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PERSONA AND PARRHESIA: RESEARCH 

NOTES ON THE DIALECTICS OF THE 

REAL 
 

MATT EO ST OC CHETT I 

 

ABSTRACT 

If reality is socially established through practices that, directly or 

indirectly, depend on communication and therefore on some notion of truth, the 

idea of a post-truth communicative regime or “age” may seem not only bizarre 

but also worrying. The dissolution of the real, announced by the prophets of 

postmodernism in the form of either a “perfect crime” or a “liquid reality”, has 

been interpreted as the effect of the crisis of truth and legitimation that Jean-

François Lyotard (1982) referred to with his notions of “performativity” and 

“legitimation by force”. From this perspective, reality depends upon truth, and 

the possibility of truth depends, in turn, on configurations of power that seem 

too elusive and ephemeral to be effectively engaged with in either theory or 

practice. In this paper, I mobilise the notions of parrhesia and persona in an 

effort to establish an alternative standpoint from which to discuss the 

epistemological and ontological implications of the postmodern condition and 

the crisis of truth associated with it. The main point can perhaps be summarised 

in the idea that, if the new regime of truth (or post-truth) relies on persona 

expressing the roles/characters compatible with it, the notion of parrhesia may 

gain a critical relevance for the normative evaluation of these personas and the 

social implications of their truth. Famously reintroduced by Michel Foucault 

(1999) in his analysis of truth and its discursive conditions, the notion of 

parrhesia has a heuristic potential that has not been fully exploited. While 

challenging the social construction of reality on practical grounds in 

fundamental ways, the digitalisation of social life also presents theoretical 

challenges, some of which can be addressed by the reconceptualisation of 

parrhesia in relation to the social role of the persona rather than the individual. 

In my paper, I present some preliminary research notes in this direction. 

 

KEY WORDS 

Parrhesia; Persona; Dialectics of the Real; Post-Digital; Post-Truth 

 

THE DIALECTICS OF THE REAL 

The main goal of this paper is to offer some preliminary reflections on the heuristic and critical 

opportunities associated with the conceptual binary of “persona” and “parrhesia”, and to see 



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how these opportunities might apply to the implications of the digital turn in the dialectics of 

the real. 

The reproduction of the real is a process characterised by tensions: for example, 

tensions between the past, the present, and visions of the future; between the real and the ideal; 

and between what is possible and what is desirable. This process presents both competitive and 

non-competitive aspects and has a communicative and a non-communicative dimension. The 

competitive aspects consist in the efforts of a variety of social forces to increase their influence 

over the social construction of the real. The competition for influence over the construction of 

the real, however, is associated with other non-competitive aspects that, in forms of shared 

meanings, rules, and so forth, constitute both the stake and the struggle. For example, the 

“meaning” of the real and the “rules” in the competition for the control of the process that 

reproduces it. The notion of truth is important, in this perspective, as the communicative device 

that allows for the constitution of the shared (and therefore non-competitive) grounds for the 

competition among social forces and the resolution of the dialectical tensions that participates 

in the re-production of the real.   

But what happens if the shared grounds themselves become a stake in the competition 

for the control of the real? Jean-François Lyotard and Jean Baudrillard are probably two of the 

most well-known thinkers that, in their problematisation of truth and the real, have addressed 

this possibility. Lyotard (1982) suggests that, with the decline of science and the metanarrative 

that supported the social value and legitimating functions of truth, the social construction and 

legitimation of the real take place through performativity. The decline of truth and the rise of 

performativity, with the fundamental changes in the legitimation of the social bond associated 

with this mutation, reflects the power of capitalism, or, more precisely, the strength of the social 

forces inspired by that ideology. According to Lyotard: 

This procedure operates within the following framework: since “reality” is what 

provides the evidence used as proof in scientific argumentation, and also 

provides prescriptions and promises of a juridical, ethical, and political nature 

with results, one can master all of these games by mastering “reality”. That is 

precisely what technology can do. By reinforcing technology, one “reinforces” 

reality, and one’s chances of being just and right increase accordingly. 

Reciprocally, technology is reinforced all the more effectively if one has access 

to scientific knowledge and decision-making authority. (1982, p. 47) 

The “incredulity” with the great narratives that used to provide the moral grounds for 

the role of science and truth in the legitimisation of the social and political order creates the 

conditions for the rise of performative knowledge and self-legitimation or “legitimation by 

power” (47). In practice, this consists in the imposition of a state of affairs, a naturalised social 

order that is beyond the possibility of rational confutation or change because, in this 

perspective, only hegemonic forces can “perform” truth and truth always performs in support of 

hegemonic forces.  

For Baudrillard (1994), it is the “code”, the evocative but otherwise elusive notion 

performing fundamental explanatory functions, that is the ultimate “agent” in the process of 

effacement of the real and its substitution with the hyperreal. In Baudrillard’s words: 

To dissimulate is to pretend not to have what one has. To simulate is to feign to 

have what one doesn’t have. One implies a presence, the other an absence. But 

it is more complicated than that because simulating is not pretending […] 

Therefore, pretending, or dissimulating leaves the principle of reality intact: the 



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difference is always clear, it is simply masked, whereas simulation threatens 

the difference between the “true” and the “false”, the “real” and the “imaginary”. 

