By Didier Eribon (translated by Betsy Wing)
1991 Harvard University Press
374 pages
The Passion of Michel Foucault
By James Miller
2000 Harvard University Press
492 pages
The repertoire of literature on this French philosopher with a cult-like following can be said to be endless, as it seems is the amount of literature by him. In addition to his own books, there are interviews, articles, newspaper articles, letters and not to mention the famous Collège de France lectures that are still being transcribed and translated for all Foucault lovers.
Didier Eribon's Michel Foucault was the first biography I have read on one of the defining thinkers of the last century, and it was not a disappointment. Work on the biography clearly began not soon after Foucault's death. Owing to the endless of interviews with Foucault's friends and peers in the 1980s (Yves Montand, Gilles Deleuze, etc.), many of whom are now deceased, it is a work pieced together from various exceptional accounts of those close to Foucault himself. While Eribon's personal proximity to Foucault as well as his writing so soon after his death certainly tempers his account, there are several anecdotes and details that bring Foucault to life. One gets the strong impression of how his work was very much a part of his life, that he wrote from and was inspired by the experience of his own life. While it is known that Foucault was politically active in the 1970s, it may come as a surprise to many to find out the extent of his relentless activism.
Eribon's portrait is of course his own, with its own embellishments and blind-spots. One major shortcoming can be attributed to Eribon's intimacy with Foucault's circle as well as the climate of the time. Eribon is incredibly candid on the subject of Foucault's homosexuality and contraction of HIV/AIDS. While no secret is made of Foucault's homosexuality, the narration steers clear of going into details of how Foucault was infected with HIV or how he lived with it. Something very surprising considering the proximity of sexuality and disease to Foucault in his oeuvre. The finale was nonetheless crushing to read, how the virus gradually overcame his ability to live, and the sadness pervading the account of the end is devastating.
Eribon's omissions are to a degree compensated in James Miller's The Passion of Michel Foucault. In the introduction Miller tells us that Foucault's partner Daneil Defert was displeased with Eribon's volume. Miller doesn't specify the reasons why, and I have not as yet been able to ascertain the accuracy of this assertion, but such a claim certainly serves the interests of Miller's own biography of Foucault, which I found decidedly inferior. The most fascinating pieces of information are derived from secondary sources, often from Eribon's text, and as such it is no surprise that Miller is so brief on Foucault's childhood... Still, Miller does explore HIV/AIDS in much more detail and frankness. Yet, there is something disturbingly un-Foucauldian about this attempt to explain Foucault's disease, to discover its source and describe its symptoms and his experience. No doubt this is also why Foucault was silent on the matter at the time as well, and his cause of death initially hushed from the public.
The gulf between the two biographies on this point serves better to ask more questions rather than answer the obvious ones. In short, it reminds us that biography is a dubious genre. It perceives life, excavates its forms, and seeks to convey that life to others in a coherent timeline. Moreover, biography seeks to make lives explainable. We so much want to understand the times, ours and the past, and the personages that passed through them, and this demands we create narratives. But how do we create narratives that escape the customary history-telling that Foucault spent his life trying to transform, to which Miller arguably succumbs.
Foucault in his study
The Passion of Michel Foucault
By James Miller
2000 Harvard University Press
492 pages
The repertoire of literature on this French philosopher with a cult-like following can be said to be endless, as it seems is the amount of literature by him. In addition to his own books, there are interviews, articles, newspaper articles, letters and not to mention the famous Collège de France lectures that are still being transcribed and translated for all Foucault lovers.
Didier Eribon's Michel Foucault was the first biography I have read on one of the defining thinkers of the last century, and it was not a disappointment. Work on the biography clearly began not soon after Foucault's death. Owing to the endless of interviews with Foucault's friends and peers in the 1980s (Yves Montand, Gilles Deleuze, etc.), many of whom are now deceased, it is a work pieced together from various exceptional accounts of those close to Foucault himself. While Eribon's personal proximity to Foucault as well as his writing so soon after his death certainly tempers his account, there are several anecdotes and details that bring Foucault to life. One gets the strong impression of how his work was very much a part of his life, that he wrote from and was inspired by the experience of his own life. While it is known that Foucault was politically active in the 1970s, it may come as a surprise to many to find out the extent of his relentless activism.
Eribon's portrait is of course his own, with its own embellishments and blind-spots. One major shortcoming can be attributed to Eribon's intimacy with Foucault's circle as well as the climate of the time. Eribon is incredibly candid on the subject of Foucault's homosexuality and contraction of HIV/AIDS. While no secret is made of Foucault's homosexuality, the narration steers clear of going into details of how Foucault was infected with HIV or how he lived with it. Something very surprising considering the proximity of sexuality and disease to Foucault in his oeuvre. The finale was nonetheless crushing to read, how the virus gradually overcame his ability to live, and the sadness pervading the account of the end is devastating.
Eribon's omissions are to a degree compensated in James Miller's The Passion of Michel Foucault. In the introduction Miller tells us that Foucault's partner Daneil Defert was displeased with Eribon's volume. Miller doesn't specify the reasons why, and I have not as yet been able to ascertain the accuracy of this assertion, but such a claim certainly serves the interests of Miller's own biography of Foucault, which I found decidedly inferior. The most fascinating pieces of information are derived from secondary sources, often from Eribon's text, and as such it is no surprise that Miller is so brief on Foucault's childhood... Still, Miller does explore HIV/AIDS in much more detail and frankness. Yet, there is something disturbingly un-Foucauldian about this attempt to explain Foucault's disease, to discover its source and describe its symptoms and his experience. No doubt this is also why Foucault was silent on the matter at the time as well, and his cause of death initially hushed from the public.
The gulf between the two biographies on this point serves better to ask more questions rather than answer the obvious ones. In short, it reminds us that biography is a dubious genre. It perceives life, excavates its forms, and seeks to convey that life to others in a coherent timeline. Moreover, biography seeks to make lives explainable. We so much want to understand the times, ours and the past, and the personages that passed through them, and this demands we create narratives. But how do we create narratives that escape the customary history-telling that Foucault spent his life trying to transform, to which Miller arguably succumbs.
Foucault in his study
3 comments:
i love your blog, nice place. have a merry x. gret from argentina.
thanks! happy holidays to you too!
I agree that Miller's biography is inferior. Actually, I think is preposterous and a good example of bad scholarship. In "Michel Foucault and his Contemporaries" Eribon demolishes Miller's work.
Post a Comment