Daniele Lorenzini: The Force of Truth – video (2025)

The Chicago Center for Contemporary Theory, Feb 21, 2025

Many blame Michel Foucault for our post-truth and conspiracy-laden society. In this provocative work, Daniele Lorenzini argues that such criticism fundamentally misunderstands the philosopher’s project. Foucault did not question truth itself but what Lorenzini calls “the force of truth,” or how some truth claims are given the power to govern our conduct while others are not. This interest, Lorenzini shows, drove Foucault to articulate a new ethics and politics of truth-telling precisely in order to evade the threat of relativism. The Force of Truth: Critique, Genealogy, and Truth-Telling in Michel Foucault (University of Chicago Press, 2023) explores this neglected dimension of Foucault’s project by putting his writings on regimes of truth and parrhesia in conversation with early analytic philosophy and by drawing out the “possibilizing” elements of Foucault’s genealogies that remain vital for practicing critique today.

Daniele Lorenzini discussed his book in conversation with 3CT fellow Linda Zerilli.