In Tradition of Speaking Fearlessly: Locating a Rhetoric of Whistleblowing in the Parrhēsiastic Dialectic

ABSTRACT This essay examines how the dialectic over the presence of rhetoric in Michel Foucault’s catalog of truth telling in ancient Greek and Roman texts informs a separate but similar dialectic over the relationship between parrhēsia and contemporary whistleblowing. I posit that the argumentation justifying the practice of government and military whistleblowing used by Edward Snowden and Chelsea Manning parallels the dispute over rhetoric’s place in parrhēsia. This essay plots out how the arguments for or against the presence of rhetoric in parrhēsia routinely manifests at specific junctures in the whistleblowing timeline, indicating how the dialectic of parrhēsia naturally leads to a rhetoric of whistleblowing.