NONFICTION - Aug. 13, 1995

SAINT FOUCAULT: Toward a Gay Hagiography by David M. Halperin (Oxford University Press: $19.95; 237 pp.). Considering that Michel Foucault, though homosexual himself, once said his work had “nothing to do with gay liberation,” it might seem odd that an out-of-the-closet academic should publish a ringing defense of Foucault’s life and thought, even entitling the book after Sartre’s apologia for Jean Genet. The late French philosopher’s apparent lack of interest in homosexuality is deceptive, however, for Foucault’s obsessive concern with the unconventional, the abnormal, the other, necessarily included homosexuality; as he asked in the “History of Sexuality,” “What is philosophy today if it does not consist not in legitimating what one already knows but in undertaking to know how and to what extent it might be possible to think differently?” David M. Halperin, a literature professor at M.I.T., found in Foucault’s work a way to transcend the stigma that generally adheres to minority viewpoints, to overcome the strategies by which society marginalizes those outside the norm, and the result is an exegesis in which the author early and proudly proclaims “Michel Foucault, c’est moi. “ 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. Foucault might not be happy with Halperin’s use of his thought--it’s not certain the philosopher envisioned a future that was “definitely queer”--but he would no doubt be pleased to see some of his ideas --that authority is successful “proportional to its ability to hide its own mechanisms,” that victims of established power must “defend ourselves so well that the institutions will be forced to reform themselves”--made relevant once more.