The Truth that Lies Behind the Lies (original) (raw)
Related papers
"The Lying Life of Adults" by Elena Ferrante (and Ann Goldstein) reviewed by Enrica Maria Ferrara
www.rte.ie, 2020
"Beauty is in the eye of the beholder" could be the epigraph of Elena Ferrante's book The Lying Life of Adults (translated by Ann Goldstein), the "tangled knot" of truth and lies in which the first-person narrator Giovanna pours her aching heart. The "beholder" in the novel is the protagonist's father, Andrea Trada, a high-school teacher of "refined manner" and "inimitable elegance", who believes that twelve-year old Giovanna "is getting the face" of his sister Vittoria, in which "ugliness and spite were combined to perfection". Even though she has no recollection of Vittoria's appearance, Giovanna's entire world crumbles upon realizing that she might have inherited her aunt's features. A frantic search through family's old pictures bears no fruit; not only Vittoria has been blanked by Andrea in real life, she has also been erased from all the photos. The estranged aunt is not just absent, she has been cancelled out, emblematically turned into a radical "other", a topic so current at this moment in time. This review explores Ferrante's posthumanist worldview in this novel, in opposition to binary patriarchal structures, Giovanna's self-objectification, the bracelet as a posthuman tool endowed with agency. The review was published shortly after the live review on the radio programme RTE Arena, RTE Radio 1. The podcast and the written review can also be accessed here: https://www.rte.ie/culture/2020/0909/1164200-reviewed-the-lying-life-of-adults-by-elena-ferrante/
Hannah Arendt and the Boundaries of the Public Sphere
The lie accompanies us, it is parasitic on the truth and indispensable in our everyday life. But how can we limit it and prevent it from destroying the truth? This question is particularly topical given the so-called "post-truth" phenomenon of fake news, conspiracy theories and populist propaganda. Arendt's analyses of the relationship between truth and lies in politics are helpful. To defend facticity, truth is indispensable, but factual truth resists limitless freedom of speech and action, or, in Arendt's words, our enlarged mentality. Imagination is the common ground for creativity, the design of another world, but also for lies. Therefore, politics and lies are structurally very close, though of course not the same. Contemporary populist movements use lies in order to undermine the credibility of other politicians and mass media. The boundaries between truth, lies, the denial of reality, invented truths as well as, for example, anti-Semitism and racism are dissolving. Conspiracy theories are the pinnacle of the loss of reality. In contrast to lies, they offer a closed parallel world in which nothing happens by accident and nothing is what it seems. Zygmunt Bauman's term retrotopia indicates that globalization and technological change are leading to growing uncertainty and a discrediting of policies, which meet with populist aims. Arendt's republicanism offers an alternative to both, populism and consumer liberalism: the defense of facts, enlightened criticism and a concept of a qualitative plurality of engaged citizens.
We have entered a ‘post-truth era’, in which, Daniel J. Boorstin notes, ‘believability’ has become an acceptable substitute for ‘truth’, and ‘manifold deceptions of our culture’ are difficult to separate from ‘its few enduring truths’. In this era, communities and individuals may feel routinely duped, cheated or betrayed. Though truth may be considered intrinsically valuable, deception may sometimes be useful or necessary. Sometimes there is pleasure in the spectacle of deception. This volume addresses a variety of areas, coming from different disciplines and methodological approaches: what unites them is the notion of deception. Deception is not just one thing: it can be used for personal liberation and expression; it can be use as a tool of state oppression and sometimes it is purely entertainment.
Linguæ & - Rivista di lingue e culture moderne, 2021
What happens when we lie? What do we lie for? Are we always aware of it? Can we define its nature once and for all? Since the beginning of history, human beings have tried to define and interpret lying according to criteria provided to them by changing cultural environments and worldviews, so to give this phenomenon a definite place in their existence. All domains of human knowledge – from mythmaking to philosophy, from theology to neuroscience, from art to linguistics – have been involved. This special issue of Linguæ & aims to contribute to this multi- and interdisciplinary discourse by proposing a common core of insights on lying through contributions from the humanities and psychology.
Performance Research, 2010
We should not ask ourselves "What is a lie?" but rather "What does a lying do, and, first of all, what does it want?" (Derrida 2002: 34) The Panel 'Duplicity / Complicity: Performing and Misperforming Lies' at PSi#15 in Croatia in July 2009 examined the half-truths, hidden assumptions and power relations embedded in every act of performance through an analysis of the way in which bodies, communities and buildings perform and misperform lies. Panelists Jelena Rajak, Bree Hadley, Rebecca Caines and Andrew Filmer presented a multi-layered analysis of performances that lie, intersecting and colliding, and at times outright lying, with each other and with commentary from Alan Read.
A new essay about lying (Published in Open Insight Volumen IV • ISSN: 2007-2406
Open Insight Volumen IV • ISSN: 2007-2406, 2013
There is a tendency to assume that, under certain circumstances, lying is morally justifiable. There are numerous logical and philosophical arguments, which claim to have objective validity, point out that a world where only truth exists would be unbearable. This brings, as a necessary consequence, the relativization of the importance of truth and its function of being the pillar mode of the moral principle of honesty, turning truthful discourse into a tool, as usable as lying for pragmatic matters that are sometimes disguised as moral. Frankly in disagreement with such positions, this essay aims to present a detailed counter argument, claiming that lying is always immoral.
Journal of the American Musicological Society, 2014
Introduction 543 JENNIFER RONYAK The Lied from the Inside Out 549 BENJAMIN BINDER