Parrhesia

Border zones and detention centers are often characterized as spaces that concretize a permanent " state of exception " where resistance is deemed unlikely. This article explores hunger striking and lip-sewing practices of migrants and refugees as a largely neglected form of protest that takes a silent exception from the exception. Focusing on their gesture of a double withdrawal – from nutrition and from speech –, I make the case for an expanded conception of agency that is non-instrumental and expressive. Pursuing an alethurgic analysis, I situate the violent and embodied silence of these protests in Foucault's problematic of parrhesiastic practice. I examine these practices as processes of subjectivation that unmake and remake the self, call into being parrhesiastic counter-publics, and courageously critique the present.

The problematic I want to initially explore is what would be a Foucauldian description of politics? We can look to his later works, particularly the College de France lectures, to find his work on subjectivation and ethics of the care of the self. In his lecture course, ‘The Hermeneutics of the Subject’, Foucault examines these issues and in doing so we can gain a sense of what the relationship between politics and ethics was for Foucault. I will show that Foucault’s notion of ‘governmentality’ can provide the key to understanding the relationships between politics and ethics. For Foucault, ethical subjectivation must be linked to politics, including notions of parrhesia as truth and freedom. By showing this was the case, Foucault could then say that we can form new subjectivities, new relationships to ourselves and others and if, or when this happens, then we can also look for a manifestation of a different kind of politics.

Human drama and conflicts have enormously inspired Greek tragedies, which are characterized by "timelessness" and "universality", and thus, can "host" individual conflict cases, individual human pain and suffering. Theoretical and philosophical connections between Greek tragedies and restorative justice processes can be found on rituals used for conflict transformation. Moreover, the ancient Greek concept of "parrhesia", as it has been studies by Michel Foucault, seems to be important for both the heritage of Greek tragedies and the core restorative value of the truth. In addition, a "modern glance" on Greek tragedies can contribute to the development of restorative justice in practice, in a double way: First, Greek tragedies, combined with current scenic practices, might be a useful tool for the phase of preparation of stakeholders before a restorative encounter. Second, awareness on restorative justice can be promoted by using fictional, imaginary restorative dialogues while maintaining the issue data of a conflict of a tragedy.

What does it mean, the king is naked? The earlier version of this essay, which discusses the political implications of the concept of truth by Hannah Arendt, Michel Foucault, and Alain Badiou with reference to Plato’s allegory of the cave and its interpretation by Heidegger, appeared in the European Messenger (Europski glasnik, 26/2021), published by the Croatian Writers Society (HDP). It is a bit stretched but I hope still feasible experiment of a political truth game attempting to play with Arendt and Foucault against Badiou. On the one side, we see the picture of a tiny voice of truth and, ultimately, the big rage of facts against the violence of ideology; on the other, we face a fervor of the revolutionary truth i.e. ideology against the offensive world of facts which are handled with Jacobin methods. The game is, needless to say, a liberal one, that is a bit reactionary from the vantage point of the revolutionary political thought. There is some Ancient Greek and some French in the essay, but most of it is, alas, in Croatian; the only parts in English appear at the very end: most of the bibliography, and the translations of the title and the abstract.

A questão colocada indica uma meta (e metafísica), a de apreender a essência do documentário. Uma meta certamente pretenciosa; afinal, é notória a dificuldade encontrada por cineastas e teóricos do cinema em estabelecer uma definição do cine-documentário como segundo gênero do cinema, na sua distinção com a ficção. Segundo o documentarista Joris Ivens: "é difícil dar uma definição, de fato, para o documentário" 1. Como poderíamos nós, senão com pouca clareza, ter a presunção de demarcar a descontinuidade, no gênero cinema, entre essas duas espécies, o cine-ficção e o cine-documentário, se, como afirmou o teórico do cine-documentário Carl R. Plantinga, "a natureza da não-ficção e do filme de não-ficção provou ser absolutamente desorientadora para gerações de cineastas e acadêmicos" 2 ? Se, como disse o cineasta Jean-Luc Godard, "todo grande filme de ficção tende ao documentário, assim como todo grande documentário tende à ficção" 3 ? Cientes dessas dificuldades, no entanto, neste ensaio, assumiremos exatamente esta tarefa, a de dar a nossa contribuição para o esforço coletivo em se apreender a essência do cine-documentário. Falar em gêneros e espécies numa definição nos arrasta, de chofre, para uma maneira aristotélica de apreensão da realidade. Apreender na inteligência e no discurso-definir-um tipo de ser, para Aristóteles, é primeiramente submetê-lo a uma identidade (o gênero) e, na sequência, reconhecer a variação que o distingue dos outros tipos quase-idênticos desse mesmo gênero (a diferença específica). Mas o uso, feito aqui, desses termos, gênero e espécie, é momentâneo e acidental, é apenas uma maneira de falar. Pois nossos esforços, para a apreensão da essência do documentário, 1 IVENS, Joris. Documentário: subjetividade e montagem [1939]. Trad. Fábio Bonillo. In: LABAKI, Amir (Org.). A verdade de cada um. São Paulo: Cosac Naify, 2015. P. 42. 2

