A friend accused Michel Foucault of having sexually abused me …

French essayist, economist and journalist Guy Sorman accused the philosopher, historian, sociologist and psychologist Michel Foucault, also of French nationality, having “sexually abused children” in the 1960s. As he denounced in two recent interviews, during a visit he made to his friend in Tunisia, he saw how the author of Attention and punish paid children from 8 to 10 years old have sex.

On March 10, after more than 50 years of silence, Sorman decided to recount what had happened on French television, as he went on to promote his recent book, Bullshit dictionary. This week, he raised the issue again in an article in the British press entitled “Michel Foucault sexually abused children in Tunisia”.

According to Sorman in the Sunday Times interview, at Easter 1969, he visited the town of Sidi Bou Said, in Tunis, where Foucault lived. It was then, he said, that he found out his friend was paying local children to have sex. “Young children ran after Foucault, saying “what about me?” ? take me, take me ‘Sorman said.

“They were eight, nine, ten years old, I threw money at them and said, “ I’ll see you at ten in the evening at the usual place ”He added. According to the French essayist’s account, this ‘usual’ place was the local cemetery. “There he made love on the tombstones with the boys. The question of consent was not even raised. raised, ”he said.

During the interview, Sorman was careful to clarify that he would not have been the only one to keep the secret. “There were journalists present during this trip, there were many witnesses“, Tenu. Foucault was the philosopher king. It’s like a god in France,” he apologized for the silence he has maintained since.

Eddy“I would never have dared to do such a thing” in France, said Sorman. “There is a colonial dimension in all of this. White imperialism,” he said of this.

Look at the work “in a different way”

In the previous interview he had given to the France 5 channel, on March 10, the essayist regretted not having said anything at the time and asked viewers not to “cancel” Foucault for what had happened , but to return to his work “from an otherwise.”

“What Foucault did with young children in Tunisia and that I saw myself and reproached myself for not having denounced at the time leads me not to reject Foucault’s work, but to look at it differently. I think there’s a lot of talk about it in the United States, the so-called cancellation culture. No, you have nothing to cancel, but you have to see it with a double look, ”he said on French television.

In a dialogue with The Sunday Times, he also brought up the subject again: “I have great admiration for his work, I am not inviting anyone to burn his books, but simply to understand the truth about him and how he and some of these philosophers have used their arguments to justify their passions and desires.. He thought his arguments allowed him to do what he wanted, ”he concluded.