The “Parrhesiastic Game”: Textual Self-Justification in Spiritual Narratives of Early Modern Women

Abstract

Though scholars debate whether Foucault offers a viable theory of resistance, his analysis of parrhesia(fearless speech) poses and problematizes an oppositional rhetoric of truth-telling. Fearless speech challenges regimes of power/truth; spiritual narratives of Early Modern women challenge cultural norms to justify their right to speak. The rhetorical strategies that women use to authorize their writing—performing a struggle between God and Satan, recording revelation, and reinterpreting scripture—make them vulnerable to stereotypical criticisms of madness and witchcraft. Nonetheless, female spiritual narratives courageously critique religious and social culture, playing Foucault's “parrhesiastic game”: these texts break silence to tell truth. A notion of a contemporary rhetor-as-parrhesiastes reflects the historical evolution of parrhesia towards critique and self-questioning. A contemporary parrhesiastes interrogates guises of generalized Truth to give voice to experiential, localized, multiple truths.

Notes

“Spiritual narratives” is the term I have chosen to coalesce characteristics of certain texts. These texts transgress genre boundaries and are variously labeled in the literature as “spiritual autobiographies” (Nussbaum), “visionary writings” (Mack), or “religious texts,” “prophecy,” or “religious tracts” (Ostovich and Sauer).

Joseph Pearson, editor of Fearless Speech, explains in his Preface that the text is a transcript of recordings of six lectures given by Foucault in his seminar “Discourse and Truth.” The text incorporates responses to questions, eliminates repetitions, and revises sentences; however, Foucault “did not write, correct, or edit any part of the text” (7).

For example, see John M. Murphy's 1995 “Critical Rhetoric as Political Discourse.” Argumentation and Advocacy; Jim A. Kuypers's 1996 “‘Doxa’ and a Critical Rhetoric: Accounting for the Rhetorical Agent through Prudence,” Communication Quarterly; and Joseph P. Zompetti's 1997 “Toward a Gramscian Critical Rhetoric,” Western Journal of Communication.

O'Farrell, founding editor of the journal Foucault Studies, provides in this text an accessible introduction to the major works, a discussion of key concepts, a chronology of Foucault's life, and a bibliography.

During the seminar Foucault traces various instances when the term parrhesia is used in multiple texts and over centuries of time; therefore the meaning of the word evolves in relation to its context, both textual and cultural. I draw on here some of the generalized definitions in the first lecture.

The parrhesiastes speaks his opinion, but that opinion is truth. Foucault points out that “[f]or the Greeks,…the coincidence between belief and truth does not take place in a (mental) experience, but in a verbal activity, namely, parrhesia” (14).

Although Foucault acknowledges that a servant in one of Euripides' texts uses parrhesia, in most cases the speaker must “first be a male citizen,” allowed to take part in the political life of the community (18).

This quotation and the ones that follow in this and the next paragraph are drawn from Mitchell's insightful research in Grammar Wars.

Latour's 2002 book on religious discourse, Jubiler, is available in part on his website. Latour refers to ancient cultures but I believe his idea applies in general to religious cultures. The original reads: “La présence des divins avait l'évidence de l'air ou du sol. Ils formaient le tissu commun des vies, la matière première de tous les rituels, le repère indiscutable de toute l'existence, l'ordinaire de toutes les conversations.”

Trapnel's text was published in 1654 after a previous account of her verbal prophecy was transcribed and published in Strange and Wonderful Newes from White-hall (1654). The rather straightforward autobiographical introduction to her life written in first-person is followed by revelations that she produced in an eleven-to-twelve-day trance state. Hilary Hinds explains in her introduction that during this public trance, Trapnel drew “an increasingly large and high-profile crowd, including members of the Council of State, ex-Members of Parliament, ministers, and members of the aristocracy” (xvii). An audience member, “the relator” featured in the text, transcribed Trapnel's words. Hinds points out that the final published account emerges from “a number of different versions articulated in various locations” that Trapnel corrected and republished (xxiv).

Mitchell's analysis of the remarkable 2004 anthology edited by Ostovich and Elizabeth Sauer which presents over 150 manuscripts and print texts from 1500 to 1700. The photographs of original manuscripts and transcriptions supplement the contributions of more than 80 scholars to allow “exploration into the material life of the manuscript and printed text, as well as into the women and the cultures that produced them” (1).

Elizabeth Skerpan-Wheeler states in her introduction to the complete facsimile of Wentworth's text that only two exemplars presently exist. “The base copy of this very rare book reproduced in Volume 2 is the exemplar owned by The British Library” (“Introductory Note,” Vol. 2 xvii).

Such reluctant speech/writing appears to contravene the notion of parrhesia: speech instigated by divine command seems less than fully free. That irony, as previously discussed, exists in Greek texts as well. Here, the reluctance that Wentworth describes is a commonplace in spiritual narratives as the speaker rhetorically positions herself to be freed from accusations of self-aggrandizement. Her text constructs herself as obedient to Divine command. My argument is that cultural constraints provide probable motivation for such abdication of personal responsibility. Obviously, the freedom to speak produced by commandment is an ironically regulated freedom that occurs within games of power.

Evans and Chevers's text is printed in London in 1662 while they are in prison. They write their text to solicit support for their release and also to defend themselves against charges of Catholicism (they were Quakers). There is no modern edition. Skerpan-Wheeler admires their “complex and dazzling intermingling—in changing voices—of personal narratives, copies of letters by Evans and Chevers and others, hymns, and connecting commentary by [Daniel] Baker” (“Introductory Note,” vol. 1 xii).

Ostovich and Sauer provide photographs (figures) of original manuscripts. Where I could not access primary texts, I quote from these reproductions, with the disclaimer that some of the writing is difficult to decipher. To cite these reproductions, I use the OS anthology figure and page number.

The text is published by Daniel Baker, also a Quaker, who uses it as part of his campaign to secure their release from prison. Apparently Baker's typography reproduces Evans's manuscript text in its dialogic format (Skerpan-Wheeler, “Katharine Evans” 171).

See Semler's introduction to his critical edition for a discussion of the metaphor of the “literary babe as ‘naked’—that is, it scorns ornate rhetoric in favor of a plain style expressive of uncompromised truth” (31).

See the Travitsky and Cullen anthology, vol. 2., for a complete facsimile of Allen's text.

Of course, Foucault opposed the Greek rhetor to the parrhesiast (see Thomas Flynn's “Foucault as Parrhesiast: His Last Course at the Collège de France,” The Final Foucault). For Foucault, rhetoric is historically subsumed by written discourse: “The sophist is banished” (The Order 1462), while parrhesia evolves into critical philosophy, political intervention, and scientific inquiry (Flynn 105). Rhetoricians may define rhetoric as the broader category that includes discourse. Bizzell and Hertzberg argue that Foucault “makes a powerful argument that discourse (for which we may read rhetoric) is epistemic; he forcefully states that discourse is a form of social action;…he demonstrates the ‘microphysics of power’ that resides in the knowledge that is disseminated in discourse” (1434).