Post-Truth and Poetic Knowing
Kabir, Whitman, and Thematic Coding in Comparative Poetics
Keywords:
Narrative Resistance; Post-Truth Discourse; Thematic Coding; Kabir; WhitmanAbstract
This paper defines “epistemic resistance” as the active contestation of narratives that shape or distort knowledge—especially relevant in today’s “post-truth” era, where emotions and ideologies often override facts. Focusing on Kabir and Walt Whitman—two poets separated by time, culture, and cosmology—the study employs thematic narrative analysis, supported by NVivo coding of fifty curated excerpts. Drawing on narrative theory, historiography, and deconstruction, it reveals how both poets deploy metaphoric, subversive, and inclusive narrative strategies to contest dominant ideologies. Twenty-one thematic codes, derived inductively and deductively, highlight shared emphases on embodied knowledge, spiritual universality, and pluralist identity. Rather than treating literature as passive cultural expression, the study frames poetic storytelling as a mode of epistemological agency—capable of resisting erasure and reimagining collective belonging. The paper shows that Kabir’s paradoxical verses disrupt simplistic binaries—an approach that exposes the false oppositions found in contemporary political and media discourse. Likewise, Whitman’s inclusive poetic catalogs serve as a model for pluralistic engagement, offering strategies for community-building that resist the fragmentation of the post-truth age, both in civic life and on social media platforms. These findings affirm the relevance of literary epistemology in a fragmented information landscape, illustrating that storytelling serves not only expressive but also structural and ethical roles in the struggle for meaning and truth.
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