Daniel Defert

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Daniel Defert (September 10, 1937 — ) is a prominent French AIDS activist and the founding president (1984-1991) of the first AIDS awareness organization in France, AIDES. He started the organization after the death of his companion, the French philosopher Michel Foucault.

A professor of sociology, Daniel Defert has been Assistant (1969-1970), Maître-assistant (1971-1985), then Maître de Conférence (from 1985) at the Centre Universitaire of Vincennes, which became in 1972, Université de Paris VIII Vincennes. He has been a member of the scientific committee for human sciences of the International Conference on AIDS (1986-94); member of the World Commission for AIDS (World Health Organization) (1988-93); member of the National Committee for AIDS (1989-98), of the Global AIDS Policy Coalition of Harvard University (1994-1997), and of the French "Haut Comité de la Santé Publique" (from 1998).

Daniel Defert is author of numerous articles in the domain of ethno-iconography and public health. He has been awarded the decoration of Chevalier de la Légion d’Honneur and received in 1998 the Prix Alexander Onassis for the creation of Aides.

[edit] Life with Foucault

Daniel Defert met Foucault while he was a philosophy student at the University of Clermont-Ferrand in France and their relationship lasted from 1963 until Foucault's death in 1984. They described their relationship as a "state of passion". It was Foucault's death of AIDS, a disease about which little was known at the time, that led Defert to enter the field of AIDS activism. He also co-edited with François Ewald volume 4 of Dits et Ecrits of Michel Foucault (1994), a posthumous collection of Foucault's thought.

[edit] External links

• AIDES official website
• "Les Derniers jours" Interview with Daniel Defert in Libération, 19 June 2004