Abstract
The erosion of truth-telling is central to discussions of democratic decline. However, these discussions often gloss over how democratic truth-telling is constituted as a practice. I develop the concept of democratic alethurgies to tackle this problem by drawing on civil sphere theory and Foucauldian studies of truth-telling. Focusing on practices of critique, I situate democratic truth-telling within a discourse that contrasts curious, courageous, and open-minded democratic actors with incurious, cowardly, and closed-minded undemocratic ones. This discourse is inflected in different prescriptions for how the truth-teller should discover the truth, wield it, and relate to their public audience. I develop this approach through a comparison of the truth-telling of journalists and activists. The concept of democratic alethurgies provides a framework for analyzing democratic truth-telling and generates an empirically rooted vocabulary that reframes discussions of democratic decline.
Published Version
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