(p. 3) 

In these formulations, the process I have described in term of the dialectics of the real is 

subverted by an extreme outcome of the competition for control over the reproduction of the 

real: the acquisition of a total hegemony by the social forces of capitalism (in its “late” form). As 

a result of this conceptual subversion (a subversion that is brought about in the representation 

of the process by the way the process itself is conceptualised), the notion of truth becomes 

totally dependent on power (performativity) and the real itself totally outside the reach of the 

competitive aspects and dialectical tensions of this reproduction process – in practice a 

transcendental notion. 

My suggestion here is to “remember Foucault”, the idea that every power generates 

resistance and the intimate, and in some respects even contradictory, relationship between 

forms of power and regimes of truth (Taylor 1984). Somehow paradoxically, Baudrillard (2003, 

p. 6) expressed the same idea when he wrote that “[a]llergy to any definitive order, to any 

definitive power, is—happily—universal”. Foucault’s problematisation of truth in terms of 

parrhesia and the parrhesiastic game is interesting for it recovers the autonomy of truth in 

relations of power and the possibility of truth-dependent power. This is in antagonism to the 

power-dependent truth of performativity, and the dissolution of truth in the regime of 

simulation. The same problematisation of truth in terms of parrhesia and the parrhesiastic 

game, however, while providing the conceptual opportunity to re-open the competition for the 

real, also suggests the nature of the agent of this opening/competition and the constitutive 

features of this kind of agency. This, I argue, is the persona. 

My argument here is that the power of moral truth (parrhesia) and the ability of creative 

adaptation (a form of adaptation in which the agent mutates in order to change the 

environment: the persona) are brought together in the construction of reality. These forces 

combine in what I called the dialectics of the real: that is, the process of destruction/creation (of 

meaning) or affirmation and negation of any given (formulation of) reality in the communicative 

construction of the real through which we control our environment. From this perspective 

reality is not an iron cage protecting truth from Utopia, but rather a more or less impermanent 

result of a process in which the production, destruction, and reproduction of truth are necessary 

moments of dialectic tensions expressing alternative and possibly competing forms of truths, 

power/knowledge, and possibilities of social change. On conceptual grounds, therefore, 

parrhesia and persona seem promising elements of a critical standpoint for the study of the 

reproduction of the real and its tensions. This can, perhaps, help us to move beyond the 

intellectual impasse brought about by formulations of the problem of power in the reproduction 

of reality in terms of performative truth and simulation. 

Mentioning the dialectics of the real is a preliminary step towards arguing for the 

relevance of the persona and parrhesia as an analytical binary. This conceptual tool may, or may 

not, allow us to study important aspects of our social world that would otherwise be hard to 

grasp and therefore liable to be neglected. In this paper, I will not discuss the dialectic of the real 

further but rather concentrate on the methodological argument: the case for the heuristic 

productivity of this binary. Furthermore, I will argue that the contribution and therefore the 

value of this binary is in line with the analytical tradition, the normative concerns, and 

ultimately the social project of critical social theory. 

 



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PERSONA, PARRHESIA, AND CRITICAL SOCIAL THEORY 

Michel Foucault (1999) discusses the notion of parrhesia as part of his analysis of the discourse 

of truth. The goal of his analysis was not to identify the conditions of truth in the classic world 

but rather to problematize “truth-telling as a specific activity, or as a role” (p.74). Foucault 

summarises the specifics of this activity as follows: 

parrhesia is a kind of verbal activity where the speaker has a specific relation 

to truth through frankness, a certain relationship to his own life through 

danger, a certain type of relation to himself or other people through criticism 

(self-criticism or criticism of other people), and a specific relation to moral law 

through freedom and duty. More precisely, parrhesia is a verbal activity in 

which a speaker expresses his personal relationship to truth, and risks his life 

because he recognizes truth-telling as a duty to improve or help other people 

(as well as himself). In parrhesia, the speaker uses his freedom and chooses 

frankness instead of persuasion, truth instead of falsehood or silence, the risk 

of death instead of life and security, criticism instead of flattery, and moral duty 

instead of self-interest and moral apathy. (p. 6) 

An important aspect of parrhesia is a rather unique discursive effect of authorisation in which 

the content and the speaker of the content constitute and legitimate each other in the act of 

speaking. Foucault discusses this in terms of enunciation and enunciandum:  

In parrhesia the speaker emphasizes the fact that he is both the subject of the 

enunciation and the subject of the enunciandum—that he himself is the subject 

of the opinion to which he refers. The specific “speech activity” of the 

parrhesiastic enunciation thus takes the form: “I am the one who thinks this and 

that”. (p. 3) 

This discursive effect is presumably the cause of the transformative power of parrhesia both on 

the persona who dares to speak the truth, or “parrhesiastes”, and on the other personae 

participating in the parrhesiastic game. In this game, the authority of both the parrhesiastes and 

the content of her speech depends on at least three conditions: a) the fact that her criticism of a 

more powerful persona, the “tyrant”, implies a danger for her life, b) the awareness of this 

danger, and c) its acceptance. When these conditions are met, parrhesia become a 

transformative power with subversive effects and the parrhesiastes an influential political 

persona.   