Michel Foucault’nun Pierre Rivière’i - Cevriye DEMİR GÜNEŞ
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Michel Foucault, 19. yüzyıl Fransa’sında Pierre Rivière adındaki sıradan köylü bir gencin işlemiş olduğu aile cinayetini, Annemi, Kız Kardeşimi ve Erkek Kardeşimi Katleden Ben, Pierre Rivière… adlı hatıratla/anlatıyla ölümsüzleştirmesinin büyüsüne kapılmıştır. Hatırat suç ve cezaya ilişkin söylemin gücünü, tıbbi ve adli söylemlerin kendi aralarındaki çatışkılarını açığa çıkarmış ve söz konusu söylemlerin bütününü cinayet söylemiyle yeniden ilişkiye sokarak hayranlık uyandırıcı bir etki ortaya koymuştur. Anlatısıyla adeta işlediği cinayeti ardında bırakan Rivière, yaklaşık yüz kırk yıl sonra Foucault ve çalışma arkadaşlarını, yazdığı suç/cinayet söylemiyle baştan çıkarmıştır. Makale, yazdığı cinayet anlatısı dolayımıyla Rivière’in toplumda yaşayan bir birey olarak iktidar söylemiyle ilişkisine, kendini var kılma çabasına ve Foucault’nun Pierre Rivière hatıratı aracılığıyla bize söylemek istediklerine odaklanmaktadır. Hatıratta/anlatıda Foucault ve arkadaşları tarafından açığa çıkarılan fikirler, bunca yıl sonra Pierre Rivière’i yeniden okumayı, işitmeyi, anlamayı ve kendilik kaygısının trajik boyutları üzerine tıbbi ve adli unsurların ötesine geçen bir düşünmeyi olanaklı kılmaktadır. Makalede ayrıca Rivière’in ikili (yazar ve fail) edimini, Antik Yunan’da karşılaştığımız sözel ilişki pratiği olarak parrhesia tavrıyla birlikte düşünmenin olanağına ilişkin bir sorgulamaya da yer verilmektedir.

Anahtar Kelimeler: Foucault, cinayet anlatısı, Pierrre Rivière, suç söylemi, parrhesia.

MICHEL FOUCAULT’S PIERRE RIVIÈRE

Michel Foucault was impressed and inspired by an ordinary village youth named Pierre Rivière immortalising the story of his murder of his family members by a memoir titled I, Pierre Rivière, Having Slaughtered My Mother, My Sister, and My Brother… The memoir displayed the power of the discourse on crime and punishment as well as the contradictions between medical and juridical discourses, and produced a formidable effect by linking together this entire set of discourses with the discourse of murder. Having overshadowed the actual murder by his memoir of the deed, Rivière engaged the attention of Foucault and his colleagues around hundred and forty years after the incident. This article focuses on Rivière’s relationship with the power discourse as an ordinary citizen of his society, his struggle to validate his existence through his memoir and Foucault’s understanding of the Pierre Rivière case. The ideas extracted from the memoir by Foucault and his colleagues make it possible to read Pierre Rivière’s mind after so many years, to hear and understand his opinions and to consider the tragic dimensions of his self-anxiety that goes beyond medical and juridical discourses. This article also offers a discussion of the possibility of interpreting Rivière’s double act (as author and perpetrator) with respect to the verbal practice of parrhesia witnessed in Ancient Greece.

Keywords: Foucault, murder memoir, Pierre Rivière, crime discourse, parrhesia.

"Ethics in organizations, raising concerns, and whistleblowing have been previously theorized through Foucault’s work on the power/knowledge bond. However, approaching these issues through the work from Foucault’s third period on parrhesia, or fearless speech remains an underdeveloped route.
This paper contributes to this emerging research stream. Based on Foucault’s work on parrhesia, and the importance of courage for fearless speech to occur, we theorize the possibility of critique within organizations as a moment of disorganizing, which requires a chain of parrhesia where not only the speaker but also the hearer requires courage.
The paper examines the possibility and risks of organizing courage through three illustrations of ethical guidelines, whistleblowing, and open dialogue.

