Description

Book Synopsis
Contemporary social and political theory has reached an impasse about a problem that had once seemed straightforward: how can individuals make ethical judgments about power and politics? Crisis of Authority analyzes the practices that bind authority, trust and truthfulness in contemporary theory and politics. Drawing on newly available archival materials, Nancy Luxon locates two models for such practices in Sigmund Freud's writings on psychoanalytic technique and Michel Foucault's unpublished lectures on the ancient ethical practices of 'fearless speech', or parrhesia. Luxon argues that the dynamics provoked by the figures of psychoanalyst and truth-teller are central to this process. Her account offers a more supple understanding of the modern ethical subject and new insights into political authority and authorship.

Table of Contents
1. Authority and its discontents; 2. Risk and resistance; 3. Conversations with the unknown; 4. What is an author(ity)?; 5. The authorial subject; 6. Audiences and the proliferation of meaning; 7. Breaking the frame, composing the event.

Crisis of Authority Politics Trust and TruthTelling in Freud and Foucault

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    A Paperback by Nancy Luxon

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      Book details

      Publisher Cambridge University Press
      Published 8 June 2015
      ISBN-13 9781107551848
      978-1107551848
      ISBN-10 1107551846
      Also in:
      Social and political philosophy

      Description

      Book Synopsis
      Contemporary social and political theory has reached an impasse about a problem that had once seemed straightforward: how can individuals make ethical judgments about power and politics? Crisis of Authority analyzes the practices that bind authority, trust and truthfulness in contemporary theory and politics. Drawing on newly available archival materials, Nancy Luxon locates two models for such practices in Sigmund Freud's writings on psychoanalytic technique and Michel Foucault's unpublished lectures on the ancient ethical practices of 'fearless speech', or parrhesia. Luxon argues that the dynamics provoked by the figures of psychoanalyst and truth-teller are central to this process. Her account offers a more supple understanding of the modern ethical subject and new insights into political authority and authorship.

      Table of Contents
      1. Authority and its discontents; 2. Risk and resistance; 3. Conversations with the unknown; 4. What is an author(ity)?; 5. The authorial subject; 6. Audiences and the proliferation of meaning; 7. Breaking the frame, composing the event.

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