Michel Foucault , one of the most important philosophers of the 20th century, has been accused of being a pedophile by a French colleague, after recounting an anecdote from which he assures that he would have had sexual relations with Arab children while living in Tunisia, at the end of the 1960s.
The French economist, journalist, philosopher and author Guy Sorman wrote in a passage in his new book, My Shitty Dictionary , that he had visited Foucault with a group of friends on an Easter holiday trip to the town of Sidi Bou Said, near Tunis, where the philosopher lived in 1969. And there “little children ran after Foucault saying ‘what about me? ? Take me, take me, ‘”he recalled in an interview with the British newspaper The Sunday Times .
“They were eight, nine, ten years old, I threw money at them and said: ‘See you at 10 at night in the usual place. According to Sorman the place was the local cemetery: “There I made love on the tombstones with the boys. The question of consent has not even been raised ”.
The author also regretted not making the complaint at that time, to the police or the press, although he assured that he was not the only one to be aware of this behavior and that he was being protected by his status under a colonialist gaze.
“There were journalists present on that trip, there were many witnesses, but no one did stories like that at the time. Foucault was the philosopher king. It is like a god in France ”.
“Foucault would not have dared to do that in France,” he added, and compared him to Paul Gauguin , the impressionist painter who had sex with minors whom he painted in Tahiti, and André Gide , a novelist who in many passages of his diary touch pedophilia and accused of similar behavior in Africa. “There is a colonial dimension to this. White imperialism ”.
And he continued: “France is not yet a democracy, we had the revolution, we proclaimed a republic, but there is still an aristocracy, it is the intelligentsia, and it has had a special status. Anything will do. Now the world is suddenly changing. “
On the other hand, he commented that Foucault should not be “canceled”: “I have great admiration for his work, I am not inviting anyone to burn his books, but simply to understand the truth about him and how he and some of these philosophers used their arguments to justify their passions and desires, ”he said. “He thought his arguments gave him permission to do what he wanted.”
Foucault, who died in 1984 at the age of 57, was one of the first famous intellectuals of the 20th century, author of works that continue to be valid such as ” Watch and Punish “, “Microphysics of Power ” and the volumes of History of Sexuality . In addition, he is remembered for signing a petition in 1977 to legalize sex with 13-year-olds.
In his best-known biography, The Passion of Michel Foucault (1993), James Miller describes his interest in gay and sadomasochistic toilets in the United States, but does not mention his sexual experiences in Tunisia.