Re: Foucault and Bathouses

At 05:55 PM 4/17/98 -0500, m wrote:
>>At 02:00 PM 4/17/98 -0500, Dave wrote:
>>'We are inventing new pleasures beyond sex,'
>>Foucault told an interviewer--in this particular case, sex
>>as murder."

>Dave, isn't it necessary to tell us exactly where *one* of those many lines
>quoted came from--I'll let you guess which one stands out a bit from the
>rest. And you might consider the tabloid quality of Miller's biography, of
>which Halperin wrote extensively in _Saint Foucault_. -m.

Dueling biographies!

The text that I quoted came from the book "The Idea of Decline
in Western History." The quotes all came from the biography
"The Passion of Michael Foucault." Apparently much of this
book is based on interviews conducted by the author. I do
not have the book and it is out of print...but I am going to
try to find a copy. I was not aware that Miller's biography was
controversial.

You indicate that Miller's biography is of tabloid quality.
You seem be saying that it is also false. Do you think that
the quotes attributed to Foucault are lies? It is one thing
to be a poor writer or to be mistaken and quite another
to purposely write a false biography. What would Miller's
motivation for this be?

You say that you will let me guess which quote stands out from
the rest. I think that you may have misread what I provided
based on my poor formatting. It was attributed that Foucault
said "We are inventing new pleasures beyond sex." That
seems uncontroversial. The next part is "in this particular
case, sex as murder." This was not meant to be attributed to
Foucault or Miller. These were the words of Arthur Herman.

In the past, I have found a few books which were purposely
meant to mislead. This is always a disappointing but educating
experience. So I intend to follow up on this. According
to Amazon.com there are about 8 biographies of Foucault.
This does not include "Saint Foucault: Towards a Gay
Hagiography." Are there other biographies which you or
Halperin find suspect?

Thanks for the information.

Dave

"Give me knowledge, so I may have kindness for all."
- Sioux proverb


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