The sociologist and activist against AIDS Daniel Defert, founder of the association Aides and who was the companion of the philosopher Michel Foucault for more than 20 years, died Tuesday at the age of 85, announced the association that he founded and chaired until 1991.
Daniel Defert contributed to "
breaking the leaden screed surrounding HIV / AIDS
", and to fighting "
stigma
", said Aides, paying tribute to him in a press release posted on Twitter.
He “
leaves behind him the indelible memory of a militant life
”.
“
We who are affected by the virus, we who are the invisible, the marginalized, the excluded, those whom Daniel has always endeavored to make visible, we will continue his fight, our fight
”, added the association.
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“
Without him, we would not be here today
”, also underlined Aurélien Beaucamp, vice-president of Aides, who was its president from 2015 to 2021. The academic has “
put the patient back at the center
” in the fight against AIDS, he said.
He had created Aides "
at a time when there was no test or treatment and where the patients were victims of a very strong ostracism
", said Aurélien Beaucamp to AFP.
"Ethical issue"
An associate professor of philosophy and militant of the “
clandestine proletarian left
”, Daniel Defert had founded Aides a few months after the death of his famous companion, in June 1984 at the age of 57.
"
We had acted together and it was a bit my work of mourning to continue an activism
", he explained in 2000. These are the "
lies
" and the "
misunderstandings
", in other words the unspoken surrounding the death of Foucault, who had led him to engage in this fight, he also explained in 1996. "
I wanted to live this mourning by continuing a common story around an ethical issue of speaking
out ".
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With Foucault, he had also participated in 1971 in the creation of the short-lived Prison Information Group (GIP), which aimed to give prisoners a voice and to reflect on the meaning of incarceration.