Posverdad y abismo epistémico: Hacia una ética de la palabra como cuidado

Abstract

The contemporary phenomenon of post-truth is usually interpreted as a crisis in the relationship between facts and public beliefs. This article proposes, however, that post-truth is above all a symptom of the collapse of a modern epistemic regime founded on an abyssal separation between those who can produce truth and those situated outside its field of legitimacy. This split—termed the epistemic abyss—is linked to the modern/colonial project described by Walter Mignolo and to the consolidation of a linguistic order that privileged a single conception of the word as a transparent, disembodied signifier. Drawing on a philosophical-linguistic analysis of the muosieûale’ language of Tetelcingo, where word and body form a single field of resonance, and building on the phonetic phenomena described by Pittman and Tuggy, the article argues that post-truth does not simply derive from informational manipulation but from the historical exhaustion of Western logos as the sole instance of legitimation. Against this backdrop, the article proposes an ethics of the word as care, inspired by the muosieûale’ understanding of the word as a corporeal and territorial bond, and by an ethics of listening that draws together elements from Spivak, Gadamer, and Lenkersdorf. From this horizon, post-truth does not represent the triumph of relativism, but rather evidence of the fragility of a modern conception of truth uprooted from the body, from territory, and from the bond with the other.