Keywords: parrhesia, whistleblowing, business ethics, courage"

En la última etapa de su trabajo, Foucault acusa un nuevo desplazamiento metodológico en sus estudios, acompañado de una serie de interrogantes nuevos. En esta ocasión centrará sus indagaciones en torno al sujeto, esto es, en los procesos por los cuales el individuo se reconoce y constituye como sujeto. Este cambio en el itinerario investigativo produce otras formas de preguntar, otros grupos de problemas y otras maneras de indagar y transitar. Con este cambio de mirada parecen darse algunas pistas respecto a lo que podría considerarse como una perspectiva metodológica distinta a las que venían orientando el trabajo investigativo de Foucault hasta entonces. Los interrogantes que ello suscita son bastantes y algunos de ellos difusos, lo que ha propiciado el indagar por las resonancias de este giro dentro de la investigación en educación y pedagogía.

En este orden de ideas, podemos señalar tres grandes líneas de debate en la articulación de los trabajos aquí expuestos. En primer lugar, un eje de discusión que podríamos suscribir en la relación saber-poder y en la permanente exploración de las herramientas arqueológicas y genealógicas para pensar e investigar en educación y pedagogía. Una segunda línea de debate puede hallarse en lo que la literatura foucaultiana ha venido tratando como el gobierno por la verdad. Un eje que inscribe los últimos trabajos de Foucault en el escenario de la ética y la política. Y, por último, un tercer escenario gira en torno a las contribuciones de otros pensadores al campo de la educación y la pedagogía en diálogo con los planteamientos foucaultianos.

Asking how post-crisis countercultural formations compose new means of resisting an unjust economic order, this essay centers the tiny homes movement, which takes the financialization and commodification of housing as a warrant for radically downsized dwellings. As I argue, the campaign to displace (from) big homes and emplace tiny homes relies on coordinating rhetorical modalities: the parrhēsiastic case against dominant but flawed materializations of “good living” and the eudaimonic envisioning of an alternative “good living” less beholden to capital. I conclude by reviewing both problematics and possibilities that emerge from this inventive play for social and economic change.

Abstract: Dance bequeaths a conflicted legacy for resisting neoliberalism: the same portfolio careers; pick-up companies; and freelance working practices through which the artist-entrepreneur negotiates and survives the exigencies of the neoliberal market have themselves been co-opted by neoliberal economics as blueprints for labour practices in ways unimagined and never intended by arts practitioners.  ‘The freelancer’ to quote Lauren Berlant (76) ‘is one of the sovereign figures of neoliberalism’.1  Looking beyond dance’s unwitting complicity in the neoliberal contracting of the body, this paper focuses on dance as an emergent critical aesthetics that calls attention to the incorporation of the geopolitical by the post-statist neoliberal project.

Its case study is "Maleficent" (2014), the Angelina Jolie popular cinema radical retelling, as prequel, of the back story of "Sleeping Beauty’s" slighted fairy Carabosse.  "Maleficent’s" status as dance intertext is many-faceted: its titular character’s conjunction of malevolence and magnificence and the sourcing of her predicament to an originating act of socio-economic disenfranchisement are familiar from the characterisation of Carabosse in Marius Petipa’s choreography for the ballet "The Sleeping Beauty" (1890).  Unspecified in the ballet, this act is elaborated in the film: ‘the winged creature who rose to be protector of The Moors, a kingdom which needed neither king nor queen’ to quote the film’s narration, Maleficent is shorn of her wings in an act of land-grab motivated premeditated human interspecies violence.  This act, betokening rape for Jolie, renders Maleficent’s aerial choreographic spectacle pedestrianised; everyday and earthbound, just as Carabosse, denied vertiginous danse d’école vocabularies, must substitute more mundane mime in their place. 

This paper begins by establishing the strong bonds which bind Disney to dance; the extent to which, to quote Soviet avant-garde filmmaker Sergei Eisenstein, ‘the art of animation… has its forerunner in ballet…At least in Fokine’s ballets for Diaghilev...’.2  Drawing on analyses of neoliberalism, those of David Harvey in particular, this paper then moves to consider "Maleficent" as the articulation of a critique of neoliberalism, one which – it will be suggested – relies heavily on Cynic philosophy for its formulation. Cynic philosophy, especially in the extended consideration of the Cynic life presented by Michel Foucault’s final series of Collège de France lectures 3  will be critically important here.  Arguing for Maleficent as the choreography of Feminist ethics in response to neoliberal policies that render human relations to the land ever more ethno-biologically precarious, this paper will point up the strong parallels that exist between the film and Cynic thinking.  In Foucault’s account, Cynicism especially prioritises the vie autre (other life).  This makes Cynicism particularly effective as a vehicle for questioning neoliberal values and proposing others in their place. 

