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Subjects of truth: resisting governmentality in Foucault’s 1980s

Legg, Stephen

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Abstract

Responding to ongoing concerns that Michel Foucault’s influential governmentality analytics fail to enable the study of “resistance”, this paper analyses his last two lecture courses on “parrhesia” (risky and courageous speech). While Foucault resisted resistance as an analytical category, he increasingly pointed us towards militant, alternative, and insolent forms of counter-conduct. The paper comparatively analyses Foucault’s reading of Plato, Socrates and the Cynics, exploring parrhesia’s episteme (its truth-knowledge relations), techne (its practice and geographies), identities (its souls and its bodies) and its possible relations to the present. It concludes that Foucault viewed resistance as power, which problematized governmentalities but could also be analysed as a governmentality itself.. In pursuing parrhesia Foucault reaffirmed his commitment to studying discourse as always emplaced and enacted, whilst sketching out the geographies (from the royal court and the democratic Assembly to the public square and the street) that staged the risk of truth-talking. This suggests new subjects and spaces to open up political possibilities when exploring the geographies of governmentalities.

Citation

Legg, S. (2019). Subjects of truth: resisting governmentality in Foucault’s 1980s. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 37(1), 27-45. https://doi.org/10.1177/0263775818801957

Journal Article Type Article
Acceptance Date Aug 24, 2018
Online Publication Date Sep 25, 2018
Publication Date Feb 1, 2019
Deposit Date Oct 1, 2018
Publicly Available Date Mar 29, 2024
Journal Environment and Planning D: Society and Space
Print ISSN 0263-7758
Electronic ISSN 1472-3433
Publisher SAGE Publications
Peer Reviewed Peer Reviewed
Volume 37
Issue 1
Pages 27-45
DOI https://doi.org/10.1177/0263775818801957
Keywords Foucault, Governmentality, Truth, Resistance, Parrhesia
Public URL https://nottingham-repository.worktribe.com/output/1047891
Publisher URL http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0263775818801957

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