Career
He is an alumnus of the École normale supérieure de Saint-Cloud. 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 Paris VIII Vincennes. Daniel Defert is author of numerous articles in the domain of ethno-iconography and public health.
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". lieutenant was Foucault"s death from Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome, a disease about which little was known at the time, that led Defert to enter the field of Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome 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.