Forms of Knowledge and Regimes of Truth: The Case of the Vajont Disaster
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.60923/issn.1971-8853/23297Keywords:
Indiciary paradigm, Disasters, Forms of Knowledge, Organizations, Narrative truthAbstract
This article builds on Carlo Ginzburg’s reflections on truth and the philological method to examine three distinct forms of knowledge — judicial, historical, and narrative — and their corresponding conceptions of truth. Judicial truth is defined as the outcome of a legal process, while historical truth derives from inquiry grounded in the methods of the historical and social sciences. The paper introduces a third form, narrative truth, understood as the result of communicative processes that often operate independently of, or in contrast with, the other two. The analysis highlights the epistemic tension between judicial truth, focused on causal responsibility, and historical truth, concerned with meaning and context. It further explores how narrative truth functions as a discursive regime driven by emotion and belief rather than empirical evidence, often amplified by the media acting as echo chambers. This mode of knowledge privileges rhetoric over proof, turning possibility into persuasion and contributing to the spread of conspiratorial or mythic explanations. These dynamics are illustrated through the case of the Vajont disaster (Italy, 1963). A philological examination of the sources reveals how a narrative truth — centered on the false “race to testing” myth — has become dominant over time. This myth attributes the tragedy to the alleged haste of SADE in testing and selling the dam to ENEL, despite the lack of any factual or economic basis for such claims.
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