Foucault informs us that, according to the ancient Greeks, not everyone can play the 

parrhesiastic game and be a parrhesiastes. The requirements include being free and aware of 

what must be said, at the cost of a personal risk and for the good of the city. Short of this 

awareness and these qualities, speaking becomes mere shallow and unrestrained utterance 

(another meaning of parrhesia, albeit not as common in those times) or a compulsive behaviour 

and therefore not free. To play the parrhesiastic game, a parrhesiastes was required to have a 

specific relation with truth and to choose risk over personal comfort. For this specific relation to 

exist, however, our would-be parrhesiastes also needed to have a specific relation with the 

social world in its historical specifics, for example a given society, in a given time, and in a given 

place. 

The parrhesiastes is thus the persona that, in certain conditions, can play the 

“parrhesiastic game”. In Foucault’s problematisation, however, it is important to distinguish at 

least two moments in the reconstruction of this “game”: before and after what he calls “the crisis 



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of democratic institutions” (33). This is a crisis that, he argued, prepares the grounds for a 

fundamental change in the nature of the “truth game”: 

[…] from that truth game which—in the classical Greek conception of 

parrhesia—was constituted by the fact that someone was courageous enough 

to tell the truth to other people […] to another truth game which now consists 

in being courageous enough to disclose the truth about oneself.  (p. 62) 

The crisis of parrhesia is a crisis of the persona of the parrhesiastes and a situation in 

which the complex set of relations constituting the parrhesiastes as a socio-political persona 

become problematic. In Foucault’s words: 

The crisis of parrhesia, which emerges at the crossroads of an interrogation 

about democracy and an interrogation about truth, gives rise to a 

problematization of some hitherto unproblematic relations between freedom, 

power, democracy, education, and truth in Athens at the end of the Fifth 

Century. From the previous problem of gaining access to parrhesia in spite of 

the silence of god, we move to a problematization of parrhesia, i.e., parrhesia 

itself becomes problematic, split within itself. (p. 31) 

In Foucault’s formulation, therefore, the parrhesiastes seems to be either a persona with a 

distinctive relation to truth, or a socio-political or public role played by a persona with a special 

relation to truth.i The notion itself, I suggest, offers some interesting analytical opportunities that 

can be described in relation to more conventional notions (for example, in Goffman and Jung), 

but that, from a critical perspective, are perhaps more salient than these.  

Common to Goffman and Jung, for example, is the metaphor of the persona as a “mask” 

that makes it possible for the individual to adapt and to participate to the social world—indeed 

to adapt in order to participate. This metaphor, however, hides as much as it reveals.  While 

adaptation seems to be the main concern of Goffman’s (1959) “presentation of the self”, Jung’s 

(1977) problematisation of the persona is more concerned with what lies behind the mask, the 

core of our identity, with deep roots in the collective unconscious. In fact, for Goffman:  

To the degree that a performance highlights the common official values of the 

society in which it occurs, we may look at it, in the manner of Durkheim and 

Radcliffe-Brown, as a ceremony—as an expressive rejuvenation and 

reaffirmation of the moral values of the community. Furthermore, in so far as 

the expressive bias of performances come to be accepted as reality, then that 

which is accepted at the moment as reality will have some of the characteristics 

of a celebration. (1959, p. 45) 

In this view, the persona has primarily “conservative” rather than subversive functions towards 

the moral values and the “reality” of the community. This kind of persona participates in the 

“celebration” of a reality that, albeit temporary, is stripped of the tensions that I described in 

terms of the dialectics of the real. What is important in this perspective, however, is the 

connection that the persona must have, and learn to manage, with precisely the elements 

constituting her reality—independently from the connotation of this concept. This knowledge, I 

would claim, is necessary but not sufficient in the constitution of the parrhesiastes. 

For Jung, persona is a tool both useful and problematic. It is an interface that allows us 

to live in the world, but at the same time an obstacle to the authenticity of our participation in it. 

For Jung: 



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The persona is a complicated system of relations between individual 

consciousness and society, fittingly enough a kind of mask, designed on the one 

hand to make a definite impression upon others, and, on the other, to conceal 

the true nature of the individual. (1977, p. 190)  

Jung’s persona is in some respects more complex than Goffman’s due to the role that the 

individual and collective unconscious play in the life and in the very constitution of the 

individual. Jung acknowledges that “the word persona is really a very appropriate expression for 

it, since it originally meant the mask worn by an actor, signifying the role he played” (p. 155). 

For Jung, however: 

Fundamentally the persona is nothing real: it is a compromise between 

individual and society as to what a man should appear to be. He takes a name, 

earns a title, represents an office, he is this or that. In a certain sense all this is 

real, yet in relation to the essential individuality of the person concerned it is 

only a secondary reality, a product of compromise, in making which others 

often have a greater share than he. The persona is a semblance, a two-

dimensional reality, to give it a nickname. (p. 156) 

The risks that this mask implies for the individual have nothing to do with truth and the 

subversive effects that truth-telling may have on one’s (sense of) reality, but with the 

possibility for the individual to become trapped in the role of her persona: to become what 

society forces her to be, or the “mask” that is supposed to perform as a protection against 

social pressures. The process of individuation, which occurs in normal development as 

well as in analysis, is the process that makes it possible for the individual to avoid this risk 

and shed this mask. The analysis of the persona, for Jung, seeks to “strip off the mask, and 

discover that what seemed to be individual is at bottom collective; in other words, that the 

persona was only a mask for the collective psyche” (p. 156). 

