ABSTRACT
Critics of authority have often suspected that claims to speak truthfully are veiled invocations of power. Since Michel Foucault develops his truth-telling model in his late, unpublished lectures, some interpretive work is necessary in order to develop an analytic framework for these claims. These lectures present a sweeping range of parrhesiastic episodes from which Foucault delicately disentangles analytic commonalities from contingencies of context and character. Foucault’s first task in constructing such a model must be to determine the position from which an authority can speak, and the qualities such a figure brings to bear on his words. The relationship generated through the parrhesiastic joust can best be assessed by contrasting this struggle to the different stages of confessional speech. In setting out this model for truth-telling, Foucault recognizes the need for individuals to avoid dependency on authorities and trust that their daily practices bear on truthfulness.
