Fearless Speech [Paperback]

Michel Foucault (Author), Joseph Pearson (Editor)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 19, 2001 | ISBN-10: 1584350113 | ISBN-13: 978-1584350118

I would like to distinguish between the 'history of ideas' and the 'history of thought.' The history of ideas involves the analysis of a notion from its birth, through its development, and in the setting of other ideas, which constitute its context. The history of thought is the analysis of the way an unproblematic field of experience becomes a problem, raises discussions and debate, incites new reactions, and induces crisis in the previously silent behaviors, practices, and institutions. It is the history of the way people become anxious, for example, about madness, about crime, about themselves, or about truth.

Comprised of six lectures delivered, in English, by Michel Foucault while teaching at Berkeley in the Fall of 1983, Fearless Speech was edited by Joseph Pearson and published in 2001. Reviewed by the author, it is the last book Foucault wrote before his death in 1984 and can be read as his last testament. Here, he positions the philosopher as the only person able to confront power with the truth, a stance that boldly sums up Foucault's project as a philosopher.

Still unpublished in France, Fearless Speech concludes the genealogy of truth that Foucault pursued throughout his life, starting with his investigations in Madness and Civilization, into the question of power and its technology. The expression "fearless speech" is a rough translation of the Greek parrhesia, which designates those who take a risk to tell the truth; the citizen who has the moral qualities required to speak the truth, even if it differs from what the majority of people believe and faces danger for speaking it.

Parrhesia is a verbal activity in which a speaker expresses his personal relationship to truth through frankness instead of persuasion, truth instead of flattery, and moral duty instead of self-interest and moral apathy.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Michel Foucault (1926-84) is widely considered to be one of the most influential academic voices of the twentieth century and has proven influential across disciplines.

Product Details

• Paperback: 128 pages
• Publisher: Semiotext(e) (Foreign Agents) (February 19, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1584350113
• ISBN-13: 978-1584350118
• Product Dimensions: 6.8 x 4.2 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #385,527 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

One of the leading intellectuals of the twentieth century and the most prominent thinker in post-war France, Foucault's work influenced disciplines as diverse as history, sociology, philosophy, sociology and literary criticism.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

67 of 68 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An inspiring read that deserves more attention, December 10, 2002

By 

Henri Edward Dongieux - See all my reviews

This review is from: Fearless Speech (Paperback)

This compact volume makes a good read and a great gift to any thinking person. A series of transcribed lectures, Fearless Speech introduces the notion of parrhesia - roughly "telling of the unvarnished truth" - as it has developed from Greek thought onwards. Foucault, acting here as the master historian of ideas, is precise and erudite, his language is clear, and his story inspires. The discussion begins with the origins of the word in early Greek thought and its use by Euripides in tragedy, and then moves on to discuss the place of parrhesia in democratic institutions, and ultimately its practices and its games.

Parrhesia is a type of speech that is neither rhetoric nor dialectic, though it has historically occupied an important space among both - forming perhaps a trialectic. Parrhesia is a species of truth that mandates its own telling, in a quasi-spiritual fashion if need be: the parrhesiastes, or truth-teller, is one who puts him- or herself at considerable risk, including the risk of death, with his or her words. It can easily be seen that parrhesia is an essential antecedent to criticism and critical theory, but it is also ubiquitous in many forms of discourse. The Jeremiads of prophetic speech, the jokes of court jesters, Che's formative travelogues around South America, Taussig's defacing messages to the academy, and the best-selling literature of Rushdie that was in the 1990s so ill-received by the Muslim community - all of these are examples of this powerful discourse-form at work and play.

I first ran across the term in Arpad Szakolczai's excellent volume on Weber and Foucault, "Parallel Life-Works." After reading FS, I was frankly amazed that the idea is not more widely discussed in university rhetoric classes. The concept is extremely fruitful, first of all, for anyone interested in rhetoric, dialectic, philosophy, and law. Moreover, for anyone studying Foucault's life or epistemic universe (orders of discourse, manifestation, dispositifs, and so on), parrhesia needs to be on the list of terms. For those interested in neo-Enlightenment thinkiers like Habermas and the communicative ethics thinkers like Benhabib and Miller, Rorty and the pragmatists, or the large and diverse group of scholars studying ideology (such as Teun van Dijk) within Critical Discouse Analysis, it's also a very worthwhile read.

Most of all, though, the book shows everyone - and not just the intellectual - that parrhesia needs to be incorporated within our everyday modes of thinking and speaking. To what extent are "we" speaking, and to what extent is ideology speaking through us? What power does our speech reproduce, and what might it transform? Is our speech emancipatory? Does it contribute to the complexity of thought? Does it leave more questions open than closed? Do we break new ground, or just re-hash the useless play of words? This is a book that will fuel the mind and inspire questions like these like few others I've recently read. If you're tired of reading about the "end of history" and post-post-everything thought, try this slim volume. Highly recommended.

1 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Brave speech too, June 12, 2009

By 

Aldo F. Ramirez - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Fearless Speech (Paperback)

Interesting ideas from a Brave Man, he is not afraid of being politically incorrect he says what he thinks and there is a good basement in his ideas.

0 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Good book, but WAY too expensive, January 22, 2011

By 

lisliasm (SANTA BARBARA, CA, US) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Fearless Speech (Paperback)

I paid $70 for this little pamphlet on Amazon. After it was too late to return, I found out that my professor had a PDF copy of the entire text. Essentially, I wasted $70. It's a good set of lectures, but way too expensive for what you get. I paid more for this than for the new (full) translation of Madness and Civilization.