Truth and Force

Session Submission Type: Full Paper Panel

Session Description

Contemplations on the concept of truth often regard it as the exact opposite of force: where there is truth, we are told, there cannot be force. Shifting our gaze from ideal forms to everyday practices complicates this story. How are truth and force entwined? With what effects? The papers in this panel ask to unpack these questions from multiple angles. Daniele Lorenzini draws from the work of Fanon and Foucault to show how truth claims are weaponized in service of oppression. Shai Gortler takes Foucault on a trip to Israeli prisoner of war camps for Palestinians in the 1948 war to unearth how the Israelis used the camps to make the POWs “spread the truth about our country.” Yuna Blajer de la Garza interrogates power from its opposite directionality, turning to citizens’ practices of contestation and, more specifically, the various costs of these acts of truth-telling. Davide Panagia brings us full-circle in that he exposes the dispositional modes of power that media enact in everyday life both from the bottom-up and top-bottom. Together, these papers invite political theorists to reflect on specific tensions between force and truth: on the ways in which people’s truth-telling can transgress norms on the one hand yet further domination on the other.

Sub Unit

• Division 2: Foundations of Political Theory

Individual Presentations

• Truth-Telling and Oppression - Daniele Lorenzini, University of Pennsylvania

• Orchestrated Life: Subjectification in 1948 Israeli POW Camps - Shai Gortler, University of Arkansas, Fayetteville

• The Virtuous Citizens: Who Can Speak Up? - Yuna Blajer de la Garza, Loyola University, Chicago

• The Dispositional Powers of Media and the Problem of Truth-Telling - Davide Panagia, UCLA

Chair

• George M. Shulman New York University

Discussants

• Anne Norton University of Pennsylvania

• Anna M. Terwiel Trinity College