Iron in the stomach. Talking about the poor, »Mouchette« comes to mind. Robert Bresson’s »Mouchette«. 1967. The unforgettable mud in the air. Mouchette: she is poor, she is ill-fated, she is represented in an art work, but you can’t swallow her, she can’t be digested, she can’t be assimilated. She doesn’t even have to grow. She is 14 and it is enough.

I will start from the end. When we say that we want to take poverty and social disadvantage as a theme but we don’t want to end up in some kind of welfare art or presumption or social romanticism, then how we function is very crucial. How do we talk? What kind of »art in action« are we talking about? How does art contribute to the prevailing system that is creating knowledge of poverty? How can art replace this system with something else instead of politely contributing to it?

Sure, it is vital to think about when and how poverty and social disadvantage became a »problem« for the art world and artists. How an unproblematic field of experience became a problem, raised discussions and debate. But then we will have to go back to the invention of the »era of art«, the invention of the »fine arts« and Art with a capital A, the invention of the artist as being totally separated from the craftsmen, etc.. Art with a capital A is a chastity belt for any artist who wants to »do something«. Social romanticism is a lake for artists. Poisoning. »Expect poison from the standing water« said the poet...
Here, I would like to suggest that we seek help from the discussions on the term parrhesia as it is re-used by Foucault in his late lectures. This will, I hope, help when reflecting on the politics of an artistic act that talks about true poverty.

What is parrhesia? Why does Foucault to this old word and what can we do with parrhesia today?
In the fall term of 1983, Foucault gave a series of lectures at the University of California in Berkeley as part of a seminar entitled »Discourse and Truth«. These lectures were devoted to the study of the Greek notion of parrhesia or »frankness in speaking the truth«. Foucault’s concern in this period was the role of parrhesia in the resistance to the modes of subjectification entailed by bio-power, as well as the prospects for new modes of subjectivity based on self-fashioning and a new vision of inter-subjective relationship based on friendship . In these lectures, Foucault outlines the meanings and the progress of the classical Greek word parrhesia and its cognates as they enter into and exemplify the changing practices of truth-telling in Greek society. In particular, Foucault investigates »the use of parrhesia in specific types of human relationships’« and »the procedures and techniques employed in such relationships« .

Foucault claims that the word parrhesia occurs for the first time in Euripides (c.484-407 BC). For Foucault, the meaning of parrhesia had five component concepts: frankness, truth, danger, criticism and duty. The word is normally translated into English as »free speech« (or fearless speech, or truth-telling), and a »parrhesiastes«, a person who uses parrhesia, is the one who speaks the truth: »Parrhesia means in Greek roughly the activity of a person (the parrhesiastes) >saying everything<, freely speaking truth without rhetorical games and without ambiguity, even and especially when it is hazardous.« Parrhesia is a verbal activity that occurs at the intersection of those five elements, the first of which is frankness, which refers to the parrhesiastes’ openness of speech.

When engaging in frankness, the speaker’s heart and mind are completely open to those engaged in discourse. Secondly, parrhesia occurs, for Foucault, where belief and truth match. That is, »a parrhesiastes says what is true because he knows that it is true; and he knows that it is true because it really is true« Here, truth consists less in opposition to the lie or to something »false« but rather in the verbal activity of speaking truth: »the function of parrhesia is not to demonstrate the truth to someone else, but has the function of criticism: criticism of the interlocutor or of the speaker himself.” Additionally, parrhesia requires an element of danger. A person can only be a parrhesiastes if there is a risk or danger in telling the truth. Parrhesia requires »courage in the face of danger: it demands the courage to speak the truth in spite of some danger«. The fact that a speaker says something dangerous –different from what the majority believes - is understood as a strong indication that he is a parrhesiastes.

The next element of parrhesia is criticism, which can take two forms. The critique can be of an interlocutor by someone who has the power to punish the speaker or criticism can be self-critique engaged in by the speaker.
The last feature of parrhesia is that of truth-telling as a duty. An orator fearful of punishment is free to remain silent; however, a parrhesiatic orator speaks the truth regardless of consequences because the speaker feels it is a duty to do so . Foucault emphasizes that, unlike other truth-tellers, the parrhesiastes speaks only in his own name. His words reflect his personal virtues and character.

Foucault distinguishes between political and ethical parrhesia, both of which are characterized by risk or danger for the parrhesiastes. »A parrhesiastes addresses himself to a sovereign, to a tyrant, and tells him that his tyranny is disturbing and unpleasant because tyranny is incompatible with justice, then the philosopher speaks the truth, believes he is speaking the truth, and more than that, also takes a risk (since the tyrant may become angry, may punish him, may exile him, may kill him)«.

