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| Michel Foucault |
One of the brightest stars in the Gallic philosophical firmament has been the late Michel Foucault. The French State has now made his Olympian status official. According to a report in the Parisian newspaper Le Monde, the government has declared Foucault's archives a "national treasure."
The directive, among other impacts, bans the export of Foucault's documents. As the Le Monde story noted, the Foucault action comes in the wake of the French government's recent intervention to block some of Antonin Artaud's recently auctioned self-portrait in pencil from leaving France.
Excuse the malicious comment, but what would be the "American counterparts"??
ReplyDeleteAlso in North American outstanding philosophers get the star treatment, but I am talking of Dewey, Peirce, James...
I wonder how an analytic philosopher would ever get the attention of the people as Foucault and other European philosophers did.
Anonymous, thanks for your reply.
DeleteI don't consider your comment a malicious one; on the contrary, you raise a fair point.
I thought about the "American counterparts" phrase, and wondered if it were an appropriate characterization, or simply a throwaway line. I was thinking of living American philosophers, as opposed to historical (and yes, important) figures.
I cheat a bit in the second paragraph, by switching from an observation about the living to a reference to the deceased Foucault. In retrospect, I would have more carefully considered my line of reasoning. However, it it the living who made the decision to make Foucault's archives a national treasure. It's hard to imagine the United States government having a similar policy, or even having a staff that would know the field, understand its concerns, and have the bureaucratic pull to accomplish such a policy.
The point you raise in your comment's final paragraph is a valid one, and one for which I have no answer or even a path toward an answer.
Finally, here's a point I didn't raise initially. Nations are increasingly concerned about the protection of their perceived or genuine cultural patrimony. This issue looms large in the fine arts and archaelogy, and clearly motivated the French government's actions viz the auctioning of the Foucault archive.