Post-Truth, Populism, and the Simulation of Parrhesia: A Feminist Critique of Truth-Telling after Hannah Arendt and Michel Foucault

"When day comes we step out of the shade, aflame and unafraid. The new dawn blooms as we free it. For there is always light, if only we’re brave enough to see it. If only we’re brave enough to be it." Amanda Gorman, “The Hill We Climb" Inspired by Amanda Gorman's feminist truth-telling, the paper discusses the relation between truth, politics, and authoritarian populism. Referring to Arendt’s and Foucault’s concepts of truth-telling, the paper formulates a feminist critique on post-truth politics and populism. Even though neither Arendt nor Foucault can be deemed feminists, their works on power, politics, and emancipation provide both an archive for feminist theories and an arsenal for feminist struggles. Drawing from the current feminist discussion in political theory on truth-telling, for instance by Linda Zerilli and Bonnie Honig, the paper argues that contemporary populist landscapes of the Global North do not practice truth-telling but simulate it. Moreover, the Arendtian and Foucauldian truthtellers reproduce tropes of masculinity that are, in general, inscribed to politics and are, on a more detailed note, prevalent in post-truth rhetoric and current populist narratives. The paper, therefore, scrutinizes those masculinist tropes showing how feminist truth-telling draws from both political theories while critically distancing itself from them.