But speaking truth to power, political parrhesia, also entails an ethical relationship to oneself. For Foucault, it is Socrates who embodies ethical or philosophical parrhesia in the form of philosophy as a way of life, inasmuch as the aim of his truth-telling »is not to persuade the Assembly, but to convince someone that he must take care of himself and of others; and this means that he must change his life. This theme of changing one’s life, of conversion, becomes very important from the fourth century B.C. to the beginnings of Christianity. It is essential to philosophical parrhesiatic practices.«

For Foucault, ethical parrhesia is inseparable from inter-subjective and communal relationships. We will have to turn back to this ethical parrhesia based on inter-subjective relationships when we address »conversational art« practices.

[b]Parrhesia and Art[/b]
How can we think about art in parrhesiatic terms? I will first try to define some discussable fields concerning parrhesia and art. Are we now referring to the »Zola way«, the legendary »J\\\\\\\'accuse!« way?
Artists, like philosophers, can accept the parrhesiatic game »in which their life is exposed and risk death to tell the truth instead of reposing in the security of a life where the truth goes unspoken.« Foucault admits that the threat of death comes from the Other, and thereby requires a relationship to the Other. »But the parrhesiastes primarily chooses a specific relationship to himself: he prefers himself as a truth-teller rather than as a living being who is false to himself.«

This is a straight version of political parrhesia. Telling the truth to the tyrant directly by word (not through an art work or an artistic act). Very naked truth with no rhetoric whatsoever and no styles or anything. Instead of appealing to authority or instead of being in the position of state consultant, instead of understanding duty as the duty to your country or state or any other representative body, you regard telling the truth as a duty.

Although I am just indicating the direction things can go, if you find »the threat of death« too dramatic for today, I would like to remind you of the case of Nigerian author Ken Saro-Wiwa, who told the truth about multinational oil companies and was hanged for it. Kenule Beeson Saro-Wiwa (October 10, 1941 - November 10, 1995) was also an environmental activist. He was a member of the Ogoni, an ethnic minority whose homelands in the Niger Delta have been targeted for oil extraction since the 1950s. Initially as spokesperson and then president of the Movement for the Survival of the Ogoni People (MOSOP), Saro-Wiwa led a non-violent campaign against the environmental damage associated with the operations of multinational oil companies, especially Shell. On November 10, 1995, Saro-Wiwa and eight other MOSOP leaders were executed (hanged) by the Nigerian military government of General Sani Abacha. In the statement made by Saro-Wiwa just before his execution, he said »I have devoted my intellectual and material resources, my very life, to a cause in which I have total belief and from which I cannot be blackmailed or intimidated.«

Bearing in mind other texts of Foucault on the role of the intellectuals, we can stress that this is not a representative role of intellectuals in games of truth. Here, the philosopher-artist is a Diogenes. The non-digestible, non-assimilatable »Cynic«, Diogenes of Sinope, who meets Alexander the Great. The story goes that Alexander, thrilled at coming face to face with the famous philosopher (in his tub), asked if there was any favour he might do for him. Diogenes replied, »Stand a little less between me and the sun« When Diogenes is demanding the sun and talking about the truth, he believes in what is is saying. Diogenes is so far beyond the consensus that the category of the sovereign does not work for him. Without consensus, Alexander the Great appears as a man who has a body and a shadow. Diogenes is like a small colorful insect –a monarch butterfly in exile. Monarchs defend themselves from predators by their bad taste and by being poisonous when eaten. Monarchs are »foul-tasting and poisonous due to the presence of cardenolides in their bodies, which the caterpillars ingest as they feed on milkweed. Both forms advertise their unpalatability with bright colors and areas of high contrast on the skin or wings«. Is parrhesia a way to be a monarch butterfly? How can an artist be »foul-tasting and poisonous«?

Artists can also accept the parrhesiatic game in which not their life, but their »career« is exposed, and risk success to tell the truth instead of reposing in the security of an artistic life where the truth goes unspoken. This is still quite an undeviating version of political parrhesia. This is the scene where an artist speaks the truth to power structures in the art world. Tyrants in the art world could be art institutions, curators, editors, culture lords and official controllers of uncontrollable art flows, police chiefs of the art world, legitimating mechanisms of the art system, various dominating power positions and generally the mode of being under the rule of the art consensus of the times. This is no avant-garde shock, these are no routine, carelessly memorized »actions« which have been carried out to build an anti-career. This is an approach that carefully has kept a gap between itself and any avant-garde/vanguard vision or/and any avant-garde/vanguard project.

