Some sort of marvelous transgression
I would have left this self-humiliation alone but then she had to throw in a jab at “terfs” so…I couldn’t.
Early this year? Uh………..
But she goes on.
Bad faith yourself you ignorant hack.
Many many people inform her of her error.
Unless that “one ugly facet” is disagreeing with trans dogma. Then it doesn’t matter whether the topic is related to trans issues, this person’s work must be expunged from the public record and the person must not be allowed to speak on any topic anywhere ever again.
If it weren’t for that absolutist stance, then I’d be at least somewhat sympathetic with the point. There is a lot of wrestling with artists and scientists and political figures who have done great and important things, but who had also done or said some terrible things in their lives. Foucault can’t possibly be the first such moral conundrum for Penny. Surely by now she understands there’s something between excusing the “marvelous transgression” and discarding someone’s entire body of work because of it?
Laurie P should not try to read big difficult books with big difficult theories. She is basically a reporter (and even a good one) trying to be a cultural analyst without the intellectual background or the brain.
It was absolutely common knowledge, and more or less the whole point of his work – that what was considered a transgression was arbitrary, a simple reflection of power relations.
I think part of it is whether or not this is an example of the logical consequences of the theory being espoused, of the theory being put into practice. Whether or not Martin Luther King Jr. was unfaithful to his wife has no bearing on the arguments he made against segregation and racism. That Hitler was a racist is foundational to National Socialism. It is his “body of work.” The question seems to be whether the same thing can be said of Foucault’s paedophilia? Is it an example of Queer Theory being put into practice (beyond its immediate use as a handy excuse and rational in his own circumstances)?
There are rumors and then there is an accusation. The rumors are like the tweet you cite about Foucault being a pedophile and this being common knowledge since at least the 90s. Some of the tweets say since the 70s. These seem to be unsubstantiated.
The accusation this year comes from a French-American philosopher name Guy Sorman. He accused Foucault of buying sex from 8 to 10 year old boys in Tunisia and having sexual relations with them in a cemetary. Sorman claimed to have witnessed Foucault paying the boys. The problem is that Guy Sorman has not produced any evidence, and for those that are cynical made the accusation while promoting his new book Mon Dictionnaire du Bullshit.