Dr. Jason Hannan, photo supplied
On the heels of the America election comes Truth in the Public Sphere, a new volume edited by UWinnipeg’s Dr. Jason Hannan (Rhetoric & Communications). Has truth become a casualty of America’s increasingly caustic and volatile political culture? Truth in the Public Sphere (Lexington, 2016) seeks to understand the significance of truth for the everyday world of human communication.
To this end, this book explores the place of truth in several facets of the public sphere: language, ethics, journalism, politics, media, and art. Featuring an international group of contributors from across the humanities and social sciences, this collection is a definitive supplement to theoretical debates about the meaning and status of truth.
“This book was written in light of Donald Trump’s bizarre presidential campaign,” shares Hannan. “It helps to explain the post-truth culture that made his candidacy possible in the first place. It traces the degradation of truth in the American public sphere from George W. Bush to Sarah Palin to Donald Trump, suggesting that we have entered a critical historical moment in which callous disregard for the truth endangers human lives and even the planet. But the book also offers some hope by demonstrating the resilience of “truth from below” by ordinary people for whom truth is inseparable from the fight for justice.”
Truth in the Public Sphere, book cover
Contributors include UWinnipeg’s Dr. Paul Lawrie (History). His chapter is entitled, “The Tragic Action and Revolutionary Intent of Black Lives: The Historical Genealogies and Corporeal Dynamics of Cornel West’s Prophetic Pragmatism in Post-Racial America.”
To read the introduction, please visit Dr. Hannan’s Academia page.
