Daniel Defert
{{Short description|French sociologist and AIDS activist (1937–2023)}}
{{Use dmy dates|date=February 2023}}
{{infobox Person
| name = Daniel Defert
| image = Daniel Defert par Claude Truong-Ngoc février 2015.jpg
| caption = Defert in 2015
| birth_name = Daniel André Defert
| birth_date = {{birth date|1937|09|10|df=yes}}
| birth_place = Avallon, France
| death_date = {{death date and age|2023|02|07|1937|09|10|df=yes}}
| death_place = Paris, France
| alma_mater = École normale supérieure de Saint-Cloud
| occupation = Sociologist
| partner = Michel Foucault
}}
Daniel Defert (10 September 1937 – 7 February 2023) was a French sociologist and HIV/AIDS activist. Partner to the late Michel Foucault, Defert co-founded France's first AIDS advocacy group, AIDES, following Foucault's death from complications related to the disease. Defert was the heir to Foucault's estate.
Early life
Daniel Defert was born on 10 September 1937. He graduated from the École normale supérieure de Saint-Cloud. He earned the agrégation in philosophy.{{cite news|last1=Delaporte|first1=Michel|title=" Quand on questionne les marges, on arrive au cœur de la politique " Daniel Defert|url=https://www.humanite.fr/quand-questionne-les-marges-arrive-au-coeur-de-la-politique-daniel-defert-552167|access-date=11 August 2016|work=L'Humanité|date=19 September 2014}} Defert met Foucault while he was a philosophy student at the University of Clermont-Ferrand in France and their relationship lasted from 1963 until Foucault's death in 1984.{{citation needed|date=February 2023}}
Early academic career
A professor of sociology, Daniel Defert was assistant (1969–1970), maître-assistant (1971–1985), then maître de conférence (from 1985) at the Centre Universitaire of Vincennes, which became in 1972 Université Paris VIII Vincennes.{{Cite web|url=http://blogs.law.columbia.edu/uprising1313/daniel-defert/|title=DANIEL DEFERT|website=WELCOME TO UPRISING 13/13|access-date=3 March 2018}}
AIDS research and activism
After the death of his partner Michel Foucault from complications related to AIDS, Defert founded AIDES, the first AIDS awareness organization in France.{{cite web | url=https://www.radiofrance.fr/franceculture/podcasts/a-voix-nue/la-creation-d-aides-9233998 | title=La création d'Aides | date=16 February 2023 | access-date=16 February 2023 | archive-date=16 February 2023 | archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230216212400/https://www.radiofrance.fr/franceculture/podcasts/a-voix-nue/la-creation-d-aides-9233998 | url-status=dead }} The name invokes the French word for "help" as well as the English acronym for the disease (the French acronym is SIDA). Defert served as president of AIDES from 1984 to 1991.
