http://chronicle.com/weekly/v53/i02/02b01201.htm
From the issue dated September 1, 2006 Foucault the Neohumanist? By RICHARD WOLIN (clip) With acumen and enthusiasm, Foucault boarded the antitotalitarian bandwagon. Since his election to the prestigious Collège de France in 1970, he increasingly cultivated the persona of an intellectual activist. During the 1970s, Foucault justly inherited Sartre's mantle as the prototype of the intellectuel engagé. One of his first forays in this regard consisted of a vigorous defense of the so-called New Philosophers ex-Maoists, such as André Glucksmann, Bernard-Henri Lévy, and Guy Lardreau, who had finally seen the light and reinvented themselves as un-relenting critics of left-wing political despotism. In many respects, the New Philosophers were Foucault's intellectual progeny. Using conceptual tools he had developed such as "power/knowledge" and disciplinary surveillance, they merely extended his critical position to encompass the Soviet-dominated lands of, in Rudolf Bahro's words, "really existing socialism." In 1977 Foucault took to the pages of the French weekly Le Nouvel Observateur to publish a ringing justification of Glucksmann's antitotalitarian screed, The Master Thinkers, for daring to speak truth to power. Undoubtedly, Foucault saw through much of New Philosophy's rhetorical histrionics and shallow posturing. In his view, what was primarily at stake was a larger political point: delivering a coup de grâce to the French left's naïve infatuation with Marxism. Previously, French intellectuals had developed a network of sophisticated rationalizations to justify left-wing dictatorships. However, in view of the 1968 Soviet invasion of Prague, the unspeakable depredations of Mao's Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, and Pol Pot's gruesome reign of terror in Cambodia, such justifications were wearing increasingly thin. Wasn't a distinctly grisly and horrific political pattern beginning to emerge? In this way, Foucault sought to call the bluff of his fellow leftists. In his review-essay "The Great Rage of Facts," he pointedly mocked the idea, once popular among the left, that the historical necessity of socialism could ever trump basic human or moral concerns. Far from being a one-time gambit, Foucault's spirited endorsement of the antitotalitarian ethos set the tone for many of his later intellectual and political involvements. In 1978, Bernard Kouchner, the human-rights activist and Doctors Without Borders founder, contacted Foucault to support the plight of the Vietnamese "boat people," who were fleeing persecution by the recently installed Communist government. As a result, the group "A Boat for Vietnam" was founded, with Foucault as one of its leading activists. Along with Glucksmann, Kouchner, Sartre, and Raymond Aron, the organization successfully lobbied President Valéry Giscard d'Estaing to increase France's quota for Vietnamese refugees. The alliance with Kouchner and Glucksmann transformed Foucault into a passionate advocate of humanitarian intervention, or le droit d'ingérance: the moral imperative to intervene in the domestic affairs of a nation where human rights are being systematically violated. In 1981, Foucault addressed a major conference held at U.N. headquarters in Geneva where these themes were debated and discussed. In his speech, Foucault eloquently praised the responsibilities of"international citizenship," which, he claimed, "implies a commitment to rise up against any abuse of power, whoever its author, whoever its victims." "Amnesty International, Terre des Hommes, and Médecins du Monde," he continued, "are the initiatives which have created this new right; the right of private individuals to intervene effectively in the order of international policies and strategies." If Foucault retained aspects of his earlier, antihumanist worldview, they were certainly undetectable in his moving Geneva speech. Later that year, Gen. Wojciech Jaruzelski declared martial law in Poland, brutally suppressing Solidarity, Eastern Europe's first independent trade union. The response by most Western European statesmen was a deafening silence. They judged the matter to be a purely "internal" Polish affair. They feared fanning the flames of the cold war. (Ronald Reagan's presidency had begun earlier that year.) So much for international solidarity. Better that the civilian populations of Eastern Europe passively endure the yoke of authoritarian rule. The recently elected French Socialist government had an additional, domestic political motivation to look the other way. It had come to power in an alliance with the French Communists. A rift over the "Polish question" risked fracturing the alliance. At the behest of Pierre Bourdieu, Foucault once again sprang into action. The two intellectual luminaries jointly drafted an impassioned statement urging the Socialists not to repeat the ignominious blunders of 1936 refusing to come to the aid of the embattled Spanish Republic and 1956 countenancing the Warsaw Pact's brutal invasion of Budapest. The statement was broadcast on French radio. Among its signatories were Glucksmann, Kouchner, Yves Montand, and Simone Signoret. Thereafter, the French government enacted a sudden volte-face, vigorously protesting the declaration of martial law. President François Mitterrand released a statement in support of the oppressed Poles. Prime Minister Pierre Mauroy abruptly canceled a forthcoming diplomatic visit to Warsaw. Led by Foucault, French intellectuals had risen to the occasion. It was not quite the Dreyfus affair. But it was a worthy performance nevertheless.
