Abstract
The relationship between risk, risk-taking and politics is a central theme in sociological studies of risk. This article outlines how Foucault’s study of parrhesia can provide valuable resources with which to account for different contemporary relations between risk and critique. The contention is that analyses of parrhesia open up a different line of empirical and theoretical investigation which goes beyond the risk society thesis and expands the governmentality perspective to a specific consideration of resistance. Employed as a conceptual tool kit, parrhesia allows us to raise the question: how does risk-taking make a certain kind of critical practice and subjectivity possible today? Parrhesia provides a unique perspective from which to investigate this question by understanding critique as the dangerous practice of freedom and risk as its core feature and key resource. The analysis is essentially theoretical but relies on empirical materials for illustration.
Introduction: risk, reflexivity and politics
The aim of this article is to offer a way of thinking about and analysing different contemporary interrelationships between risk and politics. The argument is that Foucault’s last works on parrhesia can be utilized to provide an additional conceptual tool with which to analyse the interrelationships between risk, risk-taking and critical activity. More specifically, it enables us to open up a new line of empirical and theoretical investigation in the sociological study of risk which goes beyond the limitations of the risk society thesis and expands the governmentality perspective to a specific consideration of contestation and resistance. First, a brief outline of the risk society thesis is required before outlining how its key assumptions serve to limit an account of the various connections between risk and critique today. This will be followed by an examination of governmentality and its limitations as a different approach to analysing relations between risk and politics. Both accounts will serve as part of the rationale for taking up parrhesia as an additonal conceptual and analytical tool
The political features of risk and the critique that is inspired by risk are central to the risk society thesis. The concept of risk is proposed to be connected to critique because anxieties about risks serve to render certain practices socially and politically problematic (Beck, 1994: 5). Indeed, Beck (1994: 2) contends that this critical reflection upon the dangers produced by successful industrial modernity marks a new stage in modernization, one which he terms ‘reflexive modernization’. His theory of reflexive modernization contains two elements: ‘reflex and reflections’ (1994: 4–5). The first ‘reflex’ element involves industrial society being confronted with the dangers produced by successful modernization. This self-confrontation then leads to the second element of ‘reflection’ with a growing awareness of the dangers which ‘sets industrial society on the path to self-criticism and self-transformation’ (1994: 5–6). With this new knowledge of the risks produced by modernization, the public no longer blindly trusts the authority of governments or experts. Consequently, science is losing its monopoly on truth and public critique has become ‘a commonplace response’ to social dangers (1994: 11). Furthermore, Beck (1994: 11) argues that within this process of reflexive modernization the ‘risk society’ is produced which is by nature also a ‘self-critical society’. Critique alongside risk is therefore, from this perspective, a key defining feature of the second reflexive phase of modernity.
This process of reflexive modernization, according to the thesis, is triggering fundamental change in the nature of society and politics. Beck (1992) and Giddens (1991) use the concept of ‘individualization’ to argue that traditional collective social forms and sources of meaning (class, gender, family) are eroding as our main ‘institutional frames of reference’ for action and ‘biographical role models’. Individualization is instead becoming the social structure of risk society (Beck and Beck-Gernsheim, 2002: 2). This ongoing emancipation of the individual from the traditional structures of domination means that contemporary actors have gained significant control (reflexivity) over their selves and their social environments. Yet, in freeing itself from traditional constraints, risk society compels and expects its members to become risk-takers, as more and more aspects of social life result from personal choice and no longer from a socially determined fate. Thus, individualization delivers both progressive and regressive results. On the one hand, people are given greater choice and autonomy, and on the other, burdened with continual and compulsive self-determination and personal responsibility for failure. This produces what Beck and Beck-Gernsheim (2002: 24) call ‘precarious freedoms’ as opposed to protected freedoms secured through a human rights framework. Under these conditions of individualization, the risk society is therefore ‘not so much about the distribution of “bads” or dangers as about a mode of conduct centred on risk’ (Lash, 1994: 140–1). Risks are not simply dangers we face, but things individuals must take.
Both Beck (1994) and Giddens (1991) contend that the advance of reflexive modernization and individualization is leading to a reinvention of politics. Traditional political affiliations of class, party, gender and nationality are waning as the orienting and driving force of social critique. Instead, we are increasingly practising and organizing our political action around common anxieties about risk such as global warming and projects of self-actualization. The concepts of ‘subpolitics’ and ‘self-politics’ are used by Beck (1992) and Beck and Beck-Gernsheim (2002) to discuss this change and the new politics while Giddens (1991) uses the concept of ‘life politics’. These are new more direct and individualized forms of political engagement which bypass the traditional formal political institutions (parliament, political parties, trade unions, etc.) that have become problematic (Beck, 1994: 23). This emerging ‘new political culture’ is, we are told, ‘more bottom up than top down’; ‘sub-politicization implies a decrease of the central rule approach’ (1994: 23). The state and business are no longer the only political players with citizen initiative groups and social movements now key players. From the risk society perspective, these new forms of politics signal the possibility of constructing a new, more deliberative and inclusive democratic political order (Beck, 1994; Giddens, 1991). For Beck (2009) this new deliberative democratic political order is couched in a global ‘cosmopolitan politics’ and for Giddens (1998) ‘a third way’ politics.
