The Lives of Michel Foucault by David Macey

Author:David Macey
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Verso Books

Early on Saturday afternoon, a planning meeting took place at the Ecole Normale, where a group of Maoists, no strangers to illegal demonstrations, carefully drew a map of the streets around the boulevard Bonne-Nouvelle on a blackboard. Few people were present, much to the annoyance of some militants, who grumbled about lack of discipline. Genet arrived with Foucault, who had not signed Sartre’s appeal and claimed, no doubt disingenuously, not to know who had written it.

By three in the afternoon, the police had begun to pick up North Africans for identity checks as they emerged from the metro; most were probably more interested in Christmas shopping than demonstrating. As the demonstrators began to gather, a commissaire, resplendent in a tricolour sash, approached Genet, addressed him as ‘maître’, a term of almost obsequious respect, and asked him if he could stop the demonstration. Genet replied: ‘Call me monsieur’, and refused to do anything. Small groups of demonstrators now began to move up the side streets, using the queues outside the cinemas as cover. They were repeatedly broken up by police charges. Shortly afterwards, a squad of police charged demonstrators leafleting the queues. As the Rex cinema was showing Walt Disney’s 101 Dalmatians for the holiday period, there were large numbers of children in the area, and panic ensued. A six-year-old boy and his grandmother were knocked over, and the child suffered a nose bleed. The sight of a bleeding child being carried away did little to calm tempers.

Initially, the police concentrated their attentions on Arab demonstrators and, presumably acting on orders, ignored the intellectuals present. As a result, a number of those arrested were snatched back from the hands of the police by Genet, Foucault and others. By six, intellectual immunity had been lifted. As a vanload of prisoners was driven off to applause from the remaining demonstrators, the CRS charged again. Mauriac was struck in the kidneys and a truncheon blow aimed at his groin narrowly missed its target. Foucault was surrounded and dragged into a police van, where he was soon joined by Mauriac. Foucault was pale with anger, but his main concern was that Deleuze might have been arrested too. A young CRS officer warned Foucault that if he tried to be clever, he would make him eat his glasses. Foucault challenged him to repeat his words, and a potentially ugly incident was only averted by the intervention of an officer.

A total of 161 arrests were made. Foucault and Mauriac were taken to the police holding centre in the rue Beaujon, where they encountered Genet and Geismar, also under arrest. The centre, which Foucault had first seen after his arrest during the occupation of the University of Vincennes in 1969, has a sinister reputation; as Geismar pointed out, it was here that student demonstrators had been forced to run the gauntlet between lines of club-wielding CRS in May 1968. On this occasion, no violence occurred, though the calculated insults directed at his captors by Genet raised the temperature to a potentially dangerous level.

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