Critiques of 'Truth'

Adam Hodges, session organizer

Abstract for panel of the
American Anthropological Association Annual Meeting
San Jose, California
November 15-19, 2006

Understandings of 'truth' arrived at both within society and within academia provide a critical intersection worthy of careful analysis. 'Truth' in Western society has traditionally been viewed as the matching of knowledge with objectively verifiable facts about the world. Thus, to find 'truth' is to discover a reality simply waiting to be uncovered. Yet critical scholarship has drawn attention to the intricate social process that underlies claims to 'truth.' Myriad voices of social actors, variously constrained and imbued with power, interact with one another to construct and authorize notions of what is true or not. This session explores the boundaries drawn around 'truth' - drawn both by social actors and scholars - to arrive at new intersections of understanding.

One site of interest is American political discourse, where 'truth' is not so much discovered as enacted. In a critique of 'truth' in politics, the first paper examines the performative acts that bring 'truth' into circulation. Speeches and interviews of the Bush administration and its critics are used to illustrate how intertextuality contributes to the construction as well as subversion of 'truth' claims. The author argues that while political actors view 'truth' as an objective reality to be discovered, analysts are best served by viewing 'truth' as a process that involves action.

Another site where 'truth' takes center stage is the university classroom. The second paper provides a critique of how 'truth' develops within management and business lectures. Based upon an ethnographic study of classes at a large public university, the author looks at the content of management lectures from the perspective of Bourdieu's 'authorized language' and discusses the relationship between 'authorized language,' the transmission of ideology , and 'truth'; as well as, the implications for interpreting such lectures.

Within society, social actors encounter constraints and mobilize resources as they report and contest the authoritative 'truth' of recognized experts. The third paper analyzes the voicing across several speech events in which the same results from a French sociological study about Portuguese immigrants are reported and contested. At issue is the way different participants, including a journalist at the Portuguese magazine O Expresso and a group of second generation Portuguese in France, first decontexualize and then recontextualize the findings of the study.

The fourth paper takes a different perspective by examining secretive knowledge. Specifically, the author looks at how this knowledge is a primary social tender among magicians in Paris, France. Through ethnographic research, the paper explores the social life of secrets and the predictable crises in their life cycle, from manufacture through processes of innovation, circulation in networks of exchange, display in contexts of performance, and expiration by means of exposure.

Finally, historical 'truth' is a site of frequent contestation and scholars have often noted that accounts of the past are contaminated by present perspectives. The last paper provides a critique of these ideas by problematizing the very notions of 'past' and 'present' presupposed in them. Drawing from anthropology, history and field research in Mexico, the author argues that the 'pastness' of the past is actually an idea that underpins not just history but much of our knowledge and orientation within the world.

PAPER
'Truth' in Political Discourse: A Theoretical Critique Against the Backdrop of the 'War on Terror' Era
Adam Hodges (University of Colorado)

PAPER
Truth, Lies, Damned Lies and Management Lectures: 'Authorized Language' and the Problem of Truth
Kenneth N. Ehrensal (Kutztown University)

PAPER
Contesting What the "Experts" Say: Second-Generation Portuguese Responses to their Portrayal in Elite Discourse
Michele Koven (University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign)

PAPER
Amazing Secrets Revealed!
Graham Matthew (New York University)

PAPER
Past versus Present?: Critiquing Critiques of Historical Truth
Trevor Stack (University of Aberdeen, UK)

DISCUSSANT
David Samuels (University of Massachusetts)

Adam Hodges is a PhD student in the Department of Linguistics at the University of Colorado at Boulder, and a member of the Colorado Research in Linguistics editorial board. He can be reached at: Adam.Hodges@Colorado.edu.