This brings me to the starting point of my argument. Despite the innovation and theoretical elegance of the risk society thesis, it offers a somewhat limited account of the variety of contemporary connections between risk, risk-taking and critique. This is due in part to the key assumptions upon which its methodological approach to risk rests. Some of these assumptions have been explored extensively in the critical literature and are commonly identified in the following terms outlined by Dean (1999: 176–97): ‘a totalising assumption’, an ‘assumption of uniformity’ and ‘a realist assumption’. A brief discussion of these assumptions will serve to support the rationale for taking up parrhesia as a valuable resource for broadening sociological analyses of contemporary interrelations between risk, risk-taking and critique.
Various scholars point to the ‘totalising assumption’ (Dean, 1999: 182) or ‘universalism’ animating the risk society narrative (Mythen, 2004: 8). Such a totalizing approach leads to a lack of specific historical and detailed analysis (Zinn, 2008: 47–8). For instance, while the risk society narrative claims characteristics such as ‘critical reflexivity’ as features specific to late modernity, other scholars assert that ‘modernity is by definition reflexive, involving continual monitoring of itself, even if through convention rather than through individualisation’ (Lash, 1993: 5). Like other global theories, the risk society discourse subordinates the complexity and multidimensionality of risk and critical reflexivity in the search for theoretical unity. The empirical varieties of risk and reflexivity are thus reduced to mere instances or expressions of one kind of instrumental rationality or epoch (Dean, 1999: 182). Within this totalizing narrative it is difficult to consider that there are multiple and diverse risk rationalities and practices of critical reflexivity that take different forms and have diverse histories of their own.
Following from this is the assumption of the uniformity of both risk and reflexivity. Risk is assumed to have ‘fundamentally the same characteristics in all spheres’ which allows ‘general and abstract characterisations of risk’ to be made (Dean, 1999: 182). For instance, Beck (2016: 148) tells us that ‘the features common to global risks’ are that they transgress temporal, geographical and social boundaries and are increasingly unpredictable. Risks, it is also presumed, will be uniformly responded to by ‘objective probabilistic and calculative reasoning involving cognitive (self) monitoring’ (Lash, 2000: 54). The subject of the risk society is assumed to be an ‘exclusively rational assessor of risk … and has no proclivity towards affective methods of interpretation’ (Mythen, 2004: 142). As many scholars argue, this tends to obscure the diverse cultural, historical, aesthetic and other factors that will also shape reflexive judgements and experiential aspects of risk and risk-taking (Alexander, 1996; Lash, 2000; Mythen, 2007; Zinn, 2017). For example, the general characterization of risk and risk-taking as something bad or ‘undesirable’ makes it difficult ‘to consider the broader conditions and motivations of risk-taking and to examine why people expose themselves to danger’ (Zinn, 2015: 1). It inhibits an analysis of the ‘complexity, volatility and diversity of the meaning and practices of risk in the social realm’ (Zinn, 2017: 2). This neglects the possibility of positive cultural and social meanings, such as pleasure and excitement, being attached to constructions of risk and risk-taking action (Lyng, 2008).
Finally, there is the realist assumption evident in the key assertion that ‘the reason why risk is a defining feature of contemporary societies and individual and collective experiences and identities is that real riskiness has increased’ (Dean, 1999: 182) Treating risk ‘ontologically’ inhibits considerations of cultural and social embeddedness of risk (Dean, 1999: 182). It also limits an analysis of other possible explanations for how risk has become a key feature of contemporary societies, experiences and identities (Dean, 1999: 182). It thereby overlooks the possibility that different relationships between risk, risk-taking and critique are possible and significant in the play of contemporary politics.
The governmentality analytic offers us ways to overcome some of these methodological limitations and broaden the analysis of interconnections between risk and politics, but not without encountering other hurdles. From the governmentality perspective, risk is not simply a new type of social reality and consciousness, but indicates the transformation and emergence of new liberal forms of governing people in the 20th century. Foucault’s concept of governmentality is deployed to analyse how risk rationalities and technologies become connected to and facilitate the workings of these contemporary forms of ‘individualising power’ (Dean, 1999; O’Malley, 2004; Rose, 1999). A key focus of analysis is how contemporary forms of individualizing power use the self-governing capacities of free subjects as a means of achieving its ends. Yet, despite its conceptual innovation and valuable analyses, several limitations in the approach have been identified.
