Rumors

by Mladen Dolar

When Socrates was standing before the Athenian tribunal in 399 BC, he said in his defence that the opponents he feared most were the invisible ones, those who had been spreading rumors against him for years but none of whom were being brought to court – it was like fighting shadows. The moment was Socrates, the harbinger of logos and true knowledge, was eventually defeated by rumors and mendacious slander.

Where does the strange power of rumors come from? Everyone knows that rumors are unfounded and based on thin air, but still they pass them rumors spread, and what appeared as a small breeze can grow into a mighty whirlwind and produce serious effects, ruin people’s lives and change the course of events. This book scrutinizes the mysterious power of rumors and seeks to analyse it philosophically, examining along the way some key moments of our cultural history concerning rumors, from Shakespeare and Cervantes to Gogol and Kafka.  It also underlines the fact that, although rumors are as old as humankind, the advent of the internet and social media has raised the spreading of rumors to an entirely new level, to the point where we could speak of the rumorization of the social.  The more communication there is, the more the social fabric threatens to fall apart – and the more urgent it becomes to find strategies to counteract this.

Genres: Philosophy, Nonfiction

144 pages, Paperback

Published January 21, 2025

About the author

Mladen Dolar is a Slovene philosopher, psychoanalyst, cultural theorist and film critic. Dolar was born in Maribor as the son of the literary critic Jaro Dolar.

Reviews

[Mette Nebel · Rating 5 out of 5]

Perfection, I love gossip and rumors and I love reading about it even more

[Jeff · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is so much closer to how I believe the internet ("our toxic information environment") should be conceptualized than the normal "post truth" sermons. The whole argument tends toward the grim possibility that digital communication has amplified and accelerated the ownerless "conspiracy without a master" (the snake whose head cannot be cut off because it has none) that has always been latent in systems of capitalist exchange to apocalyptic dimensions.

The one dimension of digital life that feels deeply salient yet relatively underexplored is the way games of imaginary identities and roles are increasingly indistinguishable from "sincere" or "authentic" social and political dynamics (e.g. in the evolution of QAnon but also more generally the way in which digital platforms are perceived as places to "try on" identities but which are in fact often more indelible than real life...)

[Ciprian Ghibirdic · Rating 5 out of 5]

I heard it's good

[Salvador Ramírez · Rating 5 out of 5]

Este es un ensayo corto que desde la filosofía discute los rumores, a los cuales sitúa como una sombra constante y presente de la razón. Estos incluso tienen la capacidad de socavar a la razón, como lo ejemplifica la pena de muerte de Sócrates debido a rumores. De acuerdo a Dolar se aventura a realizar la hipótesis de que estos forman parte de la naturaleza del lenguaje y funciones como la creación de grupos. Sin embargo, con el surgimiento del internet y las redes sociales estos han explotado, de tal forma que rivalizan hoy el uso de la razón, socavando lo iniciado por la ilustración y el proyecto de la modernidad.

Un ensayo muy relevante para los tiempos actuales en donde la derecha a resurgido en el mundo gracias al uso de las mismas redes sociales usando rumores, post-verdades y fantasías conspiratorias.

Una reseña más larga del libro en inglés (que escribí) se puede consultar aquí:


https://www.everydayanalysis.co.uk/po...