A figure collects up the people; a figure embodies shared meanings that inhabit their audiences. (Haraway 1997, 23)
The commitment involved in parrhesia is linked to a certain social situation, to a difference of status between the speaker and her audience, to the fact that the parrhesiastes says something which is dangerous to herself and thus involves a risk, and so on….Parrhesia, then, is linked to courage in the face of danger: it demands the courage to speak the truth in spite of some danger. And in its extreme form, telling the truth takes place in the “game” of life or death. (Foucault 2001, 13, 16)31
There are a few words to read aloud. Donna Gentile in a prison cell in the Las Colinas women’s jail, serving a prostitution conviction, four months before her death, making a tape recording that her lawyer will release to a television reporter after her body is found:
I have no intention of disappearing or going out of town without letting my lawyer know first. Because of the publicity I have been given in the police scandal, this is the reason I am taping this..I feel that even someone in uniform and a badge can still be a serious criminal. This is the only insurance I have.32
It didn’t work, this insurance. I want to know what else she said, or is written about her. I look for Donna Gentile on the Internet and find mainly articles that discuss her and also statements by other Donna Gentiles who I want to have been her. On the website of coyote (a prostitutes’ advocacy group), which doesn’t yet talk about the many women missing from the Vancouver area or the evidence of some of their murders, I find:
One prostitute who did file a corruption report against a police officer in San Diego was murdered shortly after the report. [Donna Gentile] Serial murder of prostitutes has become a major problem in this country. In the last three years, more than 100 women have been murdered on the West Coast by no more than three men, none of whom have been caught.33
On another I read:
22-year-old Donna Gentile. Gentile, an alleged prostitute, was found in 1985 off Sunrise Highway in East County and her mouth had been stuffed with stones. She had recently testified at a police civil service hearing against two officers who were disciplined for engaging in improper conduct with a prostitute. One officer, Larry Avrech, was fired and the other, Lt. Carl Black, demoted. According to Gentile Avrech provided her with confidential police information in return for sexual favors. Some investigators interpreted the stones in her mouth as meaning she had been killed in retaliation for her testimony.34
She went on the stand and later her mouth was stuffed with gravel and stones. She went on the stand (pictured [focalizing] on the stand, on national television, later on the billboard looking at the letters nhi with her mouth closed) and her (parrhesiastic) mouth was stuffed with stones and gravel.35
There are more Donnas: a “donna” is a woman, more than one donna is donne, to give is donner, to donate. Gentile means gentle, dear. Dear Woman Donna Gentile: a Donna Gentile writes condolences to another Donna online, and I’m drawn to read it: