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Theory, ‘truthers’, and transparency: Reflecting on knowledge in the twenty-first century

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  19 June 2015

MATTHEW FLUCK
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Abstract

The current era is often described in epistemic terms, as an ‘information age’ or ‘knowledge society’. Such claims reflect ideals that are deeply ingrained in modern societies. There is a widespread assumption that successful social and political interaction involves access to information and that political power is gained when knowledge replaces obscurity. Such assumptions reflect contemporary ‘epistemic folkways’, which are manifested in two widespread epistemic phenomena – faith in ‘transparency’ and conspiracy theorising

International Relations (IR) theorists should be well-equipped to understand such developments. However, reflection concerning epistemic matters in IR is in under attack, increasingly presented as a distraction from the formulation of empirically grounded accounts of international politics. This article argues that reflexive theory can in fact play an important role in helping IR scholars to understand contemporary epistemic folkways. Drawing on the Critical Theory of Theodor Adorno, it is argued that the transparency ideal and conspiracy theorising reflect the efforts of individuals to increase their influence in a world in which they are both objects of technical knowledge and, in principle, epistemically empowered subjects. Reflection on the subject-object relationship suggests that the pursuit of increasingly unmediated access to information is in fact a key source of reification and disempowerment.

Type
Articles
Information
Review of International Studies , Volume 42 , Issue 1 , January 2016 , pp. 48 - 73
Copyright
© 2015 British International Studies Association 

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Footnotes

*

The author would like to thank the three anonymous reviewers for their detailed comments and advice. Elements of this article were presented at the 2013 European Workshops in International Studies in Tartu – my thanks to the participants in the ‘After Epistemology’ workshop for their comments. Thanks are also due to Daniel R. McCarthy for many helpful discussions about transparency.

References

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