From: "Markisha Greaney" <chimeragrrl-AT-hotmail.com>
Subject: Re: Foucault and Bathouses & St. Foucault
Date: Mon, 20 Apr 1998 09:19:39 PDT


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-AT-lists.village.Virginia.EDU
>From: Dave Roberts <dave.roberts-AT-tracsys.com>
>Subject: Re: Foucault and Bathouses
>Reply-To: foucault-AT-lists.village.Virginia.EDU
>
>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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