Barney, like Liane de Pougy, was notably antisemitic, as was Gertrude Stein (despite the fact that she was herself Jewish). Of course, one needs to take into account first of all their class backgrounds: aristocrats or upper class bourgeois women, they often tended toward fascism because of their horror of communism. Yet one should also not fail to take into account the role played by their involvement in artistic modernism, nor the one played by their sexual politics. See Benstock, ‘‘Paris Lesbianism and the Politics of Reaction, 1900–1940,’’ 332–46.
10. See Mosse, The Image of Man.
11. Hirschfeld defended the principle of the equality of men and women, even if he was unable ever to give up the idea of a certain kind of masculine superiority. See Wol√, Magnus Hirschfeld, 86–99, 148, 153, 169.
12. rtp, 2:643 (my emphasis). See the commentary by Bersani and Dutoit, Caravaggio’s Secrets, 11–12.
13. See Rivers, Proust and the Art of Love, 38.
14. The letters are cited by the editor Antoine Compagnon, in Recherche, 3: 1198.
15. Lorrain was trying to come up with an explanation for why Léon Daudet, the famous critic from L’Action Française, and the father of Lucien, would have shown so much kindness to such a mediocre writer. See Tadié, Marcel Proust, 286. On dueling as a practice meant to rea≈rm masculinity, see Nye, Masculinity and Male Codes of Honor in Modern France.
16. Cited in Rivers, Proust and the Art of Love, 32.
17. Proust, rtp, 2:643. Gide, The Journals of André Gide, 2:265.
18. [Translator’s note: This novel has also been translated as Lafcadio’s Adventures. ]
19. Proust, Correspondance, 13:107. The letter is dated March 6, 1914.
20. Ibid., 13:139. Letter of April 6 or 7, 1914.
21. Ibid., 13:235. Letter of June 6, 1914.
22. Ibid., 13:247. Letter of June 10 or 11, 1914. This letter sets out the theme of a
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di√erence in sensibility between Charlus and his brother, but does not yet present the idea of the man-woman as a general theory.
23. Ibid., 13:249. Letter dated June 14, 1914.
24. Lucey, ‘‘Practices of Posterity,’’ 56.
25. The ‘‘Enquête sur l’homosexualité en littérature,’’ published in Les Marges in March and April 1926, has been reprinted by the Cahiers Gai-Kitsch-Camp, edited by Patrick Cardon. The questionnaire, which cites Souday’s article, can be found on 19.
26. ‘‘It was a dangerous thing for art to separate itself from life. . . . The artist who is no longer in touch with his public is led not to a failure of production, but to the production of works with no destination.’’ These words are from a lecture by Gide, titled ‘‘On the Importance of the Public.’’ Cited in Lepape, André Gide, le messager, 198.
27. Gide, Oscar Wilde, 42–44. Gide’s emphasis.
28. Proust, Against Sainte-Beuve, 39, 12. Gide, Dostoevsky, 152–53, translation modified.
29. Sartre, What Is Literature? 73.
30. See Lucey, ‘‘Practices of Posterity,’’ 62–63.
pa rt ≥
Michel Foucault’s Heterotopias
1. Much More Beauty
1. Foucault, ‘‘On the Genealogy of Ethics,’’ 261. In the original transcript of this interview, Foucault says ‘‘Why couldn’t everyday life, everyone’s life, become a work of art?’’ Hubert Dreyfus and Paul Rabinow, ‘‘Discussion with Michel Foucault, April 15, 1983,’’ transcription in the archives of Paul Rabinow.
2. Cited in Ellmann, Oscar Wilde, 310.
3. See, for example, Wilde, The Soul of Man Under Socialism, 1079–1104.
4. I discuss these matters in more detail in Michel Foucault et ses contemporains, 285–86.
5. The descriptions of Walter Pater cited earlier come to mind immediately, for example, when one reads what Paul Veyne wrote in his journal in 1983. (Veyne would often stay in a studio adjoining Foucault’s apartment when he came to Paris from his home in the south of France to give his courses at the Collège de France.) In describing the atmosphere that reigned in the ‘‘large apartment with white ceilings and walls’’ on the rue de Vaugirard, Veyne notes: ‘‘The kinds of conversations that were preferred consisted entirely of fantasies, sincere confidences, and, of course, complete freedom of expression, meaning that all forms of libertinism
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were allowed. In fact the most libertine conversations were heard and appreciated.