Key among the criticisms of the governmentality approach is its formulation of the connection between risk and politics. Scholars argue that it does not allow for the possibility of political agency and resistance (Lash, 1993: 20; Lupton, 2013: 141–2; Mythen, 2004: 166–70). The argument is that while both the risk society and governmentality approaches treat the individual as self-governing, ‘the concept of reflexivity allows Beck to attribute political agency to the individual’ (Mythen, 2004: 170). In contrast, ‘[w]hat appears as the freedom of agency for the theory of reflexivity is just another means of control for Foucault, as the direct operation of power … has been displaced by its mediated operation’ (Lash, 1993: 20). Critics further assert that the perspective has an exclusive focus on official discourses or ‘top-down’ risk rationalities and technologies and presumes a certain determinism of modes of governing (Lupton, 2013: 141–2). For some governmentality scholars however, these are not so much inherent limitations but ‘dangers of governmentality analysis if handled poorly’ (Dean, 2015: 192). Nevertheless, the governmentality framework provides little conceptualization of contestation and resistance. The concept and analysis of parrhesia can address this and thereby the distinct lack of research on the question of contestation and resistance in governmentality studies of risk.
Where the governmentality perspective is primarily concerned with the links between risk and power, the concept of parrhesia can extend the analysis to a specific consideration of contestation and resistance. This allows us to examine the contemporary significance of risk and risk-taking as a core feature and key resource of critical activity. The next section will outline what is meant by parrhesia before providing a detailed analysis of one empirical example to illustrate its analytical value for sociological understandings of interrelations between risk, risk-taking and politics today.
Parrhesia: ‘the dangerous practice of freedom’
While in 1986 Beck introduces us to his theory of reflexive modernization (first published in English in 1992), in a lecture given in January 1976 Foucault (2003: 6) discusses ‘the proliferating criticizability of things, institutions, practices and discourses …’ evident in the last decade or so. Here he raises the problem of whether the dominant scholarly critique of culture and society reliant on totalizing theories is out of touch with the ways critique was being practised in culture and society by the new social movements and political groups. It was this problem of critique, of how critique works, of how it is practised and defined, that leads Foucault to construct a ‘genealogy of the critical tradition’ in the West (Foucault, 2001a: 170).
Foucault traces this genealogy through ‘the emergence and trajectories of critical practices from the ancient Greek tradition of parrhesia to the enlightenment and the (neo) liberal critique of the state’ (Folkers, 2016: 7). He contends that modernity can be more usefully understood as a ‘critical attitude’ rather than an historical period and this ‘critical attitude’ is the ‘ethos of modernity’ (Foucault, 1997b: 105). For Foucault, this critical attitude ‘is not a general habitus of all people encapsulated in the modern age’ (Folkers, 2016: 7). Rather, it is a particular and ‘voluntarily’ chosen critical reflective disposition towards the present (Foucault, 1997b: 105). And he shows this critical attitude to be a direct descendant of the ancient Greek practice of parrhesia: a mode of truth-telling which can be distinguished from other modes due to its relationship to risk (Foucault, 2001a).
Foucault (2011: 50, 61) explains parrhesia using a dramatic scene: ‘I think that in a way this is an exemplary scene of parrhesia: a man stands up to a tyrant’ and ‘tells the truth to a tyrant and risks his life’. For Foucault (2011: 56) this is the ‘matrix scene’ of parrhesia. Not because the scene is necessarily typical, but because it exemplifies three basic and generalizable characteristics of parrhesia as an ancient form of the modern critical attitude.
The first generalizable feature exemplified in the scene is that an act of parrhesia does not derive from an institutional or legal basis. The truth-speaker gives themselves a right that they do not have (Foucault, 1997a: 47). He ‘exercises his own freedom as an individual speaking subject’ rather than a freedom granted by ‘status or anything that could codify or define the situation’ (Foucault, 2011: 65). Critique in this sense is always a form of ‘reflective insubordination’ (Foucault, 1997a: 47). The critical ethos is the ‘art of voluntary insubordination’ manifest in the ‘art of not being governed quite so much’ (Foucault, 1997a: 32). The will not to be governed is not an essential characteristic of being human or a natural aspiration, but a will formed in confrontation with forms of government (Foucault, 1997a: 72). Parrhesia is therefore not a performative speech act, in which an institutional environment permits an act of speech the authority to have codified effects. ‘Parrhesia does not produce a codified effect; it opens up an unspecified risk’ (Foucault, 2011: 62).
