Speaking Truth to Power? A Foucauldian Theory of Whistleblowing in A Nihilistic World

This paper aims to propose a novel account of whistleblowing. Whistleblowing is seen as “speaking truth to power”. But if there is no truth outside power, as in our post-truth age, whistleblowing loses its meaning. The relationship between truth and power should be questioned. The paper refers to Michel Foucault’s works to interrogate the relations between truth, power, and subjectivity in whistleblowing and show how mainstream theory fails to address those relations. The new account uses Foucault’s term “practice of freedom” to re-anchor the meaning of whistleblowing in a nihilistic world without ultimate truth.