There were no cold glances. Indeed, people smiled at what would have horrified the bourgeois or the academician. On the other hand, few bourgeois gentlemen or academicians would have been able to sustain the level of elegance or of imperti-nent nonchalance that was required of those admitted to this salon, one secretly more elitist than that of the Guermantes. The guests were carefully screened, and the screening criteria were quite esoteric. . . . I remember an appearance made by X. . . . If I mentioned the subject of the conversation, even quite unchaste ears would blush. Yet the style and the manners exhibited showed a libertine refinement of quite an eighteenth-century variety.’’ (Consulted with the permission of the author.
I have removed the name of the person mentioned.)
6. Foucault, ‘‘On the Genealogy of Ethics,’’ 261. This interview was done in English by Paul Rabinow and Hubert Dreyfus. Foucault made slight modifications to it when preparing the French translation. See ‘‘A propos de la généalogie de l’éthique,’’
4:616. This passage caught the eye of David Halperin, who has asked if we would be justified in making the opposite inference, that Seneca, were he living in San Francisco today, would be a gay man into leather. See Halperin, Saint Foucault, 103.
2. From Night to the Light of Day
1. Letter from Michel Foucault to Jean Barraqué, dated October 20, 1904 (1954).
Archives of Jean Barraqué.
2. Undated letter from Michel Foucault to Jean Barraqué. Archives of Jean Barraqué.
3. In a later letter, one still written in the esoteric language that is characteristic of this moment in his life, Foucault writes, ‘‘The only thing missing, as you know, when I am vertical and parallel to you, is homosexuality, whose surface area permits an infinite, definitive, and reciprocal destruction of the myth of comedy. I am certainly to blame, for it is up to people like me—who else?—to preserve the traditions of exile, and to raise up before dawn in places where no one tarries altars that will never be used for sacrifices.’’ The letter is dated January 2, 1956.
4. ‘‘His erudition in the matter of bad boys is nearly encyclopedic,’’ wrote Foucault to a friend in 1952. ‘‘I am totally taken aback to find myself invited by him to explore a world I didn’t even know existed, in which I can take my su√erings for a walk.’’ Cited in the ‘‘Chrononogie’’ of Dits, 1:18.
5. That is the word used by the recipient of the letter cited in the previous note to describe Barraqué’s e√ect on Foucault. See ibid., 1:18.
6. I interviewed Dr. Étienne when I was writing my biography of Foucault. He was certain of himself on this subject, having spoken about it at length with
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Foucault, whom he would often have admitted to the infirmary at the École. [Translator’s note: the École normale supérieure is one of the most prestigious institutions of higher learning in France. Entrance is by an extremely competitive examination.]
7. Letter dated May 23, 1950, and cited in the ‘‘Chronologie’’ of Dits, 1:16. The recipient’s name is not given. In 1954 he would write to Jacqueline Verdeaux, ‘‘A great Husserlian ascesis has led me to lands that are so strange and unexpected that I am not even sure if it is possible to breathe there. After having considered becoming a monk or else turning in the direction of the paths that lead into the night, I have decided to make the e√ort to live. But I h
ave only taken the first few breaths. I am keeping an eye on the mirror to make sure I don’t turn blue.’’ Letter to Jacqueline Verdeaux, August 19, 1954.
8. See Eribon, Michel Foucault, 26–27.
9. [Translator’s note: Sainte-Anne is a psychiatric hospital in Paris.]
10. See ‘‘Chronologie,’’ in Dits, 1:15.
11. A comparison again seems called for between this art of playing with one’s physical appearance, theatricalizing it, making something new—something of one’s own—out of it and Wilde’s way of shaping his appearance. It could also be compared to the general theatricalization involved in gay self-a≈rmation. For it is always a question of reinventing one’s gestures, one’s appearance, one’s very being in the eyes of others—reinventing everything that goes into what Go√man has called the ‘‘presentation of self.’’