Risk, then, is the second general characteristic of parrhesia (Foucault, 2011: 63). The risk does not have to be a risk of death due to a vengeful tyrant. What is definitive is that in the critical situation, the person knowingly and willingly makes a choice to take a significant risk in telling the truth. It is this ‘opening up of a space of risk’ for the person who speaks that ‘constitutes’ parrhesia (Foucault, 2010: 56). It is not the content of truth that makes it parrhesia, but the fact that there is a significant danger involved for the person in telling the truth. Risk, Foucault (2010: 56) tells us, is the ‘crux’ of parrhesia. Voluntary risk-taking is not simply a vital dimension, but a precondition for and constitutive and defining element of the critical act of parrhesia. It is in these ways that, ‘parrhesia is an action which is risky and free’ (Foucault, 2010: 66). It is ‘the dangerous exercise of freedom’ (Foucault, 2010: 67). Here, freedom is not simply a status we occupy or a space outside of power relations, but a critical reflexive practice or action we undertake inside a power relationship.
The third general characteristic of parrhesia that the scene exemplifies is courage. Unlike Beck’s (2009: 6) ‘cosmopolitan communicative logic’ or communicative action in Habermas’ sense, ‘it is not the subject’s social, institutional status that we find at the heart of parrhesia; it is his courage’ (Foucault, 2011: 66). Parrhesia is not simply a matter of confessing or conveying truth, it has an ‘effective function of criticism’ that takes courage to accept and enact (Foucault, 2001a: 17). Therefore, it is not the content of the truth, but the particular way it is told that defines it as a critical act of parrhesia. The parrhesiastes’ courage to risk speaking the truth to others was taken as evidence of the honesty with which they speak. The ‘veridicity’ is validated through the demonstration of courage and not only by reference to logical arguments or objective evidence (Foucault, 2011: 66).
Foucault (2001a: 89) tells us that after the decline and fall of democratic Athens in the fifth century
Parrhesia and its potential as a new conceptual toolkit
Foucault’s study of parrhesia as the birth of the modern critical tradition in the West provides valuable resources for the analysis of contemporary interconnections between risk and critique. First, modernity can be approached as a ‘critical attitude’ rather than a historical period as the risk society thesis understands it. Second, in contrast to the risk society concept of critique characterized by universality, necessity and habit, we can adopt the concept of critique as ethos and attitude marked by risk, singularity and voluntary choice. Critique can be analysed as grounded in an effective critical reflexive disposition of courage rather than universal calculative reason. Third, rather than approach risk as a new social reality and consciousness, we can follow the lead of governmentality studies with their focus on how risk facilitates contemporary forms of ‘individualising power’ (Dean, 2003: 124). Yet, parrhesia can extend the analysis by showing how risk-taking is a way of governing ourselves that works both with and against contemporary forms of individualizing power. This overcomes a major limitation of the governmentality analytic by highlighting the potential for contestation and resistance.
Turning parrhesia into a conceptual tool by taking up these resources we can account for some of the novel and different interconnections of risk and politics that elude the risk society thesis and are often neglected by governmentality analyses. Employed as a theoretical tool, parrhesia allows us to ask a new question concerning not merely what motivates people to take risks voluntarily, but how does risk-taking make a certain kind of critical practice and subjectivity possible today? We can distinguish those risk-taking practices that assume the meaning, role and function of parrhesia and open them up for empirical study and theoretical analysis. We are able to examine the significance of risk to contemporary critical practice along two key dimensions: a political and an ethical dimension. Such an analysis can extend the governmentality analytic to a specific consideration of contestation and resistance. To demonstrate this utility of parrhesia, an analysis will be undertaken of Edward Snowden’s 2013 revelations regarding mass surveillance practices of the American National Security Agency (NSA). Using this scene of critique as a concrete example, the analysis offered by the risk society narrative will be compared with one produced using the concept of parrhesia.
Risk society analysis
In The Metamorphosis of the World, Beck (2016: 141–9) uses the mass surveillance practices of the American NSA revealed by Edward Snowden as empirical evidence of (world) risk society thesis. He tells us, the ‘totalitarian surveillance’ practices represent ‘a new chapter in world risk society’ (2016: 141). We now face a new ‘global digital freedom risk’, which is a threat to our ‘digital freedom rights’ to privacy and control of personal data (2016: 147).
According to Beck (2016: 148), this new risk exhibits the features common to global risks as well as some unique characteristics. It is an unintended negative side effect of successful digital modernization and it transgresses temporal, geographical and social boundaries (2016: 148). Yet, unlike other global risks, public critique was triggered not by a catastrophe but by the ‘mismatch’ between public expectations and the ‘actual reality of freedom and data in contemporary (Western) societies’ revealed by Snowden (Beck, 2016: 142). Snowden’s revelations ‘trigged an anthropological shock’ as the public was confronted with ‘the failure of the capacity of the nation-state to exercise democratic control’ (2016: 142) The ‘visibility’ of the ‘violation of digital freedom rights’ thereby created an awareness of the potential catastrophe of ‘total hegemonic control of personal information’ that led to resistance and social critique (2016: 142).
