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

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 with other 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.