Women Speaking Truth to Power. Interview with Béatrice Châteauvert-Gagnon

Sciences Po’s Centre for International Research (CERI) is thrilled to welcome our new colleague, Béatrice Châteauvert-Gagnon as part of our academic staff. As and International Relations scholar, Béatrice’s research interests cross IR, Security and gender and sexuality studies. She answers our questions on her academic path and research interests.

Can you briefly introduce your career and your main research themes, as well as your current projects?

After being awarded a PhD in International Relations from the University of Sussex (UK), I completed a postdoctoral fellowship at the Centre for Feminist Research at York University (Canada) and a postdoctoral knowledge outreach programme1 at the Research Centre on Social Innovation and Transformation at St-Paul University (Ottawa). In terms of teaching, I have taught Political Science, International Relations and Gender/Sexuality Studies to hundreds of students at many different post-secondary institutions in Canada, Quebec, and the United Kingdom.

My research interests are located at the intersection of International Relations, Security Studies, and Gender and Sexuality studies. More specifically, my expertise resides in critical, feminist, and queer security studies; poststructuralist, feminist, and queer IR; and feminist theories more generally.

My work explores courageous truth-speaking practices as a form of political dissidence in relation/reaction to issues of security, violence, justice, and protection. In a digital age, where the consensus grounded in scientific facts and the line between truth and lie have both been eroded, an increasing number of people claim to be speaking truth to power. As the cacophony of truth-tellers who divide and unite us grows in confusing ways, it becomes more important than ever to consider what is at stake in the performance of speaking truth to power and assess its resistive/transformative potential. Hence, my research mobilises Foucauldian work on parrhesia2—a practice in Ancient Greece consisting in speaking truth to power and taking risks in doing so out of a sense of moral duty to improve a situation for oneself and others—to understand how different marginalised figures resist, challenge, problematise, and/or reinforce dominant practices and discourses globally.

More specifically, I am currently working on a book mobilising Foucault’s work on parrhesia to examine the cases of different international figures of dissident female protectors—namely Malalai Joya, Chelsea Manning, Greta Thunberg, the Gulabi Gang and Idle No More3—who resisted, challenged, problematised, and/or reinforced the dominant logics of protection in/of International Security. Starting from the work in Feminist Security Studies on the logic of masculinist protection,4 the manuscript widens and deepens this work by, first, analysing not only gendered logics of protection but also the innumerable other logics in which protectors operate in global politics—such as race, caste/class, cisheteronormative, (settler)colonial5 and so on, logics of protection. Second, it looks not only at how such logics are performed but also how they are resisted, challenged, transformed and/or reconducted by all types of protectors—within and beyond official institutions of protection—across different local, national, and international contexts. The book argues that what unites these different figures of female protectors is that they all turn themselves into dissident protectors by speaking courageous truth to power, taking risks in doing so, hence enacting a contemporary form of parrhesia.

What do these figures have in common in terms of positioning/political responsibility? While the risks they have taken in their public action may differ, these women have received life threats. In order to explain what you call their dissident truth-speaking and the reactions they have caused, you mobilise the concepts of logics of protection and parrhesia. Can you explain?

First, I argue that Malalai Joya, Greta Thunberg and INM leaders each decided to act/speak out against the failures, lacks, exclusions, violence and injustices in the words and deeds of different authorities claiming to act on behalf of (their) security and protection. By doing so, they made visible, challenged, and disrupted the dominant logics of protection—who protects whom, against what, at what costs and with what consequences—on which such a claim is based. Moreover, they not only called into question the claim that such authorities were protecting them/others but also turned themselves into dissident protectors of the unprotected (to whom protection is withdrawn or refused) and unprotectable (to whom protection was never offered in the first place). In short, these figures, each in their own way, challenged/problematised discourses and practices of protection.

Second, I argue that each of these figures enacted this critique by speaking truths to power, and that this can be understood as a contemporary form of parrhesia. In fact, they did five things that Foucault associates with the practice of parrhesia: They all spoke/acted frankly, saying directly everything they had to say; they all spoke truths about injustices in relation to insecurity issues and protection; they all took risks in doing so, putting themselves in some level of danger; their truth-telling was a form of criticism towards dominant leaders and institutions claiming to protect people and offer security; and they all did so out of a sense of duty to improve a situation and protect themselves and others.6
Yet none of these women stated anything radically new or shockingly unknown: by the time Chelsea Manning released hundreds of documents to Wikileaks about US misconducts and abuses in its War on Terror, for example, the Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo scandals had already revealed such “state secrets,” and you can read most of what Greta Thunberg or Malalai Joya said in an IPCC or Human Rights Watch report…

So why did speaking such open secrets (secrets de Polichinelle) generate such intense backlash and reactions?

