Saint Foucault: Towards a Gay Hagiography [Paperback]

"Foucault, the worm having turned, needs defenders these days, and Halperin fills the position well, arguing that Foucault provides the radical gay movement with both the philosophical underpinnings and political means with which to resist suppression by mainstream culture."--The Los Angeles Times Book Review
"Saint Foucault is not only the most stimulating analysis to date of 'the Foucault effect': it is a major contribution in its own right to the political effect of Foucault's work. It is required reading for everyone interested in Foucault's thought, in philosophical thought and contemporary politics, as well as everyone interested in Queer Theory and in the ongoing controversies and struggles of the gay movement."--Didier Eribon, author of Michel Foucault and Michel Foucault et ses contemporains
"Without even setting out to do so, David Halperin has provided the most lucid explication of the later work of Foucault that I've read. As if this were not rebuke enough to thos --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

"a provocative read ... Halperin's book is highly engaging." --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

`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? Offering a no-holds barred rebuke to recent criticism of Foucault by Camille Paglia, Richard Mohr, biographer James Miller, and others, Saint Foucault is an uncompromising and impassioned defence of the late French philosopher and historian. A sometimes scathing, sometimes moving exploration of truth and sexual politics, it shows Foucault as a galvanizing thinker who will continue to serve as a model for gay intellectuals and activists.

David M. Halperin is Professor of Literature at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The founding editor of GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies, he is the author of One Hundred Years of Homosexuality, which Outweek called `the single most important contribution to the interpretation of gay history in nearly a decade.'
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.