The Unknowers
The Unknowers

Author: Linsey McGoey

Publisher: Zed Books Ltd.

Published: 2019-09-15

Total Pages: 335

ISBN-13: 1780326386

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Deliberate ignorance has been known as the ‘Ostrich Instruction’ in law courts since the 1860s. It illustrates a recurring pattern in history in which figureheads for major companies, political leaders and industry bigwigs plead ignorance to avoid culpability. So why do so many figures at the top still get away with it when disasters on their watch damage so many people’s lives? Does the idea that knowledge is power still apply in today’s post-truth world? A bold, wide-ranging exploration of the relationship between ignorance and power in the modern age, from debates over colonial power and economic rent-seeking in the 18th and 19th centuries to the legal defences of today, The Unknowers shows that strategic ignorance has not only long been an inherent part of modern power and big business, but also that true power lies in the ability to convince others of where the boundary between ignorance and knowledge lies.

Routledge International Handbook of Ignorance Studies
Routledge International Handbook of Ignorance Studies

Author: Matthias Gross

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2015-05-15

Total Pages: 427

ISBN-13: 1317964675

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Once treated as the absence of knowledge, ignorance today has become a highly influential topic in its own right, commanding growing attention across the natural and social sciences where a wide range of scholars have begun to explore the social life and political issues involved in the distribution and strategic use of not knowing. The field is growing fast and this handbook reflects this interdisciplinary field of study by drawing contributions from economics, sociology, history, philosophy, cultural studies, anthropology, feminist studies, and related fields in order to serve as a seminal guide to the political, legal and social uses of ignorance in social and political life. Chapter 33 of this book is freely available as a downloadable Open Access PDF under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license available here: https://tandfbis.s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/rt-files/docs/Open+Access+Chapters/9780415718967_oachapter33.pdf

A Passion for Ignorance
A Passion for Ignorance

Author: Renata Salecl

Publisher: Princeton University Press

Published: 2022-11-29

Total Pages: 216

ISBN-13: 0691245711

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An original and provocative exploration of our capacity to ignore what is inconvenient or traumatic Ignorance, whether passive or active, conscious or unconscious, has always been a part of the human condition, Renata Salecl argues. What has changed in our post-truth, postindustrial world is that we often feel overwhelmed by the constant flood of information and misinformation. It sometimes seems impossible to differentiate between truth and falsehood and, as a result, there has been a backlash against the idea of expertise, and a rise in the number of people actively choosing not to know. The dangers of this are obvious, but Salecl challenges our assumptions, arguing that there may also be a positive side to ignorance, and that by addressing the role of ignorance in society, we may also be able to reclaim the role of knowledge. Drawing on philosophy, social and psychoanalytic theory, popular culture, and her own experience, Salecl explores how the passion for ignorance plays out in many different aspects of life today, from love, illness, trauma, and the fear of failure to genetics, forensic science, big data, and the incel movement—and she concludes that ignorance is a complex phenomenon that can, on occasion, benefit individuals and society as a whole. The result is a fascinating investigation of how the knowledge economy became an ignorance economy, what it means for us, and what it tells us about the world today.

Axis Mundi Sum
Axis Mundi Sum

Author: D. A. Smith

Publisher: The Invisible College Press, LLC

Published: 2003-06

Total Pages: 490

ISBN-13: 9781931468169

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Unsaying God
Unsaying God

Author: Aydogan Kars

Publisher:

Published: 2019

Total Pages: 361

ISBN-13: 0190942452

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Focusing on the first seven centuries of the Islamic intellectual history, Unsaying God examines the ways in which Muslim, and some Jewish, scholars negated what they said about God in order to indicate the limits of human thought on the absolute. Ardogan Kars argue that contemporary studies on apophasis and negative theology in Islam are strongly motivated by the challenges and demands of modernity, and tend to preserve European universalism in the language of pluralism.

Not Born Yesterday
Not Born Yesterday

Author: Hugo Mercier

Publisher: Princeton University Press

Published: 2022-03-22

Total Pages: 384

ISBN-13: 0691208921

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Why people are not as gullible as we think Not Born Yesterday explains how we decide who we can trust and what we should believe—and argues that we're pretty good at making these decisions. In this lively and provocative book, Hugo Mercier demonstrates how virtually all attempts at mass persuasion—whether by religious leaders, politicians, or advertisers—fail miserably. Drawing on recent findings from political science and other fields ranging from history to anthropology, Mercier shows that the narrative of widespread gullibility, in which a credulous public is easily misled by demagogues and charlatans, is simply wrong. Why is mass persuasion so difficult? Mercier uses the latest findings from experimental psychology to show how each of us is endowed with sophisticated cognitive mechanisms of open vigilance. Computing a variety of cues, these mechanisms enable us to be on guard against harmful beliefs, while being open enough to change our minds when presented with the right evidence. Even failures—when we accept false confessions, spread wild rumors, or fall for quack medicine—are better explained as bugs in otherwise well-functioning cognitive mechanisms than as symptoms of general gullibility. Not Born Yesterday shows how we filter the flow of information that surrounds us, argues that we do it well, and explains how we can do it better still.

