Government & International Relations Seminar Series:

Post-Truth, Postmodernism and the Public Sphere

Presenter: Saul Newman (Goldsmiths)

RD Watt Seminar room (203) and Zoom

My aim in this paper is to understand the impact of the post-truth political condition on the idea of the public sphere. A functioning public sphere – referring to a shared space of rational communication, deliberation and democratic will formation between citizens – is usually seen as central to most understandings of liberal democracy. However, the procedures and institutions that make up the traditional notion of the public sphere are seen as being fundamentally endangered by the post-factual political climate, in which lies, ‘fake news’, disinformation, ‘alternative facts’ and conspiracy theories – fueled by right-wing populist forces – threaten to fragment and polarize this shared space. I take this as an opportunity to reconsider what the public sphere means today, particularly in light of the debate simmering beneath the surface of current ‘culture wars’ about the extent to which ‘postmodernism’, in its supposed relativization of truth, is to blame for the current malaise. Here I seek to defend certain aspects of postmodern theory, arguing that Foucault’s later work on parresia or free and fearless speech, can help us to combat post-truth populism and revitalize and transform the public sphere in more democratic ways.

Saul Newman (PhD UNSW 1998) is Professor of Politics at Goldsmiths, University of London. His research is in contemporary political and social theory, and he has written widely on radical politics, human rights, political theology and democratic theory. He is the author of: From Bakunin to Lacan (Lexington Books 2001); Power and Politics in Poststructuralist Thought (Routledge 2005); Unstable Universalities (MUP 2007); Politics Most Unusual (Palgrave 2008); The Politics of Postanarchism (EUP 2010); Max Stirner (Palgrave 2011); Agamben and the Politics of Human Rights (EUP 2013); Postanarchism (Polity 2015); Political Theology: a Critical Introduction (Polity 2019); and Order, Crisis and Redemption: Political Theology after Schmitt (2023SUNY Press). He is the current holder of an EU Horizon grant, ‘Reclaiming Liberal Democracy in the Post-Factual Age’.

Feature image By HollyHarry on AdobeStock