Re: Foucault and Bathouses & St. Foucault

dear all,

_Saint Foucault: Towards a Gay Hagiography_ is a brilliant book and
should be required reading for everyone here, particularly those easily
suceptible to homophobically informed pilosophies & biographies. it
would be nice to see this little imbroglio take a productive turn and
develop into a discussion of halperin's book.

markisha
--who's off to minnesota to be an academic for a few days




>Date: Fri, 17 Apr 1998 19:24:35 -0700
>To: foucault@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
>From: Dave Roberts <dave.roberts@xxxxxxxxxxx>
>Subject: Re: Foucault and Bathouses
>Reply-To: foucault@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
>
>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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