The Hazards of being a Radical Academic

So I'm reading The Passion of Michel Foucault, by James Miller -- a biography about a philosopher I really didn't get the opportunity to study back in college. Miller portrays Foucault as perpetually obsessed with getting the upper hand on Sartre, desperately vying for academic recognition and lashing out in vehement opposition to the French existentialist's humanistic philosophy of free will and responsibility.

I'm very much amused by Foucault's love-hate relationship with the political radicals he courted -- embracing them in the thick of conflict with the establishment, 'sticking it to the man', so to speak, as when he joins his pupils in a uprising against his fellow colleagues at the university of Vincennes:

[January 23, 1969] That afternoon at Vincennes, Foucault joined a handful of other professors and some five hundred students and militants in occupying the administration building and amphitheater of the new campus, which had opened for classes just days before. The seizure was ostensibly a show of solidarity with students who had occupied the rector's office at the Sorbonne earlier that day . . . but to paraphrase a good slogan from the American student movement in those days, the issue was not the issue. The main point, one suspects, was to explore again, the creative potential of disorder. . . .

The occupation lasted less than a day. The police began their assault on the administration building in the predawn hours of January 24. Those still inside, including Foucault, fought back fureiously. . . . Some surrendered. Others, including Foucult, fled to the roof. There, they set about hurling bricks at the police gathered below. Witnesses recall that Foucault exulted in the moment, gleefully lobbing stones -- although he was careful not to dirty his beautiful black velour suit.

Foucault himself was in a position of authority at the university, having personally been charged with assembling the faculty of the department of philosophy. Of course, hiring the most revolutionary among them wasn't the brightest idea:

. . . Foucault, like Dr. Frankenstein, had to cope with the monster he had created in the form of Vincennes philosophy department. Offering countless coures with titles like "Cultural Revolutions" and "Ideological Struggle," Foucault's department naturally attracted dissidents of every conceivable type. Many of his militant colleagues were swept up in the enthusiasm of the moment: in 1970, Judith Miller, a professed Maoist (and Jacques Lacan's daughter), handed out certifications of course credit in philosophy to total strangers on a bus, explaining afterward in the pages of L'Express that "the university is a figment of capitalist society."

The president of the Republic was not amused. The minister of education fired Miller, and moved quickly to decertify the department as a whole . . . in public, Foucault staunchly defended the program, and also the continuing rebellion in the universities: "We have tried to produce the experience of freedom . . ."

In the end, however, Foucault finds his fraternization with the oppressed student minority counterproductive:

. . . the campus was constantly in an uproar, roiled by strikes, marches, and classroom demonstrations. Following the time-honored radical precept that "my closest friend is my own dangerous enemy," militant students targeted Foucault's lectures for disruption.

His patience wore thin. It was one thing to express solidarity with the left in interviews, or by pitching stones from rooftops -- that was fun! But it was quite another thing to have to put up with, day in and day out, with the insane harangues of the various ultra-left sects that stormed through his classroom.

Foucault had begun to feel, as he once suggested, like Sade at Charenton: staging subversive plays in the asylum, and then having the inmates rise in rebellion against the master himself.

Foucault's solution was simple: He spent as little time as possible on campus . . .

Trying to read (much less understand) Foucault can be daunting, but James Miller provides a decent introduction to the philosopher, flavored with his wry sense of humor. (From what I've heard David Macey's The Lives of Michael Foucault is the better of the two biographies, so I might tackle that somewhere down the line).

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Excerpted from: The Passion of Michael Foucault, by James Miller. Harvard Univ Pr; (April 7, 2000). pp. 176-181.