"Maleficent’s" critique will be shown to be choreo-philosophical in the sense that it mobilises, and is highly reliant upon, a range of dance histories - those to do with "The Sleeping Beauty" especially - and dance practices, particularly those bound up, ultimately, with pantomime dance in Hellenistic ancient Greece. This article will suggest that pantomime dance as a close, cognate ally of Cynic philosophy, was already imbued, in some significant sense, with philosophical intent.  It is pantomime dance’s philosophical intent - this paper argues - that endures and is mobilised to such effect in the roles of Carabosse and Maleficent.  Attention then turns to Alain Badiou’s concept of cinema as philosophy.  This article will suggest both that Badiou’s concept is more indebted to dance than is generally acknowledged, and that it arguably strengthens the sorts of claims that can be made for "Maleficent" as choreo-philosophical critique.  This paper also proposes, in a similar vein, that on the basis of his reading of Cynicism as actually highly motile, the late Foucault is more phenomenological in orientation and - so it would follow - less antithetical to dance and its study, than has hitherto been suggested.           

1. The fuller quotation reads ‘the freelancer is one of the sovereign figures of neoliberalism, the person on contract, who makes short-term deals for obligation and thrives through the hustle over the long haul.  She prefers entrepreneurial precarity to the too closeness of the world.’ (Berlant: 76). 
Zygmunt Bauman comments similarly but less sanguinely, for he does not share what might, from Berlant’s slightly ambiguous account, be construed as neoliberal precarity’s redemptory feature, namely its potential as a strategy for managing an individual’s relationship with the world.  According to Bauman’s characterization, ‘an ideology of privatisation’ is ‘a new ideology for a new individualised society: as Ulrich Beck has written, individual men and women are now expected, pushed and pulled to seek and find individual solutions to socially created problems, and to implement such solutions individually, with the help of individual skills and resources.  This ideology proclaims the futility (indeed, counter-productivity) of solidarity…This is also an ideology made to the measure of the new society of consumers.  It re-presents the world as warehouse of potential objects of consumption…’,Zygmunt Bauman, ‘Happiness in a society of individuals’, "Soundings", 38 (Spring 2008) pp. 19-28; pp. 20-21. 

2. Sergei Eisenstein, "Notes on the General History of Film" (1948), quoted in Khitrova, p. 83
 
3. These lectures were subsequently published, in an English translation, as "The Courage of the Truth (The Government of Self and Others II) Lectures at the Collège de France 1983-1984", ed. Frédéric Gros, general editors: François Ewald and Alessandro Fontana, English series editor Arnold I Davidson, transl. by G Burchell,  Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan 2011, henceforth to be referred to as Foucault.

« [M]oi, qui ne sçay rien, m’en suis voulu mesler » : Blaise de Monluc dit se « mêler » d’écrire l’histoire pour se distinguer des historiographes « lettrés », comme le font également, à la même époque, les frères du Bellay. Tous font cependant valoir leurs jugements sur l’action politique dans l’histoire : ils écrivent sur l’histoire plutôt qu’ils n’écrivent l’histoire. Ainsi Montaigne insiste, dans les Essais, sur la nécessité de savoir juger l’histoire et ses acteurs. La distinction générique qui oppose l’histoire aux Mémoires, aux « Commentaires » et aux « essais » s’avère peu opérante pour comprendre ces auteurs. Je propose d’aborder leur rapport à l’histoire sous l’angle de « l’histoire-jugement », une histoire écrite par ses acteurs, qui porte sur l’action politique (les « faits » et les « dits » dans la langue du XVIe siècle) et sur les « conseils », c’est-à-dire les intentions et délibérations des acteurs. La première partie explique l’importance qu’a prise l’histoire-jugement au temps de François Ier, en raison, d’abord, des idéologies et des pratiques de la monarchie contemporaine, puis par la « renaissance » de traditions philosophiques, rhétoriques et historiographiques qui associent le conseil au discernement (ou « discrétion »), aux discours (« concions » ou conciones) et à la franchise (ou parrêsia). Le règne de François Ier voit se nouer ces pratiques et ces traditions : les humanistes, la noblesse d’épée et l’État royal appellent de leurs vœux une histoire-jugement destinée à la formation des élites politiques. La deuxième partie montre qu’un auteur, Guillaume du Bellay de Langey, et une œuvre, ses Ogdoades, ont incarné cette aspiration, réunissant les lettres et les armes. Après avoir étudié la naissance de cette œuvre restée inachevée, j’analyse le Prologue des Ogdoades (ici édité), manifeste et méthode qui définit les rapports de la rhétorique, du jugement et de l’expérience politique dans l’historiographie ; puis j’étudie la mise en œuvre de cette méthode dans les fragments des Ogdoades. La troisième partie porte sur l’œuvre des deux plus importants héritiers de Langey : les Mémoires de son frère Martin du Bellay (qui comprennent une partie des Ogdoades) et les Commentaires de Monluc. Le discours sur l’historiographie, dans la seconde moitié du XVIe siècle, insiste sur la parrêsia de l’historien ; un tel discours n’est pas anti-rhétorique mais rejette une écriture de « clerc d’armes » parce qu’elle révèle l’inexpérience politique de l’historien. L’ars bene dicendi ne laisse pas de fasciner Martin du Bellay et Monluc, dont l’écriture se veut paradoxalement éloquente, parce que dépouillée des fastes de l’épidictique ; la parrêsia des conseils permet de dépasser l’opposition du bien dire et du bien faire à laquelle on résume souvent la poétique des Mémoires d’épée. Monluc et Martin du Bellay cherchent ainsi à comprendre la portée et les limites de leur capacité d’agir. La quatrième partie examine la place de l’histoire-jugement et l’héritage de Langey dans les Essais : on sait depuis longtemps les affinités de Montaigne avec Amyot et Bodin, mais on ignorait qu’il en eût avec les Du Bellay. La notion d’histoire-jugement permet de comprendre les jugements, synthétiques et pourtant circonstanciés, que porte Montaigne sur les acteurs de l’histoire. Cherchant dans l’histoire les voies d’une prudence lucide, l’essayiste s’interroge sur la possibilité d’agir et de parler librement, ce qui autorise à penser son rapport à la politique et à la rhétorique en termes de conseil et de « discrétion ». La conclusion esquisse un moment Guillaume du Bellay, où l’histoire fut comprise non comme une étude du passé mais comme le prolongement réflexif des délibérations des acteurs de l’histoire, comme le moyen de « dire sur ce qui peut advenir ».

