Saint Foucault : Towards a Gay Hagiography

by David M. Halperin

"My work has had nothing to do with gay liberation," Michel Foucault reportedly told an admirer in 1975. And indeed there is scarcely more than a passing mention of homosexuality in Foucault's scholarly writings. So why has Foucault, who died of AIDS in 1984, become a powerful source of both personal and political inspiration to an entire generation of gay activists? And why have his political philosophy and his personal life recently come under such withering, normalizing scrutiny by commentators as diverse as Camille Paglia, Richard Mohr, Bruce Bawer, Roger Kimball, and biographer James Miller? David M. Halperin's Saint Foucault is an uncompromising and impassioned defense of the late French philosopher and historian as a galvanizing thinker whose career as a theorist and activist will continue to serve as a model for other gay intellectuals, activists, and scholars. A close reading of both Foucault and the increasing attacks on his life and work, it explains why straight liberals so often find in Foucault only counsels of despair on the subject of politics, whereas gay activists look to him not only for intellectual inspiration but also for a compelling example of political resistance. Halperin rescues Foucault from the endless nature-versus-nurture debate over the origins of homosexuality ("On this question I have absolutely nothing to say," Foucault himself once remarked) and argues that Foucault's decision to treat sexuality not as a biological or psychological drive but as an effect of discourse, as the product of modern systems of knowledge and power, represents a crucial political breakthrough for lesbians and gay men. Halperin explains how Foucault's radical vision of homosexuality as a strategic opportunity for self-transformation anticipated the new anti-assimilationist, anti-essentialist brand of sexual identity politics practiced by contemporary direct-action groups such as ACT UP. Halperin also offers the first synthetic account of Foucault's thinking about gay sex and the future of the lesbian and gay movement, as well as an up-to-the-minute summary of the most recent work in queer theory. "Where there is power, there is resistance," Michel Foucault wrote in The History of Sexuality, Volume I. Erudite, biting, and surprisingly moving, Saint Foucault represents Halperin's own resistance to what he views as the blatant and systematic misrepresentation of a crucial intellectual figure, a misrepresentation he sees as dramatic evidence of the continuing personal, professional, and scholarly vulnerability of all gay activists and intellectuals in the age of AIDS.

Genres: Philosophy, Queer, Theory, Nonfiction, LGBT, Queer Studies, Academic

256 pages, Paperback

First published June 15, 1995

Reviews

[simon · Rating 2 out of 5]

i liked this book slightly more before i learned more about david halpern's current work. before i heard a story from my classmate about when he said that eve sedgwick, queen of queer theory, was "a straight woman who likes it up the ass" and didn't have a right to write queer scholarship. fucker.

i learned more about foucault than i ever had before, which i appreciate. and halperin seems to be obsessed with ACT UP, though he completely erases the presence of dykes and other women in the movement, a practice he seems privy to in a large amount of his scholarship. he also writes about how foucault saw fist-fucking as queer liberation, which i appreciate - though he does so from an outsider, rather than a participant.

i'm trying to write this review about the book and not just about halperin, who recently was the keynote speaker at a conference my queer theory classmates put on at UW-Milwaukee. before they met him, they described him as a "bitchy old queen," and not in a good way. after he left, they just hated him because he was completely ungracious, unkind and misogynist.

'hagiography' means to write the life of a saint, and halperin surely did this with his do-no-wrong praise for foucault and his intertwining of his life practices and his philosophy/scholarship. like halperin, i am dedicated to this model of life praxis, and i appreciate his defense of this model. but why such an ass hole?

[Robert · Rating 5 out of 5]

this is an important text on both an academic's love of foucault and foucault's articulation of 'friendship as a way of life' and what i would say, following foucault, a queer aesthetics-as-ethics of existence, as a way of stitching together a 'queer life,' which is also an artful, aesthetic life. this is not just a text on an important thinker (both foucault and halprin), but also an important text on the importance of thinking, writing, living, learning, and being-with/for others, other-wise.
i decided to re-read this text while reading halprin's new text: How to Be Gay -- which is how one may variously become (which does not end) queer. indeed, being gay (or, better, queer) is NOT isomorphic with having same-sex eroticisms, desires, or performing acts.
haprin is an important figure in the thinking of sexuality and gender -- for over 20+ years now.

