Revisiting the Politics of ‘Post-Truth’ in Steinbeck’s Fiction

Abstract

Post-truth has been identified both as a widespread phenomenon, as well as a condition, in which debates are generated and maintained by appeals to prevailing majoritarian emotion /national political temper, over and above actual lived experience and realities
thereof. Post-truth politics, it has been suggested, moves beyond the traditional contestations of power that occur due to falsifying facts. The paper revisits two Steinbeck novels, In Dubious Battle and The Grapes of Wrath in the context of posttruth politics, and examines the impact of a post-truth model of the American Dream on American agriculture of the Depression era. The paper also attempts to relate the realities therein to the present-day Indian agricultural scenario.