The Public Intellectual as Provocateur: Michel Foucault and Dan Savage on Sexuality and Relationality

• In Event: 51.023 - Rethinking the Intellectual for the 21st Century

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to explicate how Michel Foucault and Dan Savage problematize normative notions of sexuality and intimate relationships. Both Foucault and Savage in their public forums (e.g. interviews, essays, and books) invoke serious reconsideration of the role that sexuality plays in monogamous, traditional marriage. In their public discussions of this topic, they cut the thin threads between monogamy, and subsequently marriage with sexual practices. In this way, they both exemplified the public intellectual as provocateur. This paper argues that in order to be considered a public intellectual, s/he must invoke a reconsideration of normative, taken-for-granted ways of relating to each other. In the case of Foucault and Savage, they both problematize our current notions of marriage and monogamy.

What’s most interesting about both Foucault and Savage is they both employ the gay rights movement with questioning normative notions of sexuality and relationality. To be more precise, they both argue that the emergence of the gay rights movement, typically located in the 1969 stonewall rebellion in New York City, serves as an opportunity to reconsider the role that sexual practices can play in the ways that people relate to one-another. For Foucault’s part, in an interview he gave to Gai Paed magazine in 1981, he argues that homosexuality provides an opportunity to transverse relational lines to foster a more tender and intimate relationships among men. Sexual practices and sexuality can function as a manner to test oneself and to develop friendships. Instead of buttressing normative constraints on relationships, sexual practices offer an opportunity to open subjectivities and ways of relating to one another. Savage, for his part, challenges primarily monogamy and marriage. He argues that marriage as an institution restricts bodily pleasure and has very little to do with sexual practices. The public intellectual as provocateur, then continually challenges commonly held understandings of subjectivities and ways of relating. In the case of Savage and Foucault, they do so through questioning sexual practices and sexuality. This paper explicates all of their essays, books, and interviews as they relate to sexual practices, sexuality, monogamy, and marriage.

What constitutes the public intellectual and the role of the public intellectual remain important considerations for researchers in the post-truth era. How can the public intellectual play a role when truth seems to be an ever-shifting, mutable entity? The author’s answer to this question is that they (the public intellectual) can use history to challenge taken-for-granted ways o relating in the present moment. Both Foucault and Savage offer us a criteria and methods for being public intellectuals as provocateur. The public intellectual does not simply offer a mirror up to the current socio-political climate (Chomsky, 2008), or remain a constant amateur (Said, 1996), but provokes us to reconsider our normative onto-epistemological ways of being in the world. Foucault and Savage can act as guides for all of us to consider our roles as public intellectuals.

Author

• David L. Carlson, Arizona State University