Post-truth and Climate Change Denialism in Brazil

• In Event: The Post-Truth age: What is this really about? - II

Abstract

The article addresses some key questions about the so-called “post-truth age”, denialism and its political-epistemic implications for climate change in Brazil. The text has two main objectives. The first is to present some of the main definitions of the post-truth and discuss them by the lens of “agnotology studies” (PROCTOR; SCHIEBINGER, 2008), as planned forms of production of ignorance. We suggest that the Foucauldian concept of “dispositive” helps us understand how the production of ignorance is put into practice. The second objective is to illustrate how a dispositive for producing ignorance of climate change was formed in Brazil with the rise of the “Bolsonarism”, a conservative far-right movement. By the analysis of the concrete case of climate denialism in Brazil, we intend to discuss two concepts that have been explored in an excessively abstract way, the concepts of "post-truth" and “climate denialism”. We argue that post-truth age is made by particular forms of circulation of discourses, materialities and meanings which serve to deny scientific facts and delegitimize certain political practices related to them. As an example, climate denialism are particular forms of circulation of discourses, materialities and meanings that aim to destroy the basis of political and epistemic sovereignty on climate change.

Author

• Jean Carlos Hochsprung Miguel, Federal University of São Paulo