‘crisis of truth‘, the role of emotions has received increasing attention. On the one hand, an intensified recourse to emotions is taken as an indication that truth has become more and more irrelevant as a normative point of reference. On the other hand, dominant forms of social theory are charged with marginalizing emotional sources of knowledge. Against this background, in this contribution I aim at identifying the conditions under which the project of critique can be extended to the realm of emotions. In doing so, I take debates about migration as a point of reference as they are particularly characterized by both emotional interventions and routinized calls for more rationality.
Pages: 48-60
Scientific article
The complexity of hybrid publics and their consequences for theory
Jung, Simone
Abstract:
In the dispute over ‘the public’, the call for a rational public debate becomeslouder. From the perspective of a deliberative public theory, the diminishingimportance of traditional journalism damages the politicalpublic sphere. Social media, in particular, is believed to contribute to thedecline of public discourse and pose a threat to democracy. Even if theconcern is justified, the material infrastructures and practices, along withtheir effects on political discourse, are often overlooked in democratic andpolitical theory debates. This article takes a different stance, drawing fromtechnology studies and focusing on the formative power of media andtechnologies in the context of digital publics. It examines the networkingprocesses and affective logics of the ‘new publics’, as well as their effects onpublic theory, and concludes that instead of normatively assuming a universalisticpublic in the singular, the processivity and performativity ofdifferent media systems in the production of hybrid publics should betaken more closely into account.
Pages: 61-72
Scientific article
The crisis of truth as a crisis of societal self-observation
Kumkar, Nils
Abstract:
The discourse on the crisis of truth or the post-truth condition often restsin the assumption of people being less and less able to identify what is factuallycorrect and what is not, and therefore subscribing to heretical truthclaims.This essay argues that the empirical basis for this assumption isshaky at best and, furthermore, that the communicative form of many socalled‘alternative facts’ does not seem to be that of an actual truth claim.The crisis of truth therefore must be understood as a crisis of truth of thesecond degree – not of uncertainty of the truth value of information, butas theoretical uncertainty of how to grasp the practical difference suchtruth values actually make in communication.
Pages: 73-83
Scientific article
Truth, theoretically created
Amlinger, Carolin
Abstract:
This article examines the situational, processual, and unfinished arrangementsof truth production in theory. The tentative claim is that the institutionalizedpraxis forms of truth in their everyday routines are relativelyresilient to theory crises. To demonstrate this, the article first reconstructsindicators of theory orientations and links them to a praxeology of truth.Then, two selected truth scenes in theory work are described, which situationallyestablish, ratify or modify truth in a fit structure of norms andpractices. Finally, some conclusions about the resilience of theory practicesare drawn from the two microanalytic approaches.
Pages: 84-96
Scientific article
Truth and other validity claims beyond the west
Langenohl, Andreas
Abstract:
The article compares debates about post-truth and fake news in the Westwith other historical as well as contemporary references to factual truth.This is, first, the foundation of a democratic intellectual movement in lateand post-Soviet Russia which referred to ‘truth’ in order to articulate a political-moral rejection of the Soviet societal order; and second, post- anddecolonial discourses that have identified claims to factual truth as instrumentsof colonial domination. The article’s main argument is that in theintellectual and political public claims to factual truth enter into connectionswith other validity claims, such as claims to normative rightness,moral urge or political resistance. In theoretical terms, such ‘scenes oftruth’ are seen as performances of ‘doing truth’. Compared with those twonon-western scenes of truth, the discourse on post-truth in the West revealsitself as hardly reflecting on the interdependence of different validityc laims with the claim to factual truth.
Pages: 97-108
Scientific article
Social innovations : implicit assumptions and analytical potential
Erhard, Franz; Jukschat, Nadine
Abstract:
The article explores the increasing prominence of the term ’social innovation’in contemporary social sciences. It critically examines the debatessurrounding social innovation, highlighting the implicit assumptions ofthe concept and situating it within the progress paradigm of modern societies.Building on this, the concept of social innovations is translated intoa heuristic that explicates the interpretive processes that accompany socialinnovations. With this turn, we aim to pave the way towards a social innovationresearch that does not equate novelty with optimization, but insteadopens up the view to social evaluation mechanisms. This allows for adistant research attitude and considers the fact that ideas of the future arecurrently more fiercely contested than ever and that the different perspectiveson social innovation carry conflict potentials that are sometimesoverlooked in the discussion.
Pages: 109-122
Scientific article
[Rezension von: Sascha Regier, Den Staat aus der Gesellschaft denken] / Steffan, Jakob [Autor:in] – 2023
Steffan, Jakob
Pages: 123-126