Foucault draws a distinction between political and personal parrhesia. In noting the different styles of parrhesia evident in Euripides Ion, Foucault states that personal parrhesia “takes the form of a truthful accusation against another more powerful [individual], and as a confession of the truth about herself (p. 56).
It is this form of parrhesia I contend [...]
I’m working on the concept of blogging as parrhesia.
In my last post I examined the parrhesiastic contract. It suggests that there’s an important place for the powerful to give to the subject permission to speak freely. Without that permission the ruler does not get to hear all that is on the mind of the speaker [...]
Foucault speaks about the parrhesiastic contract in which there is an implied approval to speak freely. The subject is permitted by the powerful to speak what is on the mind. Of course, such an approval would be unneccesary were the topic of speech not, in some way, dangerous. The powerful gives permission for the subject [...]
I’m interested here in the idea of blogging as parrhesia.
Foucault believed that parrhesia necessarily involved the telling of truth to an interlocutor; and this telling of truth necessarily involved danger. For the parrhesiastes truth is told, not out of compulsion, but out of a sense of duty. If we told the truth to a friend [...]
A post on dooce entitled I Have Something to Say is a useful example of parrhesia. Here we find Armstrong speaking truth in the form of a criticism – of both herself and others – which involves a level of risk to the speaker. It’s not a risk of life and death so much [...]
I’ve been reading The Political Mapping of Cyberspace by Jeremy Crampton (2003) after finding a comment about one of my posts on Jeremy’s blog. Jeremy’s comment lead me to begin an exploration of the terms “hupomnemata” (self-writing) and “parrhesia” (frank and fearless speech, particularly spoken against the powerful) (p. 107). This post, therefore, is an [...]