Even from this short description, it should be clear that some significant aspects of the 

persona of the parrhesiastes differ from Goffman’s and Jung’s persona. If the persona is 

fundamentally a mask, or a role defined as “the enactment of rights and duties attached to a 

given status” (Goffman 1959, p. 27), Foucault’s parrhesiastes has far less concern than 

Goffman’s individual about the credibility of its role. In the former, the “mask” makes the 

persona much more than in the latter. The notion of “performance” that is central to Goffman’s 

discussion (p. 28ff.) appears not just inappropriate, but a fundamental misconstrual of the 

motives of the parrhesiastes’ public behaviour.  

The parrhesiastes is the individual who speaks parrhesia, the moral truth. However, the 

moral truth of the parrhesiastes is authoritative and influential because the persona of the 

parrhesiastes is not merely a “mask” to pursue personal interests, to avoid embarrassment (like 

in Goffman), or to protect our deeper self from the pressures of society (like in Jung). Rather, it 

is a relationship that bounds the individual to the self, to the community, and to a duty toward 

truth with potentially dangerous implications for the one who dare to speak it. In Foucault’s 

problematisation, the functions of the persona/parrhesiastes are not primarily adaptive, like in 

Goffman and Jung, conservative, like in Goffman, or defensive, like in Jung. Instead, they are 

mainly participatory, progressive, and possibly subversive of the established relations of power 

and the reality associated with them.  

The parrhesiastes brings to surface the tensions of the dialectics of the real. Her 

persona, to perform parrhesiastic functions, cannot be a mere compromise between self and 

society. The knowledge of society and awareness of what is good for the community must be 



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coupled with a commitment to truth so as to choose risk against comfort. It is the element of 

risk, in addition to the social competence, but in antithesis to the idea of social comfort, 

appropriateness, or compromise, that gives the parrhesiastes her subversive functions vis-a-vis 

the tyrant. This dimension of personal risk is present but misconstrued in Jung, for whom the 

only risk for the individual is that of identifying with the mask. The Jungian individuation, as a 

process of progressive awareness about the inner self, presents, however, some affinities with 

the practice of the parrhesiastic game as a form of introspection: a later meaning of parrhesia 

that Foucault describes in relation to the crisis of the democratic institutions.  

This crisis, according to Foucault, transforms parrhesia into a discipline of the soul. In 

this practice, courage consists in facing the truth about oneself. It is as if, once the parrhesiastes 

becomes an obsolete persona for the socio-political conditions of its time, the functions of the 

parrhesiastic game are preserved in the relationship with the self: to preserve the moral 

functions of truth. From a Jungian perspective, the risks of de-individuation lie in the mask 

becoming the face. And this is where the later notion of parrhesia as the courage to discover the 

truth about oneself seems most compatible with the Jungian interpretation. To become a 

parrhesiastes, an individual is required to become aware of the “mask”, to avoid the reduction of 

its identity to it but also to use the mask properly, to establish a creative or productive 

relationship between her inner self and the social world. The Jungian process of individuation 

and parrhesia as a discipline of the soul seems, in other words, different from, but compatible 

with formulations of the Socratic invitation to “know thyself” and, from this perspective, a 

constitutive aspect of the parrhesiastes’ moral authority. 

In sum, when the notion of parrhesia combines with that of persona, the result is a new 

and rather special kind of political persona, the parrhesiastes. This notion combines elements 

from more conventional formulations, such as in Goffman and Jung, in addition to new features.  

The blending of criticism and self-criticism with the “duty to improve or help other 

people” and the “specific relation to moral law through freedom and duty” (6) may sound 

familiar for those who are acquainted with the critical tradition in the social sciences and 

humanities. The normative roots of this tradition have been traditionally discussed in relation 

to the works of Karl Marx and Sigmund Freud (Fromm 1966). I suggest that the mobilisation of 

parrhesia and persona may, indeed, establish analytical and pedagogical grounds compatible 

with this tradition.  

On analytical grounds, the parrhesiastes is a notion that combines the heuristic 

opportunities of the other two notions: the persona and parrhesia. The concept of persona 

locates individual agency within, rather than outside of, the complex interplay of communicative 

practices and competing forces that participate in the social construction of the real. The 

concept of parrhesia is important because it emancipates the problem of truth and the possibility 

of its effects, from the constraints of the discourses associated with empirical control, 

performativity, or even instrumental reason, to establish parrhesia and the 

parrhesiastes/persona as antagonistic or subversive forces in the dialectics of the real.  

On pedagogical grounds, the ideal of parrhesiastic truth, inviting the individual to 

problematise issues of moral truth in relation to power, self, and society, seems a promising 

element of the critical pedagogy promoted by Paulo Freire and others (Freire 2001, 2013). The 

discourse of parrhesia can be a starting point to unmask the relations of power constituting a 

given regime of truth but also a way to bring about forms of critical consciousness and 

ultimately the possibility of emancipative social change. 



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As I shall argue, combining the notions of parrhesia and the persona offers critical 

grounds to further research on the role of critical pedagogy in education and the impact of the 

“post-truth” regime and the “digital turn” in the dialectics of the real.  

