Tara, but on what level are we arguing? It seems we go everywhere...

 

The whole debate is kind of false. To say that speech should or could be limited in some ways is to deny the power of self-determination and critical self-interpretation, self-questioning so to speak.

 

The whole debate on free speech can be illustrated with the Foucault 's concept of governmentality. The dismantling of welfare-state forms of intervention is accompanied by a restructuring of techniques of governing, which transfer the leadership capacity of state apparatuses and instances to the population, to "responsible", "prudent" and "rational" individuals. This development relates primarily to the self-government, self-discipline and self-controlling individuals. So, if we self-govern ourselves, obviously we cannot allow this critical self-questioning such as free speech..

 

The problem of the concept of governmentality in this context lies primarily in the appearance of an inescapable totality, which seems to leave a defeatist withdrawal and individual exodus (Bartleby) as the only "forms of action" possible. Foucault, however, also sees a possibility specifically in the indissoluble linking of power and self-techniques. This possibility is developed in his Berkeley lectures from 1983 in the genealogy of a critical stance in western philosophy within the framework of the problematization of a term that played a central role in ancient philosophy: (parrhesia means in Greek roughly the activity of a person "saying everything"), freely speaking truth without rhetorical games, even when this is hazardous. The parrhesiastes speaks the truth, not because they are in possession of the truth, which he makes public in a certain situation, but because they are taking a risk. The clearest indication for the truth of the parrhesia consists in the "fact that a speaker says something dangerous - something other than what the majority believes." According to Foucault's interpretation, though, it is never a matter of revealing a secret that must be pulled out of the depths of the soul. 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."

 

Michel Foucault, Diskurs und Wahrheit, Berlin 1996, p.14 (discussion of parrhesia)

 

http://foucault.info/documents/parrhesia/) – very revealing  ]

 

 

Best, Julia

 

It seems to me that in arguing that it is not a matter of free speech but of incivility v solidarity one simply avoids engaging in the substantive arguments for and against.

What if for example if large groups of 'liberal fundamentalists' got together and started protesting that the governments of say, Saudi Arabia or Algeria should resign because their policies towards women were fundamentally uncivil and offensive to the principles of liberalism? It seems that if we accept that governments are answerable to people other then their own citizens in this way then this would not be objectionable. By calling the argument something else, these most obvious issues are just avoided before we even get onto the more important arguments for free speech. For example, in the hypothetical case above, whose feelings have the most value, who will decide on this etc.

Personally, as a liberal fundamentalist, I am against the way in which women in Saudi Arabia are treated, for example.  However, I also believe in democracy and self-government, and am prepared to accept that other governments have a right to govern in a way which I find objectionable or offensive.

Tara

Dear all,

If you don't have a chance to read Fish's assault on Free Speech
(highlighting the easy slippage between postmodernism and enlightened
authoritarianism) - there is an interview link below:
http://www.lib.latrobe.edu.au/AHR/archive/Issue-February-1998/fish.html

Best wishes,

David Chandler

Dear Abdelwahab,

Salaam and many thanks. This is a very good and subtle piece, which serves
to highlight - as an American Supreme Court judge once put it - that there
are times and contexts in which the principle of freedom of speech provides
a refuge for rogues. I have done quite a lot of work on the genealogy of the
free speech principle, itself a European Protestant invention of the early
seventeenth century. Amidst all the recent trumpet blasts in favour of Free
Speech, nobody seems to have spotted the bitter-sweet ironies associated
with its Christian origins - in particular the ways in which Milton and others appealed to freedom from pre-publication censorship in order better to round on Catholics, Jews, Muslims and others considered unworthy or incapable of exercising the 'Reason' supposedly given by God. The remembrance of such precedents understandably prompted the distinguished American literary critic, Stanley Fish, to incite uproar of late by
proposing that there isn't such a thing as free speech, and that that's a good thing.
No doubt your fine points will come up during at Democracy Club talk by
Bhikhu Parekh.

All good wishes,
Professor John Keane