Kyle Minor

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October 7, 2005

Speaking What to Whom?

Today, the International Atomic Energy Agency and its director Mohamed ElBaradei won the Nobel Peace Prize, which shows that the Nobel folks still know what they're talking about. Good for them.

When I heard an excerpt of ElBaradei's speech this morning on the radio, he said something about "speaking truth to power."

That reminded me of a very very cool post over on Will's "Professor Truth" blog:

Thrill Is A Huge Dork, First Blood Part 1: Speaking truth to power

after reading an email from hip e., i looked around for info on the phrase "speak truth to power" because, although i thought i knew the meaning, i wasn't certain. my thought was that it means to be honest with people in power, rather than being a yes man; this is the meaning that most often came up in my various web searches (not surprisingly, since that's what most people mean when they use it). however, it apparently isn't that at all.

it has to do with the idea that power and truth are philosophically inter-connected (a la nietzsche), and that truth is indeed itself a form of power (philosophically speaking). the idea is that power is corrupt (as in acton's famous quote, "power corrupts; absolute power corrupts absolutely"), as are the people who hold the power. their corrupt power is based on a corrupt truth (let's take for an example the assertion that "apartheid doesn't hurt people"). if one exposes the real truth (not the corrupt version of "truth" that the powerful are putting out there as true), the power system collapses under the weight of the truth (as mandela did in south africa, with the end of apartheid eventually spelling the end of white rule in south africa). "to speak truth to power" means, in this sense (that is, the correct sense), to expose something for what it really is: a corruption. anita hill used the phrase to describe (in her book "speaking truth to power") her dealings with the whole clarence thomas nomination/lawsuit issue; by speaking truth to power, she exposed the corruption of thomas for all to see (although obviously that wasn't found to be the case, and she failed to undermine his reputation/power sufficiently to prevent his confirmation to the court).

so, while the idea of being honest with those in power fits nicely into the syntax of the phrase, it's actually quite the opposite: it means to speak to truth to those NOT in power, thereby exposing those in power as corrupt. i suppose you could say it's similar to the phrase "this speaks to the issue": it doesn't literally mean you're speaking to an issue, it means you're addressing it, you're handling it; similarly, speaking truth to power means you're addressing/handling the issue that the powerful aren't being honest/truthful.

i bet you can't wait for part 2....

16 Feb 05 - 10:36pm

Now go and read some Professor Truth and all the other fun folks in my brand-new blogroll, adroitly named "Aren't YOU clever?"

Unless... the only people who read my blog are already listed there. Eh boy.

Posted by kyle at October 7, 2005 4:38 PM

Comments

Posted by: x at January 16, 2006 4:37 PM