Reckoning with Foucault’s alleged sexual abuse of boys in Tunisia

I am not calling for Foucault to be ‘cancelled’, but we need to address recent reports about his predatory behaviour in Tunisia.

“Tunisia, for me, represented in some ways the chance to reinsert myself in the political debate. It wasn’t May of ’68 in France that changed me; it was March of ’68, in a third-world country.” This is how Michel Foucault, a French philosopher, described his time in Tunisia, a country that welcomed him and offered him his first academic teaching position at the University of Tunis. Foucault, the public figure and famous theorist of power and sexuality, was indebted to Tunisia for his early transformative experiences. He was enthralled by the intensity of the intellectual debates he took part in, and the radicalism of political activism against dehumanisation he witnessed during his stay in Tunis in the late 1960s. During the same time, Foucault, the private figure, allegedly sexually abused Tunisian prepubescent children.