A Parrhesian Genealogy

A Parrhesian Genealogy is the first full-length study of the utility of Foucault’s concept of ‘parrhesia’ for sociological research, drawing on autobiographical and self-conversion practices to reflexively display Foucault’s concept of ‘care of the self’ as an embodied way of living. Based on empirical and historical documentation, the author undertakes a genealogical search for the ‘ignoble origins’ of the ‘social’, identifying the 1830s as the crucial point at which ‘factory children’s’ voices first emerged politically as ‘parrhesians’ and at which the ‘social’s’ codifying power also emerged. The author argues for moving beyond traditional institutional ethnography and class-consciousness frameworks to incorporate Foucault’s notions of subjugated knowledges, counter-conducts and parrhesia. Simultaneously, the book shows the necessity of synthesizing Foucault’s genealogical thinking on power/knowledge, governmentality and race struggle, to show the utility of his thoughts on ‘knowledge-power’. This approach extends beyond both Thompson's working-class analysis, Smith’s ‘standpoint’ theorising, and Foucault's ‘panoptic liberalism’ to uncover the ‘parrhesian selves’ that conventional sociology has typically overlooked. Finally, the text also represents the author's own intellectual journey and transformation: a career-long, ascetic process and intellectual ‘odyssey’ that Foucault saw as crucial to ‘care of the self.’An innovative study that introduces the contemporary ‘parrhesian’ speaker to sociological theorizing, A Parrhesian Genealogy will appeal to scholars across the social sciences with interests in class, genealogical analysis and the work of Foucault.