THE “DIGITAL TURN”  

As a preliminary point, I would like to mention the methodological “trap” of construing persona 

and parrhesia as dependent variables of technological change instead of forces with, at least, 

partial autonomous agency in the dialectics of the real. This process is social and communicative 

and, therefore, open to the influence of technological change, but not dependent on that. The 

idea that every technological change is a “revolution” that radically changes the nature of the 

process through which the real is constructed is a reflection of technological determinism that, 

in turn, is an expression of the influence of hegemonic forces in the dialectics of the real. The 
discontinuities allegedly produced by the “digital turn” are part of an ideological discourse 

promoting myths, such as the “end of politics”, the “end of history”, and so forth (Mosco 2004); 

their fundamental function, as Roland Barthes noted, is that of “depoliticized speech”, a form of 

communication that hides its own political function (Barthes 1972). The capacity to assess the 

nature and direction of the discontinuities allegedly brought about by the digital turn in the 

dialectics of the real depends on the relation that the parrhesiastes has with herself, the 

community, and the inclination to risk. It depends on qualities that belong to Goffman’s 

“performer” and to Jung’s persona, combined with the meanings of parrhesia, before and after 

the crisis of democratic institutions (Foucault 1999, p. 33). The main question to ask, in this 

perspective, is not How does digitalisation change the parrhesiastes? but rather What are the 

moral truths that should be uttered in relation to the changes brought about by digitalisation? The 

idea implicit in this state of affairs can, perhaps, be expressed in terms of a moral duty. The 

parrhesiastes must constantly update her knowledge about self, society, and the relation 

between them, which constitute her persona, so to preserve a notion of moral truth without 

remaining attached to any specific connotation of this notion. This kind of exercise is 

hermeneutic in kind. It pertains to the very essence of critical hermeneutics, not primarily as a 

“theory of meaning” (Roberge 2011, pp. 6-7), but as an interpretative practice in which issues of 

meaning are addressed in association with issues of power. For a subversive truth to be uttered 

in a parrhesiastic game of some sorts, the problem of assessing the impact of the digital turn on 

the dialectics of the real concerns not only technological change but also changes in, for 

example, the social forces and strategies that are deployed in this process to foster or resist 

technological change.  

A further possibility is to forget, for a moment, the idea that the digital turn has 

“revolutionary” potential and look instead at the continuities, that is, aspects or processes 

associated with the dialectics of the real that the digital turn contributes to reinforcing rather 

than undermining or transforming. One good candidate I would like to suggest here is what 
Anthony Giddens (1990, p. 21) referred to as “disembedding” or “the ‘lifting out’ of social 

relations from local context of interaction and their restructuring across indefinite spans of 

time-space” . This feature of modernity is an influential source of change for the social 

relationships that construe the persona of the parrhesiastes and the features of the moral truth. 

Digitalisation facilitates the disembedding of social relations, for example, making physical 

absence not only possible but even productive through mobile technology (Villi & Stocchetti 

2011). Once morality itself is “disembedded”, all the ingredients of the parrhesiastic game are 

affected: relations of power, the social construction of the self, the relation with the relevant 

communities, and the notion of moral truth. Digital disembedding is a fundamental force of 

globalisation that Giddens defines as “the intensification of worldwide social relations which 



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link distant localities in such a way that local happenings are shaped by events occurring many 

miles away and vice versa” (1990, p. 64). To the extent that the influence of the parrhesiastes is 

rooted in society and is culture-specific, disembedding, more than digitalisation per se, 

represents an important challenge to their role in the resolution of tensions that constitute the 

dialectics of the real. The problem (a conceptual problem with political implications) here is to 

see how the persona/parrhesiastes and the parrhesiastic truth are still meaningful notions when 

their distinctive features are construed on a global rather than local level.  

The influence of the parrhesiastes in the dialectics of the real is not much a result of her 

persona, but a more complex combination of factors that include, for example, identification 

with a community, a vision of the public interest, and courage. An important element in the 

constitution of the parrhesiastes is the “tyrant”: the persona that participates in the 

parrhesiastic game as the source of the potential punishment that constitutes courage as a 

fundamental feature of the parrhesiastes persona. What this perspective suggests, therefore, is 

the problematisation of the discourse of truth in relation to new forms of power: the new 

“tyrants” implicated with the digital turn and the processes this supports, such as disembedding 

and globalisation. The question one may want to ask is then: who is the “tyrant” in the digital 

age? Or more precisely, how does the digital turn affect the possibility of parrhesiastic 

game/truth by bringing about the mutation of the persona/tyrant? Zygmunt Bauman (2004, pp. 

42-48), for example, argues that in “liquid time” domination is not exercised through direct 

control or presence, but through the mere preservation of precarieté that transforms the 

freedom of the rulers into insecurity for the ruled. The question would then be, how does the 

digital turn foster “absent domination” (42-48), “liquid fear” (Bauman, 2006), and ultimately the 

influence of new “absent” tyrants in the dialectics of the real? What are their features? And what 

kind of punishment should be expected for the new parrhesiastes? The possibility for anyone to 

play the parrhesiastic game nowadays depends on the possibility of answering these questions. 