Here we have two obvious fields of political parrhesiatic games in art: telling the truth to the tyrant of everyday life and telling the truth to the tyrant of the gallery/museum. These are both verbal (or written, if they are in the same manner and with the same directness, avoiding all rhetorical techniques.)
But then we have to enter another field: the field of speaking the truth through an art work, in an art work or with an artistic act. This is not directly verbal talking, but talking with art. Is this possible? Is it possible to make a parrhesiatic artistic act about poverty? Can art be something that fits this, or can parrhesia fit into art? Can an artistic act work like a speech act? This can criticize both the power structures of everyday life and also art worlds. The point is that the parrhesia act is not carried out through direct speech this time, but just through »direct art«.

At the end of his lectures, Foucault says a few words about this seminar, explicitly defining its general objective target: to construct a genealogy of the critical attitude in Western philosophy. And if we combine this target with the history of art we will be encouraged to construct a genealogy of the critical attitude in art (or, if we keep in line with Foucault, we can say »Western art«).
In parrhesia, Foucault finds roots of the »critical« tradition in the West. Then would it give us any clue if we were to investigate parrhesia in the arts to find the roots of the »critical« tradition in art?

Today, we have two problems here. The first one has to do with directness. Should an art work have to have some indirectness, some rhetoric? Does total directness push an artistic act outside the realm of art? And secondly, do indirect modes of art-making necessarily mean that they are based on a rhetorical attitude? Can there be modes of political or philosophical parrhesia that will go well with art? To put it more simply: what kinds of artistic acts may function as truth-tellers in the sense of a parrhesiatic act?
Parrhesia has to be a direct critique, a direct way of truth-telling. Foucault’s intention was not to deal with the problem of truth, but with the problem of the truth-teller, or of truth-telling as an activity. And for anybody who still understands art in terms of the fine arts/polite arts/Art with a capital A, art is not art if it is that direct . The definition of art is crucial. We certainly have to think beyond the art of the »era of art« to be able to find parrhesiatic acts in art. But more importantly, if these have something to do with the roots of the critical tradition in the history of art, then the attempts of expelling directness and thus the parrhesiatic act from the realm of art should be taken as a serious attack on the critical attitude in the arts.

As for the modes of political or philosophical parrhesia that will go well with art, re-reading Foucault’s emphasis on the progress of parrhesia from public criticism to self-criticism may help. »First, parrhesia occurs as an activity in the framework of small groups of people, or in the context of community life. Secondly, parrhesia can be seen in human relationships occurring in the framework of public life. And finally, parrhesia occurs in the context of individual personal relationships« When Foucault focuses on Socrates in Plato’s dialogue »Laches«, »Socrates no longer assumes the function of the parrhesiastes in the sense of exercising dangerous contradiction in a political sense, but rather by moving his listeners to give an account of themselves and leading them to a self-questioning that queries the relationship between their statements (logos) and their way of living (bios).« As Raunig goes on to say, »Parrhesia is thus not a characteristic/competency/strategy of a single person, but rather a concatenation of positions within the framework of the relationship between the parrhesiastes’ criticism and the self-criticism evoked by. … here parrhesia is not the competency of a subject, but rather a movement (my emphasis) between the position that queries the concordance of logos and bios, and the position that exercises self-criticism in light of this query. Parrhesia as a double strategy is needed: as an attempt of involvement and engagement in a process of hazardous refutation, and as self-questioning.«

This is where we can link parrhesia to »conversational art« practices, »dialogue-based public art«, where we see artists »creating an open space where individuals can break free from preexisting roles and obligations, reacting and interacting in new and unforeseeable ways« These conversational art practices could be a set of practices where we can problematize the »working poor« among other social problems through political and especially ethical parrhesia. Could »parrhesia as a movement«, »parrhesia as a double strategy« work in these dialogical conversational artistic acts? In my opinion, this is quite a crucial question for rethinking the critical in art.

Recent studies on parrhesia are reflecting various searches for politically active parrhesiatic approaches. David Novak examined three speeches of Malcolm X that he gave in different periods of his life and reevaluated them in terms of parrhesia, while Alex Neiwirth investigated the cyber-publishing experiment Independent Media Center network in terms of parrhesia. IMC is also comparable with conversational art practices owing to its dialogical and at the same time political starting point. IMC has a parrhesiatic form that emerged from today’s understanding of horizontal politics. As David Graeber said , the ideology of the alternative globalization movements is its form. And, I believe, this form is not »standing water«.

 

 

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