Editing Daniel Defert (section)

==Foucault estate==
After Foucault's death, Defert inherited his estate despite the fact that their partnership preceded French government recognition of [[gay]] couples through [[Civil solidarity pact|civil unions]] (1999) or [[Same-sex marriage in France|marriage]] (2013)<ref name="lenouvelobselesarchives" /> and Foucault left no official will; however Foucault had written a letter indicating his intention to bequeath his apartment and all its contents, which included his archive and corrected proofs for an unpublished manuscript, to Defert.<ref name="Libbey-2018">{{Cite news|url=https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/08/books/michel-foucault-new-book.html|title=Michel Foucault's Unfinished Book Published in France|last=Libbey|first=Peter|date=8 February 2018|work=The New York Times|access-date=6 April 2018|language=en-US|issn=0362-4331}}</ref> Other family members deferred to Foucault's wishes, but without government recognition, Defert, like other surviving partners in a similar position, was still subject to much higher inheritance taxes than he would have been as a recognized family member.<ref name="lenouvelobselesarchives">{{cite news|last1=Aeschimann|first1=Eric|last2=Monnin|first2=Isabelle|title=Daniel Defert : "Les archives de Foucault ont une histoire politique"|url=http://bibliobs.nouvelobs.com/essais/20121106.OBS8175/daniel-defert-les-archives-de-foucault-ont-une-histoire-politique.html|access-date=11 August 2016|work=Le Nouvel Observateur|date=26 November 2012}}</ref>

Defert co-edited, with [[François Ewald]], volume 4 of ''[[Dits et Écrits|Dits et Ecrits]]'' of Michel Foucault (1994), a posthumous collection of Foucault's writing.{{citation needed|date=February 2023}}

In 2013, Defert sold for €3.8m ($4.0m, May 2022)<ref>{{Cite news|url=https://www.lemonde.fr/culture/article/2012/12/20/archives-a-vendre-ou-a-laisser_1809068_3246.html|title = Archives à vendre ou à laisser|newspaper = Le Monde.fr|date = 20 December 2012}}</ref> Foucault's archives to [[Bibliothèque nationale de France|France's national library]], making the material available to researchers; subsequently the family, which owns the literary rights, elected to publish the manuscript (''Confessions of the Flesh'', 2018, the fourth and final volume of Foucault's ''[[The History of Sexuality|History of Sexuality]]''), despite Foucault's instruction that no work be published posthumously.<ref name="Libbey-2018" /> Defert explained the decision that after the material became available to researchers with the credentials to acquire a reader card at the national library,<ref name="Libbey-2018" /> Defert and others close to Foucault felt that access should be either available "to everyone or no one".<ref name="lenouvelobselesarchives" /> Additionally, many previous posthumous works had already been published,<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.theguardian.com/books/2018/feb/12/key-fourth-book-of-foucaults-history-of-sexuality-published-in-france|title='Key' fourth book of Foucault's History of Sexuality published in France|last=Flood|first=Alison|date=12 February 2018|website=The Guardian|language=en|access-date=6 April 2018}}</ref> and Defert felt this new addition did not make any encroachment on Foucault's intimate life, but strictly contributed to the corpus of his intellectual contributions;<ref name="lenouvelobselesarchives" /> by contrast, the letters exchanged between the two of them, Defert said in 2012, he intended to "take to his grave."<ref name="lenouvelobselesarchives" />