The post-fact world: six steps you can take to fight back

How did we come to be living in a ‘post-fact’ world? Who or what is responsible for the breakdown in trust in fact-generating institutions? Crucially, what can we do about it? In this edited extract from a lecture delivered at several US universities, Mary Poovey, author of A History of the Modern Fact and of the forthcoming Finance in America: An Unfinished Story, traces the assaults on factuality back to the 1960s and suggests practical ways to resist them.