ERIC Number: EJ1200048
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2018
Pages: 5
Abstractor: As Provided
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ISSN: ISSN-1191-162X
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The Sociality of Post-Truth: Neoliberal Culture and Its Rationality
Sonu, Debbie
Canadian Social Studies, v50 n2 p28-32 2018
In her essay, Neoliberalism's Frankenstein, Wendy Brown (2018) unpacks with meticulous depth how the current neoliberal condition valorizes private venture by eroding trust in the meaning of the social. In an attempt to understand, like Michel Foucault (1977), the governing rationality that generates certain kinds of subjects and their conduct, Brown chooses as her object of study the recent hypervisibility of white male right political rage and the inconsequentiality of truth in the context of a liberal "democratic" nation, the United States. With key leaders now legitimizing bigotry as a form of 'greatness', white right rage is given permission to explode onto the scene, crushing political correctness, multiculturalism, plurality and all democratic values, crying liberty and freedom at the helm of hatred and anger. As said by Hannah Arendt (1951), "being right has nothing to do with the objective truthfulness of the Leader's statements which cannot be disproved by facts, but only by future success or failure" (p. 383). Thus, the only reassurance audiences need in a post-truth culture is the constant reassurance that he, the leader, is winning, winning, winning.
Descriptors: Neoliberalism, Politics of Education, Privatization, Whites, Males, Political Attitudes, Democratic Values, Negative Attitudes, Competition, Pathology
University of Alberta. 347 Education South, Edmonton, Alberta T6G 2G5, Canada. Web site: http://www2.education.ualberta.ca/css/
Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Evaluative
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Language: English
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