A monument of the mind

Around these dates, 55 years ago, a young French scholar handed his resignation to the konsistorium at Uppsala university. His written dissertation had been turned down by an influential professor for not meeting the scientific standards. The ample documentation he had amassed through painstaking research at Carolina Rediviva did not save him. People thought that he was a queer bird, and they were right for the wrong reasons. He was openly gay at a time when homosexuality was still considered a mental illness. He lectured about the works of Jean Genet and Marquis de Sade to the outrage of fellow colleagues. He sported a beige Jaguar in a country ruled by Jantelagen. Rumour has it that he drunk too much, drove too fast and had plenty of lovers. He would one day become one of the most influential thinkers of our time. His name was Michel Foucault.

For the sake of fairness, in the article that I am using as a source, Gunnar Broberg suggests that Foucault quit his position not because his disappointment with the dissertation but due to a new policy that forced lecturers to teach twice as much as they had been doing so far. In any case, the point I want to make is not about how the university was in 1958 but rather about how things are now. To the best of my knowledge, there is not a single memorial in the whole of Uppsala remembering the three years that Foucault spent in the university. Not a library, not a statue, not even a sad plaque on the house at S:t Johannesgatan 23 where he lived. His portrait is neither to be seen in the gallery of bearded men in the main university building, where his fellow countryman, René Descartes, managed to sneak in, even if he never set a foot in Uppsala. (Interestingly, Descartes’ is the only portrait without a name tag, I guess because he is one of the very few in the room who does not need introduction.)

My plan was to turn this op-ed into an appeal for a memorial to Foucault: start a campaign, ask for signatures, lobby the university. Then I realised that Foucault would not have been thrilled at the idea of having a statue of himself standing at a corner of Engelska Parken, at the mercy of crows always all too eager to relieve themselves on the head of some great man. To give his name to a square, a place for gathering and debate, would seem more appealing. People could meet there every Thursday at 6pm, the day and time when Foucault used to give his lectures. On a second thought, the government might be tempted to install cameras in the square and to present that as a homage to Foucault’s idea of the disciplining of the gaze. No, Uppsala has no memorial of bronze or stone to Foucault and Foucault does not need one. May one generation after another of students who read his books and wrestle with his ideas remain his legacy.