Hervé Guibert as Foucault might have imagined him

Abstract

This essay attempts to reconfigure our understanding of the relationship between Michel Foucault and the French photographer and writer Hervé Guibert. It contends that this relationship has been misunderstood inasmuch as it has been described in terms of a dynamic of confession and betrayal. In place of this familiar understanding, developed largely by James Miller, this essay seeks to create the grounds for a Foucaultian appreciation of Guibert’s work as both photographer and writer. On the basis of Guibert’s Ghost Image, as well as several clues scattered throughout Foucault’s corpus, this essay argues that Guibert’s work issues in an anti-realist aesthetics that allows for desire to be articulated outside of the deployment of sexuality. In the final section of the essay, I use these concepts in order to suggest a reading of some of Guibert’s most famous images, including the portrait of Foucault contained in Guibert’s 1990 novel, To the Friend Who Did Not Save My Life. In general, I aim to show that Guibert’s different works enact the Foucaultian notion of a friendship of between men, wherein the aim is to invent new ways of giving each other pleasure.