Another notion to be problematised is that of “digital persona” and the idea that the 

affordances associated with digitalisation offer the techno-savvy individual the possibility of a 

deeper and more extensive control over the construction of her persona. A superficial 

interpreter of Goffman’s persona, for example, may be led to believe that a digital performer can 

have more effective control over her persona than her non-digital homologue, while neglecting 

the fact that our digitalised performer has to face the challenges of digitalised “social 

establishments”. The possibility of anonymous personae, for example, may give some relief to 

Goffman’s persona and her concerns. However, this is obviously useless for Foucault’s 

parrhesiastes, since anonymity undermines the moral value of parrhesia by hiding the identity 

of the parrhesiastes and removing the element of risk. From a different perspective, the digital 

persona is a creature whose very existence is dependent on a privately owned technological 

infrastructure designed to serve private corporate interests. Questions concerning the exclusive 

affordances of the digital persona can surely be asked. But when it comes to parrhesia and the 

parrhesiastic game, one also needs to problematise the impact of a communicative 

infrastructure, not only on what a person can do but in relation to what a person becomes. The 

growing concern and literature about digital loneliness, digital narcissism, digital alienation and 

so forth suggests that the control of the persona is a key stake in the competition for control 

over the processes of the dialectics of the real. The digital turn, and the digitalisation of the 

social, brings about not only a problem of authenticity (of “false” persona or “false truth”), 

although this is surely a dimension, but also a profound change in the political economy of the 

communicative conditions of the parrhesiastic game. A core aspect of this change consists in the 

disembedding of both the persona and parrhesia from the social/local and their dependence on 

a technological infrastructure implicated in the reproduction of capitalist influence on the 

dialectics of the real (Allmer 2015; Curran et al. 2012; Fuchs 2014; McChesney 2013). Perhaps 



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on a more positive note, however, the perils of digitalisation feed forces that move towards a 

post-digital age.  

The distinctive feature of this age is not the rejection of the digital, but rather the 

incredulity about the possibility of emancipation in a technological environment dominated by 

private interests and the logic of profit—one in which corporations can use technology to 

control individuals in support of their interests, more than individuals can use technology to 

pursue personal goals. Other features include the informed scepticism about the promises of the 

“virtual”, a new interest in non-mediated relationships, a strong demand for alternative uses of 

available technology, and a fundamental disbelief in the myths of technocentric discourse and 

their “digital expression” (Mosco 2004). 

When, in a digital world, the awareness of being manipulated is stronger than the feeling 

of empowerment, and when the social realisation of new forms of digital loneliness or 

addictions is deliberately obscured by a promotional culture fed by the profitability of digital 

business, the problem of truth easily becomes a problem of personal identity. The problem is 

one of adaptation and identity management. The strategies responsible for the presentations of 

the self in the digital environment depend on affordances that are not primarily designed to 

enable a more effective presentation of the self, but to foster mutual promotional strategies that 

support productive engagement with the same infrastructure. Individuals discover themselves 

more and more as producer/consumers of digital content rather than managers of their social 

image. In other words, we want to be “someone”, and we use available communication 

technology to that purpose. But, in the process of establishing and preserving our digital 

persona, we become aware that “someone else” is created. This is the persona imposed on 

individuals by the technological infrastructure and, ultimately, the strategies and interests of 

those who control/own it. In these conditions, the search for truth becomes a fundamental 

aspect of the search for a more autonomous and functional persona, and parrhesia a 

fundamental ideal and a point of reference in this search.   

The question of whether the “post-digital” persona can credibly bear the political 

responsibilities and the authority of the classic parrhesiastes remains an open question since 

the features of the post-digital age itself are still too unclear. In relation to the dialectics of the 

real, however, there is a least one notion that is useful to look at from the point of view of the 

persona and parrhesia.   

THE DIALECTICS OF THE REAL IN THE REGIME OF POST-TRUTH  

The notion of post truth is commonly taken to describe “circumstances in which objective facts 

are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief” 

(Oxford dictionaries, 2017). While this term is a neologism, the “circumstances” it describes are 

not unique to our times. The relative influence of “objective facts” over emotions and beliefs has 

always been problematic in the history of human knowledge for the simple reason that, in the 

pressing circumstances of daily-life problem solving, the latter are far more easily accessible 

than the former.   

What I think is interesting in this notion and its sudden popularity, however, is the 

possibility to interpret both as “signs” of a widespread need for a new problematisation of truth. 

The process Foucault discussed in relation to a distant past and the Greek-Roman political 

culture, in other words, is happening again in our times and on a global scale. The core problem 

triggering this problematisation, now and then, is not primarily about epistemology or the 

nature of truth but, more pressingly, about the pragmatics or legitimation of political power. 

From the perspective adopted in this discussion, the post-truth debate can be interpreted as 



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part of a problematisation of truth in the dialectics of the real. Today, like in the time and place 

of Foucault’s analysis, this problematisation involves truth, democracy, and education. If this is 

true, there are perhaps a few aspects of this problematisation that are worth looking at.  

The problematisation of truth in terms of post-truth presents some elements of 

continuity with the “postmodern condition”. The role of emotions and beliefs, for example, may 

recall the “new type of emotional ground tone” that Fredric Jameson (1991, p. 6) called 

“intensities”, as one of the five constitutive features of postmodernism construed as the 

“cultural logic of late capitalism”. In the connotation of (a claim to) a more sustainable truth for 

the digital age, on the other hand, the post-truth is the continuation of the “performative” move 

in the dialectics of the real: a move that, according to Lyotard, describes hegemonic influences in 

the dialectics of the real. The important point to keep in mind, however, is that as intellectual 

tradition, postmodernism and post-structuralism were also an expression of a radical turn in 

social critique. The interpretations of truth, power, and the relation between the two generated 

by this turn sought to expose the role of hegemonic forces in the dialectics of the real and 

support, albeit with debatable results, an emancipatory agenda.   

