When we can’t handle the truth: Occupy, “dangerous speech,” and public administration

Abstract

The Occupy Movement (“Occupy”) was largely ignored by public administration scholars. In this paper we argue that letting Occupy pass by without substantive analysis is unfortunate because it represented an opportunity for public administration to learn and reflect on critically important issues. Occupy was an important moment of truth-telling in US politics and prefiguring of a different way of life, yet it revealed the field’s inability to hear and constructively engage with the “truth” of contemporary social movements. We elaborate these matters and contend that Occupy should be read as a moment of what the ancient Greeks and, more recently, Michel Foucault, call parrhēsia, or frank, direct, truthful speech. We consider Occupy within the broader context of public administration as a field of practice that engages with particular forms of truth-telling and use this as a fulcrum to theorize the particular ways in which public administration could or could not “handle” Occupy’s truth-telling. The final sections of the paper outline concrete lessons about how public administration may respond differently to the truth-telling of current and future social movements.