Author: Sylwia Tomaszewska
In this paper, I will focus on two texts: “What happened to social facts?’’ written – by Ho Karen and Jillian R. Cavanaught – and the text by Dick, Hilary Parsons: “Build the wall! Post-truth on the US-Mexico border’’. Both texts discuss the question of post-truth. The issue of post-truth has become relevant in the context of modern society, social media and politics. Post-truth refers to a situation in which emotions, beliefs and personal opinions are more important than objective facts in shaping public opinion and decision-making. Therefore, it is important to understand and recognize post-truth in order to effectively promote the accuracy of information, develop critical thinking skills, check information sources and promote accountability in communication. Knowledge of post-truth also helps us better understand the contemporary challenges of democracy and the functioning of the information society.
Truth and facts are fundamental concepts in the social sciences, including anthropology, and form the basis of scientific research. Scientists strive to base their conclusions on solid evidence, facts and field research to get as close to the truth as possible. Karen Ho and Jillian R. Cavanaugh open their essay with their discussion in truth and facts which have long been important concepts for anthropologists, at least since the ethnographic turn. While Trumpism’s attempts to settle claims to truth on the basis of vested interests, worldviews, power, and ego are deeply troubling, an intervention is needed that reaffirms the singularity and unquestionability of “objective facts”. Connected with this idea is the thought of post-truth. According to one interpretation of the term, post-truth refers to denoting situations in which appeals to emotions and personal beliefs are more influential than objective facts, which is particularly relevant for haping public opinion. The authors also write that anthropologists may have a unique commitment to scholarly discussion of political discourse, processes that generate inequality and power relations that are unequal, and to approaching truth as a politically situated concept.
The importance of anthropology in the discussion on facts and truth is described by the authors as follows. They write that the absolutist, binary thought that anthropology seeks to question, contextualize, and move beyond is made up of strict adherence and outright denial. In this endeavor, it is essential to challenge presumptions that are taken for granted and to situate social facts in the very process of producing anthropological knowledge.
The second work I am referring to is the article written by Hilary Parsons DickoOn the US-Mexico border, in which she invokes Donald Trump’s wall to illustrate and better understand what it is and how post-truth is created. According to her, Trump’s wall, which is simultaneously a political idea, a tool for social distinction, and a type of hate speech, maintains the US immigration policy against migrants from Latin America as a social fact that has been debunked.
According to the author the idea of post-truth, in particular, refers to a political climate in which it is more challenging to generalize policy-making facts to groups with competing political interests. Instead, they have evolved into symbols for these organizations; in other words, facts now serve as descriptors for various types of collectivity. A political process known as “post-truth” is defined by this alleged mode of accepting facts “emotionally or instinctively, regardless of evidence”[1]. In other words, post-truth signifies a certain method to their discovery and authorisation – an epistemology – rather than referring to a moment when individuals no longer announce truths. The techniques of knowing in Trump’a post-truth wall discourse are fundamentally different from those employed by several colleges, news organizations, and governmental agencies, as well as the related specialists (the much-maligned “establishment”).
I will briefly try to discuss some key aspects and stages that contributed to the emergence and development of the concept of “post-truth”, which are included in the text. The first of these is the rupture in authorization processes. According to Hannah Arendt, when there is a rupture in authorization processes, factual truths that contradict “the benefit or pleasure of a particular group” are easily transformed into individual opinions and are thus canceled out as facts. This is a key initial stage in the development of post-truth. The next aspect is political differences. The concept of post-truth points to a political environment in which factual truths informing policy making become difficult to generalize between groups with opposing political interests. Instead, these truths become emblems of these groups. Next comes an emotional or instinctive understanding of truth. This step is when truth is understood emotionally or instinctively, regardless of evidence. This approach to truth has become characteristic of post-truth. Next is the production of spectacles. Post-truth uses performances to create, verify and authorize truths. These performances are based on a semiotics of individualization that favors uniqueness and simplicity at the expense of patterns and complexity. At this stage, factual truths become symbols – they are emblematized. Next comes securitization and symbolization: In the case of the US-Mexico border wall debate, factual truths became associated with the figure of Donald Trump and his policies. They became a symbol of the group and its interests, which is a key element in post-truth epistemology. And finally, the politicization of truth: Eventually, factual truths become a tool of politics, used to legitimize and promote certain actions or policies, such as the construction of the wall on the border with Mexico.
About the authors:
Karen Ho is a professor of anthropology at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities. Her research focuses on the problems of understanding and representing financial markets, sites that resist cultural analysis and often disavow various attempts to locate or detail them[2]. Whereas Jillian R. Cavanaugh is a linguistic and cultural anthropologist who received her PhD from New York University. She is a professor and chair of the Department of Anthropology and Archaeology at Brooklyn College CUNY and on the faculty of the Anthropology Program at the CUNY Graduate Center[3].
Hilary Parsons Dick is an associate professor of international studies. She is a CASAA Scholar-Advocate Fellow 2022-2023 and the Frank and Evelyn Steinbrucker ‘2019 Endowed Chair at Arcadia University 2021-42. Dr. Dick researches Mexico-US. migration and asylum-seeking on the US-Mexico border from the perspective of ethnographic discourse analysis; the political economy of language; anti-racist approaches to language and law; and gender, class and ethno-racial relations[4].
[1] Dick, Hilary Parsons. “Build the Wall!”: Post‐Truth on the US–Mexico Border. American Anthropologist 121, no. 1 (2019), pp. 180.
[2] Ho, Karen – Minnesota Writers Directory (mnwritersdirectory.org) [access date: 18.05.2023].
[3] Jillian R. Cavanaugh – Items (ssrc.org) [access date: 18.05.2023].
[4] Hilary Parsons Dick (academia.edu) [access date: 18.05.2023].
Anthropological Perspectives 
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