12. See Eribon, Michel Foucault, 41–49, 128–30, 138–40.
13. Foucault, ‘‘La Recherche scientifique et la psychologie,’’ 1:158, and ‘‘La Psychologie de 1850 à 1950,’’ 1:136.
14. Foucault, ‘‘La Psychologie de 1850 à 1950,’’ 1:137.
15. Foucault, ‘‘La Recherche scientifique et la psychologie,’’ 1:158.
16. See his preface to Madness and Civilization, ix-xii; hereafter cited as mc . See also the formulations he gives in Mental Illness and Psychology, 88; hereafter cited as mip . [Translator’s note: the full text of Foucault’s 1961 preface to Madness and Civilization was not printed in all subsequent editions, and only a truncated version is present in the English translation. The full version can be found in Dits, 1:159–67.
The volume was published under a slightly di√erent title in 1961: Folie et déraison: Histoire de la folie à l’âge classique (Paris: Plon, 1961). Future French editions would have the shorter title Histoire de la folie à l’âge classique. ]
17. See the passage in which Althusser describes himself as a ‘‘missing person’’
and where he says that Foucault wrote about himself: ‘‘ ‘in the bright sunlight of Polish freedom,’ once he felt himself cured.’’ Althusser, The Future Lasts Forever, 23, translation modified. Althusser is here referring to a sentence from the 1961 preface to Madness and Civilization in which Foucault writes that his book was ‘‘begun during
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a Swedish night’’ and ‘‘finished in the stubborn bright sunlight of Polish freedom’’
( Dits, 1:167). In this same text Foucault mentions a future work he plans to write
‘‘under the sun of the great Nietzschean project’’ (1:162). The opposition between
‘‘night’’ and ‘‘sun,’’ between shadow and light, and so on, is one of the structuring principles of Madness and Civilization.
18. Letter from Althusser to Franca Madonia, dated February 28, 1966, in Althusser, Lettres à Franca, 1961–1973, 660. I discuss Foucault’s relations with Althusser at greater length, focusing especially on this period, in Michel Foucault et ses contemporains, 314–50.
19. For more details on this nomination and on Foucault’s meeting with Dumé-
zil (a meeting that was to have immense importance in Foucault’s life, his career, his work, and so on), see Eribon, Michel Foucault et ses contemporains, 105–83.
20. Letter from Michel Foucault to Jean Barraqué, dated September 25, 1955.
Archives of Jean Barraqué.
21. Letter from Michel Foucault to Jean Barraqué, dated November 13, 1955.
22. Letter from Michel Foucault to Jean Barraqué, dated September 20, 1955.
23. Letter from Michel Foucault to Jean Barraqué, dated August 1955, with no day given. More information on Arcadie follows in the pages ahead.
3. The Impulse to Escape
1. For this vocabulary, see Foucault, ‘‘Madness Only Exists in Society,’’ 8, and
‘‘Médecins, juges et sorciers au XVIIe siècle,’’ 1:753.
2. Letter from Althusser to Franca Madonia, dated September 25, 1962, in Lettres à Franca 1961–1973, 215.
3. ‘‘It is only in Foucault’s book that I have experienced this rising to the surface of intimate matters.’’ Letter from Althusser to Madonia, February 28, 1966, in ibid., 659.
4. Letter from Althusser to Franca Madonia, dated September 28, 1963, in ibid., 455. Emphasis in original.
5. Immediately after Madness and Civilization, Foucault had the idea of publishing a series of documents retrieved from archives. Here is how the work, which was never published, was announced in advance publicity: ‘‘Madmen: From the Bastille to Hôpital Sainte-Anne, from the seventeenth to the nineteenth centuries, Michel Foucault recounts the journey to the end of the night. Forthcoming.’’ See Eribon, Michel Foucault, 144. Foucault describes Madness and Civilization as an archeology of silence in its preface. See mc, xi.
6. Deleuze and Parnet, Dialogues, 5.
7. Deleuze, Negotiations 1972–1990, 103–4, translation modified. The three texts on Foucault assembled in this volume (83–118) strike me as one of the best com-
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mentaries available of his work and also of its guiding gesture. See also Deleuze, Foucault.