To answer this question, we need to make two theoretical moves. As elaborated above on the book I am currently working on, we first need to build on work in feminist security studies on the logic of masculinist protection and extend, complicate, and pluralise this work in order to make sense of the multiple, interrelated, and sometimes contradictory logics of protection in which we are embedded (such as those of race, age, dis/ability, settler coloniality, coloniality, and so on), as well as the subject positions, economies of power and, more importantly, inevitable resistance such logics produce, rely on, and function through, beyond the battlefield and traditional sites of power/security.

Second, we need to mobilise Foucauldian work on parrhesia from a feminist perspective attentive to the power relations involved in the possibilities and risks associated with speaking truth to power. My argument in this article is that by mobilising these two frameworks together, we can have a fuller understanding of the dissident truth-speaking of figures such as Joya, Thunberg and INM activists. In fact, by locating them within the multiple logics of protection in which they are embedded, we can better understand the context that makes parrhesia both possible and risky: it is precisely their positionings within such logics that made their truths so daring. In turn, by mobilising parrhesia, we can better understand what truth-speaking as a praxis does to dominant logics of protection, even when it is about saying out loud what is already known.

What will you be working on in the next few years and how does this dialogue with the research conducted at CERI, and more generally Sciences Po, in particular with the PRESAGE programme?

My current research project aims at extending the work highlighted above by, first, looking at parrhesia as a collective rather than an individual practice; second, looking at what digital capitalism does to truth-speaking in a post-truth era; and third, further expanding our understanding of security and insecurity and what conflict means in International Relations in times of deep polarisation of the political discourse. My research will therefore look at two diametrically opposed empirical cases of collective truth-speaking on social media: the #metoo movement and the #tradwives. It is divided into two phases.

The first phase looks at #metoo and argues that it can best be seen as a form of digital parrhesia rather than as a social movement as such. I argue that the truths of #metoo harnessed the deluge of screens and spectacles on social media and only managed to be heard because of its collective, polyphonic and decentralised character, which in turn limited which truths were heard and taken up by dominant discourses and institutions. My research complexifies parrhesia as a collective practice that is often the only way to speak/be heard for the epistemically marginalised—those to whom speaking and, mostly, being heard within dominant social, political and discursive spaces is out of reach—and in turn complexifies #metoo as, not a social movement as such, but a moment of courageous truth-speaking that opened up potentialities to be and do differently in relation to sexual violations.

Secondly, in his study of the evolution of the practice of parrhesia, Foucault explored how Ancient Greece entered a crisis in democracy where it was not possible to distinguish the “good” parrhesia of well-intentioned individuals working for the greater good from the “bad” parrhesia of bold, arrogant speakers only wanting to shock their audience and manipulate the masses, which might sound eerily familiar today… The second phase of my research project will therefore focus on the #tradwives—an online group of women (re)claiming a traditional way of life made of rigid gender roles, female submission, and flawless homemaking. While only some of its members are openly/explicitly linked to the manosphere and alt-right ideologies, all of them share an anti-feminist stance and an implicit reliance on epistemological whiteness to fuel their nostalgia for a fantasised past. They claim to speak dangerous truths to the power of neoliberal feminist elites and can thus be inscribed within larger movements claiming to speak “alternative truths” that have been suppressed and/or ignored by powerful liberal cosmopolitan elites. This second phase of the research project aims to deepen our understanding of online reactionary movements and the participation of women within them. The study of right-wing women from a feminist perspective has highlighted the complex and contradictory ways in which these women navigate their involvement and space within such movements. While right-wing extremism, particularly that linked to the manosphere and misogynistic antifeminism, is increasingly responsible for terrorist attacks and acts of violence worldwide, the #TradWives movement provides a unique case study for understanding online radicalisation and the role played by the claim to “risky truth-speaking” on social media among women.

Hence the final research project will juxtapose those two radically opposed forms of risky truth-telling on social media—#metoo and #tradwives—to explore what made such claims possible/heard but also whether these claims to parrhesia are politically and ethically distinct from one another.

This research fits within different fields at CERI on political participation and mobilisations, violence and danger management, and identity and politics. It could complement different research conducted at CERI and beyond by bringing a unique gender angle to studies of right-wing extremism, international security, social mobilisations, politics of truth, and digital politics. In turn, it could bring to PRESAGE an IR and global perspective on issues of justice, protection, truth, and security.

