The allegation can be found in a book published two months ago entitled "Mon dictionnaire du Bullshit". There the French economist and publicist Guy Sorman writes that the philosopher Michel Foucault, who died in 1984, bought children and adolescents for sexual services in Sidi Bou Saïd, Tunisia at the end of the 1960s. With some delay, this passage caught on in the feature sections and social networks. A tremendous suspicion finally hovers over one of the best-known French intellectuals, who achieved worldwide impact - and six years ago even as a modern classic in the Bibliothèque de la Pléiade.
It's no secret that literary greats on the Parisian scene sought sexual freedom in Africa.
Despite all the erotic enthusiasm that can still be felt in André Gide or later in Roland Barthes' notes, there have always been no symmetrical relationships.
Some had the money, for others it was at least also, for many probably mainly a source of income.
Foucault's friend Barthes frankly and sadly stated that as an aging man you have to pay for sex with younger men.
It is this background that raises suspicions and raises the question of how young the sexual partners might have been.
Is that about the work?
When inquiries began, Guy Sorman did not provide any solid evidence for his accusation, but instead led a walk with Foucault into the field, where boys between the ages of eight and ten would have jumped around the two of them and shouted “Take me!” To which they Foucault I ordered the "usual place" for the evening. And others quickly point to the fact that in later years Foucault lived out his homosexuality quite excessively in relevant clubs; or the open letter he signed with many others and published in “Le Monde” in 1977 for a uniform minimum age for consensual sex.
It does not become evidence of child abuse. Nevertheless, Sorman put it, the described scene should suffice to establish whether an author was a bastard or not, and it was important to know that. The obvious question is: maybe, but for what exactly? At least not for a judgment on this author's work. What you have to complain about in his thoughts, you have to show in the text and not organize yourself via the detour of a posthumous judgment about the lifestyle of its author.
And in extremis, the uncomfortable thought should not be set aside that, in one respect or another, morally disavowed authors can still be of importance. Even if, because the rumor circulated by Sorman could not be verified, it does not have to be brought up to Foucault.