Foucault, the politics of ourselves, and the subversive truth - telling of trauma : survivors as parrhesiasts

Abstract

This chapter is divided into four sections. The first section provides an overview of Foucault’s different approaches to the practice of self-narration in his work prior to the 1980s. This will involve viewing self- narration through the lens of discourses and power relations by outlining Foucault’s intentions in publishing the medico-legal dossier of Pierre Rivière. Th is section then turns to the case of Herculine Barbin to highlight how Foucault also approached the practice of self- narration through the problematic of the confessional will to truth. The second section outlines Foucault’s approach to practices of self- narration in his work in the 1980s, particularly on the hermeneutics of the self and self- writing. Th is section considers his work on parrhēsia as an extension of his lifelong engagement with the relation between the power of truth and subjectivity, and looks closely at Foucault’s account of Cynic parrhēsia. It is with this form of parrhēsia that traumatic self- narration is eventually compared to. The third section considers a feminist application of Foucault’s ideas on self-narration. In the spirit of “the personal is political,” it is not surprising that feminists influenced by Foucault’s work have elaborated further on how practices of self-narration are imbued with power relations, and that in the same way that power impacts practices of self-narration, so too can such practices trouble hegemonic exercises of power and subvert some of its effects. This section explores the uneasy tension between what Ewick and Silbey (1995) term “subversive stories” and “hegemonic tales” in their proposed sociology of narratives. The fourth and final section of the chapter builds upon these applications of Foucault’s ideas to highlight how traumatic self-narration is caught up in a similar tension since narratives of trauma can be co-opted by power so that preferred conceptions of trauma narratives are reinforced, but they can also resist such co-option and depoliticization by positively functioning as subversive acts. In this latter way, narrations of trauma can function as a form of parrhēsia by, at a risk to the speaker, courageously uttering truth.