This paper analyzes Xenophon’s somewhat enigmatic exploration of the concept of parrhēsía, which denotes ‘frank’ and ‘true’ speech. Although Xenophon never deploys any form of the term parrhēsía, his use of the verb parrhēsiázomai and of related concepts, e.g. the noun haplótēs, reflect Xenophon’s understanding that ‘frank’ speech was essential to ruling well and extending the mission of Socrates. In turn the paper explores Xenophon’s reflections on the limits of parrhēsía. It argues that Xenophon problematizes the concept and shows how the ‘parrhēsiastic game’ can be manipulated in order to demonstrate how and why speaking frankly/truthfully when offering advice can both help and hinder leaders. For example, Xenophon uses the adjective krypsínous in order to denote the inverse concept of parrhēsía, i.e. of concealing one’s true thoughts; he suggests that doing so can merit praise or condemnation. In exploring the concept of ‘frank’ speech in Xenophon the paper evaluates potential parrhēsiastic advisors and instances of the parrhēsiastic game in Anabasis, Hellenica, Cyropaedia, Hiero, and Poroi.

The purpose of this thesis is to investigate the political possibilities which are made possible by the theoretical studies of philosophers such as Michel Foucaut with Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari and by a micrological perspective that radically transforms our perception of society. For this purpose, it will be shown what kinds of possibilities are provided to the resistance by Foucault‘s discussion on ethical and aesthetical process of self-construction in the context of truth and power. On the other hand, it will be tried to determine the principles of a materialist semiotics by explaining the unconscious dynamics of processes of subordinations, which are problematized by Deleuze and Guattari, especially in their attempt of schizoanalysis. At this point, it should be also added that the modes of ethical subjectivation, which are provided to the life and the politics by a nuanced and new form of reflection on the body that appears on the studies of Foucault with Deleuze and Guattari, will also be opened to discussion. Also, it will be tried to show that an analysis which claims to bear the adjective of ―materialist‖ should focus on the perspective of production of subjectivity. The ultimate goal of the study is to show that to capture the potential for a radical political change it should be connected with ethical-political conditions of subjectivation, which are interested in creating new vital horizons outside of the real politics. It will be tried to expose what can be the principles of this new approach, which appears as micropolitics, and what makes the conditions of political subjectivation secondary to vital pragmatism

In this dissertation, I will consider the multiple trajectories of the thought of Michel Foucault in the 1970s and 1980s, offering an approach through which his writings on power and knowledge on one hand, and ethics and the self on the other can be understood fruitfully in relation to each other without being seen as representing a radical break in his work. I will do this by, first, locating the question of the subject and its formation within Foucault’s works on disciplinary power and sexuality, paving the way for this question to be revisited through his later writings on ethics. I will then consider how the development of Foucault’s ideas on power into biopower and governmentality enable an approach through which continuity within Foucault’s works can be identified through the relations between power, conduct and modes of individualisation. This will lead to considering Foucault’s genealogy of ethics and the modern subject not as a departure from his earlier ideas, but as the culmination of his interest in analysing knowledge, power and ethics. I will consider but go beyond the notions of aesthetics of existence and care of the self in Foucault’s discussion of ancient Greek and Hellenistic ethics in order to deal with his ideas on parrhēsia and truth-telling from his final lecture courses at the Collège De France that show that his late ideas reflect his earlier concerns. Therefore, by appealing to the conceptual developments within his writings as well as his approach to philosophical analysis, Foucault’s philosophical projects need not be seen as disparate and so the issue of continuity in his work can be raised and positively viewed.

