CFP: Philosophy parrhesia journalism

In the ante-mortem series of lectures, our contemporary Michel Foucault excavates a vital cultural matter. The philosopher canvasses diverse critical exercises as possible stepping stones to an occasion of “truth-telling”. The classics called this aptitude and right – parrhesia, an apposite problem for any age. Touching on personal and public, political and cosmic spheres, Foucault's heuristic account considers fearless speech with respect to human affairs, the building blocks of man-made cultures.

To reiterate Foucault, where and how can one learn to become the person “who speaks and who, regardless of everything, takes the risk of telling the whole truth”, and is willing to accept it?

Philosophers are remembered for the problems posed, questions asked out loud, and inferences made. The best of them are also remembered for taking a hand in their day and age and future. As an independent discipline, journalism is significantly younger than philosophy, and yet eminent journalists work in a similar vein, researching and exposing veridical facts, patterns of error, and injustice. These and other perennial matters are fleshed out in material events and abstractions, in reports, lectures, interviews, and articles, while both camps take pride in nourishing skilful analysts and story-tellers, assuring to convey no fiction!

Could we assume, then, that common roots, concerns, and, possibly, techniques connect philosophical and journalistic investigations as kindred modes of parrhesiastic work?

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Forthcoming in Parrhesia: A Journal of Critical Philosophy

Contents:

Staging the Truth: Free Speech, Fearless Speech and the Problem of Parrhesia by John M. Carvalho

All this Fearless Speaking is Really Fearful Screaming: Diogenes, Foucault and the American Crisis of Bad Parrhesia by Christopher Schwartz

Political Parrhesia and the State’s Rhetoric in Iran by Majid Heidari

Kopenawa’s Shamanic Parrhesia: Wasp Spirits vs. White Climate Epidemic by Joshua M. Hall

When the Witnesses in War Stop Waiting for a Necrotic Peace: A Contemplation on Nelson Maldonado’s Against War by Gwendalynn Roebke

The Transparency of War Photography by Michel-Antoine Xhignesse
Forms of Truth-Telling. Parrhēsia and Documentary by Stefanie Baumann

Police Abolition: An Anti-Colonial Dialogue by Adam Elliott-Cooper and Geo Maher

Posthought: Parrhesia, Graphomania, and Scenius by Valery Vino