This new risk, Beck (2016: 144) tells us, was produced by a ‘new digital empire’ and its key instrument of control is not ‘military violence’ but ‘surveillance’. Yet, while it exercises ‘a profound and far reaching control’, it is paradoxically, Beck argues, ‘extremely vulnerable’ (2016: 144).
The empire of control has not been threatened by a military power, by a rebellion or revolution, or by war, but by a single and courageous individual. A thirty-year-old secret service expert has threatened to topple it by turning the information system against itself. (Beck, 2016: 144–5)
Thus, while nation-state-based political and legal institutions fail in the face of this and other global risks: the individual can, indeed, resist the seemingly hyperperfect system, which is an opportunity that no empire has ever offered before. If digital freedom is endangered, the brave can resort to counter-power, to non-compliance on the job. One of the key questions, therefore, is whether we shouldn’t oblige the major digital companies to implement legally a whistle blower union and, in particular, the duty of resistance in one’s profession, maybe first on a national scale and subsequently at the European level etc. (2016: 145)
Beck contends that the negative side effects of digital modernization have also produced several unintended ‘emancipatory’ side effects. They created ‘digital humans’ whose radically transformed modes of existence challenge traditional social categories including ‘status, social identity, collectivity and individualisation’ (2016: 146). Also produced was a normative horizon of ‘digital humanism’, inspiring public demands for data protection as a universal human right to protect digital freedom (2016: 146). As Beck sees it, all this raises the possibility of a new more deliberative ‘cosmopolitan’ democratic political order for taking action on the digital freedom risk (2016: 149).
Parrhesia analysis
Resituating this critical event within the parrhesia framework allows us to identify and examine a different set of interrelationships between risk and critique. We can shift the focus of analysis to the practical political and ethical dimensions of critique which are skimmed over by the grand and future-focused narrative of the risk society thesis. This allows us to account for how risk-taking makes parrhesia possible for Snowden as a direct and individual form of critical practice and form of subjectivity.
Obliged to make this critical event fit into the totalizing risk society thesis, Beck’s analysis bypasses the practical aspects of political action. The risk of significant punishment and exile Snowden takes are treated as secondary in the risk society analysis, which privileges the institutional rather than practical and experiential aspects of risk and critique. Consequently, the analysis also misses the significance of Snowden’s critical risk-taking act in its singularity. Beck points to Snowden as an example of the potential effectiveness of individual acts of resistance but it is the ‘empire of control’ which is said to make it possible. While Beck understands Snowden as ‘brave’ and ‘courageous’, and his actions as ‘revolutionary’, the significance of his critical action is considered mostly in terms of ‘triggering’ a broader social critique, resistance and emancipatory effects. The broader social and political consequences of Snowden’s actions are discussed, but the practical risk-taking dimensions of critical action are overlooked. Analytical specificity and nuance is subordinated to theoretical unity. The result is that an analysis of the critical risk-taking actions of Snowden’s as the dangerous exercise of freedom is bypassed. The risk society thesis largely disregards this different form of direct and individual political practice today and the different relationship between risk and critique that makes it possible.
Parrhesia, in contrast, shifts the focus of analysis to the critical ethos and practical political dimensions of this critical event. While for Beck power is imagined as a force of domination repressing freedom, we can adopt Foucault’s (2001c: 342) conception of power relations as ‘agonistic’ games between liberties. In this view, there is no absolute distinction between the exercise of power and practices of freedom. ‘Governing is indissociable from the critical ethos of how not to be governed and the art of not being governed so much’ (Foucault, 1997b: 44–5). From this different perspective, we can account for the critical event as an agonistic encounter between the NSA’s will to power and Snowden’s will not to be governed by mass surveillance practices. In this critical situation, risk is not just an object of critical action or simply a mode of conduct centred on risk. Risk-taking is a precondition of and key resource to conduct an individual political struggle.
While governmentality studies of risk analyse those moments or points at which practices of freedom become hitched to and instruments of relations of power, parrhesia can offer an additional tool of analysis. It can enable us to examine how a critical risk-taking practice can loosen that connection, working to unsettle rather than facilitate relations of power. Parrhesia thus turns our attention to diffuse localized individual acts of ‘voluntary insubordination’, opening up for analysis this different relationship between risk and critique.
