Categories
Daniele LorenziniThe Force of Truth
Monday, February 3, 2025, 5:00–6:30pm
Many blame Michel Foucault for our post-truth and conspiracy-laden society. In this provocative work, Daniele Lorenzini argues that such criticism fundamentally misunderstands the philosopher’s project. Foucault did not question truth itself but what Lorenzini calls “the force of truth,” or how some truth claims are given the power to govern our conduct while others are not. This interest, Lorenzini shows, drove Foucault to articulate a new ethics and politics of truth-telling precisely in order to evade the threat of relativism. The Force of Truth: Critique, Genealogy, and Truth-Telling in Michel Foucault (University of Chicago Press, 2023) explores this neglected dimension of Foucault’s project by putting his writings on regimes of truth and parrhesia in conversation with early analytic philosophy and by drawing out the “possibilizing” elements of Foucault’s genealogies that remain vital for practicing critique today.
Lorenzini will discuss his book in conversation with 3CT fellow Linda Zerilli.
Daniele Lorenzini is Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Pennsylvania, where he is also a member of the Department of Francophone, Italian, and Germanic Studies (FIGS) Graduate Group. He has previously held appointments at the University of Warwick, Columbia University, Sorbonne University, and the University of Saint-Louis in Brussels. Lorenzini is an editor-in-chief of Foucault Studies and the co-editor of two book series, Philosophie du présent (Vrin) and The Chicago Foucault Project (University of Chicago Press).
Linda Zerilli is the Charles E. Merriam Distinguished Service Professor of Political Science and the College. She was the 2010-16 Faculty Director of the Center for the Study of Gender and Sexuality, where she continues in her capacity as a leading scholar and teacher in the field. Zerilli is the author of Signifying Woman (Cornell University Press, 1994), Feminism and the Abyss of Freedom (University of Chicago Press, 2005), A Democratic Theory of Judgment (University of Chicago Press, 2016), and the forthcoming A Democratic Theory of Truth (University of Chicago Press, 2025).
