CFP: Making and Unmaking Facts

What is a fact? We often think of facts as invulnerable, objective truths, descriptions of reality that stand apart from opinion, belief, and bias. But how did we come to be so certain of all that we are certain? In a world increasingly polarized by misinformation, the fact is frequently invoked as a neutral arbiter of truth. But has it always carried this authority? As Hilary Putnam had questioned in his critique of the fact–value dichotomy, the distinction between what is and what ought to be is neither as clean nor as stable as we might wish.

This conference invites scholars to interrogate the history, politics and epistemologies of factuality with special focus on the context of South Asia. Today, we regard facts as the building blocks of ‘scientific’ knowledge, far removed from the vagaries of ideology and values, which belong to the more fluid world of the humanities, and as such are always prone to bias or prejudice. But can these disciplinary boundaries based on the inviolable status of the fact or data be challenged when re-examined in light of the constructed nature of these concepts themselves? Can historicising these ideas shed light on our understanding of the systems of knowledge production?

From the early modern skepticism toward meteorites to the objectivity heralded by statistical tables and scientific atlases, facts have evolved in tandem with changing institutions, technologies, languages, and power structures. Whether through the lexicons of colonial botany, the atlases of Enlightenment science, or the spreadsheets of modern capitalism, facts have always been mediated, translated, and constructed. As Steven Shapin, Mary Poovey, Lorraine Daston, Minakshi Menon, and others have shown, the epistemic virtues of truth, precision, and objectivity are not universal constants, but products of historical development.

The claim that we live in a post-truth world assumes that, once upon a time, we lived in a world of Truth: an era when politicians and corporations did not lie as much, when the media could be taken for its word, when fact-checking was unnecessary. But has this ever been the case? And even if the institutions of yesteryear were guardians of the truth, how did those institutions, systems and ideas come to be? How did we come to live in a world where citizens feel entitled to facts, to information, to transparency? What was the world like before facts, before data, in a world without precision–particularly non-European societies? This conference will explore these and related questions.

Possible topics include (but are not limited to):

Ways in which facts have been defined, constructed, contested, or dismissed in the history of South Asia and Southeast Asia.

Practices (scientific, bureaucratic, linguistic, technological) that have enabled the production and stabilization of facts on the subcontinent.

Networks of exchange between fact and fiction, fact and myth, fact and belief both before and after the colonial encounter.

The extension of this revolution in beliefs pertaining to facts, objectivity, neutrality of data to other areas of human activity such as law and politics.

The status of fact and objectivity in the digital world.

The conference is jointly organized by IIM Calcutta, the journal DECISION and the forum Fact or Value.

Publication opportunity: Following the conference, DECISION will publish a special issue on the conference theme; presenters are welcome to submit completed papers for consideration.