Thursday, March 29, 2007

How he might look today

We walked past a murderer's front door into a plain room. Michel Foucault was speaking to a group of media studies and cultural gender non-specific bi-curious students when I stepped in. It was the sort of audience one would expect to find sitting in a Foucault seminar at Warwick University - ie. no philosophers.
Nevertheless, I scanned the crowd for M-who-was-not-there (this was when I was looking for him, a few months ago). It saddened me that I had missed Foucault's talk. I was struck by his appearance: silver-grey tufts of hair and a greatly aged face. He had died twenty years before, after all.
I left the room to continue my search for M. On returning, I found that the students had left, and various lecturers were standing around with plastic cups of wine. To my astonishment, I noticed Dave Distiller holding forth into Foucault's ear, his elbow jauntily resting on the great man's shoulder.