Between the Desire for Law and the Law of Desire: #MeToo and the Cost of Telling the Truth Today

Philosophy & Rhetoric Dec 2018

Between the Desire for Law and the Law of Desire: #MeToo and the Cost of Telling the Truth Today

Sarah K. Burgess

Abstract

ABSTRACT This article examines the kairotic beginnings of the #MeToo movement in order to understand what we are to make of this moment. It shows that commentaries about #MeToo unfold as a debate over the desire for law and the law of desire, ceding the contingent kairotic moment in which we might remake our contemporary political landscapes. As such, I argue that movements dedicated to ending sexual violence must reimagine the scene of address in which demands for justice might be spoken and their speech recognized as the truth. This project is complicated, however, by a post-truth era in which telling the truth matters little because truth itself has been devalued. Through this lens, we can see that the cost of telling the truth in the terms of the established debate is the creation of a form of identity politics that reinforces post-truth logics rather than intervening in them.

Journal: Philosophy & Rhetoric
Published: 2018-12-01
DOI: 10.5325/philrhet.51.4.0342
Open Access: Closed
Topics: multilingual writers place and space

Citation Context

Cited by in this index (2)

Buisker (2024)

Articulating Hierarchical Victimhood: Rhetorical Mirroring in Anti-Fat and Rape…

Rhetoric Society Quarterly
Corp (2023)

Lockean Natural History and the Revivification of Post-Truth Objects

Philosophy & Rhetoric

Cites in this index (1)

Goodstein (2017)

Money, Relativism, and the Post-Truth Political Imaginary

Philosophy & Rhetoric

Also cites 1 work outside this index ↓

Murray, Stuart J. 2007. “Ethics at the Scene of Address: A Conversation with Judith Butler.” Symposium: Revie…

↗

CrossRef global citation count: 9 View in citation network →