Polarization as a result of post-epistemological efforts in self-preservation

With growing scepticism towards science and media, making the implementation of anti-Covid measures difficult and halting efforts at a unified strategy in European migration politics, the notion of truth itself has come under scrutiny, leading to growing polarization and fragmentation of the public sphere, with less and less common ground to stand on. Rather than as an epistemological problem, as the propagation of “alternative facts” supposes, I conceptualize post-truth politics as an effort to escape a perceived danger of being redescribed (Rorty 1993). Such a conceptualization does not look at the fragmentation of the public sphere as a result of post-truth politics, but rather at post-truth politics as a political means to reach a different goal at the risk of leading to more fragmentation. Rationalist approaches to public discourse stress that participants have to assume others’ rationality (Jezierska 2019). Here, political discussion aims at rational agreement by means of arguments and facts and relies on participants sharing the motivation to reach such agreement, providing the named common ground. Proposing so-called alternative truths, though, is more fruitfully understood as an intent at narrative self-preservation, akin to seeking recognition (Honneth 1996). Participation in the public sphere, thus understood, is not about having the better argument based on shared ideas about the quality of arguments, but about remaining who one believes one is. Participating in post-truth politics can be understood as an effort to preserve one's personal life narrative, even at the cost of chances at consent. Similar effects have been described as populism’s tendency of transforming itself “into a new form of representative government.” (Urbinati 2019). Rather than as a result of relativism, post-truth politics, and the fragmentation that comes with it, is understood as politics "post-questions-of-truth", transforming dissents into challenges of narrative self-preservation. Such an approach leads to new perspectives on potential remedies to polarization and the fragmentation of the public sphere.