On similar grounds, I would argue that the current problematisation of truth is a 

response to the crisis of the truth regimes of performativity and simulation, and their 

functionalities for the hegemonic forces in the dialectics of the real. The main aspect of this crisis 

is, perhaps, the legitimation gap between these regimes of truth and their effects on the social 

bond. In the dialectics of the real, this gap ultimately undermines the influence of the social 

forces associated with the regimes of truth of performativity and simulation. The response to 

this crisis is inspired by at least two different projects: one aiming at improving the quality of 

truth to save the possibility of democracy politics, and the other aiming at effacing the 

subversive potential of truth from the dialectics of the real in order to liquidate the “risks” 

associated with democratic politics.  

In the first project, the notion of post-truth participates in a critique that seeks to 

identify the features of a regime of truth more compatible with the preservation of democratic 

ideals in the conditions of late capitalism—the core analytical challenge of critical social theory. 

In the second, the introduction of the same notion is a discursive move in the opposite direction. 

It is an effort to address the crisis of legitimation by liquidating the role of truth to neutralise its 

subversive potential in the dialectic of the real. Although one may suggest that this effort is 

rather clumsy, the problem it tries to address is quite important: the legitimation of a social 

bond and the preservation of inequalities through regimes of truth producing a reality that 

increasingly appears unacceptable and unsustainable.ii 

The relative influence of these interpretations in the processes of the dialectics of the 

real depends on the relative strength of the social forces associated to them. The relevance of 

the parrhesiastes—of the binary persona/parrhesia—can be argued in relation to what I would 

call the political economy of truth in the dialectics of the real: the less reliable the available truth, 

the greater its value. In time of crisis, in other words, the parrhesiastes may become an 

influential political persona by virtue of her unique relation with truth, knowledge, and courage.   

If the notion of post-truth, with all its ambivalence, and following Foucault, is construed 

as a problematisation of truth, democracy, and education, the blending of the persona with 

parrhesia may offer a standpoint for some critical reflections. These concern the possible 

outcomes of this problematisation, the crisis that triggers it, and the role of (democratic) 

education on the nature of these outcomes.   

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If the salvation of the democratic project requires a persona with the skills and will to perform 

the remaking of truth through the exercise of parrhesia, where does this persona come from? If 

the capacity for the creative adaptation that substantiates the persona is a feature of human 

psychological structure, where does the inclination to risk originate from? And, even if one 

concedes that the knowledges necessary for the exercise of parrhesia—such as the knowledge 

about oneself, about society and about the specifics of the problem at hand—may simply be 

available in one form of another, what makes the persona of the parrhesiastes choose to use 

those knowledges for the sake of a moral truth and against her personal interest in safety?     

The question concerning the origins of the parrhesiastes is important because, if left 

unanswered, it shrouds parrhesia and the parrhesiastes with an aura of myth and fatalism that 

does not quite fit with the normative project of critical social theory. In other words, for all its 

fascination and intellectual credibility, Foucault’s problematisation of truth and democracy 

remains sterile if we cannot learn how to deal with the problematisation of truth and democracy 

in our age.  

As an avenue for further research, I think this question leads to the role of education 

and, more precisely, to the role of the pedagogical dimension of educational practices. By this, I 

mean to describe the features of learning pertaining not primarily to the acquisition of 

knowledge, but to the forming of the learner’s personality. In practice, this is the persona that 

can perform parrhesia, not only because of what she knows, but because of who she is. This 

distinction is important, for the purposes of this discussion, because in common parlance 

learning is a notion that combines, and to some extent confuses, two very different processes: 

the acquisition of knowledges and the transformation of the individual, which results from the 

acquisition of these knowledges but also from the interaction with her educators.  

The digital turn in education, for example, seems to be inspired by a deliberate effort to 

separate the learner from the educator, to decouple the acquisition of knowledges from the 

transformations and, presumably, the risks associated with exposure to the persona of the 

educator. The regime of post-truth, on the other hand, implies a “performative” pedagogy as an 

interpellation to grow up without moral certainties and, therefore, without the need nor the 

capacity to face personal risk for the sake of a moral truth. The tyrants of the digital age and the 

post-truth regime will soon have nothing to worry about if, in our “knowledge societies”, the 

practical possibility of parrhesia will be effaced by the pedagogical repression of the distinction 

between what is true and what is right. This is why the pedagogical dimension of education is 

crucial. In Foucault’s problematisation of truth, this role remains quite marginal. From the 

perspective of the dialectics of the real, instead, this role can hardly be overestimated. To the 

extent that the actual genesis of the parrhesiastes depends on the variety of practices we usually 

refer to as education, this is the terrain of the competition for the construction of the real 

between the democratic and the performative projects, that is, between the efforts of “re-

making” and those of “effacing” the truth. As with every social practice, pedagogical practices 

simultaneously influence, and are influenced by, education.  

If the importance of the pedagogical dimension of education for the practical possibility 

of parrhesia seems plausible, the next important question concerns the nature of the 

pedagogical standpoints and approaches that could credibly support educational practices and 

regimes of truths compatible with democratic futures. My suggestion here is to combine the 

problematisation of truth and the analysis of the persona with the tradition of critical pedagogy.   