The Amateur
The Amateur

Author: Andy Merrifield

Publisher: Verso Books

Published: 2018-05-29

Total Pages: 241

ISBN-13: 1786631075

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A radical manifesto about doing what you love Andy Merrifield offers a passionate tribute to the revolutionary spirit of the amateur—a figure who thinks outside the box, takes risks, dreams the impossible dream, seeks independence, and carves out a new world. Merrifield celebrates such square pegs as Charles Baudelaire, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Edward Said, Guy Debord, Hannah Arendt, and Jane Jacobs, each of whom shows us a path of unconventional wisdom and freedom. The Amateur advocates urgently for the liberated life, one that creates the space to question authority.

CEO Society
CEO Society

Author: Peter Bloom

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

Published: 2018-04-15

Total Pages: 289

ISBN-13: 1786990741

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Chief Executive Officers (CEOs) have become the cultural icons of the 21st century. Figures like Steve Jobs and Mark Zuckerberg are held up as role models who epitomise the modern pursuit of innovation, wealth and success. We now live, Bloom and Rhodes argue, in a 'CEO society' – a society where corporate leadership has become the model for transforming not just business, but all spheres of life, where everyone from politicians to jobseekers to even those seeking love are expected to imitate the qualities of the lionized corporate executive. But why, in the wake of the failings exposed by the 2008 financial crisis, does the corporate ideal continue to exert such a grip on popular attitudes? In this insightful new book, Bloom and Rhodes examine the rise of the CEO society, and how it has started to transform governments, culture and the economy. This influence, they argue, holds troubling implications for the future of democracy - as evidenced by the disturbing political rise of Donald Trump in the US - and for our society as a whole.

Language vs. Reality
Language vs. Reality

Author: N. J. Enfield

Publisher: MIT Press

Published: 2024-03-05

Total Pages: 309

ISBN-13: 0262548461

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A fascinating examination of how we are both played by language and made by language: the science underlying the bugs and features of humankind’s greatest invention. Language is said to be humankind’s greatest accomplishment. But what is language actually good for? It performs poorly at representing reality. It is a constant source of distraction, misdirection, and overshadowing. In fact, N. J. Enfield notes, language is far better at persuasion than it is at objectively capturing the facts of experience. Language cannot create or change physical reality, but it can do the next best thing: reframe and invert our view of the world. In Language vs. Reality, Enfield explains why language is bad for scientists (who are bound by reality) but good for lawyers (who want to win their cases), why it can be dangerous when it falls into the wrong hands, and why it deserves our deepest respect. Enfield offers a lively exploration of the science underlying the bugs and features of language. He examines the tenuous relationship between language and reality; details the array of effects language has on our memory, attention, and reasoning; and describes how these varied effects power narratives and storytelling as well as political spin and conspiracy theories. Why should we care what language is good for? Enfield, who has spent twenty years at the cutting edge of language research, argues that understanding how language works is crucial to tackling our most pressing challenges, including human cognitive bias, media spin, the “post-truth” problem, persuasion, the role of words in our thinking, and much more.

States of Ignorance
States of Ignorance

Author: Christina Boswell

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2023-11-16

Total Pages: 295

ISBN-13: 1009410164

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Much attention has been focused on how states produce knowledge about the people they govern; far less has been written about those aspects of society that states choose to keep obscure. This book makes an original contribution to understanding state ignorance by focusing on one of the most complex and contested social issues of our day: the governance of irregular migrants. Tracing the evolution of state monitoring and control of irregular migrants from the 1960s to the present day across France, Germany and the United Kingdom, the authors develop a theory of 'state ignorance', setting out three complementary ways of understanding such oversights: ignorance as omission, ignorance as strategy, and ignorance as ascription. The findings upend dominant approaches, which tend to assume that states are preoccupied with producing knowledge about their populations, and argues that states have actually been keen to sustain ignorance about their unauthorised populations.