Media, Truth, and Power
Course Overview
The contemporary turn toward illiberal politics across numerous countries reveals a set of recurring tendencies: rising xenophobia and social polarization targeting minorities; the revival of nineteenth-century principles of foreign policy based on spheres of influence and the privileges of great powers; the discrediting of expert knowledge; the fragmentation of public discourse into mutually isolated ideological clusters; the framing of painful social issues as elements of conspiracy and culture wars; and an increasing tolerance for violence between states and social groups.
This course treats the contemporary “crisis of truth” as an entry point into a broader problem: the crisis of communication, social polarization, and the erosion of the social contract in contemporary societies. Illiberal regimes and movements do not simply reject truth; rather, they seek to monopolize, instrumentalize, or strategically destabilize the very ideas of common truth and common good. The resulting crisis affects not only political institutions, but also the everyday forms through which individuals and groups recognize, address, and imagine one another. The final aim of the course is therefore not simply to “restore” damaged communicative pacts, but to imagine new scenarios of interpersonal imagination: new ways in which individuals and groups can perceive, address, recognize, and respond to one another without reducing social, cultural, and psychological complexity.
Seminar Leaders
Dr. Ilya Kukulin
Lecturer
University of Massachusetts Amherst
Dr. Ilya Kukulin is a poet, literary critic, cultural historian, and cultural sociologist, and a visiting research fellow at the Amherst Center for Russian Culture. He is the author of Machines of Noisy Time: How Soviet Montage Became an Aesthetic Method of the Unofficial Culture and co-author of A Guerilla Logos: The Project of Dmitry Aleksandrovich Prigov, and has published several collections of poetry, with his work translated into English, Italian, Albanian, Serbian, and Georgian.
Dr. Maria Mayofis
Visiting Associate Professor of Russian
Amherst College
Dr. Maria Mayofis has been an Associate Professor and Senior Research Fellow at the School of Advanced Research in the Humanities at the Russian Academy of National Economy and Public Administration since 2011. She previously served as an editor of the leading Russian literary studies journal New Literary Observer and is the author of Appeal to Europe: The Literary Society “Arzamas” and the Russian Modernization Project of 1815–1818, as well as co-editor of volumes on Soviet children’s and youth culture and education.
Syllabus and Readings
Course Schedule
tuesday, oct 6
Week 1: Truth, Post-Truth, and the Crisis of Communication
Hosted on Zoom
Suggested Readings:
- Teele Rebane, “The people cold calling to chip away at Russia’s digital iron curtain”, CNN, April 2, 2022 (https://edition.cnn.com/2022/04/02/europe/cold-calling-ukraine-russia-iron-curtain-intl-hnk-dst).
- Sophia Rosenfeld. Democracy and Truth. University of Pennsylvania Press, 2019. P. 1—41.
TUESDAY, OCT 13
Week 2: Genealogies of Truth: Critique, Confession, Science, and Expressivism
Hosted on Zoom
Suggested Readings:
- Nietzsche F. On Truth and Lies in a Nonmoral Sense (1873)
TUESDAY, OCT 20
Week 3: Progress, Modernization, and the Future of the Social Contract
Hosted on Zoom
Suggested Readings:
- Fraser, S. The End of the Future. Jacobin, 2024, March 2. (https://jacobin.com/2024/03/left-politics-future-history-capitalism-progress)
- Peter Wagner, Progress: A Reconstruction (Polity, 2016), Foreword, Chapter 1 (“The Withering Away of Progress”), and Chapter 6 (“Possible Progress Today”). Chapters 2–5 are recommended but not required.
TUESDAY, OCT 27
Week 4: Complexity, Media, and the Great Simplification
Hosted on Zoom
Suggested Readings:
- Leslie, I. We know a lot less than we think we do about the world. Which explains the allure of “simplism.” New Statesman. 2019. June 21.
