Introduction (27/01/2025)
Fiction & Reality or Truth & Post-Truth in democracies under stress
- Starting point of the course: public spheres in which – due to technologies (don’t carefully write
down facts, filter bubble, etc) – people get a lot of information, but do not always know where the
info comes from, what is real and what is fabricated, what is “authoritative” info
- The result is that many citizens are reluctant to accept what politicians or scientists say, many
believe in conspiracy stories or fake news, many stay in their own opinion bubble, and fictions seem
to stand in for facts
- People focus so much on social media platforms that there is less trust in the real society
Main RQ in this course: how do mechanisms of fictionalization and representation operate, and
how can we implement them for a better analysis and understanding of current public spheres?
Point of departure: Democracies under stress?
- Shany Mohr, “Nobody Understands Democracy Anymore” (2019): the crisis is both linked to the rise
of social media as to the privatization of news via platforms (GAFAM); too much information; voters
lack competence to make political decisions, governments are not always capable to make good laws.
- The most important practice of democracy is proscribing norms for the habit of legitimate
disagreement (cf. Voltaire). Disagreement must be organized:
- “Twitter can’t replace that; cable news can’t replace that; referendums can’t replace that; liberal
high courts, international organizations, pious human rights groups, and the free market can’t replace
that; and authoritarian populists certainly can’t replace that” (Mohr, 2019)
How to (dis)agree? How to arrange discussion among climate defender and denier
- Extinction Rebellion vs. BBB-voters
- What happens in politics: Letting it go, because it’s difficult to get the opinion of the different
perspectives. Just don’t discuss it, because it’s difficult to organize the discussion
- Democracy is only functioning when you can listen to each other. You can only find consensus/an
agreement when you listen to each other not possible in this world, because were overloaded
with information and emotions
Timothy Snyder on Capitol Hill riots 2021
- When Trump created his “electoral fiction” and sent this out on Twitter, people believed him,
because he confirmed what they already believed
- Snyder: “It takes a tremendous amount of work to educate citizens to resist the powerful pull of
believing what they already believe, or what others around them believe, or what would make sense
of their own previous choices” (NYT 2021)
- If we lose the institutions that produce facts that are pertinent to us, then we tend to wallow in
attractive abstractions and fictions
January 20, 2025, Trump, this is REALITY: “The golden age of America begins now”, “Sunlight is
pooring over the entire world”
* He behaves like a television personality (I’m going to name the Gulf of Mexico the Gulf of
America)
* Many people believe in him, but it is also a theatre play
The day after: Trump wiped January 6 convicts’ records clean. Now his DOJ is wiping evidence of
rioters’ crimes from the internet
* Dep of Justice taking evidence away – seems like fiction in a state based on legal justice
* It is too weird to believe, but it is happening
Diagnosis
- We see reality, but we see different perceptions of reality (some believe in Trump and others not)
- Reality erosion: it’s less and less clear what the reality is in the world in which we live
- Alternative facts
,- Post-truth
People do not share the same frames to analyse data and arrive at conclusions
They invent their own world/perspective (and exclude others = negative effect in today’s
democracy)
Can fiction help to understand current transformations of the public sphere?
- Don Quixote chooses to believe in fantasy – the world is more enchanting
* Doubleness: serious and not serious in the same time
* Believe in your own story
* First modern novel
The novel is not the truth
- Don Quixote, novel published in two parts (part 1, 1605, and part 2, 1615) by Spanish writer Miguel
de Cervantes, one of the most widely read classics of Western Literature. Originally conceived as a
parody of the chivalric romances that had long been in literary vogue, it describes realistically what
befalls an aging knight who, his head bemused by reading such romances, sets out on his old horse
Rocinante, with his pragmatic squire, Sancho Panza, to seek adventure. Widely and immediately
translated (first English translation 1612), the novel was a great and continuing success and is
considered a prototype of the modern novel.
The protagonist invents stories and adventures while deliberately mistaking windmills for dragons,
sheep for a military army, a copper basin for a hat, … - he frames the reality in a different ways –
alienation (we kunnen onszelf er niet in verplaatsen) is the result
* But at the same time we recognize elements of our daily life in it too
- Elif Shafak (2022): we are living in the age of anxiety, an in-between age… Writing is an open space
in which one can discuss difficult topics
Online genres of fiction: BookTube, BookTok, Sci-fi, romance, etc
* The interest in fiction on online platforms
* Commercial vs. literary fiction?