[Andrew Shaffer · Rating 4 out of 5]

Overall, an excellent book. It’s divided into two main sections, preceded by a short introduction. The first section is on the queer politics practiced and advocated by Foucault, however much of it applies to the practice and theorization of queer politics in general. The second section largely concerns itself with the various biographies written about Foucault and, while enlightening, probably wouldn’t be of interest to a general audience.

After reading the book, I have a much greater appreciate for Foucault’s work, and I feel I have a stronger understanding of his ideas. Only having been previously exposed to snippets of various books and articles by Foucault, I had a basic comprehension of his vocabulary and thought, however Halperin’s book helped me to dive much deeper into Foucault’s mind and to see his ideas in the greater context of his life.

One of the strongest sections came from pages 29-35 as Halperin discussed various angles of the closet at some length. He does an excellent job of synthesizing various theorizations on the closet, as well as summarizing the common reactions to the closet. The other section worth reading on its own comes on page 62, when Halperin defines the positionality of the queer and defines it in opposition to homosexuality or sexuality in general.

The book is largely a response to critics of Foucault's life (his sexual practices, in particular), and some of the author's references are difficult to follow for those who have not kept up with these critiques, however the book will be of interest to anyone concerned about the marginalization of those who practice non-normative sexual practices.

[olinka malinka · Rating 5 out of 5]

Brillant. Et puis ça fait toujours plaisir de lire l'éloge de Foucault.

[C. B. · Rating 5 out of 5]

As others have said, this is good just generally as a lucid perspective on Foucault's thought. But the unique appeal of this book is Halperin's astonishingly incisive and nuanced analysis of other people's analyses of Foucault. As a fan, it was sad for me to read his convincing argument about Edward Said's sub-textual homophobia when writing about Foucault, but I think he's completely right. So much writing on Foucault at the time Halperin was writing was inundated with prejudice. The way Halperin tears apart Jim Miller's The Passion of Michel Foucault is exhilarating... I found myself smiling at Halperin's own humourous pseudo-psychosexual analysis of Miller. There's so much life to this book, and it's a beautiful defence of idolisation.

[Tim · Rating 4 out of 5]

I've never read any actual Foucault, so I appreciated this brief and entertaining intro to both his ideas and (more importantly) his relevance. Halperin makes a good case for why Foucault's ideas are actually interesting, subversive, and why queer activists like ACT-UP have adopted him as their patron saint. Plus it is an enjoyable read, often funny, sarcastic, and never (too) inscrutable.

[Jared Perovic · Rating 5 out of 5]

David M. Halperin is a literary theorist from the United States, whose work Saint=Foucault: Towards A Gay Hagiography (1995) amounts to the political, rather than moral worship.

"So let me make it official. I may not have worshiped Foucault at the time I wrote One Hundred Years of Homosexuality, but I do worship him now. As far as I'm concerned, the guy was a fucking saint." (page 6)

The object of veneration Halperin identifies with "Foucault's acute and constantly revised understanding of his own social location," exuding a radical politics of "unsystematic but effective modes of resistance" (7).

Against knowledgeable authorities, Halperin justifies his sympathy for Foucault on the basis of sharing a vulnerable social position as gay men.

"If I share nothing else with Foucault, would I do share with him is the problem of how, as a gay man, an academic, and a public intellectual, I can acquire and maintain the authority to speak, to be heard, and to be taken seriously without denying or bracketing my gayness. It's not just a matter of being publicly or visibly out; it's a matter of being able to devise and to preserve a positive, undemonized connection between my gayness and my scholarly or critical authority. That problem of authorization, to be sure, presents itself in the most acute form only to otherwise socially accredited gay men of the professional classes, but it dramatizes the more general social and discursive predicament of lesbians and gay men in a world where a claimed homosexual identity operates as an instant disqualification, exposes you to accusations of pathology and partisanship (even by other gay men, as we have seen), and grants everyone else and absolute epistemological privilege over you. What Foucault and I have in common, in short, is our vexed and escapable relation to the sexual politics of truth." (8)

Unequal privilege and "instant disqualification" are symptomatic for:
"the kind of moral panic that can be unleashed in the public mind by the presence of socially recognized authority figures who are openly, visibly gay and who work to promote lesbian/gay political issues within their own institutions." (12-13)

Halperin determines the meaning of coming out as a shifting social position of openness.

