Understanding Emotions in Post-Factual Politics: Negotiating Truth - Hardcover

Durnová, Anna

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1788114817 ISBN 13: 9781788114813

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing, 2019

Synopsis

An insightful lens into the contemporary state of post-factual politics, this timely book explores the perceived binary nature of facts and emotions, suggesting ways to integrate them. Anna Durnová shows that in order to understand post-factual politics, we must unveil the role of emotion in the discursive registers through which politics is constructed and knowledge is legitimized.

By analysing and comparing scientists' protests against the Trump presidency with famous scientific controversies in modern medicine, this book redefines truth as a negotiation in public discourse between the interplay of values, beliefs and facts. Chapters examine the ways in which people see emotions as being opposed to facts, unpacking how this ultimate opposition limits public discussion on science in the wake of alternative facts and 'fake news'.

Political science students and academics will find the new discussion of post-factual politics through the lens of emotions a timely and important read. This book is also ideal for social movements scholars with the March for Science a key case study used to examine the gap between emotions and facts in modern day times.

About this title

About the Author

Anna Durnová, Department of Public and Social Policy, Charles University, Prague, Czech Republic and Institute for Advanced Studies,Vienna, Austria

Review

'The defense of science as being free of human passions is worse than ineffective. It is part of the problem, driving public alienation from the scientific enterprise, while blinding us to the causes of that alienation. Durnova's original analysis points to a way forward that refuses to censor the emotions that lie at the heart of the production of truth.'
--Daniel Breslau, Virginia Tech, US

'How do we negotiate the topsy-turvy world of 'the post-factual condition'? That's the timely question Anna Durnová poses with her important new book. Citizens responding to brazen demagoguery must now protest 'for reality'. It can get emotional, as the quest for truth usually is. Durnová offers insights crucial to the way ahead.'
--Douglas Torgerson, Trent University, Canada, and author of The Promise of Green Politics: Environmentalism and the Public Sphere

'Social research should provide counterintuitive insights, and this book does precisely that, questioning how we tend to juxtapose emotions and facts. Whilst developing broader historical insights, it is also remarkably relevant to the current era.'
--Patrick Baert, University of Cambridge, UK

Edition details

• Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing
• Publication date: 2019
• ISBN 10: 1788114817
• ISBN 13: 9781788114813
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 176