8. Foucault, ‘‘My Body, This Paper, This Fire,’’ in Aesthetics, Method, and Epistemology, 416. This volume is hereafter cited as Aesthetics. [Translator’s note: this essay was originally published as an appendix to a later French edition of Histoire de la folie ( Madness and Civilization). It is not present in the English translation of that volume.]
9. Foucault, ‘‘So Is It Important to Think?’’ in Power, 458, translation modified.
This volume is hereafter cited as Power.
10. Martin, ‘‘Truth, Power, and the Self: An Interview with Foucault,’’ 11. On these questions, see Eribon, Michel Foucault et ses contemporains, 62–63.
11. Foucault, ‘‘L’Intellectuel et les pouvoirs,’’ 4:747–48.
12. See Eribon, Michel Foucault et ses contemporains, 233–64.
13. The citations in this paragraph are taken from a 1978 interview with Ducio Trombadori, first published in 1980: ‘‘Interview with Michel Foucault,’’ trans.
Robert Hurley, in Power, 267.
14. Deleuze, Negotiations, 85. He also comments in this passage: ‘‘When you admire someone you don’t pick and choose; you may like this or that book better than some other one, but you nevertheless take them as a whole, because you see that some element that seems less convincing than others is an absolutely essential step in his exploration, his alchemy.’’ For more on the coherence of Foucault’s works across all his ‘‘crises’’ and ‘‘reorientations,’’ see ibid., 104–5.
15. ‘‘Interview with Michel Foucault,’’ 267. [Translator’s note: the published English translation omits the word ‘‘death’’ which is present in the French version.
See Dits, 4:67.]
16. One day in the early 1980s I asked him which of his books was his favorite, and he replied without hesitating: Madness and Civilization. He added, ‘‘Of course it would be di√erent if I wrote it today, but I think that book had something totally new to contribute.’’
17. [Translator’s note: Lettres de cachet were warrants issued by the throne during the ancien régime under which a person could be imprisoned indefinitely, and without specific cause.]
18. Foucault, ‘‘Lives of Infamous Men,’’ 158. This text first appeared in 1977, but the anthology it was to preface was not published, and Foucault would not include this text when, together with Arlette Farge in 1982, he published a collection of lettres de cachet from the archives of the Bastille entitled Le Désordre des familles.
19. Deleuze, Negotiations, 106.
20. I am citing from the original transcript of Foucault’s 1978 interview with Ducio Trombadori.
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21. Foucault,
‘‘What Is Critique?,’’ 386.
22. Ibid., 386. See Eribon, Michel Foucault et ses contemporains, 66–67.
23. ‘‘What I would like to speak to you about is the critical stance as a general virtue,’’ he said at the beginning of his lecture (‘‘What Is Critique?,’’ 383; translation modified). On critique as ethos, see Foucault, ‘‘What Is Enlightenment?,’’ 303–19.
24. On ‘‘intransigence,’’ see Foucault, ‘‘So It Is Important to Think?’’
25. ‘‘When people follow Foucault, when they’re fascinated by him, it’s because they’re doing something with him, in their own work, in their own independent lives. It’s not just a question of intellectual understanding or agreement, but of intensity, resonance, musical harmony.’’ Deleuze, Negotiations, 86 .
26. Among the most notable examples of this, we might mention the sentence in which David Halperin identifies with Foucault as a ‘‘gay intellectual’’—understood both as a political position and as a condition of social vulnerability: ‘‘Michel Foucault, c’est moi.’’ See Halperin, Saint Foucault, 8. See also, in an entirely di√erent perspective, the very beautiful book in which Maria Inés Garcia Canal attempts to grasp the e√ects her reading of Foucault had on her life, her thought, and her political commitment: El loco, el guerrero, el artista.
27. Foucault, ‘‘La Force de fuir,’’ 2:401–5.
28. Foucault, Discipline and Punish. Gilles Deleuze is quite right to point out that for Foucault the prison played the role of an analogical model. (See Deleuze,
‘‘Postscript on Control Societies,’’ in Negotiations, 177.)
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