"The very real vulnerability which, until that moment, I hadn't realized I shared with all other lesbian and gay people in our society, a vulnerability I foolishly thought I had managed to escape by coming out. The point of coming out, I had thought, was precisely to deprive other people of the privilege knowingness about me and my sexuality; coming out had seems to me to furnish a means of seizing the initiative from them, a means of claiming back from them a certain interpretive authority over the meaning of my words and actions. As I discovered to my cost, however, it turns out that if you are known to be lesbian or gay you're very openness, far from preempting malicious gossip about your sexuality, simply exposes you to the possibility that, no matter what you actually do, people can say absolutely whatever they like about you in the well-grounded confidence that it will be credited. (And since there is very little you can do about it, we might as well not try to ingratiate yourself by means of "good behavior.")" (13)

On Power and Resistance
Power is a relation (16). From below, something always escapes:
"Foucault doesn't deny the reality of domination, in other words; what he denies is that domination is the whole story there is to tell when it comes to power. And Foucault even asserts -- famously -- that "power comes from below."" (17)

"Power is therefore not opposed to freedom. And freedom, correspondingly, is not freedom from power -- it is not a privileged zone outside power, unconstrained by power --but a potentiality internal to power, even an effect of power. Power, then, is everywhere. Resistance to power takes place from within power [...] What escapes from relations of power -- and something always does escape, according to Foucault -- does not escape from The reach of power to a place outside power, but represents the limit of power, its reversal or rebound. The aim of an oppositional politics is therefore not liberation but resistance." (17-18)

"What shocked traditional liberals about Foucault's dictum that power is everywhere, then, is the dark vision of modernity, of the liberal state, and of progressive, Enlightenment-era values (such as freedom, truth, and rationality) that it expresses. For according to Foucault's analysis, civil society, scientific research, intellectual activity, and personal life are not in fact free zones from which power has progressively retreated since the enlightenment but colonized spaces into which it has steadily expanded, proliferated, and diffuse itself." (19)

Halperin targets the diffusion of racist and authoritarian ideologies in "modern liberal societies," where, "in the allegedly sacrosanct private sphere of personal freedom which they now have it, because within that sphere they freely and spontaneously police both their own conduct and the conduct of others [...]" (19)

Modern liberalization has not entailed a liberation from power, but the multiplication of power and its deeper internalization. Biopolitics will characterize the liberal state with an element of seeping into the deepest spheres of private life, where biopower is increasingly capillary.

"Modern liberalism has eliminated certain modes of domination only to produce many others (which do not present themselves as modes of domination and are all the more difficult to challenge or oppose); it has championed and ethic and an ideal of personal freedom while making the exercise of that freedom conditional upon personal submission to new and insidious forms of authority, to ever more deeply internalized mechanisms of constraint." (19)

Halperin delineates the inner force of "modern liberal societies" (19). For the biological meaning of "bio-power," Halperin determines along legal-political lines of "the state's administration of the technology for producing and regulating life." (28) The technological aspect of biopower involves a wide array of professional expertise (28).

Halperin raises the question, what did gay activists see in Foucault? (27)

"The reason," Halperin writes, "is that "truth" confers power on those who can claim access to it: it licenses "experts" to describe and objectify people's lives, especially the lives of those who, for whatever reason, happen to find themselves most fully exposed to the operations of disciplinary power. " (185).

The figure of the expert is always a subject of knowledge, an official image of social order. The status of expertness depends on the appearance of ambiguity. Far from being neutral, however, intellectuals are implicitly political since they are preconsciously interested in maintaining the coherence of a privileged knowledge of experts. Scientific discourse is another territoriality of privileged knowledge.

"And it licenses such experts to write without every having to answer /to/ the subjects of their descriptions /for/ the consequences of those descriptions, because their privileged access to trust enables their power to manifest itself entirely in the use of a legitimate authority that has no need of further justification." (Halperin, p. 185)

Armed with Foucault for an influence, Halperin narrates a direct struggle of power/knowledge during the 1980s when gay and lesbian activism militates against "monopolies of professional expertise:"

"AIDs activism has taken its distinctive (and indicatively modern) shape from the social and institutional embodiments of the power/knowledge nexus with which it has had to struggle. In order to be effective, AIDS activism has had to challenge traditional modes of authorizing and legitimating power. It has had to find ways of breaking down monopolies of professional expertise, ways of democratizing knowledge, and ways of credentializing the disempowered so that they can intervene in the medical and governmental administration of the epidemic." (28)

Power and knowledge have each other and no other "modes of authorizing and legitimating."