These different ways critique can be practised and how risk-taking makes certain critical practice possible is obscured by the risk society thesis. While Beck does point to the paradox of the omnipresent power of the empire of control being so ‘vulnerable’ that a single individual can unsettle it, he neglects to examine the detail of how or what has made this critical action possible and effective. While Beck points to the effectiveness of Snowden’s actions this is mostly understood in terms of rendering the ‘invisible visible’. Following the critical theory tradition, critique is understood only as an unmasking tool. Snowden’s act of ‘voluntary insubordination’ is marginalized. Instead, the analysis reverts to a conception of power as repressive of freedom and a traditional liberal application of critique calling for global human rights, unions and laws to secure and protect freedoms and constrain power. This puts the brakes on an analysis of the significance of the risk-taking actions of Snowden being an effective means of contesting and unsettling power relations. Yet, one might ask: why is the risk society thesis so concerned with rights as a political strategy, and more so than with individual acts of risk-taking? If we are, indeed, living in a risk society structured by a new individualism, then this analytical focus seems all the more relevant.
By giving agonism a greater emphasis in our analysis, we can examine another aspect of the socio-political role and function of risk-taking in the form of parrhesia. While Beck identifies this critical event as signalling the ‘death of freedom’ and the demise of democracy or its possible future renaissance, using the concept of parrhesia permits us to see paradox and complexity in this critical situation. Parrhesia links with the political theory of agonism that emphasizes contestation rather than consensus as foundational to democratic politics. In Ancient Greece, the practice of parrhesia was considered imperative and effective not only under despotic or monarchic regimes but also under democratic forms of rule (Foucault, 2001a). In Foucault’s (2001a: 22) account, parrhesia formed a condition of possibility for the emergence of Athenian democracy ‘in the sense that democracy was built on an acceptance of the right for anyone to speak, but also paradoxically fulfilled the opposite function of corroding already-existing “democracy” … democracies, once built could be destroyed by speech against them …’ In other words, parrhesia was not only considered indispensable for its health, but also possibly dangerous to democracy.
From the perspective of parrhesia, Snowden’s actions can be accounted for in terms of the agonistic workings of democracy, as a moment of vitality rather than simply a sign of the impending ‘death of freedom’ and democracy. The analysis allows us to consider that while people struggle for rights, freedom and democracy they do so by exercising rights, freedom and democracy. While Beck’s analysis points to how the critical action functions as an unmasking tool to reveal the totalitarian threat liberal democracy faces. Used as a conceptual tool, parrhesia permits us to account for Snowden’s critical action as both significant in terms of the vitality of an agonistic democratic order but also a danger to the democratic rule of law. Indeed, many within the American government, NSA and CIA see Snowden as an irresponsible citizen, terrorist and traitor rather than a revolutionary or patriot. The analysis can draw out this paradox of critical activity, which is difficult to nuance using the risk society thesis and most political and sociological theory with normative concerns.
Using parrhesia as an analytical tool also allows us to consider a second paradox concerning relations between parrhesia and democracy. In order for there to be democracy there must be parrhesia. But conversely, parrhesia can be corrupted by demagoguery and thus threaten democracy (Foucault, 2010: 182–3). For instance, parrhesiastic forms of risk-taking can be practised in the name of rights as well as perverted in the service of xenophobic and religious fundamentalist politics.
This then brings us to the dimension of ethics in parrhesia as a dangerous practice of freedom. Governmentality scholars point out that the risk society perspective and in particular its theory of ‘individualisation cannot account for the field of contestation within contemporary politics over ethics, identity and culture’ (Dean, 2007: 78). By making the new individualism a ‘side effect’ of wider social and cultural processes (reflexive modernity, risk society) ‘power, conflict and struggle are erased from accounts of identity and self’ (Dean, 2003: 124). We see evidence of this in Beck’s analysis, where the rise of the ‘digital individual’ is considered an emancipatory side effect of ‘digital metamorphosis’. This exemplifies how the risk society thesis overlooks the ways ‘different forms of individuality and different ways of working on ourselves are related to political struggles.’ (Dean, 2003: 124) It results in the thesis being unable to account for the role and function of individual risk-taking acts in making possible different ways of constituting and conducting ourselves today.
Both the concepts of governmentality and of parrhesia allow us to distance ourselves from the risk society approach to identity and subjectivity and instead take up Foucault’s thinking about the subject as constituted by ethical practices and the links with politics. For Foucault (2001b) ethics is considered not simply as the domain of moral codes and prescriptions but also as a set of practices of self-formation and self-conduct. Governmentality analyses of risk have been confined largely to an analysis of the ways in which new forms of liberal government operate via our ethical practices of self-formation and self-government. With parrhesia we can extend the governmentality analysis to a specific consideration of resistance. As Brigstocke (2013: 58) points out, ‘Foucault’s own insistence on thinking about the subject constituted as practices, works both with and against neo-liberal subjectivity and neo-liberal conceptions of freedom, truth and reality’ (original emphasis). In this sense, analyses of how risk-taking provides opportunities for constituting and enacting parrhesia as a form of subjectivity can be vital for critiques of neoliberal subjectivity and analyses of possible forms of resistance to neoliberal governmentalities.
