Abstract

Arpad Szakolczai: Thank you very much, Philippe, for granting me this conversation. The 2018 publication, and now the 2021 English translation of the fourth volume of the History of Sexuality is an opportunity to rethink a bit this important question, which is the following: what was the dynamics of Foucault’s work in the last ten years of his life, before it was cut short? There are a number of reasons why this question is so interesting and important. On the one hand, Foucault was always tapping into the heart of what matters in the present – and not just the concrete, temporary present, but with validity for the entire contemporary period – as a kind of foresight into what will be the central issues coming. Now, two of the central issues of our days, and which Foucault touched centrally in the mid-1970s, just after his prison book (Surveiller et punir, 1975; English edition Discipline and Punish, 1979), were the history of sexuality project, and at the same time the closely connected concern with biopolitics, or the politics of health. These are two of the absolutely central issues of our days, with the recent lockdown on the one hand, or what has been made out of a health emergency, which is a perfectly Foucaldian theme. On the other hand, the politics of sexuality is similarly central in our days. So, in the mid to late 1970s Foucault’s work seems to perfectly anticipate our central current concerns, except that he again changes, and it is this change that you – and Frédéric Gros – are trying to map in a series of publications, because in a series of steps he is taking Antiquity and Christianity more seriously than before, and so he turns to studying that, instead of contemporary biopolitics or governmentality. Or, as it is argued by a series of people, who should know this better, he abandoned his road to study the present, and got side-tracked into obscure historical interests. This is what we have to understand, and this has its own methodological importance, as we should not second-guess major thinkers – as Foucault’s turn to Antiquity can be compared to Max Weber’s, as he did the almost the same thing; or Eric Voegelin. This is rather a crucial issue: how is it that Foucault touches upon so central current issues, ‘the heart of the present’, but then as if realises that, before this could be successfully tackled, we should revisit what happened in this regard in Antiquity and in Christianity? So, what are the deep roots of our modern condition in ancient times – though also very much present, as Christianity is still very much alive? So, these are the questions I’d like to discuss in this and the following conversations.