The United States has entered an era of “post-truth” as even seemingly proven facts seem open to contestation. The contests over facts range from the existential (when conservatives deny climate change) to the trivial (when the Trump administration questions the audience figures of its own inauguration ceremony). This essay combines two literatures on post-truth that rarely speak to each other: institutional political science analyses of American political polarization and STS analyses of “objectivity” in science and public life. I argue that post-truth is the outcome of two interlocking processes that have transformed the American public sphere: (1) the re-configuring of American political identities around the Republican and Democratic parties, and (2) the establishment of an alternative media ecosystem around the Republican Party whose legitimacy derives from its questioning of the “objectivity” of mainstream media institutions. Drawing on STS theorizations of the construction of objectivity, I contend that to recreate an objective public sphere will require an institutional arrangement that is based not on demarcating facts from values—or right facts from wrong facts—but on demarcating people and institutions who seek to enter this public sphere.

中文翻译：

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后真理与寻求客观性：政治两极分化与知识生产的重建

美国已经进入了“后真相”时代，即使似乎看似经过证实的事实似乎也容易引起争论。有关事实的辩论范围从存在主义（保守派否认气候变化时）到琐碎（特朗普政府质疑观众就职典礼的观众数字）。本文结合了关于后真理的两种文献，它们很少互相交谈：对美国政治两极分化的制度政治学分析和对科学和公共生活中“客观性”的STS分析。我认为，真相是两个相互联系的过程的结果，这些过程使美国的公共领域发生了变化：（1）重新配置围绕共和党和民主党的美国政治身份，（2）在共和党周围建立替代性媒体生态系统，其合法性源于对主流媒体机构“客观性”的质疑。我基于客观结构建构的STS理论，主张要重新建立客观的公共领域，就需要一种制度安排，该制度安排不是基于将事实与价值区分开来，也不是将正确的事实与错误的事实区分开来，而是基于对寻求实现的人和机构的划分。进入这个公共领域。