When reality does not impose itself

Down to Earth (2017) and the political question of denialism

Abstract

Our go is to bring to light the way Bruno Latour understands the issue of political denialism in Down to Earth: Politics in the New Climatic Regime (2017). It is about demonstrating how more than an epistemological phenomenon linked to “post-truth”, denialism concerns the geopolitical situation of “post-politics”. At first, based on the book by Naomi Orekes and Erik M. Conway, Merchants of Doubts (2010), we will detour through the history of climate denialism. In the sequence, we will explore the displacement that led political-economic elites to abandon their commitment to the truth. Then, following Latour, we will address the reasons why people do not believe in facts or scientific truths, a side effect of decades of systematic destruction of a “common culture” of support. Finally, we will advance the hypothesis that we must shift the conditions for the solution of the denialism problem.