Table Of ContentFoucault on the Politics of Parrhesia
DOI: 10.1057/9781137368355.0001
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DOI: 10.1057/9781137368355.0001
Foucault on the
Parrhesia
Politics of
Torben Bech Dyrberg
DOI: 10.1057/9781137368355.0001
© Torben Bech Dyrberg 2014
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2014 978-1-137-36834-8
All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this
publication may be made without written permission.
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Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication
may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.
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in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
First published 2014 by
PALGRAVE MACMILLAN
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registered in England, company number 785998, of Houndmills, Basingstoke,
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ISBN 978–1-349-47465-3
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A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress.
www.palgrave.com/pivot
doi: 10.1057/9781137368355
Contents
List of Illustrations vi
1 Speaking Truth to Power and Power
Speaking Truthfully 1
2 Power: From Productive Submission and
Domination to Transformative Capacity 10
3 The Nature of Critique: Political Not
Epistemological 31
4 The Politics of Critique: Political
Engagement and Government 46
5 The Nature of Parrhesia: Political
Truth-Telling in Relation to Power,
Knowledge and Ethics 66
6 The Politics of Parrhesia: The Autonomy
of Democratic Politics and the
Parrhesiastic Pact 84
7 Leadership and Community: Critique of
Obedience and Democratic Paradoxes 102
8 Political Perspectives: Authority and the
Duality of Power, Politics and Politicization 119
References 126
Index 137
DOI: 10.1057/9781137368355.0001 v
List of Illustrations
Figures
2.1 Foucault’s categorization of power: relations
between freedom/domination (vertical axis)
and use/abuse of power (horizontal axis) 29
4.1 The critical ontology of ourselves vis-à-vis
revolutionary vs radical approaches to public
political authorities 60
6.1 Input/output politics in relation to community,
regime and authority 92
7.1 The framing of parrhesia 112
Tables
2.1 Foucault’s approach to power, subject and
critique in relation to early and late phase 17
4.1 Contrasting Critical Theory/Ideology Critique
and Foucault’s political critique 50
4.2 Two ways of constituting the regulation of
public authorities by law 63
vi DOI: 10.1057/9781137368355.0002
1
Speaking Truth to Power and
Power Speaking Truthfully
Abstract: Foucault’s notion of parrhesia is tentatively
defined and situated in his work where it, among other
things, is related to critique. His interest in parrhesia, and
the reason it is politically relevant, is because it addresses
critical issues in democratic theory such as those related to
authorities and citizens, what is personal and what is political
as well as political ethics and realpolitik. It also touches
upon distinctions between input and output politics, which
again are related to Foucault’s power analytics, and where
parrhesia is geared to political authorities communicating
and implementing their policies.
Keywords: authority/laypeople; critique; democracy;
parrhesia; politics; power
Dyrberg, Torben Bech. Foucault on the Politics of
Parrhesia. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014.
doi: 10.1057/9781137368355.0003.
DOI: 10.1057/9781137368355.0003
Foucault on the Politics of Parrhesia
parrhesia
Political as truthful and
trustworthy communication
In this book I will be dealing with Foucault’s analyses of the politics of
truth-telling as it appear in his lectures (1981–84) and other works, which
revolve around the Greek notion of parrhesia. If this term could be trans-
lated into Latin, it would be libertas or licentia. Parrhesia means speaking
truthfully, freely and being up-front in the sense of being open, transpar-
ent, engaging and saying everything there is to say about a particular
issue in contrast to holding something back, being secretive, covert and
manipulative (CT: 218, 326–7; FS: 12; GSO: 381; HS: 372, 404–5). It is a
political ethics as opposed to be applied normative theory: it is practical
as it is from the outset entwined with government, it is risky and takes
timing and courage, it requires knowledge, a good sense of judgement
and resolve.
Above all, parrhesia is important for Foucault because it operates on
the axis of political authorities and citizens vis-à-vis the public realm,
it connects personal and institutional aspects of politics and it empha-
sizes the duty to make sure that words and deeds are not disconnected.
In doing so, it stresses trustworthiness and accountability as vital for
democracy both personally and institutionally. Parrhesia is, moreover,
associated with other themes in Foucault’s work, notably those related to
the enlightenment ethos of critique, the questions of care of self, govern-
ment and limits to governing as well as liberty as a practice. Finally, it is
interesting to see how his focus on parrhesia links up with his lifelong
academic and political interest in political subjectivation, which orbits
around the triangle of power, knowledge and ethics, as well as his lib-
ertarian and egalitarian resentment against hierarchical institutional
set-ups marked by domination and obedience.
In setting out to discuss parrhesia I will be dealing with a set of politi-
cal issues, which are at once classical themes in political theory and topi-
cal and contested issues in today’s political culture. Parrhesia concerns
an individual’s freedom to tell the truth, as he or she perceives it after
getting acquainted with the facts and due reflection, which is, or rather
ought to be, reciprocated by the interlocutor’s acceptance of the other’s
truth-telling. Freedom goes together with courage, because the one who
speaks freely and truthfully puts oneself at risk. Thus conceived parrhesia
links up with public political reasoning, critical engagement, political
freedom and personal integrity, which are essential components of a
DOI: 10.1057/9781137368355.0003
Speaking Truth to Power and Power Speaking Truthfully
democratic ethos cultivated in a democratic political community. This
political aspect of parrhesia has captured my attention, and is the major
concern for Foucault.
Foucault elaborated in his last series of lectures an approach to politi-
cal authority and freedom that broke with both mainstream and radical
views of the relationship between politics and democracy. In his studies
of Greek and Roman antiquity, his implicit message was that Western
political discourses have suffered from a negative take on political
power, which has resulted in a widespread agreement – irrespective
of whether one is right or left, mainstream or radical – that power in
general, and political power in particular, is antithetic to truth, fairness,
freedom and individuality. This has made democracy appear as a mat-
ter of civilizing and depoliticizing the threats of political oppression by
converting conflict into consensus and by shielding private individuals
from public power. Whilst Foucault on numerous occasions spoke and
acted in favour of protecting individuals from repressive power, and saw
rights as an indispensable tool in this respect, his primary concern in
the lectures was to point out that there could be no democracy unless
political authorities, as well as those challenging them, possessed the
ability to disconnect politics from their own partial interests and instead
tell the population the truth of what has to be done in given situations.
This requires that authorities and laypeople are part of a political culture
marked by liberty and equality as opposed to domination and hierarchy,
which is to say that parrhesia and democracy are two sides of the same
coin. ‘For there to be democracy’, says Foucault (GSO: 155), ‘there must
be parresia; for there to be parresia there must be democracy. There is a
fundamental circularity.’
The argument I develop in this book is that parrhesia is vital for
Foucault’s sustained efforts over the years to expose and criticize the
various forms of obedience – be that blatant repression or normaliza-
tion – which go hand in hand with elite rule, hierarchical structures and
states of domination. His interest in parrhesia taps into his experiential
political inclination to widen and deepen liberty as a practice. The focus
is, as it always was for him, on political authorities and their critics. As
such parrhesia is located right at the centre of Foucault’s many histories,
because it addresses the key axis of these stories, namely the relation-
ship between authorities and laypeople in all kinds of institutionalized
settings such as medical or penal institutions or security apparatuses.
Although not formally political, they do partake, according to Foucault,
DOI: 10.1057/9781137368355.0003
