The philosopher Michel Foucault accused of having abused children in Tunisia

Michel Foucault, one of the most important philosophers of the twentieth century, was accused of being a pedophile by a French colleague, after telling an anecdote which he claims he had sex with Arab children while he was living in Tunisia at the end of the 1960s.

French economist, journalist, philosopher and author Guy Sorman written in a passage from his new book, My shit dictionary, that había visitado a Foucault con un grupo de amigos en un viaje de vacaciones de Semana Santa al pueblo de Sidi Bou Said, cerca de Túnez, donde vivía el filósofo in 1969. Y allí “los niños pequeños corrían detrás de Foucault diciendo ‘¿ and me? ? take me, take me ””, he recalls in an interview with the British newspaper The Sunday Times.

“They were eight, nine, ten, I threw money at them and said, ‘Meet at ten in the evening at the usual place.’ According to Sorman, the place was the local cemetery: “There I made love on the tombstones with the boys. The issue of consent was not even raised ”.

The author also regretted not having lodged a complaint at the time, with the police or the press, while assuring that he was not the only one to be aware of this behavior and that he was protected by its status under a colonialist gaze.

“There were journalists present on this trip, there were a lot of witnesses, but nobody made stories like that at the time. Foucault was the philosopher king. It’s like a god in France ”.

“Foucault would not have dared to do that in France”, he added, comparing him to Paul Gauguin, the impressionist painter who had sex with minors whom he painted in Tahiti, and Andre Gide, a novelist who in many passages of his diary borders on pedophilia and who is accused of similar behavior in Africa. “There is a colonial dimension to this. White imperialism ”.

And he continued: “France is not yet a democracy, we have had the revolution, we have proclaimed a republic, but there is still an aristocracy, it is the intelligentsia, and it has a special status. Anything will do. Now the world is suddenly changing. ”

On the other hand, he commented that Foucault should not be “canceled”: “I have great admiration for his work, I do not invite anyone to burn his books, but simply to understand the truth about him and how he and some of them philosophers used their arguments to justify their passions and desires, ”he said. “He thought his arguments allowed him to do what he wanted.”

Foucault, who died in 1984 at the age of 57, was one of the first famous intellectuals of the twentieth century, author of still valid works such as “Attention and punish“, “Microphysics of power”And the tomes of History of sexuality. Additionally, he is remembered for signing a petition in 1977 to legalize sex with 13-year-olds.

In his best-known biography, Michel Foucault’s passion (1993), James miller describes his interest in gay and sadomasochistic toilets in America, but does not mention his sexual experiences in Tunisia.

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