This week, Guy Sormon, the French-American professor and philosopher, caused shock waves among intellectuals worldwide, claiming that the French philosopher Michel Foucault was a pedophile and a rapist. According to Sormon, he witnessed Foucauld, who died in 1984 aged 57, having sex with Arab children while living in Tunisia in the late 1960s. Sormon's allegations quickly became a hot topic.
Following his claims, a 1977 petition to the French parliament calling for the decriminalization of sex between adults and children came to people's attention. The petition was signed by Foucauld and list of prominent intellectuals, including Jean-Paul Sartre, Jacques Derrida, Louis Althusser, Roland Barthes, Simone de Beauvoir and Gilles Deleuze. This information added more fuel to the controversy around Sormon's allegations.
So, is it time to cancel Foucault too?
What if – in today's history revisionism hunger – we begin rushing to cancel everything that doesn't reflect society's current spirit?
For centuries, from ancient Greece to modern times, the elite enjoyed a very liberal lifestyle while the dregs lived under a conservative order. The very same ruling class that dictated the rules didn't have to abide by them. Only the regs had to. To me, it's a clear case of a double standard.
We could go on and on about this social arrangement, but this got me thinking of how much we, regular people, don't help fuel this social order too?
People complain about the wealthy's privileges; once they have climbed up the social ladder, they quickly begin to emulate the same behavior they had called it out before. It might be their way of showing to the world that they have arrived. Others say that it is all about empowerment.
But I wonder if a society ruled by principles that at the same time celebrate privilege isn't systematizing double standards as a norm?
Perhaps protected by the privileges that come with being part of an intellectual elite, Foucauld didn't think the bourgeoisie middle-class rules would apply to him. In fairness, he wasn't afraid of professing his beliefs out in the open, like in 1977's petition.
I think we can't look at this without looking deeper into their historical and personal context. But most of all, we can't look at it without first looking at ourselves in the mirror.
Once I heard that principles only matter when they're inconvenient. We can't pick and choose what we wanna say and what we wanna do at our convenience. Or we might be at risk of having to cancel ourselves someday too.