Post-truth, or Post-Academic?: The Transformation of Science and the Obsolescence of “Reality”

Abstract Discussions of post-truth typically appeal to a notion of science as objective and therefore non-ideological. Objectivity has been attacked as itself an ideology, and a large literature has developed which claims that there are alternative “epistemologies” which reveal facts which this ideology excludes. The focus on the question what is a fact leads to “post-truth: this question is in turn treated as ideological. But this is misleading in two ways. One is that the kinds of facts that are supposed to be added by these alternative epistemologies have been part of sociology all along. The disagreement is not about facts, but about affirming the validity of viewpoints. Another is that sociology problematizes ideology itself, without affirming any ideology. This approach provides its own discipline: we come to understand what something like “oppression” means, and means for the people involved, in terms of the difference between our assumptions and practices, from our living life, and theirs.