Conference Agenda

The argument I intend to present at ECER relates to the pedagogical significance of post-truth, primarily in terms of the construction of political subjects. In the following I intend to argue that post-truth is one of the most powerful and dangerous pedagogical invention shaping our contemporary political status quo. What I find particularly significant is that in order to be addressed as a conceptual and political problem we must abandon defining it in opposition to ‘factual truth’ within the classical understanding of the term (as correspondence).

Epistemological and ontological perspectives I employ in order to discuss the relationship between post-truth and the question of the development of political subjectivities, relate to post-structural notions of truth (Deleuze 1991, 1994) and to regimes of truth (Rancière 1991; Deleuze, Guattari 1994), as well as the conceptualisations of 'the political' and 'politics' that permeate the political writings of Hannah Arendt and Jacques Rancière (Arendt 1998, 2005, 2006; Ranciere 1999, 2007). Within such a theoretical constellation, truth appears as a phenomenon that cannot be expressed by the explanatory order of language, and hence, it is unable to be transmitted in some direct way; its relation to 'facts' and 'reality' requires constant translation, interpretation and mediation through individual and intersubjective experience. 'The political' - is understood as a necessary ontological condition for forming practices of living together, for constitution of human freedom, and for the creation of a community of citizens - different and yet equal, for politics itself. Such a theoretical background leads me to emphasise the two key concepts around which the presentation is organised: post-truth and political subjectivity.

Post-truth is a fairly vague and ambiguous category. From the perspective of 'non-binary', post-structural epistemologies, it seems difficult to radically contrast the concept of post-truth with the idea of so-called 'factual truth'. Instead of arguing that the essence of post-truth is constituted by a simple negation of the classical notion of truth (where we are dealing with an assumption of a 'truthfulness' of thinking and being (cf. Allen 1993,15), I focus on understanding post-truth in terms of a linguistic construct involving a form of ‘co-created fiction in which the distinction between truth and falsehood has become irrelevant’ (Kalpokas 2019). Moreover, I argue that the social and pedagogical means of transmitting both truth and post-truth refer to 'an explanatory form of social order that involves an absolute confidence in the linguistic accessibility of facts, opinions, feelings, ideas, logics and narratives' (Bingham, Biesta, Rancière 2010, 122). Thus, post-truth, along with 'truth', is located within the epistemology of clarity and certainty that goes along with the imaginary of a fully transparent language that in its arbitrariness imposes explicit meanings and narrows down the human capacity of critique. At this point I want to stress that similar epistemological connotations underlie Arendt's concept of the political lie - a lie that 'never comes into conflict with reason' (Arendt 1973).

The question of political subjectivity is understood here in terms of political potentiality: natality, i.e. the ability to re-create the common world and to initiate political action. It is also deeply connected to human freedom and its capacity for ethical judgement. In the light of Arendt's political writings, there is an inextricable and mutual connection between the social experience of living in a community - including open communication under conditions of diversity - and the formation of political subjectivities of its citizens.

One aspect of our times is how finely balanced we are between dictatorship and democracy. Commentators are keen to find a method of renewing democratic processes. Naim (2022) suggested autocrats gain and maintain power through the exercise of ‘3Ps’, populism, polarisation, and post-truth. While recognizing the significance of the ‘3P’ tools used by authoritarians the language used in relation to the 3Ps is contested. Authoritarian challenges presented as the 3Ps are not necessarily new. In the 1920s John Dewey noted the rise of nationalism, unfettered power, and rapid technological change, he argued we can only change the world for the better on the basis of verifiable knowledge that results in action taken in association with others (Dewey 1929:3). A similar view is presented in Toulmin (2001) who argued that we need to continuously experiment and re-evaluate experience as it evolves across time. Temporal factors underpin critical realist theories of social change and social reproduction such as Archer’s (1995) morphogenetic approach. These philosophical and social theories directly address contemporary issues and analyze the processes of social change. This paper explores the role of education in democratic change and re-asserts a need for critical thinking, deliberation and systematic verification of knowledge that changes over time. We argue it is time to re-visit ideas of Dewey’s (1915,1929) to strengthen peoples’ capability to verify the warrants for assertions.

Citizen assemblies have been held up as response to the ‘3Ps’ of popularism, polarisation and post-truth (Naim 2002:237) and (Stewart 2023). We argue that new forms of representation such as citizen assemblies require an education that enables people to verify and assess evidence that inform decision making. How can we enable citizens to make better judgements of evidence? Dewey asserted the need for education to prepare people for democratic participation. Dewey argued this was achieved through systematic assessment of evidence and testing theory in practice. Is there a need to reassert a theory of knowledge and action for the 21^st century? That is, to consider the verification of information and warrants that underpin assertions. The paper will argue that Dewey’s, Toulmin’s and Archer’s accounts of social change can be used to build democratic capability that enables verification evidence which provides for warranted assertions in times of rapid social change.

In connection with what has been described as a turn towards “a post-critical educational philosophy” (Hodgson/Vlieghe/Zamojski 2018) several philosophers of education have in recent years aimed at reaffirming the value of “education to be for education’s sake (rather than for extrinsic goals such as global citizenship)” (ibid.). Rather than wanting to imply that education is apolitical, this shift is defended as itself a necessary political move in the context of contemporary educational research and theory. We agree that there is a problematic tendency of instrumentalizing education for political and economic gain, and that the intrinsic value of education is a worthy aim in its own right. However, we argue that a more fine-grained and nuanced analysis is necessary in order to be able to distinguish between different political takes on education, as well as to sharpen the discussion of the consequences of different ways of understanding politics, philosophy and education, as well as their relationship with each other. We argue that not all ways in which education is described, analyzed or conceived of in political terms are equally problematic cases of instrumentalization and that there lies an immense danger in such over-generalization. We suggest distinguishing between instrumentalization and reification in order to avoid that a call for “education for education’s sake” turns into a naïve gesture of strengthening tendencies of the status quo which contribute to increasing social inequality and injustice. Particularly, we want to show which preconditions are necessary so that affirmatively focusing on the educational in education does not contribute to further covering over current injustices rather than providing us with the language to describe and, also in affirmative ways, position ourselves differently in relation to the political aims of education we consider worthy.