(James Day) Queer Sexualities in French and Franco (BookFi)

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FRENCH LITERATURE SERIES
Editor
James Day
Editorial Board
University of South Carolina
William Edmiston Daniela DiCecco

Freeman G. Henry Jeanne Garane
Paul Allen Miller Nancy E. Lane
Marja Warehime Jeffery C. Persels
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(French Literature Series, Volume XXXIV, 2007)
QUEER SEXUALITIES
in French and
Francophone Literature
and Film
Edited by
James Day
$PVWHUGDP1HZ<RUN1<7
From the Editor
This volume of FLS owes its existence to Bill Edmiston, who or-
ganized our 2006 French Literature Conference on the theme of
“Queer Sexualities.” Bill’s introduction to the current volume goes far
beyond the usual summaries of contributors’ articles; he has, in fact,
provided a substantial introduction to the field of queer theory. Bill’s
deep involvement with the project is all the more remarkable in that he
was simultaneously serving as chair of one of our university’s largest
departments.
Acknowledgment goes also to the editorial board, which pro-
vided two separate peer reviews and rankings for each submission
received. In cases where special expertise was required, our interna-
tional advisory board stood ready to provide counsel. Both the annual
conference and FLS are indebted to the Department of Languages,
Literatures, and Cultures, to the program in Comparative Literature,
and to the College of Arts and Sciences of the University of South
Carolina for their generous support.
James Day
Contents
Introduction ix
Sodomy, Allegory, and the Subject of Pleasure

Michael A. Johnson 1
Divergences et Queeriosités: Ovide moralisé

ou les mutations d’“Iphis en garçon” (XIIe-XVIIIe)
Lise Leibacher-Ouvrard 13
A Modest Proposal for Queering the Past:

A Queer Princess with a Space of Her Own
Pierre Zoberman 35
Rousseau’s Queer Bottom:

Sexual Difference in the Confessions
Angela N. Hunter 51
Mademoiselle de Maupin: Fluctuations identitaires et sexuelles

Guri Ellen Barstad 63
Gender Convergence in Sand’s La Mare au diable,

a Contrasexual Reading
James F. Hamilton 73
“Étrange n’est-ce pas?” The Princesse Edmond de Polignac,

Erik Satie’s Socrate, and a Lesbian Aesthetic of Music?
Samuel N. Dorf 87
Outing Proust
Nathan Guss 101
The Anus of Tiresias: Sodomy, Alchemy, Metamorphosis

Ed Madden 113
Queer Writing: Homoeroticism in Jean Genet’s Fiction

Elizabeth Stephens 129
“Nous sommes un fléau social”:

Cinéma, vidéo et luttes homosexuelles
Hélène Fleckinger 145
Révélations intimes: Vers une cartographie queer du Sud-Ouest

Philippe C. Dubois 163
Stop the World, or What’s Queer about Michel Houellebecq?

Douglas Morrey 177
Recto/Verso: Mapping the Contemporary Gay Novel

Lawrence R. Schehr 193
FLS, Volume XXXIV, 2007 Queer Sexualities
William F. Edmiston
Queer Sexualities in French and Francophone

Literature and Film: An Introduction
In the 1945 Broadway musical Carousel, Oscar Hammerstein

