Hamid Dabashi notes how what he calls “interested knowledge” is now produced away from academia by bodies such as think tanks. Information is tailored to the demands of those who commission it, resulting in a sort of privatization of knowledge leading to a short-term, disposable product: “fast-knowledge produced on the model of fast food.” Add to this the power of the Internet, where any theory, no matter how extreme, can take root and find an audience, and you have all the conditions for that kind of “post-truth” politics recently identified as marking contemporary democracy: a hodge-podge of rumor, innuendo, and personal grouse with which unscrupulous politicians can build a support base. If there is no longer even the pretence of objectivity in knowledge production—and if experts are scorned and marginalized—then the field lies open to demagoguery, where the most successful exponent of politics will be the one who can cater to the most prejudices.

XREF: Connects to debates on post-truth politics, knowledge privatization, and the decline of expert authority in democratic discourse.

Peter Morey, Islamophobia and the Novel, loc. 521