`My work has had nothing to do with gay liberation,' Michel Foucault reportedly told an admirer in 1975. And indeed there is scarcely more than a passing mention of homosexuality in Foucault's scholarly writings. So why has Foucault, who died of AIDS in 1984, become a powerful source of both personal and political inspiration to an entire generation of gay activists?

Offering a no-holds barred rebuke to recent criticism of Foucault by Camille Paglia, Richard Mohr, biographer James Miller, and others, Saint Foucault is an uncompromising and impassioned defence of the late French philosopher and historian. A sometimes scathing, sometimes moving exploration of truth and sexual politics, it shows Foucault as a galvanizing thinker who will continue to serve as a model for gay intellectuals and activists.