Halperin admires Foucault for the sake "unsystematic but effective modes of resistance" (7) down to the details of life: "Foucault's History of Sexuality, Volume I, had already treated the body as a site of political struggle."

"AIDS activism has thereby accelerated a multiplication of the sites of political contestation beyond such traditional arenas the electoral process, the power structure, and the industrial economy, to immigration policy, public health policy (including such matters as anonymous HIV-antibody testing and needle exchange), the practice of epidemiology and clinical medicine (right down to the determination of optimum dosage levels for new drugs), the conduct of scientific research (the elimination of placebo trials in experiments on human subjects), the operation of the insurance and pharmaceutical industries, the role of the media in representing the epidemic, the decisions of rent-control boards, the legal definition of "family," and ultimately the public and the private administration of the body and its pleasures. Foucault's History of Sexuality, Volume I, had already treated the body as a site of political struggle." (28)

In France, Foucault led the Groupe d'Information sur les Prisons (GIP) which became an influential force within the anti-prison movement for prisoners rights. From the first pamphlet:
"The GIP does not propose to speak in the name of the prisoners in various prisons: it proposes, on the contrary, to provide them with the possibility of speaking themselves and telling what goes on in prisons. The GIP does not have reformist goals; we do not dream of some ideal prison: we hope that prisoners may be able to say what it is that is intolerable for them in the system of penal repression. We have to disseminate as quickly and widely as possible the revelations that the prisoners themselves make [...]" (Quoted in Halperin, page 55)

"we do not dream of some ideal prison" (quoted in Eribon)
"The GIP does not have reformist goals," but instead works by "unifying" "the political battle and the legal battle, into one and the same struggle." (55)

Foucault joined the Communist Party of France in 1950 and he quit three years later (156). And he became a Maoist in 1969. In 1986, Foucault drove to Warsaw to help Solidarnosc (55). Foucault has intense political shifts at the speed of politics. Halperin pulls from an edition of Libération, September 24, 1975, describing Foucault as a political militant.

"the fifty-year-old philosopher was regularly engaging in street battles with the police, fighting at sufficiently close quarters to sustain a variety of serious physical injuries - including, on at least one occasion, a broken rib." [Quoting Foucault:] "It is the cop's job to use physical force," so "anyone who opposes cops must not, therefore, let them maintain the hypocrisy of disguising this force behind orders that have to be immediately obeyed." (quoted in Halperin, page 23)

In a valuable footnote, Halperin criticizes Mohr for equivocating social construction with determinism (187-188).

[astrid · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really good! While this may not be the most interesting book for those who aren't into queer theory/broadly intrigued by Foucault's thought, biography, and the scholarship around him, personally, I found it very readable. The first essay predominantly discusses queer politics, the possibilities for fashioning new ways of being through queer sexual practices and living, and specifically how Foucault can be considered to have influenced thought in these areas despite not having been a 'queer theorist' himself or somebody that necessarily discussed queerness extensively outside of the context of the LGBT press. Harder to understand, but perhaps more compelling and useful for a wider audience than the second essay, which specifically looks at 3 biographical works of Foucault and what they fail/succeed in doing. More generic interest can be derived from the implications for the biographies of queer people at large, and the way that 'perversity' labels are used to delegitimise those thinkers whose ideas are not compliant with those of the biographer.


"To be gay is to be in a state of becoming... the point is not to be homosexual, but to keep working persistently at being gay... to place oneself in a dimension where the sexual choices one makes are present and have their effects on the ensemble of our life... [T]hese sexual choices ought to be at the same time creators of ways of life. To be gay signifies that these choices diffuse themselves across the entire life; it is also a certain manner of refusing the modes of life offered; it is to make a sexual choice into the impetus for a change of existence."

[Grant Hartley · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ugh, fine. I'll read Foucault.

