"Truth" in the Age of Trump

Cultural studies scholars have a long history of problematizing the concept of truth. Today, however, many on the left have turned to the tactic of calling out Trump’s lies, enumerating them, fact-checking them, and countering them with contrary evidence. While well-intentioned, dependence on calls for fact-checking and slogans that proclaim allegiance to science without acknowledging the cultural and social factors that affect knowledge production risks reifying some of the problems that early cultural studies scholars rightly highlighted. This essay argues, ultimately, that cultural studies scholars, activists, teachers, and critical theorists should resist the urge to set down the tools of critical theory but instead to apply them with abandon to Trump, his policies, and, perhaps most importantly, to ourselves. Cultural studies scholars have a long history of problematizing the concept of truth by critiquing positivism and objectivity, and outlining the dangers of an uncritical reliance on Enlightenment-inspired rationality. Some might argue, in fact, that at the very core of cultural studies’ critique of the status quo is the idea that the knowledge we produce is in uenced by our subject position and embedded in culture and the material historical conjuncture in which we live and work. The concept of a singular objective Truth is all but impossible to sustain under such circumstances. However, as today’s historical conjuncture includes Donald Trump’s presidency, many on the left have turned to the tactic of calling out Trump’s lies, enumerating them, fact-checking them, and countering them with contrary evidence in an effort to resist Trump’s agenda and policies. Such tactics seem more than logical in the face of the president’s steady stream of lies and “alternative facts” designed to justify his agenda. While well-intentioned, however, dependence on calls for fact-checking and slogans that proclaim allegiance to science without so much as a nod to the cultural and social factors that color the fraught process of knowledge production risks reifying some of the very problems that even the earliest of cultural studies scholars have highlighted. This essay begins to grapple with the question of what we are to do with this tension, the tension between the critical work of critiquing positivism and objectivity and the desire to call out Trump and his seeming barrage of bald-faced lies and efforts to gaslight the public. The essay represents a call, ultimately, for cultural studies scholars, activists, teachers, and critical theorists to resist the urge to set down the tools of critical theory but instead to apply them with abandon to Trump, his policies, and, perhaps most importantly, to ourselves. Despite a long history of debates about precisely what cultural studies is and what it should and will be in the future, few would deny that among the concepts central to the eld is power. In making visible various intersecting systems of power, including ideology, the political economy, and norms related to gender, sexuality, and race, we begin to complicate the notion that one can objectively observe an object and apply reason and the scienti c method to discern the Truth about that object. Embedded in a particular moment in history and in uenced by our positionality, culture, and social context, the knowledge we produce is informed by what we think we already know about the world. While such notions are the bread and butter of a critical theorist or cultural studies scholar, this is not the case for skeptical colleagues and friends and, importantly, students who might grapple with what seems to be an affront to the methodologies they are learning in other courses. Students wrestling with the critique of positivism and objectivity might conclude that such critiques amount to the idea that “everything is subjective” or that “it just depends on your opinion.” In such cases, distinguishing between the relativism and imaginary thinking that critical theorists are sometimes accused of and a real need to account for how the cultural, social, and historical context and one’s social identity and positionality in uence how that person thinks about a particular object or phenomenon is essential. Ironically, the concept of hegemony simultaneously makes this task easier to explain by labeling the process by which a particular dominant view of the world becomes common sense, and more dif cult as its very presence makes it hard for students to see their way around it. Indeed, students are not the only ones who may be confused or critical about cultural studies practitioners’ critique of positivism and objectivity. The Sokal Affair of 1996 is a possible case in point. This is, of course, the famous case where physicist Alan Sokal submitted and successfully published a fake article in the journal Social Text, in which he made dubious arguments that wove together scienti c language and rhetoric about social constructionism to demonstrate what he saw as a problematic trend among postmodernists and cultural studies scholars of accepting any argument that seemed to justify their political position regardless of its rigor. Sokal saw the publication of his article as proof that these scholars on the left were willing to accept arguments that were divorced from truth and empirical facts. In explaining his decision to submit the hoax article and allow for its publication more than twenty years ago, Sokal lamented the fact that the Left (with which he himself identi ed) had seemingly severed its ties with science: For most of the past two centuries, the Left has been identi ed with science and against obscurantism; we have believed that rational thought and the fearless analysis of objective reality (both natural and social) are incisive tools for combating the mysti cations promoted by the powerful—not to mention being desirable human ends in their own right. The recent turn of many “progressive” or “leftist” academic humanists and social scientists toward one or another form of epistemic relativism betrays this worthy heritage and undermines the already fragile prospects for progressive social critique. Theorizing about “the social construction of reality” won’t help us nd an effective treatment for AIDS or devise strategies for preventing global warming. Nor can we combat false ideas in history, sociology, economics and politics if we reject the notions of truth and falsity. In today’s context of a seemingly endless ow of misinformation from Donald Trump and his administration in which the ght against global warming, medical advances like vaccinations long accepted as effective, knowledge about women’s reproductive health, and other scienti c developments seem at risk, Sokal’s critique might begin to look appealing to both us and our students. In the face of the daily storm of lies and active efforts to obscure or reduce access to scienti c data, in the face of policy proposals seemingly divorced from reality that pose threats to marginalized populations throughout the country, a critical approach can feel like a luxury. And indeed, some on the left—a group that may include some of our students and ourselves—have begun adopting slogans that perhaps unwittingly re ect a positivist view of science. Slogans on signs and t-shirts proclaim that “science is not a liberal conspiracy” and “science is real.” Such pronouncements echo Hillary Clinton’s declaration during her acceptance speech at the Democratic National Convention: “I believe in science.” 1 Organizers estimated that, in April of 2017, more than a million people participated in the March for Science in Washington, DC and in sister marches around the world to profess their support for “the need to respect and encourage research that gives us insight into the world.” March organizers explained on their website that People who value science have remained silent for far too long in the face of policies that ignore scienti c evidence and endanger both human life and the future of our world. New policies threaten to further restrict scientists’ ability to research and communicate their ndings. We face a possible future where people not only ignore scienti c evidence, but seek to eliminate it entirely. Staying silent is a luxury that we can no longer afford. We must stand together and support science. Our gravitation toward such ideas, as well as pithy slogans and clever protest t-shirts, and exasperated declarations that Trump is completely divorced from reality are fueled, in part, by our disbelief at the extent to which Trump and his associates appear to ignore scienti c maxims that have long ago been accepted as fact. We nd ourselves emboldened to declare that, in this complex world, surely we can at least agree that vaccinations are helpful, that climate change is real, that science itself is real and its data materially compelling. But we would do well to check this impulse against the equally real bene ts of a critical skepticism of positivism and the notion of objectivity. We would do well to slow down and avoid statements that suggest that science is somehow a vessel lled with pure objective knowledge ready to be discovered and that scienti c practice is simply the extraction of this knowledge from the vessel. Such an idea ies in the face of the work of any number of critical theorists, postmodernists, feminist theorists, and other cultural studies scholars. Similarly, overemphasis on simply listing facts or listing Trump’s lies does not guard against a situation where Trump or one of his colleagues cites nothing but veri able facts to support a harmful policy. While naming Trump’s lies is important, so is tracing the relationships of power at play and the harmful consequences of his actions. This is the kind of nuanced analysis cultural studies facilitates. Have we so quickly forgotten the insights of theorists like Anne Fausto-Sterling, for one, who has so adeptly described so