This book offers an original reading of Michel Foucault’s project of a history of truth that showcases its philosophical and ethico-political relevance. While Foucault’s work is generally interpreted as defending an anti-normative, strongly relativist approach to traditional philosophical themes such as truth, value, or critique, this book shows, on the one hand, that his views about truth are far more complex and nuanced than generally acknowledged, and on the other, that the critical force of his genealogical and ethical writings relies on crucial, albeit mostly implicit, normative commitments. In particular, it argues that Foucault’s lifelong critical project should be revaluated in terms of his late interest in the practice of truth-telling, or parrhesia.

This article examines how Christians who had been deprived of the direct sponsorship of the state articulated their claims for political and religious freedom. I examine four cases from the fifth and sixth century in the Eastern Roman Empire and Sasanian Iran. Here I argue that Scriptural models provided an important reservoir of political ideas that could be used to undermine state authority, whether to underscore the conditional nature of Roman claims to authority or to deny an equality of religious freedom to non-­‐‑ Christian co-­‐‑ citizens.

This paper begins by taking seriously former slave and abolitionist Frederick Douglass' response in his What to the Slave is the Fourth of July? to systematic violence and oppression. He claims that direct argumentation is not the ideal mode of resistance to oppression: " At a time like this, scorching irony, not convincing argument, is needed." I will focus on a few elements of this playful mode of resistance that conflict with the more straightforward strivings for abstract, universal, objective, convergent, absolute thinking that champions reason over emotion, logic over narrative, and science over lived experience. In contrast, the type of protest employed by people like Douglass can utilize aesthetics and logic, playfulness and seriousness, emotion, even anger, and reason. Douglass provides examples of humorous, sincere parrhesia, oscillating between the lexicon of the dominant sphere and the critical reflection from a trickster on the margins. This will require an analysis of Michel Foucault's conception of parrhesia : courageous truth-telling in the face of powerful people or institutions. It is a study of humor in the parrhesiastes, an element I think neglected by Foucault. I argue that the humorous parrhesiastes offers a mode of resistance which can subvert oppressive power structures that perpetuate injustice, revealing the fact that humor can be integral in courageous truth-telling.

Rastrea y examina la función de la filosofía y los efectos que ha producido en el campo educativo y pedagógico. Para ello se ha situado en las herramientas conceptuales y metodológicas de Michel Foucault esbozadas en sus últimos trabajos. Así, el eje central del ejercicio gira en torno al pensamiento de Foucault, en la última etapa de su producción académica académica y, de manera puntual, en las categorías teórico-metodológicas desplegadas en este periodo.

This article combines Foucault's exploration of the ancient Greek concept of parrhesia with the novels of Joseph Heller to attempt to arrive at a more complete critical position for an author whose work, aside from his first novel, is often critically neglected. The article explores the way in which Heller's writing progresses over his first three novels, becoming more explicit in its social critique. It also explores his uses dark humour – a popular device for comics, authors and filmmakers in the period – in his first three novels to preach against the way that American systems of a military, political, or corporate nature control the actions of supposedly free citizens, through intricate bureaucratic webs which border or tip into absurdism, and the fear which stems from the underlying covert threat to the citizen's wellbeing.

À la fin du premier semestre 1982, Michel Foucault prononce à l’Université Victoria de Toronto un cycle de conférences intitulé "Dire vrai sur soi-même". Le thème de ces conférences, s’inscrivant dans le cadre du projet d’une généalogie du sujet occidental moderne, est la formation historique de l’herméneutique de soi. Après avoir analysé le type très particulier de connaissance de soi et de rapport à soi qui caractérise l’askêsis gréco-romaine, où il s’agit pour le sujet d’établir avec lui-même une relation de possession et de souveraineté, Foucault étudie le renversement qui conduit, aux premiers siècles du christianisme, et tout particulièrement dans les communautés monastiques, à la naissance d’une herméneutique de soi conçue comme l’exploration et le déchiffrement par le sujet de sa propre intériorité. Pour définir ce renversement, Foucault introduit ici une distinction inédite entre deux formes d’ascèse, l’une tournée vers la vérité, l’autre tournée vers la réalité. Parallèlement aux conférences, Foucault conduit à Toronto un séminaire consacré à l’étude détaillée de textes des auteurs anciens sur lesquels s’appuient ses analyses de la culture de soi antique. Il y présente également une esquisse des différentes significations de la notion de parrêsia dans l’Antiquité, qui allait devenir le thème principal de ses derniers travaux. Ces conférences et ce séminaire sont publiés ici pour la première fois, dans une édition critique.

