Conor's Critical Reads
August 31st, 2017
In the wake of the election, much has been made of supposedly "post-truth politics", where emotional certainty and the dissolution of belief in previously widely trusted sources of political information have endangered factually based political discussion. These three titles, all published in the three years leading up to the election, show that this apparently recent phenomenon is not really all that new. A common thread throughout all three is a focus on the productivity of emotion or affect in generating political understanding. Masco, Ioanide and Brown compellingly argue that emotional political attachments or affective states are not simply an abdication of reasoning; rather, these attachments or states play an active role in generating cohesive (if rationally incoherent) world-views within which reasoning takes place. These affects must be reckoned with rather than cast aside as irrelevant in discussions of race (Ioanide), national security (Masco) and immigration (Brown).
Lastly, Ludwig Wittgenstien's classic On Certainty offers a penetrating and entertaining analysis of what we mean by certainty as we act in the world. Currently, political forces are making use of widespread uncertainty, especially the faltering belief in the reality of news media, governmental accounting assessments and reports from academic sources. It is not merely a matter of philosophical interest, then, to deepen our understanding of what certainty is and how we make use of it in everyday life.
- Conor, Bookseller at Seminary Co-op
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