#Wegotthis: queer parrhesia in the register of parodic paranoia

ABSTRACT

Queer parrhesia is an activist mode of speaking truth to power that destabilizes dominant societal positions and their opposition. We develop this concept and illustrate one of its registers, parodic paranoia, through a close reading of the whistleblower and transactivist Chelsea Manning’s bid to run for U.S. Senate in the 2018 Democratic primaries. Hacktivism and transactivism, we show, constitute rhetorical manoeuvres by which Manning performs (as) a subject position that combines an ethics of paranoia with an aesthetics of parody to enact politics as unusual. Beginning from Manning’s parodic paranoia, we conceptualize queer parrhesia as an inherently transgressive political style and discuss its performative potential for dismantling current social orders and imagining less orderly alternatives. The productive potential of queer parrhesia, we conclude, can only be realized when the subject position of the parrhesiastes is put at risk, gaining strength from its performative vulnerability and, indeed, failure.

KEYWORDS:

• Chelsea Manning
• paranoia
• parody
• parrhesia
• queer activism

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 The result was a resounding victory for incumbent senator Ben Cardin, who went on to re-win his seat in the mid-term elections of Fall 2018 (Kheel 2018; Madani 2018).

2 The quote’s use of the label ‘secular martyr’, we believe, dramatizes Manning’s willingness to suffer for her principles and beliefs – as well as her followers’ celebration of this willingness. To emphasize Manning’s continued activism and her refusal to accept fate passively, however, ‘human rights champion’ might be a more accurate label (see Munro 2018).

3 Queer, of course, also has specific connotations to sexuality and gender, indicating an orientation to these (and other) identity dimensions, which defies binary categories and categorization (Butler 1993). We do not know whether Chelsea Manning self-identifies as queer, but her Twitter presentation as ‘trans femme’ with the pronouns ‘she/they’ does suggest a certain affinity. We should, however, emphasize that queer parrhesia, as we define it here, is by no means delimited by the material subject position of the speaker (that is, one does not have to ‘be’ queer to ‘do’ queer parrhesia).

4 Here, queer agency refers to the ability to enact queerness, understood as a subject position that is defined by its refusal to be positioned. Hence, queer agency is ambiguous, unpredictable, and risky (Rand 2008).

5 Again, we should note that we have no privileged insights as regards the underlying intentions of Chelsea Manning’s communicative acts. While the use of active verbs (‘builds’, ‘uses’, etc.) in the above may suggest as much, what we refer to, here, is not an underlying intentionality (what Manning wants her communication to do), but a communicative effect (what the communication actually does). The exclusive communicative focus of our analysis also implies that we do not know whether Manning agrees with our readings or not – we would hope so, but, as we detail below, our main ambition is conceptual development rather than empirical confirmation.

6 Similarly, whistleblower subjectivities may be more subtly entwined with and, indeed, passionately attached to the powers against which they speak than what the stereotypically masculine construct of the parrhesiastes as ‘fearless’ and ‘free’ reveals (see Agostinho and Thylstrup 2019; Kenny, Fotaki, and Vandekerckhove 2020). We shall return to this point in the discussion.

7 The position of the paranoid parrhesiastes, then, may be anti-performative in the sense invoked by those proponents of critical management studies who believe scholars should not engage with management (Fournier and Grey 2000; Spoelstra and Svensson 2016). The alternative position, which we will seek to develop here, is more akin to that invoked by proponents of ‘critical performativity’ who suggest that scholars can make a difference by becoming involved with the organizations they study (Spicer, Alvesson, and Kärreman 2009; Wickert and Schaefer 2015).

8 This tendency seems particularly pronounced under conditions of digital mediatization (see inter alia Guo 2018; Kirkwood, Payne, and Mazer 2019; Laaksonen, Koivukosi, and Porttikivi 2021).

9 Queer, we should emphasize, is as ambiguous in theory as it is in practice. While our emphasis here is on the ‘critical queerness’ of parody, as identified in the work of Judith Butler, we might also – given the centrality of Sedgewick’s work to queer theory – envision a ‘reparative queerness’. Reparative queerness, however, would involve a different affective register from that of parodic performances. Parody, in sum, may be inherently queer, but queer is not necessarily parodic. We shall concern ourselves with the issue of whether and how queer parrhesia may become reparative in the discussion.

10 Revisiting Manning’s Twitter account, it is immediately clear that her rhetorical repertoire is no longer the same. In late 2021, when we were finalising this study, there were not as many emojis and other stylistic gimmicks, but the political content was tempered in different ways – most notably, with pandemic (dis)content. In terms of Manning, then, what we offer is at best a snapshot of a subject position she once held. In conceptual terms, however, this position holds enduring relevance as an illustration of queer parrhesia.

11 While we will subsequently analyse the parodic aspects of her tweets, there are no indications that Manning’s run for office was anything but serious. To the contrary, the analysis indicates the great communicative efforts and personal costs that went into campaigning. As such, let us emphasize the point that parody does not preclude sincerity.

12 The original thread has been deleted, but the comment in question has been re-tweeted by another user and can be found at: https://twitter.com/SandraHeretic/status/896836952078594049

Additional information

Funding

This study was funded by the Velux Foundation [grant number: 00013146]; both authors received funding from this grant.