Introduction

We’ve talked a lot about communication, connection and information. All have a key part to play in gaining wider support against the reactionary formal politics that have been dominating our lives for too long. Now we turn to knowledge and knowledge production; how they’ve been captured by neoliberalism and the pioneering progress being made to reverse that and reconnect them with our lives and experience.

A personal word first

I should perhaps start by saying that Trumpian ideas like ‘post-truth’ and ‘fake news’ don't really feel new to me. My father killed himself when I was four and left my older sister and me with a mother who could be terrifying. She never told us he’d died. I didn't discover he had killed himself until I was an adult! Among the things she did tell us was, ‘If I say something's black and it's white, then it is black’. It was really only when I was grown up and talked about this with my partner that I began to realise the magnitude of what she was doing. While I would resist statements like this at the time, challenging them with her and in my own head, for a small child it was pretty difficult to escape their power! I don't think I really did. The issue was more about being able later to break away from the power exerted over us. I don't think my poor sister ever could. However, I got an early apprenticeship in understanding broader issues of knowledge manipulation!