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Showing posts from July, 2017

The truth behind 'post-truth'

The recent appointment of eminent Art historian Victoria Coates to President Trump’s National Security Council, is a move that seems to have gone totally under the radar. This is the body that advises the president over military matters both at home and abroad and on the surface, looks like one of the more left field appointments of what is already a seriously left field administration. Really? An Art historian advising the Commander-in-Chief of the most powerful military machine the world has ever seen? But it may not be as random as it seems. Not only did she work with Donald Rumsfeld in the late 2000s, but she recently advised Ted Cruz on his foreign policy during the presidential campaign. But crucially, as an Art historian, she is arguably better placed to understand the new politics of ‘fake news’ and ‘post-truth’ than most. The Art world has been using the term ‘post-meaning’ for a generation now, though its roots go further back to the beginning of Modern Art itself.