Santiago Zabala, "Being at Large: Freedom in the Ago of Alternative Facts" (McGill-Queen's UP, 2020)
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What is the central problem of “alternative facts” that the episode addresses?
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Welcome back to the New Books Network. I'm your host, Stephen Dozman. In recent years, questions around the nature of truth in facts have reentered public debate, often in discussions around journalistic bias and whether politically neutral reporting is possible or even desirable. Many pundits have tried to place blame for the increasingly slippery and fickle nature of truth in reporting on the ideas developed in much 20th century philosophy, particularly postmodern theory. However, my guest today, Santiago Zabala, argues that this is to mistake a diagnosis for the condition itself. It makes the case in his recent book, Being at Large, Freedom in the Age of Alternative Facts, that much of the hermeneutic and postmodern philosophical traditions can help us navigate these times out of joint.
Santiago Zabala is a philosopher and cultural critic and ICREA research professor of philosophy at the Pompeu Fabra University in Barcelona. He is author of many books, including, among others, Why Only Art Can Save Us. Aesthetics in the Absence of Emergency from Columbia University Press in 2017. His opinion articles have appeared in The Guardian, The New York Times, and Al Jazeera, among other international media outlets. So Santiago Zabala, welcome to the New Books Network.
Thank you very much for having
me. So we always like to have authors introduce themselves. So can you tell us a bit about who you are and what your main research tends to focus
on? My philosophical investigations are, of course, very much affine with continental philosophy and in particular with hermeneutics. And, well, my research, at least these past years, have dealt mostly with political philosophy and how to understand political philosophy through hermeneutics. And, well, this brand new book, it's really a way to... To sum up, many of the themes that I tried to develop these past years, in particular the problem of being, of ontology, the problem of interpretation, of genetics, and also, of course, the problem of emergency. All these three concepts I tried to understand through what today we call the Age of Alternative Facts. All this, of course, taking into consideration that Heidegger is more or less...
the starting point for all philosophical investigations. Although my reading of Heidegger, of course, it's very different from the ones that many other people do, as all classics have different interpreters. Mine has a lot to do with the reading of Heidegger that an Italian philosopher did, Gianni Vattimo, and also in part also with what Richard Roy did with Heidegger.
Wonderful. So in the beginning of your book, you look at the now famous bit about alternative facts from Kellyanne Conway. You argue that the reason alternative facts hit such a strange cultural nerve is because it came at a time when various other questions related to institutions, authority, and truth were being raised.
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
What is the central problem of “alternative facts” that the episode addresses?
0:00–6:40
2
How does Santiago Zabala define “freedom in the age of alternative facts”?
6:40–12:57
3
What role does Heidegger’s concept of metaphysics play in understanding truth today?
12:57–20:28
4
How does hermeneutics offer a way to navigate the “return to order” after 9/11 and the pandemic?
20:28–28:06
5
Why does Zabala argue that the greatest emergency is the absence of emergency?
28:06–33:38
6
How do populism, climate change, and biodiversity illustrate the “absent emergency”?
33:38–41:14
7
What is the significance of whistleblowers and journalists for truth in a framed world?
41:14–49:05
8
What is Zabala’s upcoming project on disruption and how does it connect to his earlier ideas?
49:05–55:48
Speakers
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Philippe Huneman, "When Metaphysics Meets Biology: Kantian Approaches to the Concept of An Organism" (Routledge, 2026)
Rivka Weinberg, "The Meaning of It All: Ultimate Meaning, Everyday Meaning, Cosmic Meaning, Death, and Time" (Oxford UP, 2026)
PJ DiPietro, "Sideways Selves Travesti and Jotería, "Struggles Across the Américas" (U Texas Press, 2025)