Cet ouvrage propose une lecture originale du projet foucaldien d'une histoire de la vérité qui vise à en mettre clairement en lumière les enjeux éthiques et politiques, grâce à l'établissement d'une confrontation entre les analyses de Foucault sur la parrêsia antique, les travaux de J.L. Austin sur l'énoncé performatif et l'étude de l'énoncé passionné par Stanley Cavell. Le problème qui est ainsi posé, en lien mais également en décalage avec les réflexions traditionnelles sur le pouvoir des mots, est celui de la force du vrai : est-il possible ou légitime d'affirmer que la vérité est une force qui s'inscrit, de manière toujours « stratégique », à l'intérieur d'un champ de bataille ? En répondant par l'affirmative, cet ouvrage entreprend d'interroger sous un angle inédit les rapports entre vérité, critique et vie au sein d'une éthique et d'une politique du dire-vrai.

On retrouve alors, maintenant explicitement employé par Foucault, le terme d’agonistique, qui décrit la structure conditionnant de l’énonciation de la vérité dans le contexte de la démocratie grecque. Foucault parle d’un champ agonistique rendant possible la parrêsia, c’est-à-dire l’énonciation d’une vérité qui n’est point destituée de pouvoir, mais bien au contraire fondante du pouvoir démocratique. Il est remarquable que le champ agonistique conditionnant l’exercice du pouvoir-vérité démocratique renvoie à un partage avec les autres, c’est-à-dire à un avec. On parlerait alors d’un avec agonistique. Mais le plus remarquable est pourtant le fait que cette description de la démocratie n’a pas l’air de la dénonce, mais bien plutôt celui de la défense.

Resumen A partir de los análisis de Foucault en su última etapa, respecto a los grecolatinos y cristianos y la ética del cuidado de sí,en relación especial a la figura de los cínicos, buscamos pensar el vínculo entre el pensamiento foucaultiano y el de Baruch Spinoza. El punto clave para dicha unión se encuentra en la cuestión de la parrhesía, que se ahondará profusamente en este trabajo de investigación, y el problema de la filosofía como modo de vida, que puede ser apreciado-siguiendo a Foucault-en citas y correspondencias del pensador holandés. Palabras claves: parrhesía-cuidado de sí-cinismo-sujeto-verdad.

L’expression « vérité héroïque » (III, 12 : heroikè alètheia) a posé problème aux philologues, qui ont souvent tenté de la corriger. L’article montre que rien n’autorise de telles « corrections », à partir d’un rapprochement avec un fragment de Favorinus cité par Aulu-Gelle, qui fait un lien à ma connaissance unique dans la littérature antique, entre parrhsiva et mélancolie héroïque. La vérité héroïque, c’est la vérité que proclame le héros mélancolique, sans tenir compte des convenances. L’expression est donc à verser au dossier d’un Marc Aurèle « mélancolique ».

This paper draws attention to Foucault’s genealogy of critique. In a series of inquiries, Foucault traced the origins and trajectories of critical practices from the ancient tradition of parrhesia to the enlightenment and the (neo)liberal critique of the state. The paper will elucidate the insights of this history and argue that Foucault’s turn to the genealogy of critique also changed the valence of his theoretical assumptions. Foucault developed a more affirmative practice of genealogy that not only discredits truth claims by tracing them back to their inglorious origins. Rather, he presents a politics of truth as a complex interaction of (governmental) power-knowledge and critique that questions the power effects of truth and rationality. This genealogy of critique contributes to current problematizations of critique by thinkers like Boltanski, Latour and Rancière in highlighting the role of epistemological and technical critique of social rationalization and political reason.

Özet Parrhesia Antik Yunanda, kişiler arasında " hakikati söylemek " üzerine düzenlenen bir sözel etkinliktir. Parrhesia'yı icra eden kişiye ise parrhesiastes denilmektedir. Parrhesia etkinliğinin amacı, aşağıdan-yukarıya doğru asimetrik bir ilişki içinde eleştiri sunmaktır. Hakikati bilen ve söyleyen bu eylemini kamusal alanda, bir görev olarak yapmakta ve bir takım riskler almaktadır. Michel Foucault Antik Yunan metinlerinden yola çıkarak giriştiği bir seminer dizisinde bu kavramları irdeler ve hakikatten çok hakikatin söylenmesi olgusuna odaklanır. Foucault hakikati söylemenin, hakikati bilmenin, hakikati bilen insanların bulunmasının toplum açısından ne önemi olduğu sorularına yanıt aramaya çalışır. Parrhesia ve parrhesiastes belgesel sinema alanı açısından da yararlanılabilir kavramlar olarak düşünülebilir. Çünkü belgesel sinemanın ortaya çıkışının ve varoluşunun temel kavramları da " gerçek " ve " hakikat " tir. Bu bağlamda belgesel sinemacılar birer " hakikat söyleyici " olarak düşünülebilir mi? Makalede bu kavramlar çerçevesinde Türkiye'deki belgesel sinema dönemleri itibariyle ele alınmakta; hakikat, hakikati söyleme ve belgesel sinema arasındaki ilişki irdelenmektedir. Belgesel sinemacıların günümüze yaklaştıkça parrhesia'ya da yaklaştıkları görülmektedir. Çalışmada, tıpkı Foucault gibi, hakikatin ne olduğunu tartışmak değil, belgesel sinemanın hakikati söyleme pratiğini ele almak hedeflenmektedir.

