Forgetting Foucault: Acts, Identities, and the History of Sexuality

Abstract

WHEN JEAN BAUDRILLARD PUBLISHED HIS INFAMOUS pamphlet, Forget Foucault, in March 1977, intellectual power, as Baudrillard recalled ten years later, enormous. After all, reviews of La volonte' de savoir, first volume of Michel Foucault's Historj of Sexuality (published previous November), had onlyjust started appear. At that time, according Baudrillard's belated attempt in Cool Memories redeem his gaffe and justify himself by portraying his earlier attack on Foucault as having been inspired, improbably, by sentiments of friendship and generosity-Foucault was being persecuted, allegedly, by thousands of disciples and ... sycophants; in such circumstances, Baudrillard virtuously insisted, to forget him was do him service; adulate him was do him disservice.Just how far Baudrillard was willing go in order render this sort of unsolicited service Foucault emerges from another remark of his in same passage: death. Loss of confidence in his own genius.... Leaving sexual aside, loss of immune system is no more than biological transcription of other process.' Foucault was already washed up by time he died, in other words, and AIDS was merely outward and visible sign of his inward, moral and intellectual, decay. Leaving sexual aside, of course. (Baudrillard freely voices elsewhere what he carefully suppresses here about the sexual aspects of AIDS: epidemic, he suggests, might be considered a form of viral catharsis and a remedy against total sexual liberation, which is sometimes more dangerous than an epidemic, because latter always ends. Thus AIDS could be understood as counterforce against total elimination of structure and total unfolding of sexuality. Some such New Age moralism obviously provides subtext of Baudrillard's vengeful remarks in CoolMemories on death of Foucault.) Baudrillard's injunction forget Foucault, which was premature at time it was issued, has since become superfluous. Not that Foucault is neglected; not that his work is ignored. (Quite contrary, in fact.) Rather, Foucault's continuing prestige, and almost ritualistic invocation of his name by academic practitioners