Joho the Blog
An Entry from the Archives

Foucault Again and the New Weirdness of Words

A couple of you have pointed out that the Foucault text I blogged about yesterday (was it just yesterday? Disk crashes seem to dilate time) is available online. (Thanks Camille, thanks John Harrison.)

Jacob Schwirtz of gazm.org writes about "parrhesia," the topic of Foucault's lectures:

when studying the Talmud, in the
original
Aramaic, there is a word used often, "Pharhessia"
(phonetically spelled), which means "in public." Not
sure it has any connection to the Greek word but it
got me thinking...

If it's a coincidence, it's an interesting one. Apparently "parrhesia" in Greek comes from roots that mean "say everything," which I assume (= guess) refers to the fact that the person engaging in the fearless speech that is parrhesia isn't holding back any of the bad news -- frank and full disclosure. But, since this type of speech was especially valuable in the public forum (although it also characterized the speech of an advisor to an authority), the connection to the Aramaic is suggestive. Words are funny things, aren't they? They could practically be cute little woodland creatures if they were anything like them.

AKM Adam, has starting blogging recently. He's a professor and minister and seriously interesting. He's also a lovely writer. He questions my claiming that

concepts today that no longer make as much sense as they once did [are:] Privacy. Friendship. Employee. Politeness. Sincerity.

He suggests "distance" as a more likely term

since the Web both makes possible friendships between distant correspondents in ways that Aristotle would have dismissed as impossible, but the same technologies further conceal from me the extent to which my high-bandwidth lifestyle separates me (and sets me at odds with) others.

My response is that "friend" is fracturing the way "parrhesia" did in the 4th-5th centuries BCE because of the distancelessness (and other weirdnesses) of the Net. Take my relationship with Adam as an example. We've never met in the RW. We probably never will. We've exchanged several emails a day for the past few days. We've been probing each other's interests, senses of humor, incipient assholism (guess what: I win!), and verbal body language. And more. I've already learned more than he thinks from him, both explicitly and watching how he thinks and talks. (More about that tomorrow.) Yet, I'm quite reluctant to call him my friend. But I don't have such personal and intensely intellectual conversations with acquaintances. We don't have the vocabulary yet.

That's what I meant.