- Healing fiction (Toshikazu Kawaguchi, ‘Before the coffee gets cold’ series): His quirky fantasy series –
set in a magical cafe in Tokyo where customers can travel back in time while their coffee cools –
centres on ordinary people struggling with loss and regret who wish they could change the past.
Readers often tell Kawaguchi that the stories helped them work through their grief or led them to
reconcile with an estranged relative or friend
Concepts
Concepts that we have to distinguish / use creatively in the current context
* Fiction is the starting point, but because we talk about fiction we need to talk about the
next concepts as well
- Fiction: invention, a narrative describing imaginary events and people
- Fact: a thing that is indisputably the case
- Reality: the state of things as they actually exist
- Imagination: the faculty or action of forming ideas or mental images
- Representation: depiction of something
- Truth / post-truth: the quality or state of being true = in accordance with fact of reality
- Accountable: able to justify actions or decisions
- Propaganda: information of biased or misleading nature
Research starts with conceptualization, data collection and asking questions
* Analysis of data; building arguments
What methodologies will we use in this course?
- Discourse analysis: there are power structures in what is said, where you are standing, whose
speaking, etc.
,- Narrative analysis (in texts and films)
* From whose perspective is the story told?
* What is the plot (events happening)?
* Who is the protagonist? Main characters.
* What is the context of the story?
* What is its meaning / themes?
* How is the narrative composed (in time / place / canon)
* Style
* Etc…
- Visual rhetoric
- Conceptual thinking
How can a cultural studies researcher be relevant in the context of fake news and democracy fatigue?
- People should be aware of fictional strategies used by politicians and other spokespersons
- The remedy for a believe in fake news is pluriformity in media reports and more info on how other
, people are living and thinking
- A remedy as well would be a cultural education, in which people are made aware that fictional
stories can be ironical, playful, critical and truthful, and that it is the reader who should be an active
respondent and interpreter
- In the post-truth society we should not keep up too much with “the Truth” but learn to recognize
the permeability of truth and fiction
What is fiction? Why is the fictional narrative so prominent in western culture? (03/02/2025)
- Interrelated concepts: fiction – the literary novel – imagination – public sphere
Brothers Grimm collecting folk & fairy tales (1812)
- Stories contain witches, trolls, dwarfs, wolves, princess, queens = the opposite of common
characters
- Stories were not intended primarily for children
- Today many of these stories are the basis of children’s reading, cinema’s
Snow white and the seven dwarfs (1937)
- Children are brought up with fictional stories
- Stimulating fantasy, language, play
- Learning how to deal with “made up” constructions
It’s everywhere in our popular culture. The idea of fiction/fact is everywhere in our culture
Fiction – the novel – literature: definitions of the novel
- Literature in the form of prose that describes imaginary events and people
- Something that is invented or untrue
- A belief or statement that is false but is often held to be true because it is expedient to do so
- Representation both as form and morality (James Wood, 2008)
- A mirror and a lamp (M.H. Abrahams, 1953)
* Fiction is putting light on specific events/cultures/etc (characters that are acting in a certain
way), but the readers can also recognize themselves in the text (mirror)
th th
18 /19 century Public Sphere – J. Habermans
- Public sphere = media society, people can discuss certain topics in certain communities
* Place where they communicate about societal/political (public) etc. topics
- Domain of social life where a public opinion can be formed and where citizens deal with matters of
general interest without being subject to coercion you can speak openly without coercion (first
step in a democracy!)
- Bourgeois society: space & time for reading and leisure
- Until the 17/18th century literature / the letters included: philosophy, religion, legal texts, poetry –
and had not much to do with “imaginative” work
- In the 19th century literature became an objective category of printed works of a certain quality.
Three related actors can be distinguished
1. A shift from learning to taste and sensibility
2. An increasing specialization of literature to creative and imaginative works
3. The development of national literatures
19th century: big middle class that goes to school, enormous influence on the society (women also
get a voice and discuss literature etc.)
