Tribute to the philosopher, René Scherer

From le Monde Libertaire
by Patrick Schindler
February 16, 2023

René, the utopian philosopher who became close to the anarchists towards the end of his life, died on February 1 at the age of one hundred.

Born in November 1922 in Tulle, René contributed in the 1960s to making the work of Edmund Husserl known in France and was known as a critic of Heidegger and Max Stirner. After May 68, influenced by Charles Fourier, he developed in particular in "Émile perverti," a philosophy of utopia and childhood, in reaction to the "institution of surveillance," anticipating in this, the sociologist Michel Foucault and his famous "Discipline and Punish."

I knew René as a philosophy teacher whose classes I took at the Université libre de Vincennes in the 1970s. He taught there with Gilles Deleuze, Michel Foucault, Félix Guattari, François Châtelet and Georges Lapassade. I also met René at the nascent FHAR (Revolutionary Homosexual Front), with Guy Hocquenghem (then his lover). In 1982, René was accused of having defended pedophilia in his writings during the Coral affair, implicating several personalities. Accusation based on falsified documents. The Coral was an alternative education center where he intervened, and "where allegedly took place" sexual abuse of adolescents. René was quickly exonerated from the case, as soon as he was confronted with his accuser. However, he was (in the words of Maxime Foerster) subjected to an " unprecedented media lynching which resulted in his entire work being ostracized." Guy Hocquenghem devoted a key novel to the affair, "Les Petits Garçons," in which he portayed René Scherer as "Stratos," a "professor with a broken career" and whom Michel Foucault refused to defend, while René proclaimed loud and clear that "justice has confused his thoughts and writings on childhood as criminal acts." I frequented René, among others, during those years. He was and remained deeply hurt by this affair for a long time. And I must point out that when I went to his house the many times with my friend Guy P. (who was one of his lovers), I always knew René to be in a relationship with consenting minors over the age of eighteen (obviously at the time the majority were 21 years old, so…!). And that I affirm loud and clear! Just as I affirm that I never witnessed compromising scenes in the old farm in the Cévennes whose tenant farmers received us in a joyful conviviality, all of us from the "Rene gang:" Copi, Serge Hureau, his philosopher friends and many others whom I apologize for having forgotten. It is therefore high time to rehabilitate René and more specifically on the site of "le Monde Libertaire," as some anarchists continue to accuse him today, without any proof, of pedophilia, which is unbearable to me!

That said, after the “affair,” René never gave up his utopian convictions. He developed the theme of "l’hospitalité" at length. He also introduced, among other things, the re-edition of "The Atomic Soul" he had written with Guy Hocquenghem, "Hospitaller Zeus," "Nomadic Utopias," as well as his Fourierist writings and his work on Pier Paolo Pasolini. He was interviewed several times in the Radio Libertaire studios by François and me on the program "Pas de Quartier." Unforgettable moments during which, François and I, had great difficulty interrupting an inexhaustible René, who simulated deafness, you can be sure! I remember that after a show, insisting on accompanying René, already in his eighties, to a taxi, but like a good countryman, he told me that he would walk back to the 13th arrondissement and that there was nothing healthier! What a René, his mischievous and erudite humor. I had also managed to bring him together with Maurice Rajsfus (also close to the FA) and the poet Daniel Giraud, to write all four of us, "Criminalisation de l’immigration, répression policière : arguments pour l’émancipation sociale," published by Éditions du Monde Libertaire. Work that we presented at the Publico bookstore. A feat, to have managed to bring together on our premises, Maurice and René (these two former militants disgusted with the CP and close to us)!

From then I continued a correspondence with René and went to see him at his house one last time before leaving to settle in Athens three years ago. That day, while we talked about our mutual friends (many of whom died of AIDS), we also spoke briefly again of the dark years of Coral, and I promised to publish after his death, my testimony in the "du Monde Libertaire." Done!

For people who are not convinced by my words, I invite them to reread all of René's works challenging them to find traces of incitement to pedophilia! Anecdotally, at sixteen, therefore a minor, I was part of the MLJ (Mouvement de Libération de la Jeunesse) which called for total liberation, especially sexual. That year I had had one of my first homosexual experiences with R., a friend of my mother's, and I can swear that it was really me who initiated it! Today, this wouldn't be serious since the age of consent is now 15, but at the time, imagine the trial my partner would have had!...

Patrick Schindler , Individual FA Athens

There are 3 Comments

anon has taken to heart the task of running the obituary section of this newspaper

Soon we will have anons contributing condolences for liberal statists and materialist dialecticians on this site, *sighs*

Thank you to whomever posted this Tribute, and thank you to the author Patrick Schindler, for giving a rare insider's account in the English language about friendship and other relations w/ René . Anyone of any Left tendency, Anarchist or otherwise, should be proud to have someone of such integrity in the movement. Someone who was willing to tackle sensitive topics without losing sight of creating a 'utopian' (Fourierist) Anarchist society, based on the principle that humans flourish when they live according to an Ethics of 'Hospitality' for the Stranger (in Schérer's focus, the Immigrant). In other words, the embracing and living alongside diversity and difference, however odd it may seem... At least in Diane Morgan's analysis (https://autonomies.org/2023/03/for-rene-scherer-1922-2023-an-anarchist-i...), there's a lot of good we could all learn from the kind man's philosophy.

I only hope we can have more non-sensationalist English language media by / about Schérer in the future.

RIP René Schérer

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