wrote the lyric “You’re a queer one, Julie Jordan.” The adjective
“queer” meant “strange,” “odd,” or “unusual.” For most of the twenti-
eth century, “queer” was also used to signify and stigmatize uncon-
ventional gender or sexuality; it was a word of homophobic derision
and insult, of hatred and scorn, a word to be dreaded by those to
whom it was applied. Used almost exclusively as a noun to denote a
(usually male) homosexual or one who deviated from the sexual and
behavioral norm, it began during the nineteen-sixties and -seventies to
replace the adjectival usage still extant in Stephen Sondheim’s song of
1973 “Send in the Clowns” (“Isn’t it queer?”). In the late twentieth
century, the term was expanded in usage as an adjective and as a verb.
Recast in a positive light, it was reappropriated, first by gay and les-
bian activists as a term of defiant identity (“we’re here, we’re queer,
so get used to it!”), and soon after in academic circles as an analytical
and intellectual term, used to call into question the very system of
normative heterosexuality, or “heteronormativity,” that had marginal-
ized “queers” in the first place.1 “Queer theory” today refers usually to
the calling into question of traditional, conventional, and normative
definitions of gender roles and of the fixity of sexual identities. It is
thought by some to have taken its name from the short-lived gay and
––––––––––
1
The term “heteronormativity” was coined by Michael Warner in Fear of a
Queer Planet, one of the first major works on queer theory. But the concept can
probably be traced to Adrienne Rich’s idea of compulsory heterosexuality.
x FLS, Vol. XXXIV, 2007
lesbian political activist group, Queer Nation, founded in 1990.

“Queer” became a useful designator for the politics and intellectual
theory of sexual minorities during the 1990s because it was more con-
cise than “lesbian/gay/bisexual/transsexual/transgender/intersexed”
and also because it demonstrated the inadequacy of binary categories
of gender and sexuality. For some, then, it became — ironically — a
new term of identity, replacing all of the old terms. For others, it was a
calling into question of the very notions of gender and sexual identi-
ties.
A number of books designed to serve as an introduction to queer
theory have been published in the past decade. While the authors of
these books attempt definitions, they also admit to the futility of defi-
nition, by virtue of the fact that “queer” often signifies a resistance to
categorization, to binary oppositions, and to essences. In 1996 Anna-
marie Jacose noted the disparity between “queer” appropriated as a
term of identity and “queer” mobilized as an opposition to identity.
For some critics and in some enunciations, she wrote, “queer does lit-
tle more than function as shorthand for the unwieldy lesbian and gay,
or offer itself as a new solidification of identity, by knitting out more
fashionably an otherwise unreconstructed sexual essentialism” (129).
Jacose concludes her study by opting for the oppositional notion and
by defining “queer” as “an identity category that has no interest in
consolidating or even stabilizing itself.... [Q]ueer is less an identity
than a critique of identity” (131). Jacose follows the thinking here of
David Halperin, who in 1995 had published a definition that is often
quoted: “‘Queer’ acquires its meaning from its oppositional relation to
the norm. Queer is by definition whatever is at odds with the normal,
the legitimate, the dominant. There is nothing in particular to which it
necessarily refers. It is an identity without an essence” (Saint Fou-
cault, 62, his italics). It is because of its resistance to categorization
and to definition that the queer movement, both politically and intel-
lectually, has often been accused of working against the gay rights
movement, which has almost always depended on stable notions of
sexual identity in its struggle for political gains. In his study dating
from 2000, William Turner emphasized “queer”’s resistance to no-
tions of identity: “‘Queer’ indicates a failure to fit not only categories
of sexual identity but also categories of gender identity. The con-
ditions of possibility for queer theory involve not only resistance to
Introduction xi
prevailing definitions of sexual identity but — equally and antece-

dently — resistance to prevailing definitions of gender identity as
well” (11). Turner, however, viewed the lack of specificity of the
word “queer” as a critical and analytical advantage: “‘Queer’ has the
virtue of offering, in the context of academic inquiry into gender iden-
tity and sexual identity, a relatively novel term that connotes etymo-
logically a crossing of boundaries but that refers to nothing in par-
ticular, thus leaving the question of its denotations open to contest and
revision” (35).
Two introductions to queer theory, those of Donald Hall and

