Rationalology
The study of reason and rationality using the methods of Sovietology/Kremlinology: examining official discourses, institutional practices, and textual clues to understand how “rationality” is socially constructed, maintained, and weaponized. Rationalology investigates who is authorized to speak rationally, what counts as a good reason, and how rationality standards change across contexts. It treats rationality not as a transcendent faculty but as a set of historically situated practices that serve social functions: gatekeeping, exclusion, legitimation. By analyzing the hidden architecture of rational discourse, rationalology reveals the interests and power relations embedded in what we take as “just common sense.”
Example: “Her rationalology work traced how 19th‑century colonial administrators used ‘rationality’ to dismiss indigenous land claims—not because the claims were irrational, but because labeling them so served imperial interests.”
Rationalology by Dumu The Void April 4, 2026
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