The model of the persona that can inspire democratic education in times of post-truth and 

political radicalisation cannot be limited to the alternatives implied by Goffman and Jung. The 

former is too passive, too close to Freire’s “adaptation”, a condition in which an individual “loses 



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his ability to make choices and is subjected to the choices of others, to the extent that his 

decisions are no longer his own because they result from external prescriptions” (Freire 2013, 

p. 4). The Jungian model, on the other hand, is introspective and functional to the moral 

development of the individual but too disconnected from the tensions of the dialectics of the 

real. The combination of persona and parrhesia in the pedagogical model of the parrhesiastes 

needs to effectively blend knowledge of the self and awareness of the relations of power 

affecting the dialectics of the real. This blending seems a pedagogical requirement for what 

Freire called integration as “the capacity to adapt oneself to reality plus the critical capacity to 

make choices and to transform reality” (Freire 2013, p. 4). Included in this critical capacity is the 

commitment to truth and to risk.   

The elements of ambivalence in the problematisation of truth add further grounds to the 

importance of the pedagogical profile of the parrhesiastes in education. The crisis of truth is 

associated with the crisis of democracy because the possibility of a common ground of 

legitimate knowledge is a fundamental requirement for democratic political competition. If this 

is true, the crisis of truth and the crisis of democracy are interconnected phenomena whose 

concomitance may easily establish a downward, “performative” spiral towards 

authoritarianism. Against this risk, one possibility is, perhaps, to problematise democracy in 

terms of constructive adaptation to the post-digital/post-truth age. Constructive adaptation 

here means the adaptation of democratic values and aspirations to the impermanence of the 

real. This possibility also depends, in my view, on the education of individuals as parrhesiastes. 

SUMMARY 

In this paper, I have sought to offer some preliminary and unsystematic reflections towards the 

formulation of a critical approach to the dialectics of the real that could move beyond the 

conceptual impasse of “performativity” and “simulation”. I have suggested that the notions of 

persona and parrhesia, and the work of authors such as Carl Gustav Jung, Erving Goffman, and 

Michel Foucault, among others, can provide useful conceptual tools to address the problem of 

the political role of truth. 

The main point in this paper is therefore about the analytical and pedagogical relevance 

of the parrhesiastes as a political persona defined in relation to a particular notion of truth. The 

working hypothesis behind this point is that to conceive of truth and persona in terms of 

parrhesia and parrhesiastes may help us to deal with the conceptual and even political impasse 

brought about by the conceptualisation of truth in terms of performativity and simulation. 

To support my arguments, I postulated that the real is an impermanent state of affairs 

reflecting more or less stable equilibria between tensions and social forces that are, perhaps, 

useful to describe in terms of a dialectical process: the dialectics of the real. The impermanence 

of the real is both an opportunity and a challenge. It offers an opportunity for those who seek 

emancipative social change, but also a constant source of apprehension for those who benefit 

from hegemonic relations of power. In the dialectics of the real, therefore, social forces may 

compete and take action to enhance their own influence in this process, in effect, to increase the 

chances that tensions are resolved in a way favourable to their interests, visions, values, and so 

forth. The analytical, normative, and even pedagogical value of the standpoint constituted by the 

notions of persona/parrhesia can be appreciated in relation to the functions of truth in the 

legitimation of the impermanent outcomes of this dialectical process.  

From this analytical standpoint, I have suggested that the impact of the digital turn in 

the dialectics of the real is mediated by disembedding and globalisation, and their effects on the 

social grounds of the persona and moral truth as these unite in the political persona of the 



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parrhesiastes. From the same perspective, I have interpreted the appearance and sudden 

popularity of “post-truth” as a sign of a new problematisation of parrhesia. Regimes of truth 

based on performativity and simulation originate the crisis of legitimation and the 

problematisation of truth, education, and democracy, as Foucault has suggested. This 

problematisation, however, presents some elements of continuity with the “cultural logic of late 

capitalism”, and is ideologically ambivalent. Ambivalence here means that the same 

problematisation is inspired by oppressive as well as emancipative purposes. The crisis of 

legitimation that manifests itself in the problematisation of truth enhances the political 

relevance of the parrhesiastes as a political persona, and as a pedagogical profile that can 

inspire democratic education in continuity with the tradition of critical pedagogy initiated, in 

modern times, by Paulo Freire and others. Persona and parrhesia are notions of a critical 

approach that, constituting the parrhesiastes as a persona with unique features, can help us 

understand the impact of the digital turn and the regime of post-truth on the dialectics of the 

real. This approach belongs to the tradition of critical social theory to the extent that it seeks 

“critical” rather than traditional knowledge, that is, knowledge inspired by emancipative 

purposes. Secondly, it problematises concepts, meanings, criteria, standpoints, and so forth as 

the social grounds of knowledge. These are the tools that are part of the reality we study and 

that we change while we study. Finally, this approach can also participate in the pedagogical or 

non-analytical dimension of this tradition: namely, in the formation of individuals equipped 

with critical analytical and normative skills to become active participants in the dialectics of the 

real as parrhesiastes. 

 

i This difference is important since it suggests that the relationship between the “parrhesia” and 
“persona” in the construction of the real is, in fact, not as simple as I have described it here and 

worth more attention. I am grateful to the anonymous reviewer for pointing that out.  

ii Thomas Piketty’s (2014) analysis of the non-sustainability of capitalism in the 21st century is 

perhaps the most popular non-Marxist contribution in this direction.  

END NOTES 

 

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