“Defying the Facts: Lying in Politics and Counterfactuals in Narrative”

Conference Title: conference “Defying the Facts: Lying in Politics and Counterfactuals in Narrative”

When: February 17, 2006 at the Live Oak Pavilion on the FAU’s Boca Raton Campus – 2-5 PM—reception follows.

Sponsored by: the Dorothy F. Schmidt Eminent Scholar in the Humanities, Dr. Richard Shusterman, and the Ph.D. Program in Comparative Studies."

Cost: Free! So there is no excuse for not attending!

Description:
Politics today is profoundly torn by contradictions concerning the
truth. Though constantly appealing to facts, political life seems more
powerfully driven by falsehoods and fabrications that are neatly
packaged and guilelessly consumed through the seductive power of
narrative spin. We are led to wonder whether any facts can be found
beyond the gloss of interpretational narrative and how we might
identify and deploy them for political progress. But true progressive
politics cannot stick to the facts. It requires vision of a better
world contrary to the dismal realities and regimes that govern us; it
demands a counterfactual discourse.

The conference “Defying the Facts: Lying in Politics and Counterfactuals in Narrative” explores these crucial issues through interdisciplinary perspectives, with lectures by two of America’s leading scholars: Catherine Gallagher, Eggers
Professor of English Literature at the University of California,
Berkeley; and Martin Jay, Sidney Hellman Ehrman Professor of History at the University of California, Berkeley.

Professor Gallagher will give a lecture entitled “War, Counterfactual
History, and Alternate History Novels,” and Professor Jay will lecture
on “The Ambivalent Virtues of Mendacity: On Lying in Politics.”