From learning to taste (from 18th century to 19th century)
- “Learning” was related to church (monasteries) and universities – “taste and sensibility” are
categories of the upcoming bourgeois
* Cultivated amateur
Fiction & Reality or Truth & Post-Truth in democracies under stress
- Starting point of the course: public spheres in which – due to technologies (don’t carefully write
down facts, filter bubble, etc) – people get a lot of information, but do not always know where the
info comes from, what is real and what is fabricated, what is “authoritative” info
- The result is that many citizens are reluctant to accept what politicians or scientists say, many
believe in conspiracy stories or fake news, many stay in their own opinion bubble, and fictions seem
to stand in for facts
- People focus so much on social media platforms that there is less trust in the real society
Main RQ in this course: how do mechanisms of fictionalization and representation operate, and
how can we implement them for a better analysis and understanding of current public spheres?
Point of departure: Democracies under stress?
- Shany Mohr, “Nobody Understands Democracy Anymore” (2019): the crisis is both linked to the rise
of social media as to the privatization of news via platforms (GAFAM); too much information; voters
lack competence to make political decisions, governments are not always capable to make good laws.
- The most important practice of democracy is proscribing norms for the habit of legitimate
disagreement (cf. Voltaire). Disagreement must be organized:
- “Twitter can’t replace that; cable news can’t replace that; referendums can’t replace that; liberal
high courts, international organizations, pious human rights groups, and the free market can’t replace
that; and authoritarian populists certainly can’t replace that” (Mohr, 2019)
How to (dis)agree? How to arrange discussion among climate defender and denier
- Extinction Rebellion vs. BBB-voters
- What happens in politics: Letting it go, because it’s difficult to get the opinion of the different
perspectives. Just don’t discuss it, because it’s difficult to organize the discussion
- Democracy is only functioning when you can listen to each other. You can only find consensus/an
agreement when you listen to each other not possible in this world, because were overloaded
with information and emotions
Timothy Snyder on Capitol Hill riots 2021
- When Trump created his “electoral fiction” and sent this out on Twitter, people believed him,
because he confirmed what they already believed
- Snyder: “It takes a tremendous amount of work to educate citizens to resist the powerful pull of
believing what they already believe, or what others around them believe, or what would make sense
of their own previous choices” (NYT 2021)
- If we lose the institutions that produce facts that are pertinent to us, then we tend to wallow in
attractive abstractions and fictions
January 20, 2025, Trump, this is REALITY: “The golden age of America begins now”, “Sunlight is
pooring over the entire world”
* He behaves like a television personality (I’m going to name the Gulf of Mexico the Gulf of
America)
* Many people believe in him, but it is also a theatre play
The day after: Trump wiped January 6 convicts’ records clean. Now his DOJ is wiping evidence of
rioters’ crimes from the internet
* Dep of Justice taking evidence away – seems like fiction in a state based on legal justice
* It is too weird to believe, but it is happening
Diagnosis
- We see reality, but we see different perceptions of reality (some believe in Trump and others not)
- Reality erosion: it’s less and less clear what the reality is in the world in which we live
- Alternative facts
,- Post-truth
People do not share the same frames to analyse data and arrive at conclusions
They invent their own world/perspective (and exclude others = negative effect in today’s
democracy)
Can fiction help to understand current transformations of the public sphere?
- Don Quixote chooses to believe in fantasy – the world is more enchanting
* Doubleness: serious and not serious in the same time
* Believe in your own story
* First modern novel
The novel is not the truth
- Don Quixote, novel published in two parts (part 1, 1605, and part 2, 1615) by Spanish writer Miguel
de Cervantes, one of the most widely read classics of Western Literature. Originally conceived as a
parody of the chivalric romances that had long been in literary vogue, it describes realistically what
befalls an aging knight who, his head bemused by reading such romances, sets out on his old horse
Rocinante, with his pragmatic squire, Sancho Panza, to seek adventure. Widely and immediately
translated (first English translation 1612), the novel was a great and continuing success and is
considered a prototype of the modern novel.
The protagonist invents stories and adventures while deliberately mistaking windmills for dragons,
sheep for a military army, a copper basin for a hat, … - he frames the reality in a different ways –
alienation (we kunnen onszelf er niet in verplaatsen) is the result
* But at the same time we recognize elements of our daily life in it too
- Elif Shafak (2022): we are living in the age of anxiety, an in-between age… Writing is an open space
in which one can discuss difficult topics
Online genres of fiction: BookTube, BookTok, Sci-fi, romance, etc
* The interest in fiction on online platforms
* Commercial vs. literary fiction?