In the Snowden case, parrhesia can reveal the ethical dimensions of the relationship between risk-taking and critique to open a new empirical analysis. When asked why he chose to risk losing his comfortable life, exile and significant punishment to tell the truth about the NSA surveillance practices, Snowden replied: ‘because I can’t in good conscience allow the US government to destroy privacy, internet freedom and basic liberties of people around the world with this massive surveillance machine they’re secretly building’ (Greenwald et al., 2013). It was not therefore simply altruism motivating his risk-taking. His choice to take such significant risks is explained in terms of acting in accordance with a ‘good conscience’. This is about the specific ethical relationship he has to himself and not just about the relationship he has to others. Snowden described himself as a ‘patriot’ for trying to stop violations of the constitution but also said: ‘I can go to sleep at night and put my head on the pillow and feel comfortable that I’ve done the right thing even when it was the hard thing’ (NBC Nightly News, 2014). Parrhesiastic voluntary risk-taking practices were the ethical means by which he constituted and conducted himself in accordance with a set of moral principles or conscience. By willingly risking his life, exile and punishment he was able to constitute and conduct himself as a subject of his politics. Voluntary risk-taking was critical to achieving the different form of individuality which parrhesia entails for the subject who uses it.
Making an analytical distinction between morals and ethics allows Foucault (1984) to point out that a given moral prescription or normative horizon may allow for different ethical ways of forming and conducting oneself. This possibility of choosing between different ethical ways of forming and conducting oneself ‘opens up the question of the relationship between freedom and ethics’ (Foucault, 2001b: 284). Indeed, for Foucault, the key question for this conception of ethics is: ‘How can one practice freedom?’ (2001b: 284). Using the concept of parrhesia we are able to adopt a broader conception of freedom in terms of ethics. We can consider the ethical role and function of risk-taking in the dangerous practice of freedom inside a power relationship. We can shift the focus of an analysis of the relationship between risk and critical activity from moral codes to ethical practices of the self. We can also extend a governmentality analysis to focus specifically on the ways practices of self-formation including risk-taking can work both against as well as for the effective operation of individualizing modes of power.
The public criticism and condemnation of Snowden’s actions were mostly directed at his choice about how to practise and conduct himself in accordance with his principles. Not the political principles or moral code in whose name he professed to be acting. He was criticized for what he did, not why he was doing it. A sociological analysis only focused on moral codes will direct our attention to Snowden’s ‘motivations’ for taking risks. This analysis will only be concerned with the reasons and moral principles or norms according to which Snowden chooses to take the risk and justifies his critical activity. This opens up normative questions about whether the critical risk-taking activity was legitimate or not. The ethical dimensions of the critical risk-taking will however be overlooked, as will the contestation over ethics and identity. In contrast, parrhesia permits an analytical focus on the ethical orientations of critical activity. It can account for this contestation over ethics and identity and draws our attention to how individual risk-taking acts make different forms of individuality and different ways of forming ourselves possible today.
People may respond very differently to the same situation. The critical situation provides Snowden with a number of choices; some significantly more dangerous than others. Snowden could have chosen to remain silent about the NSA surveillance practices, as his colleagues did. He could have chosen to take the institutional and legislative route of making a formal complaint under the whistleblower laws. In fact, Snowden was derided as an irresponsible citizen, a traitor and terrorist by many within the American government and CIA for not making this choice. Instead he gives himself a right that he does not have and exercises his individual freedom despite the possible costly consequences. His critical risk-taking activity is a practice of ‘voluntary insubordination’, manifest in the dangerous exercise of freedom and exemplifies critique as an art of not being governed quite so much. The reflexive judgement he makes about which choice to take is not simply a rational calculative judgement, but a reflexive ethical judgement. In the critical form of parrhesia, risk-taking is therefore a voluntary political choice and ethical choice. The risk-taker who practises parrhesia is not simply a probabilistic or calculative subject or legal subject of rights, but an ethical subject.