[Léo · Rating 4 out of 5]

Très bien très cool

[Marcello · Rating 5 out of 5]

Saint Foucault is the best book in order to understand the main aspects of the queer discourse.
I read for the first time Saint Foucault when I tried to figure out the true meaning of the queer theory in opposition to the so called "gay and lesbian tradition". David Halperin actually read Foucault with passion, and his personal feeling characterizes every single line of the first essay. The presence and the influence of Foucault in every single shape of the queer studies can be easily discovered in every single author. But, as it seems, Halperin is the only scholar who actually tried to explain why and when Foucalt became so important for the new generation of theorists. This book makes you look at the lgbt politics in a completely different way.
I honestly gave up reading the second chapter of the book, based on the biographies written on Foucault. The second chapter sounds a bit boring, the language is completely different compared to the way Halperin explains Foucault in the first section. Way less enjoyable.

[S. · Rating 3 out of 5]

Good...sometimes wrong, but good.

[epeesh · Rating 5 out of 5]

很喜欢对queer ethics的讨论，said exactly what I thought. 不过我们课上一个做queer literature的phd第一年男生说他非常不喜欢这本书，不过没展开具体说，不知道是因为我queer theory读的不够多所以我们态度不一样，还是因为我们在不同的文化语境下思考queer ethics所以态度不同。Halperin文笔真的很好，写的也带有感情，我特别喜欢里面对于sm还有拳交的讨论，关于在sm这样的预设权力关系中如何negotiate权力，如何通过pleasure来重构自我和他者的关系。当时读的时候脑子里一直是Wong Ping的热烈地亲亲爹地。不过这本书唯一让我比较疑惑的点是我很难想象如何在东亚语境下理解Halperin对福柯的解读。

[Emiliano · Rating 5 out of 5]

I didn't really think that a book analyzing the political context of the works of Michel Foucault would make me so emotional. An excellent demonstration of Foucauldian thought and probably a must-read if you're interested in Foucault and queer politics. Halperin has clear prose and a sharp tongue. Wholly defiant. I would like to read it again with a pencil in hand. Really really good.

[Gustavo Schott · Rating 5 out of 5]

Un libro que ayuda a separar al sujeto del autor y al mismo tiempo de su obra, no solo en cuanto se trata de Foucault sino de todos aquellos sujetos que han sido “cancelados” últimamente desde lo políticamente correcto.

[Nicole · Rating 3 out of 5]

In the wise words of a review from 10 years ago, “good, sometimes wrong, but good.” In better hands this would be even better. But I cannot separate the art from the artist, and Halperin hates women!!!

[Cooper · Rating 5 out of 5]

4.5

[Mikayla · Rating 5 out of 5]

fun. i’m now cautiously excited for history of sexuality, vol. 1.

[Lilou Grn]

Based

[Rome · Rating 4 out of 5]

i think its fun when nonfiction texts drop fuck into their sentences. this was SO interesting and i love the approach it takes to queer theory/politics/life. it really brought me back to the word queer and hiw it SHOULD be for years ive been thinking about a phenomenon i like to refer to as the buzzfeed-ification of queerness where queer gets used as this nebulous concept that somehow makes straight people more comfortable when thats the very antithesis of what queerness should be. i am not interested in the comfort of cishet people in fact i hope that my identity upsets them and makes them uncomfortable to force them to reevaluate their preconceptions about gender and sexuality! in a world thats so focused on gaining acceptance from corporations that see lgbt people as walking dollar signs this was such a refreshing read.

[Spicy T AKA Mr. Tea · Rating 4 out of 5]

I picked this up a few months ago and got really engaged with it. I then left it at my parents house. Found it and finished it. It is two essays, the first looking at the politics of Foucault's identidty related to his writing, activism, and sexuality. Halperin is really engaging and the essay went really quickly. The second essay is criticism of biographers of Foucault's who wrote in the authoritative voice circumscribing and controlling who Foucault was and what he did in complete opposition to the way he lived his life. Sharp, fierce, fun, and a pleasure to read, I do recommend.

[LT · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you want to read part of the book, I recommend the first major chapter. Called "The Queer Politics of Michel Foucault," it looks at the relevance of Foucault and his writings for queer folks, particular ACT UP activists in the 90s. The book feels relevant, though the writing itself is sometimes a bit wandering.

[Eamon · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was really looking forward to this book and it turned out to be a pretty bland introduction to queer theory and Foucault. Halperin is a better scholar and Foucault canonization is a better subject than this book suggests

[X108x · Rating 1 out of 5]

what a tool.

[ael · Rating 5 out of 5]

So much better than I expected!

[Nick Ramsey · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is certainly the most fun book I've read in years.