What is your methodological approach?

My methodology stems from poststructuralist epistemologies and discourse theory, therefore consisting mainly in discourse analysis. I rely mostly on primary and secondary sources on/from the empirical cases I study (for the #tradwives, for example, I would use YouTube videos and other social media productions from the #tradwives themselves, different media interviews with key figures of the movement, #tradwives discussion forums, etc.). The analysis then proceeds in three steps: first, contextualisation, i.e. historicising the different samples collected within their context of enunciation in relations to the discourses they address/are embedded in (right-wing discourses in different locations for the tradwives for example); second, qualitative content analysis using both a directed approach starting from Foucault’s five elements of parrhesia as a coding frame, then using free coding to see what themes emerge; and third, feminist foucauldian discourse analysis stemming from the theoretical tools developed above as discursive techniques of deconstruction of truth/power claims.

Are there potential policy implications to your work?

Yes, there are different policy implications on the different topics my work touches upon. For example, as I mentioned earlier, I did a knowledge outreach/dissemination programme where I used my research on #metoo to offer workshops and presentations to professionals working with victims of sexual violations. I presented for example at the annual training day of both the Table de concertation sur les agressions à caractère sexuel de Montréal and at the Laboratoire de sciences judicaires et de médecine légale du Québec where I offered a socio-political reading of sexual violations to help professionals better understand #metoo and public disclosures beyond the judicial or psychological framework they usually work with. As such, my work contributed to improve the reception and support of people who have been sexually victimised by offering a different angle through which professionals can read and receive their disclosures as well as any reserve or critique victimised people may have towards these services.

My other work on logics of protection could similarly be useful to policy makers working on security issues by highlighting the implicit and/or explicit narratives around protectors and protected and the consequences such narratives may have in terms of biases, failures to protect, or injustices, leading to crises of confidence in security providers of all kinds. As for my future work on the #tradwives, it could potentially be useful to understand the rise in popularity of right-wing extremist discourses and right-wing radicalisation processes, contributing to address potential violent radicalisation and reduce political polarisation of the public discourse.

Interview by Miriam Périer, CERI.

Illustrations:

• Greta Thunberg, 25 March Stockholm, by Per Grunditz for Shutterstock

• Idle no more protest in Vancouver, 5 January 2013. Photo by Sergei Bachlakov for Shutterstock

• #metoo – hands, by cash1994 for Shutterstock
• Young woman in kitchen, credit: Everett collection, Shutterstock

• 1. This programme aims at disseminating the main results of postdoctoral research into civil society. My own project, for example, included a series of presentations and workshops in different organisations working against sexual violations and the creation of a podcast (still a work in progress) on the in/justice issues raised by #metoo and its aftermath.
• 2. Foucault, Michel. 2001. Fearless Speech. Edited by Joseph Pearson. Los Angeles: Semiotext(e): [Distributed by MIT Press].
• 3. The Gulabi Gang is an Indian women’s movement created by Sampat Pal Devi in Uttar Pradesh in 2006. The group is dedicated to empowering women of all castes and protecting them from domestic violence, sexual violence, and oppression. They also combat political corruption and the oppression of lower caste people, specifically Dalits. Idle No More is an Indigenous movement in Canada that started in November 2012 in reaction to the Harper government’s passing an Omnibus law that lifted many environmental protections and amended the Indian Act—the primary law the federal government uses to govern in relation to registered First Nations people, reserves, and bands—without consulting Indigenous communities. The movement, led by women and youth, aims at honouring Indigenous sovereignty and protecting the land, the water, and the sky in Turtle Island (the Indigenous name for the North American continent).
• 4. Ase C (2018) The gendered myth of protection. In: Gentry CE, Shepherd LJ and Sjoberg L (eds) Routledge Handbook of Gender and Security. Abingdon: Routledge, 273–283; Stiehm JH (1982) The protected, the protector, the defender. Women’s Studies International Forum 5(3–4):367–376; Young IM (2003) The logic of masculinist protection: Reflections on the current security state. Signs 29(1):1–25.
• 5. While it shares with other forms of colonialism the exploitation of labour and resources, settler-colonialism is primarily a territorial project centered on settlers’ accumulation/appropriation of land, which requires a logic of displacement and disappearance of Indigenous peoples in order for settlers to claim the territory as their own.
• 6. Foucault M (2001) Fearless Speech. op. cit.