He was one of the major figures in the fight against AIDS in France. Philosopher, sociologist, companion and publisher of Michel Foucault (1926-1984), founder of the Aides association (in 1984), Daniel Defert died in Paris on Tuesday February 7, at the age of 85, according to information from the World.

He had several lives. Born on September 10, 1937, he was a student at the Ecole Normale Supérieure in Saint-Cloud (Hauts-de-Seine) before becoming an associate professor of philosophy in 1964. He could very well have been “only” a sociologist, an assistant of sociology (1969-1972), then assistant professor and finally lecturer (1985-2001) at the University of Paris-VIII-Vincennes, which moved to Saint-Denis (Seine-Saint-Denis) in 1980. Especially since he was a pupil of Raymond Aron and one of the theoreticians of the notion of ethno-iconography.

It was counting without the meeting that would mark his life, in the early 1960s, with Michel Foucault. This relationship, described as “a state of passion”, led them both to be active in the Proletarian Left, an underground Maoist movement.

From his past as a Maoist activist, Daniel Defert liked to remember certain phrases – “The eye of the peasant sees correctly”, “You have to walk on two legs” – which later, he said, would help him in particular to structure its action in favor of HIV-positive people and AIDS patients.

“Initially it was a cough”

A Maoist, he participated in a hunger strike intended to obtain the status of political prisoner for the militants of the Proletarian Left (a group banned at the time) incarcerated. In line with this action, with Michel Foucault and other great intellectuals such as Pierre Vidal-Naquet, he participated in the creation of the Information Group on Prisons. The idea was not only to give prisoners a voice, to make them appear as such in the public space, but also to reflect on the very notion of incarceration – in 1975, Michel Foucault published on the same subject l one of his master books, Discipline and Punish. Birth of the prison (Gallimard).

For Daniel Defert, the death of Michel Foucault, in circumstances that took him more than twenty years to describe, would change everything. “From mourning to struggle”: this was the title of the beautiful interview he gave to Eric Favereau, journalist at Liberation, for the latter’s book Our AIDS years. 25 years of intimate wars (La Découverte, 2006). In this interview, as well as in another book, Une vie politique. Interviews with Philippe Artières and Eric Favereau (Seuil, 2014), he returns at length to the circumstances, long misunderstood, of the death of the author of Histoire de la sexualité (the first volume, published in 1976 by Gallimard, was entitled The Will to Know).

“Initially, he said, it was a cough. In January 1984, an antibiotic treatment based on Bactrim had been shown to be very effective. “At the time, said Daniel Defert, the representation of AIDS was that of a brutal disease, very quickly fatal. However, this was not the case for us. And so the AIDS hypothesis, which we had of course both mentioned in December 1983, disappeared before the effectiveness of the treatment. Since he was recovering, that meant it wasn’t AIDS. »

Life resumes. Foucault continues his courses at the College de France. Complete two books. June 1984: relapse. Hospitalization of three weeks, which will end in his death. “Doctors pretended not to know what he had,” continued Daniel Defert. (…) They had legitimate reluctance to jump on the AIDS hypothesis. It was too simple, homosexuality = AIDS. They forbade themselves from thinking about it too soon, or too exclusively. »

The main concern of the medical team was to maintain a certain silence to leave Foucault completely to his work, “in the secret relationship to his own death”, which he had described a few months earlier in the obituary of his friend Philippe Ariès.

“Social Fear”

After Foucault’s death, Daniel Defert was asked to go to the registry office at the Salpêtrière hospital in Paris. On a piece of paper lying on the desk – the philosopher’s admission slip – he sees this: “Cause of death: AIDS. “What does that mean?” he asked the doctor who was next to him. “Rest assured, it will disappear, there will be no trace of it.” »

“There, violently, I discover the reality of AIDS, will say Defert: to pretend in the social unthinkable. I discover this kind of social fear that had obscured any report of truth. He continues: “From the moment he died without saying it, without being able or without knowing how to say it, I had the impression that I could not say it for him, that it was contrary to the medical ethics to which I adhere. And to say nothing at all was to enter into the fear of scandal. I had to solve a problem: not to speak for him, but not to do nothing. There was the obligation to create something that was not a word about his death, but a struggle. »

And so Aides was born. Reassured about his serological status – he was negative, which, at the time, did not mean much, insofar as it was not clear what this presence of antibodies implied –, Daniel Defert decided to federate around him “volunteers”, as the members of Aides were called, determined to make the imperatives of public health triumph.

Daniel Defert’s fight was long, stubborn, essential, sometimes misunderstood (why didn’t he want to make Aides an association for the defense of homosexuals?). All the more difficult since political leaders were not interested in the social issues related to the emergence of AIDS. It was the time, let us remember, when the political weight of the Church made it impossible to make advertisements in favor of the use of condoms.

Very quickly, Defert understood that the most important thing was to get the patients out – whoever they were, homosexuals, drug addicts, hemophiliacs, heterosexuals, etc. – their isolation. To put an end to the stigmatization of which they were the object. Objective all the more complex as certain interlocutors – starting with the gay press – evaded.

Finding people to listen to

It was not until the appointment of Michèle Barzach to the Chirac government’s health ministry in 1986 that things finally changed. So that Daniel Defert finally finds, at the highest level of the State, interlocutors who listen.

In 1987, Aides experienced a split – which gave birth to Arcat-Sida, the association of Jean-Florian Mettetal (1952-1992) and Frédéric Edelmann, then a journalist at Le Monde, financed by Pierre Bergé. Two years later, it was the creation of Act Up-Paris. More than ever, the figure and work of Michel Foucault were at the heart of the debates that agitated this militant milieu.

With regard to Foucault, Daniel Defert edited with François Ewald the four volumes, now reissued in two, of Dits et Écrits (Gallimard, 1994) – a posthumous collection of lectures, interviews and articles. Daniel Defert also participated, under the direction of Frédéric Gros, in the publication of the Works, by Michel Foucault, in “La Pléiade”, in 2015.

Daniel Defert appears under the first name of Stéphane in Hervé Guibert’s magnificent novel A l’ami qui n’a pas m’a pas save la vie (Gallimard, 1990). In the mode of autofiction, Guibert recounted the illness (AIDS) of his friend Muzil (Michel Foucault). Daniel Defert also appears in another very beautiful book, What to love means, by Mathieu Lindon (P.O.L, 2011).

All those who had the privilege of knowing Daniel Defert will never forget his elegance, his restraint, his spirit of nuance, this lucid and enlightened intelligence which meant that when he spoke, people listened to him. Better: we were learning.