Political Interpretation on Meaning and Power

Catalog description

What does knowledge consist of in the realm of politics? How is it discovered, interpreted, and produced? Is knowledge in politics radically unlike knowledge in other areas of life? Does it exist at all, especially if the public realm is warped by powerful news makers and profit-seeking information technologies? This course focuses on how we seek knowledge about the political world through interpretation, and how its meanings are importantly shaped, or distorted, by power. Ancient and modern texts (from Plato to Nietzsche, Weber, Popper, Arendt, Foucault, and feminism) will set the context, after which we turn to questions how political power inflects social knowledge today -- how we understand and acquire it, and how we use it to differentiate truth from falsehood in public life.