Responding to Manufactured Ignorance: Knowledge, Emotions, and Democratic Trust

• In Event: The Politics of Education in Politicized Times: Democracy, Knowledge, and Policy

Abstract

Purpose
Democracy has epistemic dimensions, and how knowledge is constructed, used, and shared influences democracy (Anderson, 2006). In the contemporary USA, the fracturing of shared truth, an active rejection of knowledge, and the politicizing of epistemic institutions have been described as “post truth” democracy (Kempner, 2022). Bolstering democracy relies on bolstering epistemic practices and a shared commitment to a collective understanding of basic facts and evidentiary practices. These commitments are sometimes positioned as fending off irrationality and emotionality, in campus discussions and wider political speech. We address “manufactured ignorance,” or the removal or discouragement of specific knowledge. To respond, we propose a framework of multidirectional skeptical trust for democratic education.

Framework
“Manufactured ignorance” refers to intentional occlusion of knowledge, whether from the “top-down” (government action, e.g. book bans) or the “bottom-up” (community norms, e.g. fear of speaking, refusing to discuss controversy in class). We assess this problem by examining its emotional dimensions. The crude relationship positioning analytic knowledge as superior while emotions ‘lack evidence’ persists in theory. These concerns are not unfounded: on campuses, issues of harm and the stimulation of politically-motivated emotions are born of hatred, fear, and vulnerability. Further, prioritizing feeling as distinct from fact can be its own ‘manufactured ignorance’ and stimulate belief in unfounded claims. Nonetheless, emotions are important to clearly understanding our political situation and to making change and building bridges. Work on ‘affective polarization,’ for instance, recognizes that emotions have impact beyond claims of irrationality (Levendusky, 2023).

Analytical Approach and Argument
We argue that a democratically-oriented epistemology is an emotional epistemology, cognizant that teaching and learning is always threaded with emotion (Furtak, 2018; Zembylas, 2021). Emotion does not just spur falsehoods, but also inflects the excitement, eagerness, and joy of learning. Through an emotional epistemology frame we argue for recognizing the myriad ways that feelings influence not just our sense of the truth but our actual body of knowledge, of what gets taught, shared, and is able to be said in classrooms. Through this approach, we focus on trust as an emotional component of teaching and learning (Jones, 1996).

We argue that efforts for democratic education would at their best integrate a multidirectional skeptical trust. This trust is skeptical because it invites individuals to question claims before believing them, thus fending off efforts to manufacture ignorance. Crucially, this trust is multidirectional because it points skepticism towards the self and towards others–being able to challenge one’s own views is part resisting manufactured ignorance. This approach protects democratic commitments to knowledge in undemocratic times but does not excise emotions from the legitimate process of learning and of knowledge. Instead it recognizes how true feelings interact with questioning and assessing claims–one’s own and others’.

Significance
To move forward democratic education—to build citizens capable of sharing ideas and listening to one another—we need to attend to genuine feelings and their relationship to teaching, learning and trusting on campus. Feelings do not just lead to increased ignorance, nor to polarization. They also make us trust each other—democratically.

Authors

• Penelope Lusk, University of Pennsylvania

• Sigal R. Ben-Porath, University of Pennsylvania