Using parrhesia as a conceptual tool we can see how risk-taking, understood as an ethical practice of self-formation and of freedom, can work both with and against individualizing modes of power. ‘Governmentality analyses focus on the ways the subject is compelled to constitute itself within forms that are already more or less in operation or underway’ (Lemke, 2012: 71–2). Here ethical practices of self-constitution and of freedom are a partner in the exercise of power relations in which case they are co-opted by external forces for governmental ends. Parrhesia, on the other hand, draws our attention to the ways the ethical practice of self-constitution and of freedom ‘is done in disobedience to or critical relation to’ those prescribed forms of subjectivity (Butler cited in Lemke, 2012: 61). Parrhesia as an insubordinate form of subjectivity and dangerous practice of reflexive insolence is thereby a way of contesting and resisting modes of governmentality.
The potential utility of parrhesia to study contemporary connections between risk and critique extends beyond the empirical domains of exceptional cases such as high-profile instances of whistleblowing and high-risk activism. It offers a tool to map smaller instances of parrhesiastic risk-taking in the contexts of everyday life that take place on a bus or train or in a workplace. Instances where a person willingly risks punishment, physical harm, their career or livelihood to criticize and challenge forms of perceived prejudice, discrimination or dominant institutions, not only out of a sense of moral duty to others but also as an enactment of a personal ethics. Such mapping has the potential to take sociological analyses beyond practices we would traditionally conceive as ‘political action’, ‘activism’ or ‘resistance’. This analysis could not only contribute to our understanding of the contemporary significance of voluntary risk-taking to how people practise their politics but also broaden our understanding of what constitutes critical political practice and resistance today.
Like all analytical perspectives, parrhesia has limitations. Unlike the risk society thesis, parrhesia offers a largely non-normative analysis. An analytics of parrhesia is less interested in the normative questions of how critique should be practised than to offer concepts that can help us understand the significance of risk for how critique is practised today. Not providing normative criteria with which to judge the validity of dangerous practices of freedom will be seen as a limitation by those following the critical theory tradition. Yet that does not mean we should refrain from attempting to develop an analytically oriented set of concepts for the study of contemporary interconnections between risk, risk-taking and critique.
There is also a danger that the concept of parrhesia can be co-opted by a process of sanctification or hero worship, or will be used to describe all manner of critical actions or that disastrous political choices will be made by someone who is appealing to it. As Foucault (2001b: 374) points out ‘the best theories do not constitute a very effective protection against disastrous political choices’. The ends to which Marxism has been used to serve is an obvious example. These issues are perhaps not simply limitations of the concept but represent a danger that it will be put to poor use.
Conclusion
As risk has become a defining feature of contemporary societies, experiences and identities, the relationship between risk and politics has become a central theoretical and empirical focus in sociology. This article has outlined three key ways parrhesia offers conceptual novelty and value for the sociological study of risk. First, parrhesia provides an opportunity to open up another dimension of contemporary interrelationships between risk, risk-taking and politics to theoretical and empirical study. While the risk society thesis identifies the emergence of new more direct and individualized forms of political engagement, parrhesia provides valuable resources for the empirical study of a direct and individual form of critical practice. Used as a conceptual tool, parrhesia can produce an analysis of the practical political and ethical dimensions of the interrelationship between risk-taking and critique which are mostly overlooked by the grand and future-focused narrative of the risk society thesis. Parrhesia will therefore be of use to scholars interested in researching more direct and individualized forms of political practice and in the different ways critique is practised in contemporary societies. More than this, parrhesia can account for the ways risk and risk-taking make certain kinds of individual critical practice possible today. Employed as a theoretical tool, parrhesia allows us to ask a new question: how does risk-taking make certain kinds of critical practice and subjectivity possible today? This brings us to the second way parrhesia has conceptual value for sociology.
Parrhesia has value for the growing body of sociological research on risk-taking. The concept can be used to identify risk-taking practices that take on the political-ethical meaning, role and function of parrhesia and open them up them up for empirical study and theoretical analysis; that is, when risk-taking is practised as a deliberate critical engagement with contemporary reality. It also allows a methodological distinction to be made between motivations and ethics. This makes it possible to widen the focus of analysis beyond motivations to a consideration of risk-taking in terms of ethics. In so doing, parrhesia can contribute to the development of a critical approach to sociological research on risk-taking.
Lastly, if contemporary forms of ‘individualising power’ work via the ways we form and govern ourselves, then the ways we form and govern ourselves can also become resources of resistance. Parrhesia can be used to broaden the analytical and empirical scope of governmentality studies of risk to a specific consideration of contestation and resistance. Analyses of parrhesia can account for the ways risk and risk-taking operate both as a partner and adversary to individualizing forms of power, including neoliberalism. Here the concept can account for the ways risk-taking is central to achieving parrhesia as an insubordinate form of individuality which cannot be reduced to those prescribed forms. While governmentality studies are concerned to chart the genealogy of individualizing power as an art of government, analyses of parrhesia can contribute to the related genealogy of the art of not being governed in that way.
Footnotes
Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.