Abstract
In an era of Brexit, Trump and the detritus of post-truth politics, this article calls upon critical management scholars to reflect upon the efficacy of their critique. We examine the post-truth critiques of public relation firms working for tobacco corporations in the 1960s, before discussing contemporary examples of the Flat Earth Society and the growing community of climate change deniers. In doing so, we note similarities to the intellectual tactics and strategies of the critical management community in terms of problematizing truth(s), broader aims to counter mainstream discourses of science and the various attempts to provide alternative perspectives on the world. In learning from these post-truth communities, we argue that the critical community should be wary of falling back onto a rational, logical and potentially elitist platform of Socratic critique and conversely should not refuse dialogue as in cynical critique. Instead, we argue for more agonistic forms of critique that use salient exemplars to develop affective relationships within communities alongside the discussion of facts, ethics and politics.
Highlights
The buzz of Brexit and Trump brought with it a new Oxford English Dictionary word of the year: ‘post-truth’
Defined as ‘denoting circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief’ (Oxford English Dictionary, 2018), the notion of post-truth has ridden the wave of anti-expert discourse in Europe and the USA
We take the opportunity to raise a note of caution to our critical kin and provocatively ask: Is not the goal of critical management studies (CMS) to contest the idea that we live in a world of hard facts? If this is the case, our motivation for ‘speaking out’ stems from our concerns as to how to respond to a manager, student, Brexit-backer, or Trump-supporter if they confront us as CMS academics with what is their own peek behind the power dynamics of science, economics and management
Summary
The buzz of Brexit and Trump brought with it a new Oxford English Dictionary word of the year: ‘post-truth’. To better position CMS within the debates on post-truth and politics, we first present some fairly successful attempts to contest ‘truth’ and create communities that promulgate alternative ideas. Climate change deniers and the Flat Earth Society use their own version of science to contest the facts.
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