Postmodernism and Post-Truth: Cause, Cure or Diagnosis?

There are three ways in which theoretical approaches and orientations having a broadly ‘postmodern’ character have been invoked in the analysis of ‘post-truth’ politics. The first and most widespread of these is the identification of postmodernism, and related positions like multiculturalism and identity politics, as a cause of post-truth politics. Several of the now numerous ‘post-truth’ books have done this, on the basis that sociological investigation of science, arguments about the relativity of truth to identity, or deconstruction of ‘regimes’ of truth, have leaked out from the social science classroom into the wider political world, to the detriment of truth itself. There are, however, good grounds for doubting this causal claim, given the apparent switch in political (left-right) polarity that must, in this scenario, have accompanied the leakage. A second but less prominent theme invokes postmodern thought as a cure for post-truth, which is held to be either an outgrowth of the recent over-confidence of science or, in another version, its recurrent counterpoint throughout history. Partially Arendtian in its provenance, and obviously more sympathetic to postmodern argument, this position has some difficulty substantiating the claim that there is anything wrong with post-truth. The paper’s emphasis, after brief discussion of these two themes, will however be on a third, the idea that postmodernism contributes to an analytical diagnosis of post-truth politics. To take this view requires a shift from a methodological understanding of postmodernism to an empirical, in particular a sociological and political-scientific, understanding of postmodernity. In this enterprise, unexpected support may be found from outside the ranks of self-identified postmodern thinkers. An obvious place to start in this spectrum ranging from self-described postmodernism to theory-averse political science, is with Lyotard’s classic formulation of postmodernism as ‘incredulity towards metanarratives’, explained as ‘undoubtedly a product of progress in the sciences: [whereas] that progress in turn presupposes it’. Beck developed a similar argument when he argued that, in science, ‘Demystification spreads to the demystifier and in so doing changes the conditions of demystification’. Laclau moved from a celebration (with Mouffe) of the progressive potential of new discursive solidifications around identity to a recognition of their repressive potential, in his work on populism – not for him a distortion but a true expression of democratic politics. Lefort’s account of democracy as a ‘dissolution of the markers of certainty’ has helped to redirect attention to Tocqueville, whose qualified endorsement of democracy gives him particular relevance under the present conditions of democracy in America. In empirical democratic theory, the benefits for democracy of increased education and, especially, the more rapid circulation of information, so-called ‘cognitive mobilization’, have come to be questioned. Common to all of these arguments is an emphasis on the effects of the continued intensification of democracy, which I have called ‘hyperdemocracy’. The paper will develop this theme towards the conclusion that democracy, while it relies on extraneous epistemic and procedural supports, cannot in the long run tolerate anything other than itself, a contradiction that post-truth politics is beginning to expose.