Frank-talking: a reading of Biko’s statement “On Death” with Foucault’s concept of parrhesia

Abstract

ABSTRACT This article is about a practice of “frank-talking” associated with Steve Biko and the BC movement of the 1970s. It sets out a reading of a short fragment titled “On Death” (found at the end of I Write What I Like) through the lens of the (coincidental) connection between Biko’s Frank-talk and Foucault’s lectures on parrhesia. Through an intentional mispronunciation of the concept of parrhesia, I re-member Biko’s statement “On Death,” and the scene of the interrogation that it describes, as an exemplary instance of Biko’s frank-talk and one which I show can usefully be read as a modern modality of parrhesia. With Biko, the “parrhesiatic” statement disrupts the white supremacist (bio)political order for the ways it comes to be articulated as a practical expression of Biko’s sense of his own equality as a Black subject.