- Healing fiction (Toshikazu Kawaguchi, ‘Before the coffee gets cold’ series): His quirky fantasy series –
set in a magical cafe in Tokyo where customers can travel back in time while their coffee cools –
centres on ordinary people struggling with loss and regret who wish they could change the past.
Readers often tell Kawaguchi that the stories helped them work through their grief or led them to
reconcile with an estranged relative or friend
Concepts
Concepts that we have to distinguish / use creatively in the current context
* Fiction is the starting point, but because we talk about fiction we need to talk about the
next concepts as well
- Fiction: invention, a narrative describing imaginary events and people
- Fact: a thing that is indisputably the case
- Reality: the state of things as they actually exist
- Imagination: the faculty or action of forming ideas or mental images
- Representation: depiction of something
- Truth / post-truth: the quality or state of being true = in accordance with fact of reality
- Accountable: able to justify actions or decisions
- Propaganda: information of biased or misleading nature
Research starts with conceptualization, data collection and asking questions
* Analysis of data; building arguments
What methodologies will we use in this course?
- Discourse analysis: there are power structures in what is said, where you are standing, whose
speaking, etc.
,- Narrative analysis (in texts and films)
* From whose perspective is the story told?
* What is the plot (events happening)?
* Who is the protagonist? Main characters.
* What is the context of the story?
* What is its meaning / themes?
* How is the narrative composed (in time / place / canon)
* Style
* Etc…
- Visual rhetoric
- Conceptual thinking
How can a cultural studies researcher be relevant in the context of fake news and democracy fatigue?
- People should be aware of fictional strategies used by politicians and other spokespersons
- The remedy for a believe in fake news is pluriformity in media reports and more info on how other
, people are living and thinking
- A remedy as well would be a cultural education, in which people are made aware that fictional
stories can be ironical, playful, critical and truthful, and that it is the reader who should be an active
respondent and interpreter
- In the post-truth society we should not keep up too much with “the Truth” but learn to recognize
the permeability of truth and fiction
What is fiction? Why is the fictional narrative so prominent in western culture? (03/02/2025)
- Interrelated concepts: fiction – the literary novel – imagination – public sphere
Brothers Grimm collecting folk & fairy tales (1812)
- Stories contain witches, trolls, dwarfs, wolves, princess, queens = the opposite of common
characters
- Stories were not intended primarily for children
- Today many of these stories are the basis of children’s reading, cinema’s
Snow white and the seven dwarfs (1937)
- Children are brought up with fictional stories
- Stimulating fantasy, language, play
- Learning how to deal with “made up” constructions
It’s everywhere in our popular culture. The idea of fiction/fact is everywhere in our culture
Fiction – the novel – literature: definitions of the novel
- Literature in the form of prose that describes imaginary events and people
- Something that is invented or untrue
- A belief or statement that is false but is often held to be true because it is expedient to do so
- Representation both as form and morality (James Wood, 2008)
- A mirror and a lamp (M.H. Abrahams, 1953)
* Fiction is putting light on specific events/cultures/etc (characters that are acting in a certain
way), but the readers can also recognize themselves in the text (mirror)
th th
18 /19 century Public Sphere – J. Habermans
- Public sphere = media society, people can discuss certain topics in certain communities
* Place where they communicate about societal/political (public) etc. topics
- Domain of social life where a public opinion can be formed and where citizens deal with matters of
general interest without being subject to coercion you can speak openly without coercion (first
step in a democracy!)
- Bourgeois society: space & time for reading and leisure
- Until the 17/18th century literature / the letters included: philosophy, religion, legal texts, poetry –
and had not much to do with “imaginative” work
- In the 19th century literature became an objective category of printed works of a certain quality.
Three related actors can be distinguished
1. A shift from learning to taste and sensibility
2. An increasing specialization of literature to creative and imaginative works
3. The development of national literatures
19th century: big middle class that goes to school, enormous influence on the society (women also
get a voice and discuss literature etc.)
From learning to taste (from 18th century to 19th century)
- “Learning” was related to church (monasteries) and universities – “taste and sensibility” are
categories of the upcoming bourgeois
* Cultivated amateur