- Rosanvallon, Pierre. “A Reflection on Populism.” Books & Ideas, 10 November 2011. https://booksandideas.net/A-Reflection-on-Populism.html
- Miłosz, Czesław. The Captive Mind. Translated by Jane Zielonko. New York: Vintage International, 1990 [1953]. Preface and Chapter I: “The Pill of Murti-Bing” (pp. vii–xiii, 3–22).
TUESDAY, NOV 3
Week 5: Recognition, Alienation, and Blocked Meaning
Hosted on Zoom
Suggested Readings:
- Pugh, Allison J. “Our Crisis Is Not Loneliness but Human Beings Becoming Invisible.” Aeon, 2025, June 19. https://aeon.co/essays/our-crisis-is-not-loneliness-but-human-beings-becoming-invisible
- Robin Celikates, Thijs Lijster & Hartmut Rosa. “Beyond the Echo-chamber: An Interview with Hartmut Rosa on Resonance and Alienation.” Krisis, 2019, 39 (1): 64—78.
- Schmitt R. Alienation and Freedom. Routledge, 2018 (2003). P. 1—40.
TUESDAY, NOV 10
Week 6: Heterochrony, Modernization, and Justice
Hosted on Zoom
Suggested Readings:
- Kukulin, I. “The Politics of Performative Humiliation: Understanding Russia’s Heterochronic Society.” Manuscript in progress, circulated with the author’s permission.
- Thompson E.P. “The Moral Economy of the English Crowd in the Eighteenth Century.” Past & Present. No. 50, 1971.
- Bloch, E. Heritage of Our Times. Transl. by Neville and Stephen Plaice. Polity Press, 1991. P. 97—117.
TUESDAY, NOV 17
Week 7: Cynicism, Kynicism, and Militant Cynicism
Hosted on Zoom
Suggested Readings:
- Sloterdijk, P. Critique of Cynical Reason. Transl. by M. Eldred. Foreword by A. Huyssen. Minneapolis; London: University of Minnesota Press, 1988. Sections «Cynicism: The Twilight of False Consciousness», «Enlightenment as Dialogue…» and «In Search of Lost Cheekiness». P. 3—21, 101—128.
TUESDAY, NOV 24
Week 8: “Traditional Values,” Invented Traditions, and the Politics of Cultural Identity
Hosted on Zoom
Suggested Readings:
- Garifullina, G. “Kremlin Promotes ‘Traditional Values’ — but Leaves Some Battles to the Governors.” The Conversation, January 23, 2025. https://theconversation.com/kremlin-promotes-traditional-values-but-leaves-some-battles-to-the-governors-246396
- Hobsbawm, Eric. “Introduction: Inventing Traditions” (pp. 1–14) and “Mass-Producing Traditions: Europe, 1870–1914” (pp. 263–307), in The Invention of Tradition, ed. Eric Hobsbawm and Terence Ranger. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983.
TUESDAY, DEC 1
Week 9: Trauma, Danger, and the Problem of Solidarity
Hosted on Zoom
Suggested Readings:
- Haslam, N., McGrath, M.J. (2020) “The Creeping Concept of Trauma.” Social Research: An International Quarterly, Volume 87, Number 3, 509-531
- Britt L, Hammett WH (2024). Trauma as Cultural Capital: A Critical Feminist Theory of Trauma Discourse. Hypatia, vol. 39, 916–933.
TUESDAY, DEC 8
Week 10: New Scenarios of Interpersonal Imagination: Art, Empathy, and the Renewal of the Social Contract
Hosted on Zoom
Suggested Readings:
- Hunt-Hendrix, Leah, and Astra Taylor. Solidarity: The Past, Present, and Future of a World-Changing Idea. 2024. — Introduction and Conclusion (“The Virtues of Solidarity”).
- Rosa H. The Uncontrollability of the World. Transl. by James C. Wagner. Polity Press, 2020. P. 1—4, 40—85.
Certificates of Satisfactory Completion
Participants who attend 8 out of 10 complete seminar sessions are eligible to receive a Certificate of Satisfactory Completion signed by the Dean of The New School for Social Research.