ABSTRACT
Chapter 7 opens the third part of the book by placing contemporary post-truth worlds within a wider historical and political perspective. The chapter first details the rise of post-political conditions since the 1970s and 1980s, as mapped by critical authors like Chantal Mouffe, Wendy Brown, Jacques Rancière, and Colin Crouch. Post-politics and post-democracy can be understood as a mode of democracy that forecloses and denies disagreement in favor of consensus, rationalism, and (supposed) universal reason. It is a form of politics that no longer relies on the people, as it functions through the internal mechanisms and logics of the political system itself. Yet, liberal democracy has never solely been about consensus or rationalism. Indeed, as Mouffe reminds us, liberal democracy consists of two opposing traditions: on the one hand, a liberal tradition that emphasizes individual rights, rationality, and private property, and, on the other hand, a democratic tradition that values popular sovereignty, equality, and cooperation. Since the 1970s and 1980s, the liberal tradition has gradually outmaneuvered the democratic, not least through the consolidation of neoliberalism as a global economic and political system. This development, the chapter argues, has profound implications for how we should understand of post-truth discourses.
