The adjective “post-truth,” Oxford Dictionary’s word of the year for 2016, “relat[es] to or denot[es] circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief.”³ This phenomenon, which has been intensified by the Brexit campaign in the UK, Donald Trump’s presidential election in the US, and more recently the French presidential election, manifests itself not only through a proliferation of “alternative” facts circulated through new information networks that have been fragmented and personalized by algorithmic filter bubbles, but also through a growing indifference toward the very distinction between true and false. Recently, the realization of the detrimental epistemological and socio-political consequences of this massive disaffection toward truth has given rise to numerous positionings in different intellectual domains, including the history of sciences, philosophy, sociology, politics, information sciences, education, and art. In the wake of these reactions, we have also seen brought to the fore, once again, the crucial question of the pedagogical and critical responsibility of “intellectuals” toward “truth,” “facts,” and scientific “objectivity”⁴ – notions that had been discredited by the poststructuralist/postmodernist critique of positivism, of which Foucault was a prominent leader – in favour of a social constructivism and a kind of cognitive relativism,⁵ the fallout from which we are dealing with today.⁶

To close the 2016-17 cycle of SIGHTINGS centred on the theme of pedagogy, we thought that in this context, it was relevant – in fact, urgent – to broach the issue of (post-)truth as it reverberates in our environment, at the crossroads of the university and the art world, in addition to the large space it takes up in the mediascape. A number of questions arise in this direction: for instance, how do the new epistemic conditions underlying current “public pedagogy”⁷ transform academic teaching and research? How can academics, artists, and critics come out of their “bubbles”⁸ and contribute to the battle against disinformation, against the cultural production of ignorance and the resulting erosion of democracy? Which intellectual, ethical, social, and political standpoints is it possible – and desirable – to adopt in the present climate, in both the academic and artistic spheres, toward the “true” as a principle of knowledge? And what role can an artistic apparatus embedded in the university play in this interdisciplinary thinking?

Since the summer is a period of slowing down that lends itself particularly well to reading and meditation, we have decided to transform the SIGHTINGS cube into a display of books and articles that can be consulted freely by the university’s passers-by and users. The content of this open “library” is based on my research and the suggestions of members of the academic personnel (professors, deans, researchers, etc.) of different departments at Concordia. We asked them what they considered particularly relevant readings – or re-readings – for this specific historical moment in which we are experiencing such a marked crisis of truth. By moving a host of textual resources into a university public space, which, because it is occupied by an exhibition structure, also calls for an aesthetic appreciation, and by juxtaposing references generated by different disciplines (pure sciences, human and social sciences, communications, etc.), this installation invites a critical questioning of our present relationship between knowledge and power. The books and articles can be read on site or borrowed for a few hours, then brought back, based on trust. Moreover, each person is free to annotate and highlight passages, which will then be transcribed and archived on the Gallery’s website.

1. Michel Foucault, “La fonction politique de l’intellectuel,” in Dits et écrits 1954-1988, vol. 3, 1976-79, ed. Daniel Defert and François Ewald, with the collaboration of Jacques Lagrange, Paris, Gallimard/nrf, 1994, p. 112. Translation in Michel Foucault, “Truth and Power,” in The Foucault Reader, ed. Paul Rabinow, New York, Pantheon Books, 1984, p. 73.
2. Jayson Harsin, “Regimes of Posttruth, Postpolitics, and Attention Economies,” Communication, Culture & Critique, 8 (2015), p. 327-33.
3. Oxford Dictionaries, “Word of the Year 2016 Is…,” https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/word-of-the-year/word-of-the-year-2016 (accessed 9 May 2017).
4. Sheila Jasanoff eloquently asks this question to the professors of future citizens in an article published on the First 100 Days blog of the Program on Science, Technology & Society of the Harvard Kennedy School. Sheila Jasanoff, “What Should Democracies Know?,” 28 March 2017. Online: http://first100days.stsprogram.org/2017/03/28/what-should-democracies-know/ (accessed 18 April 2017).
5. On this topic, see Alan Sokal and Jean Bricmont, Intellectual Impostures: Postmodern Philosophers’ Abuse of Science, London: Profile Books, 1998.
6. Writers who had actively participated in the deconstruction of scientific objectivity, such as the sociologist of science Bruno Latour, are now voicing concerns in response to the excesses of post-factual discourse. Bruno Latour, “Why Has Critique Run Out of Steam? From Matter of Fact to Matter of Concern,” Critical Inquiry, 30 (winter 2004), p. 225-48. For an interesting parallel between “post-truth” and “post-positivism,” see also Benjamin Tallis, “Living in Post-truth: Power/Knowledge/Responsibility,” New Perspectives, vol. 24, n^o 1 (2016), p. 7-18.
7. That is, “the lessons that are taught outside of formal educational institutions by popular culture, informal institutions and public spaces, dominant cultural discourses, and public intellectualism and social activism.” Ben Williamson, “Social media and public pedagogies of political mis-education,” code acts in education, 16 November 2016. Online: https://codeactsineducation.wordpress.com/2016/11/16/social-media-and-public-pedagogies-of-political-mis-education/ (accessed 24 March 2017).
8. Bruno Latour, “Comment ne pas se tromper sur Trump?,” Le Monde, 12-13 November 2016. Online: http://www.bruno-latour.fr/sites/default/files/downloads/LEMONDE_12-16-TRUMP.pdf (accessed 24 March 2017).