Defert was a member of the scientific committee for human sciences of the International Conference on AIDS (1986–94); member of the World Commission for AIDS (World Health Organization) (1988–93); member of the National Committee for AIDS (1989–98), of the Global AIDS Policy Coalition of Harvard University (1994–1997), and of the French Haut Comité de la Santé Publique (from 1998).{{citation needed|date=February 2023}}
Defert was the author of numerous articles in the domain of ethno-iconography and public health.Işıl Baş, Donald Cary Freeman (eds.), Challenging the Boundaries, Rodopi, 2007, p. x. He was awarded the decoration of Knight of Legion of Honour{{Cite web |title=Mort de Daniel Defert : nous poursuivrons sa lutte contre le VIH/sida |url=https://tetu.com/2023/02/07/mort-de-daniel-defert-nous-poursuivrons-sa-lutte-notre-lutte-contre-le-vih-sida/ |access-date=7 February 2023 |website=Têtu |language=fr-FR}} and received the Alexander Onassis prize for the creation of AIDES in 1998.{{Cite web |date=27 May 1988 |title=POTENTIAL NOBEL PURSUITS - UPI Archives |url=https://www.upi.com/Archives/1988/05/27/POTENTIAL-NOBEL-PURSUITS/9892580708800/ |access-date=7 February 2023 |website=UPI |language=en}}
Foucault estate
After Foucault's death, Defert inherited his estate despite the fact that their partnership preceded French government recognition of gay couples through civil unions (1999) or marriage (2013) and Foucault left no official will; however Foucault had written a letter indicating his intention to bequeath his apartment and all its contents, which included his archive and corrected proofs for an unpublished manuscript, to Defert.{{Cite news|url=https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/08/books/michel-foucault-new-book.html|title=Michel Foucault's Unfinished Book Published in France|last=Libbey|first=Peter|date=8 February 2018|work=The New York Times|access-date=6 April 2018|language=en-US|issn=0362-4331}} Other family members deferred to Foucault's wishes, but without government recognition, Defert, like other surviving partners in a similar position, was still subject to much higher inheritance taxes than he would have been as a recognized family member.{{cite news|last1=Aeschimann|first1=Eric|last2=Monnin|first2=Isabelle|title=Daniel Defert : "Les archives de Foucault ont une histoire politique"|url=http://bibliobs.nouvelobs.com/essais/20121106.OBS8175/daniel-defert-les-archives-de-foucault-ont-une-histoire-politique.html|access-date=11 August 2016|work=Le Nouvel Observateur|date=26 November 2012}}
Defert co-edited, with François Ewald, volume 4 of Dits et Ecrits of Michel Foucault (1994), a posthumous collection of Foucault's writing.{{citation needed|date=February 2023}}
In 2013, Defert sold for €3.8m ($4.0m, May 2022){{Cite news|url=https://www.lemonde.fr/culture/article/2012/12/20/archives-a-vendre-ou-a-laisser_1809068_3246.html|title = Archives à vendre ou à laisser|newspaper = Le Monde.fr|date = 20 December 2012}} Foucault's archives to France's national library, making the material available to researchers; subsequently the family, which owns the literary rights, elected to publish the manuscript (Confessions of the Flesh, 2018, the fourth and final volume of Foucault's History of Sexuality), despite Foucault's instruction that no work be published posthumously. Defert explained the decision that after the material became available to researchers with the credentials to acquire a reader card at the national library, Defert and others close to Foucault felt that access should be either available "to everyone or no one". Additionally, many previous posthumous works had already been published,{{Cite web|url=https://www.theguardian.com/books/2018/feb/12/key-fourth-book-of-foucaults-history-of-sexuality-published-in-france|title='Key' fourth book of Foucault's History of Sexuality published in France|last=Flood|first=Alison|date=12 February 2018|website=The Guardian|language=en|access-date=6 April 2018}} and Defert felt this new addition did not make any encroachment on Foucault's intimate life, but strictly contributed to the corpus of his intellectual contributions; by contrast, the letters exchanged between the two of them, Defert said in 2012, he intended to "take to his grave."
Death
Defert died in Paris on 7 February 2023, at the age of 85.{{Cite news |date=7 February 2023 |title=Daniel Defert, philosophe, sociologue et figure de la lutte contre le sida, est mort |language=fr |work=Le Monde.fr |url=https://www.lemonde.fr/disparitions/article/2023/02/07/daniel-defert-philosophe-sociologue-et-figure-de-la-lutte-contre-le-sida-est-mort_6160909_3382.html |access-date=7 February 2023}}
References
{{reflist}}
External links
- [http://www.aides.org AIDES official website]
{{Michel Foucault|state=collapsed}}
{{Authority control}}
{{DEFAULTSORT:Defert, Daniel}}
Category:ENS Fontenay-Saint-Cloud-Lyon alumni
Category:Academic staff of the University of Paris
Category:Academic staff of Paris 8 University Vincennes-Saint-Denis
Category:Harvard University people
Category:French HIV/AIDS activists
Category:French LGBTQ scientists