Events

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Truth and authority come as a package—but which of the two is the source of the other? Is truth a source of a special kind of authority? Or is what is true decided by whoever has the power and authority to dominate discourse? In recent years, theorists in the postmodernist and poststructuralist tradition have been accused of paving the way for the post-truth era in public discourse by weakening our conception of truth. Our intent in this workshop is not primarily to assess the rightness or wrongness of accusations made against theory in postmodern and poststructuralist tradition. Rather we are looking for theoretical positions that go beyond the dichotomous view of truth and power. To meet the backlash challenge, we need to acknowledge the constraints of a discourse-independent world while still keeping in view the power-mechanisms that structure truth-claims.

Truth and authority come as a package—but which of the two is the source of the other? Is truth a source of a special kind of authority? Or is what is true decided by whoever has the power and authority to dominate discourse? In recent years, theorists in the postmodernist and poststructuralist tradition have been accused of paving the way for the post-truth era in public discourse by weakening our conception of truth. Our intent in this workshop is not primarily to assess the rightness or wrongness of accusations made against theory in postmodern and poststructuralist tradition. Rather we are looking for theoretical positions that go beyond the dichotomous view of truth and power. To meet the backlash challenge, we need to acknowledge the constraints of a discourse-independent world while still keeping in view the power-mechanisms that structure truth-claims.

Truth and authority come as a package—but which of the two is the source of the other? Is truth a source of a special kind of authority? Or is what is true decided by whoever has the power and authority to dominate discourse? In recent years, theorists in the postmodernist and poststructuralist tradition have been accused of paving the way for the post-truth era in public discourse by weakening our conception of truth. Our intent in this workshop is not primarily to assess the rightness or wrongness of accusations made against theory in postmodern and poststructuralist tradition. Rather we are looking for theoretical positions that go beyond the dichotomous view of truth and power. To meet the backlash challenge, we need to acknowledge the constraints of a discourse-independent world while still keeping in view the power-mechanisms that structure truth-claims.