Post-truth or pre-emptive truth? STS and the genealogy of the present

More than a reiteration of old quarrels about the epistemic status and policy implications of science studies, post-truth concerns the very statute of reality. Various takes on post-truth focus on sociology of scientific knowledge’s (SSK) symmetry principle, failing to acknowledge how Actor-Network Theory’s generalised symmetry expresses and fosters an intellectual attack on western dualist ontology, connected with the rise of post-Fordist economy and neoliberal rule. The ensuing, novel political rationale gains momentum in the aftermath of 9/11. On this view, more than post-truth, one should talk of pre-emptive truth: the adjustment of words and things, knowledge and reality – beginning with the past – for reactionary purposes. If post-truth may be a fashionable topic of passing relevance, pre-emptive truth is likely to increasingly affect social, and socio-material, affairs. To keep open a possibility of critique, STS should work out a form of perspectivism, steering clear from traditional naturalism, the illusion of a (re)turn to well-guarded cognitive fortresses, and the belief in the guaranteed emancipatory implications of the “democratisation” of science and of the case for the contingency of the encounter of matter and cognition.