The American conception of free speech is primarily defined as the freedom to say whatever one wants, with little regard for the quality, context, or impact of the speech. Thus, American free speech doctrine is often characterized as neutral with regard to the speaker and the content of speech; in practice, however, it consistently privileges powerful over vulnerable speakers and harmful over critical speech. From Philadelphia to Skokie to Charlottesville, the First Amendment has been interpreted to protect speech by white men that silences and endangers women and minorities. As free speech doctrine and practice become increasingly concerned with private as well as state action, free speech becomes even more of a monopoly and monoculture dominated by the interests of white men. The impoverished and elitist conception of free speech that governs current American legal theory and practice undermines all three values the First Amendment is meant to protect: autonomy, truth, and democracy. This Article proposes that First Amendment theory and practice should be reoriented around ancient Greek concept of parrhesia, or fearless speech. As the philosopher Michel Foucault describes it, the speaker of parrhesia "chooses frankness instead of persuasion, truth instead of falsehood or silence, the risk of death instead of life and security, criticism instead of flattery, and moral duty instead of self-interest and moral apathy." Parrhesia is, in essence, the act of speaking truth to power. The more fearless the speech, the more protection and encouragement it should receive, both from state and private actors; the more reckless the speech, the less protection and encouragement it should receive. The ideal of fearless speech, rather than free speech, is a superior guide for a society with democratic aspirations. * Professor of Law, University of Miami School of Law. President, Cyber Civil Rights Initiative. I would like to thank Gordon Hull in particular for pointing me to Michel Foucault's writings on parrhesia.

This article intends to see to what extend Augustine’s Confessions may correspond to a kind of parrhesia, as analyzed by Michel Foucault about ancient christian writers in Le courage de la vérité. The classical parrhesia (freedom of speech possessed by a citizen) is actually subverted in the specific structure of the Confessions : the frankness of the parrhesia is supposed to have an effect on Augustine as author and on his readers, not on the omniscient God – whom Augustine precisely addresses. Furthermore, his trust in God – an other manifestation of parrhesia that is expressed by the Latin word fiducia – has biblical roots, but is also renewed by the idea of grace. Nevertheless, we can say that the apologetical and religious aspect of parrhesia which appears in some passages of the Confessions reminds somehow the traditional political use of parrhesia.

The aim of this article is to study parrhesia as a form of political performativity. The study of parrhesia as a speech act has been inaugurated by the researches of Lorenzini, who has proposed an in-depth analysis of the parrhesiastic speech act: we nonetheless believe that some features of parrhesiastic performativity urge us to broaden some aspects of his theory. In the first section of this article we will study the nature of parrhesiastic utterance, where Lorenzini's theses will be discussed through the use of Butler's approach. In the second section, we will 2 examine the characteristics of cynic performativity through our theoretical framework, in order to give an example of its effectiveness. We will put forward, then, an overall interpretation of parrhesia, which will be redefined as a communitarian performativity and, furthermore, as an innovative model of radical democracy.

This essay challenges dominant interpretations of Foucault’s lectures on parrhesia as affirming an ethical, non-political conception of truth-telling. I read the lectures instead as depicting truth-telling as an always political predicament: of havingto appear distant from power (to achieve credibility), while also having to partake insome sense of political power (to render one’s truth significant). Read in this way, Foucault’s lectures help us to understand and address the disputed politicality of truth-telling – over who counts as a truth-teller, and what counts as the truth – that his ethical interpreters tend to neglect. Yet the essay also shows that Foucault’s depiction of thepredicament of truth-tellers is problematically gendered: focused on the masculine problem of moving in and out of the public sphere, rather than on the experience of the dispossessed, who are excluded from political power altogether. The essay mobilizes an alternative reading of one of Foucault’s key texts – Euripides’ Ion – to draw out an alternative, more democratic model of the predicament of truth-telling: of having to constitute power that can lend significant to truth-telling, while speaking from a position of powerlessness.