The Banality of Cynicism: Foucault and the Limits of Authentic Parrhēsia.

Foucault's discussion of parrhēsia - frank speech - in his last two Collège de France lecture courses has led many to wonder if Foucault is pursuing parrhēsia as a contemporary strategy for resistance. This essay argues that ethical parrhēsia on either the Socratic or Cynical model would have little...

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Published in:Foucault Studies no. 25; pp. 251 - 274
Main Author: HULL, GORDON
Format: Article
Published: University of Pennsylvania Press Sep2018
Subjects:
Online Access:View this record in EBSCOhost
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        Cynicism
        Banality (Philosophy)
        Foucault, Michel, 1926-1984
        Parrhēsia (The Greek word)
        Facebook (Web resource)
        Authenticity (Philosophy)
        Biopolitics (Philosophy)
        Visibility
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          Cynicism
          Banality (Philosophy)
          Foucault, Michel, 1926-1984
          Parrhēsia (The Greek word)
          Facebook (Web resource)
          Authenticity (Philosophy)
          Biopolitics (Philosophy)
          Visibility
      keyword:
        authenticity
        biopower
        cynicism
        Facebook
        Foucault
        parrhesia
        social media
        speech
        visibility
      ab: Foucault's discussion of parrhēsia - frank speech - in his last two Collège de France lecture courses has led many to wonder if Foucault is pursuing parrhēsia as a contemporary strategy for resistance. This essay argues that ethical parrhēsia on either the Socratic or Cynical model would have little critical traction today because the current environment is plagued by problems analogous to those Plato thought plagued Athenian democracy. Specifically, authentication of parrhesiasts as a technique for authenticating their speech - the specific problem that the move to ethical parrhēsia in ancient Greece was designed to solve - becomes intractable in a social media environment, even with the added Cynical move to pure visibility. The problem is that contemporary society overproduces visibility as a condition for participation, which means that the context for authenticating parrhesiastic speech is one in which visibility is banalized and in which there is a surplus of speech which presents as parrhesiastic. The problem of authentication is thus a serious one, one which social media makes particularly intractable.
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