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In large part, much of my academic work draws on the kind of post-structuralist thinking that has grounded our discussions of the subjectivity of science and history. I think it is hugely important to recognize the manner in which different kinds of agendas--be they economic, political, or cultural--inform the stories we are told and tell ourselves, and that much of what we accept as distinterested truth is in actuality never truly neutral.

That being said, the assertion that "everything is challengable" disconcertingly opens the door for a refutation of histories that are important to recognize and to face. I was thinking about the tactics of some creationists (notably this guy) who exploit one apparent weakness in evolutionary theory(in this case the lack of transitional stages) to discredit an overwhelimg amount of positive evidence. I think this gesture is not dissimilar from many of the strategies of Holocaust Revionism, which will take one piece of contentious evidence(like, for example, the idea that Nazis made soap out of their victims, which has been shown to be false) to argue that none of the testimonies of survivors can be trusted. I wonder how can we both accept that history and science are subjectively informed, but also retain a knowledge that some things are in fact fact, and desperately need to be recognized as such for the sake of humanity. 

This line of thought reminded me of a piece that Michiko Kakutani wrote for the Times in 2006 after word broke that James Frey's best-selling memoir A Million Little Pieces  was largely falsified. In it, she writes about how adademic post-structuralism was co-opted by the Bush administration to  turn "truth" into a kind of dirty word that stood for a radical, leftist agenda, despite a tide of evidence that suggested their actions and rhetoric were based on little to no certainty. She  suggests that the presence of "phrases like 'virtual reality and 'creative nonfiction'" reflect an unacceptable "relativism" in our society that does a disservice to first-person testimony and the accomplishments of science.

How does such an argument change our conversations thus far?  Can we have our "crack" cake and eat it too, or does the destabalization of "fact" too insiduously make possible its appropriation by detrimental agendas? Is there a happy medium between nihilistically clamining that "everything is subjective" and naively accepting every "fact" we are taught?