Denialism, Post-Denialism and the Boundaries of the Speakable

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• Dr Keith Kahn-Harris, Birkbeck College and Institute of Jewish Policy
• Tuesday 05 June 2018, 17:00-19:00
• Room SG1, Alison Richard Building, 7 West Road, Cambridge, CB3 9DT.

If you have a question about this talk, please contact Rachael Taylor.

Speaker: Dr Keith Kahn-Harris – Sociologist and writer

The term ‘denialism’ has come to be applied to a cluster of ‘alternative’ forms of knowledge, including Holocaust denial, global warming denial, anti-vaxxers, 911 conspiracism, creationism and more. In my forthcoming book Denial: The Unspeakable Truth, I argue that denialism arose in modernity as a result of a process in which, post-enlightenment, certain desires and political projects were rendered ‘unspeakable’ and impossible to legitimate publicly. Denialism is therefore a covert forms of advocating for and legitimating certain courses of action and ways of being in the world.

The ‘alternative’ to denialism is , therefore, a dystopian prospect; a world in which the unspeakable becomes speakable again. This alternative is more than a hypothetical possibility. There are signs of a transition occurring from denialism to ‘post-denialism’. Post-denialism, embodied in the discourse of Donald Trump, eschews the masquerade of science and scholarship that defines denialism, in favour of a visceral kind of quasi-acknowledgement of that which is denied. This may signal a weakening of the boundaries of the speakable and a concomitant shift in the language of political possibility.

Dr Keith Kahn-Harris is a sociologist and writer. He is a senior lecturer at Leo Baeck College an associate lecturer at Birkbeck College, and a Fellow of the Institute for Jewish Policy Research.

The talk will be followed by a drinks reception in the Alison Richard Building foyer.

This event is being hosted by the Conspiracy & Democracy research project, a five-year project funded by The Leverhulme Trust and based at CRASSH .

This talk is part of the Conspiracy & Democracy series.

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