“Piercing This Wall”: Truth-Making in a Fascist World

Abstract

In this article, Kuntz argues for new orientations to inquiry that enact immanently entangled processes of mapping, refusing, and making—radical practices with implications for resisting the fascisms of our present time. As an extended example, Kuntz explicates one such critical orientation, parrhesia, as an inquiry orientation that manifests through an ethical determination to challenge the exploitative relations of our present. Through this example, Kuntz challenges inquirers to work with, but not become of, our contemporary moment. Any “new” inquiry practice pushes convention to its limit, reconfiguring it in such a way that convention is recognized as such for the first time through its very dissolution. Thus, there remains an important element of critical engagement within the “new”; one that manifests as an ethical challenge from within.