Insurgent Truth : Chelsea Manning and the Politics of Outsider Truth-Telling

When Chelsea Manning was arrested in May 2010 for leaking massive amounts of classified Army and diplomatic documents to WikiLeaks, she was almost immediately profiled by the mainstream press as a troubled person: someone who had experienced harassment due to her sexual orientation and gender non-conformity, and who leaked documents not on behalf of the public good, but out of motives of personal revenge or, as suggested in the New York Times, "delusions of grandeur." Compared implicitly to Daniel Ellsberg's apparently selfless devotion to the truth and the public good, Manning comes up short in these profiles–a failed whistleblower who deserves pity rather than political solidarity. The first book-length theoretical treatment of Manning's actions, Insurgent Truth argues for seeing Manning's example differently: as an act of what the book terms "outsider truth-telling." Bringing Manning's truth-telling into conversation with democratic, feminist, and queer theory, the book argues that outsider truth-tellers such as Manning tell or enact unsettling truths from a position of social illegibility. Challenging the social alignment of credibility with gendered, classed, and raced traits, outsider truth-tellers reveal oppression and violence that the dominant class would otherwise not see, and disclose the possibility of a more egalitarian form of life. Read as outsider truth-telling, the book argues that Manning's acts were not aimed at curbing corporate or governmental bad acts, but instead at transforming public discourse and agency, and inciting a solidaristic public. The book suggests that Manning's actions offer a productive example of democratic truth-telling for all of us. Lida Maxwell develops this argument through an examination of Manning's prison writings, the lengthy chat logs between Manning and the hacker who eventually turned her in, various journalistic, artistic, and academic responses to Manning, and by comparing Manning's example and writings with the work and actions of other outsider truth-tellers, including Cassandra, Virginia Woolf, Bayard Rustin, and Audre Lorde. Showing the shortcomings of existing approaches to truth and politics, Maxwell advances a new theoretical framework through which to understand truth-telling in politics: not only as a practice of offering a pre-political common ground of "facts" to politics, but also as the practice of unsettling public discourse by revealing the oppression and domination that it often masks. __Insurgent Truth__ argues for the importance of outsider truth-telling to democratic politics and reads Chelsea Manning as an important contemporary outsider truth-teller. Outsider truth-tellers such as Manning tell or enact unsettling truths from a position of social illegibility. Often dismissed as in-credible by their societies, this book argues that their acts and writings reveal problems with dominant models of truth and truth-telling in politics, which often look to truth to offer a prepolitical stable common ground and align credibility with gendered, classed, and raced traits. Focusing on how outsider truth-tellers reveal this supposedly prepolitical common ground to reflect the power and reality of elites, __Insurgent Truth__ argues that outsider truth-telling enacts an important, if risky democratic role in three ways: 1) revealing oppression and violence that the dominant class would otherwise not see; 2) revealing, in their truth-telling, the possibility of another way of living; and 3) disclosing an alternative form of stability via outsider solidarity. __Insurgent Truth__ develops this argument through reading Chelsea Manning’s actions in conjunction with a cohort of other outsider truth-tellers: especially Virginia Woolf, Bayard Rustin, Audre Lorde, and Anna Julia Cooper. "This book is about Chelsea Manning's leaking of government documents. Manning told the truth about war and a social order sustained by it. Her truth-telling also revealed the complicity of public and private in casting her - a non-gender-conforming individual - as an improper truth-teller. And Manning's truth-telling unsettled hierarchies of truth-telling that prop up a discriminatory and often oppressive social order. I read Manning not as an isolated political actor, but instead as an outsider truth-teller within a cohort of outsider truth-tellers (such as Virginia Woolf, Bayard Rustin, Audre Lorde), whose practices are distinct yet connected, and whose significance becomes more apparent when read in conjunction with each other"-- Provided by publisher "Challenging depictions of Chelsea Manning as a failed whistleblower, Insurgent Truth argues that Manning's act should be seen as what the book terms "outsider truth-telling." Lida Maxwell develops this argument through an examination of Manning's prison writings, the lengthy chat logs between Manning and the hacker who eventually turned her in, various journalistic, artistic, and academic responses to Manning. Comparing Manning's example and writings withother outsider truth-tellers, including Audre Lorde, Virginia Woolf, and Bayard Rustin, Maxwell develops a theory of outsider truth-telling as a productive practice of telling unsettling truths from a position of social illegibility" (ed.) Cover 1 Insurgent Truth 4 Copyright 5 Dedication 6 Contents 8 Preface: Cassandra and Socrates 10 1. Chelsea Manning and the Politics of Truth-​Telling 18 2. Public, Private, Insurgent: What Is Outsider Truth-​Telling? 45 3. Chelsea Manning as Transformative Truth-​Teller 69 4. Anonymity as Outsider Tactic: Woolf’s “Anon” and Rustin’s Quiet Persistence 98 5. Telling the Truth, Changing the World: Woolf’s War Photographs and Manning’s Collateral Murder Video 122 6. “I used to only know how to write memos”: The World-​Building Power of Outsider Security 153 Notes 164 Acknowledgments 202 Index 208 'Insurgent Truth' argues for the importance of outsider truth-telling to democratic politics and reads Chelsea Manning as an important contemporary outsider truth-teller. Outsider truth-tellers such as Manning tell or enact unsettling truths from a position of social illegibility. Often dismissed as in-credible by their societies, this text argues that their acts and writings reveal problems with dominant models of truth and truth-telling in politics, which often look to truth to offer a prepolitical stable common ground and align credibility with gendered, classed, and raced traits