Mediatization, post-truth, and knowledge production about Covid-19 259 truth (objective truth). Incidentally, it seems that this “mine”, “yours” or “our” truth seeks to be a vicarious notion of objective truth. That being so, without the concept of objective truth as a standard against which to hold subjective and intersubjective truth-holding claims, then all truth claims can be taken at face value, with less and less regard for the mediation and authority of scientific knowledge. The facts do not speak for themselves – and never in isolation. Narratives and discourses allow us to understand them, identify their meaning, and even, when painful or unpleasant, to be traversed by the trauma or learn to live with it. It is why many narratives revolve around human misfortune, notably accidents, illness, injustice and loss. As devices for the meaning production, narratives not only help us to infuse meaning into events, but also allow us to shape them to our own needs and desires, to comment on and contest them in a given conjuncture. As such, narratives help us process our experiences, communi- cate them to others, and reorganize themwithin social dynamics of identity and individuality. Our culture accords considerable authority to the person who speaks from personal experience, who has witnessed events with his own body, an authority that sometimes may be abused, but an authority in opposition to the expert authority, grounded in generalizable and impersonal expertise. The juxtaposition between the voice of firsthand per- sonal experience and the scientific knowledge voice is exercised in many fields, including health, law, history, therapy, and educa- tion, for example. The sentences “I was there, not you” or “I lived it, not you” sound with an authority that is very difficult to dispute. This attempt to inoculate a claim of legitimate criticism, its ele- vation to incontestable truth, is not far from what can be labeled ideological; an ideology that places as an unquestionable truth that narrated from the personal experience of the victim, whose articulation of that experience allows one to publicly raise one’s voice by narrating the personal experience and being a model of overcoming and fighting. In the contemporary configuration of testimony, it refers to the interior process of re-elaboration of oneself on a public scale. Thus, the victim is a survivor who nar- rates the overcoming of one’s suffering.
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy MjEzNzYz