In 2016, the concept of "post-truth" - indicating any linguistic regime of discourse in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotions and personal beliefs - gained significant attention in academia, although now its very pervasiveness risks oversimplifications. This research tackles the multifaceted phenomenon of post-truth as a complex network where a whole set of communicative, literary, and technological issues converge and interact with each other. The recent appearance of ChatGPT and other Large Language Model (LLM) AI platforms generating "post-truth" narratives in competition with other discourses raises a number of philosophical, linguistic, and literary questions. Our research group intends to investigate the impact and effects of post-truth on literature, linguistics, and audiovisual studies across different geographical areas, to understand if and how these textuality-related disciplines can devise epistemic tools and hermeneutic categories allowing for the creation/negotiation of strategies to understand and resist post-truth divisive tendencies. The research will proceed along two directions: 1) a synchronic exploration of a number of 21st-century relevant literary, political, audiovisual, and AI-generated narratives employed in the US, Canada, and the UK, with France as a continental counterpoint to the foundational (and, in fact, dominant) Anglo-Saxon attitude and language; 2) a diachronic analysis of the evolution, strategies, and reception of post-truth practices and linguistic strategies across a broader historical and geographical perspective. We will adopt an interdisciplinary approach that conceives post-truth not as a phenomenon that appeared in the new millennium, but as situated on a trajectory proceeding from a traceable past and directed towards a much unforeseen future - the development of an epistemological paradigm in Western history and culture that is currently being challenged.

Abstract poster

This research group, composed mainly of scholars of literature, linguistics, and translation studies, aims to tackle the multifaceted phenomenon of post-truth as a complex network where a whole set of communicative, literary, and technological issues converge and interact with each other. We will try to assess how interdisciplinary collaboration might improve our understanding of post-truth phenomena by possibly identifying some shared frameworks of reference. In contemporary planetary culture, where the nexus between literature and national identity is called into question in favor of forms of localization at the level of subnational entities, post-truth narratives may well be agents contributing to the coagulation of diasporic cultures and identities. Considering that any form of public communication has always involved lies and misrepresentation, the focus will also be on the audience's local and global reception of and response to these narratives.

More specifically, our research group intends to investigate the impact and effects of post-truth narratives on literature, linguistics, and audiovisual studies across different geographical areas, to understand if and how these textuality-related disciplines can devise epistemic tools and hermeneutic categories allowing for the creation/negotiation of counternarratives for our times, to understand and eventually counteract the dividing effects of post-truth. In order to delimit the field of study, our research will proceed along two directions: 1) a synchronic exploration of a number of 21st-century relevant literary, political, and audiovisual narratives and linguistic strategies employed in the US, Canada, and the UK, with France as a continental counterpoint to the foundational (and, in fact, dominant) Anglo-Saxon attitude and language; 2)  a diachronic analysis of the evolution, strategies, and reception of post-truth practices across a broader historical perspective.

This project adopts a comparative and interdisciplinary approach to understand post-truth not as a singular, unexpected phenomenon that appeared out of the blue in the new millennium, but as situated on a trajectory proceeding from a traceable past and directed towards a much unforeseen future – the development of an epistemological paradigm in Western history and culture that is currently being challenged. Thus, it will be necessary to move along a manifold path entailing a geographically circumscribed investigation of various literary and linguistic fields which takes into account past, present, and future perspectives, and which will be simultaneously developed by separate subgroups of the researchers included in the project.

Paolo Simonetti

Donatella Montini, Giorgio Mariani, Irene Ranzato, Valerio Cordiner, Lee McIntyre, Ali Dehdarirad, Fabio Ciambella, Alice Balestrino, Giacomo Traina, Kamelia Talebian Sedehi, Luca Valleriani, Angelo Arminio

Info: ali.dehdarirad@uniroma1.it

“Transnational Perspectives on Post-Truth” Lecture Series (2024-25)

Lee McIntyre, Boston University 

What is Post-Truth (and What Comes After That)?

17 September, aula 106, 16:00 – 18:00 (Online)

Respondent: Paolo Simonetti

Francesca Mussi, Sapienza Università di Roma 

“The Truth about Stories Is That That’s All We Are”: Questions of Truth, Storytelling, and the Apocalypse in Indigenous Canadian Contemporary Fiction

24 September, aula 107, 11:00 – 13:00

Respondent: Sara Riccetti

Jeffrey Severs (University of British Columbia) and Michael Streit (Independent Scholar)

In Buffo Veritas: Clowns, Fascism, and Don DeLillo

9 October, Sala Riunioni 2 (3rd floor), 18:00 – 20:00 (Online)

Respondent: Ali Dehdarirad

Long Bui, University of California Irvine 

Post-Information as Post-Memory: Vietnamese Americans, Trump, and the Unforgettable Wars

21 October, Sala Riunioni 2 (3rd floor), 14:00 – 16:00

Respondent: Giacomo Traina

Barbara Herrnstein Smith, Duke University 

Truth in Trouble/The Trouble with ‘Truth’

19 November, Sala Riunioni 2 (3rd floor), 16:30 – 18:30 (Online)

Respondent: Asia Battiloro

Anna Roche, Université d’Aix-Marseille 

“L’histoire en ‘comme si’ ou les intermittences de la mémoire”  

21 November, Sala Riunioni 2 (3rd floor), 11:00 – 13:00 (Online)

Respondent: Valerio Cordiner

Massimiliano Demata, Università di Torino 

Constructing the “Truth” in Discourse? Anti-science, Conspiracy Theories and Disinformation in the Age of Post-truth 

5 December, Sala Riunioni 2 (3rd floor), 14:00 – 16:00

Respondent: Donatella Montini

Brett Ashley Kaplan, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign 

Fiction as History, History as Fiction

14 January, Sala Riunioni 2 (3rd floor), 16:30 – 18:30 (Online)

Respondent: Alice Balestrino 

Anna Mongibello, Università degli Studi di Napoli L’Orientale 

Indigenous Resistance in the Post-Truth Era: A Discursive Approach

24 January, Sala Riunioni 2 (3rd floor), 14:00-16:00

Respondent: Kamelia Talebian Sedehi

Valerio Cordiner, Sapienza Università di Roma 

Il sole incantatore. Miti sovietici nella poesia francese

13 February, Sala Riunioni 2 (3rd floor), 14:00-16:00

Respondent: TBA

Project Website