Nikki Sullivan, appeared in 2003. Hall opens his study with defini-
tions of the various parts of speech, in which the adjective and verb
assume the new, resistant meaning and only the noun retains the old
devalued one:
The adjective “queer” means to abrade the classifications, to sit athwart

conventional categories or traverse several.... Systems of identification
always convey social values. To be a woman is to be a lesser version of a
man. To be “of color” is to be a lesser version of being “white.” To be an
effeminate man is to be a lesser version of a masculine man. To be a homo-
sexual is to be a lesser version of a heterosexual. To be “a queer” (the noun)
is simply to occupy the lower half of that last hierarchized binary.... To
“queer” (the verb) is to put pressure on simplistic notions of identity and to
disturb the value systems that underlie designations of normal and abnormal
sexual identity. (13-14)
Sullivan also resists a stable definition of queer: “It is the focus on the
constructed, contingent, unstable and heterogeneous character of sub-
jectivity, social relations, power, and knowledge, that has paved the
way for Queer Theory. To attempt to define what queer is would be a
decidedly un-queer thing to do” (42). Sullivan also acknowledges the
opposition between queer theory, as she conceives it, and identity
politics: “Queer Theory, as a deconstructive strategy, aims to denatu-
ralize heteronormative understandings of sex, gender, sexuality, so-
ciality, and the relations between them. Identity politics, on the other
hand, could be said to be based on the assumption that sexual inclina-
tions, practices, and desires are the expression of a person’s core
identity” (81).
xii FLS, Vol. XXXIV, 2007
Queer theory can trace its ancestry to the publication in 1976 of

the first volume of Michel Foucault’s Histoire de la Sexualité. In his
immensely influential study, Foucault famously claimed that the
homosexual was “invented” in the nineteenth century as a “species,” a
discursive construction of a class of sexually deviant individuals, as
opposed to the view of the sodomite that held sway in early modern
Europe. His theory is succinctly summarized by Eve Sedgwick: “Fou-
cault among other historians locates, in about the nineteenth century a
shift in European thought from viewing same-sex sexuality as a matter
of prohibited and isolated genital acts (acts to which, in that view,
anyone might be liable who did not have their appetites in general
under close control) to viewing it as a function of stable definitions of
identity (so that one’s personality structure might mark one as a homo-
sexual, even, perhaps, in the absence of any genital activity at all)”
(82-83). The link between discourse and identity was a crucial notion
both for the social construction of sexuality and for the development
of queer theory.2 Foucault was writing only of the discursive construc-
tion and representation of the homosexual, especially in the legal and
medical realms, and he never suggested that same-sex desire did not
exist before the nineteenth century. Indeed, the two subsequent vol-
umes of his unfinished study examined same-sex desire and behavior
in the ancient Greek and Roman civilizations. Nevertheless, Fou-
cault’s provocative thesis spawned a significant debate in the early
1980s among scholars of sexuality, a debate usually referred to as the
“essentialists” vs. the “constructionists.” As a reaction against Fou-
cault’s work, some gay and lesbian theorists and historians sought to
prove that there is an “essence” of same-sex desire that is transhistori-
cal and transcultural. Some scholars took pains to call attention to evi-
dence of same-sex sexual activity from forgotten centuries. These
so-called “essentialists” (although apparently no scholar referred to
himself or herself as such) sought to prove that a homosexual identity
had existed for multiple centuries and especially in early modern
Europe. On the other hand, an entire branch of gay and lesbian theo-
rists rejected essentialist identity politics and adopted a social con-
structionist stance. These “constructionists” followed Foucault’s
––––––––––
2
William Turner points out that, despite the enormous influence of Foucault,
the latter did not originate social constructionist work in the history of sexuality.
Earlier work had been done by Jonathan Ned Katz, Carroll Smith-Rosenberg, and
Jeffrey Weeks (64).
Introduction xiii
thinking that the notion of sexual identity was a modern one. For a
time, both the essentialist and the social constructionist approaches
remained attached to the homosexual/heterosexual binary. More re-
cent gay/lesbian criticism of the notion of gay/lesbian identity has
been led by an anti-identity movement — the queer movement. These
critics began to view queer as an opposition to, and a Derridean
deconstruction of, binary sexual categories (male/female, mascu-
line/feminine, heterosexual/homosexual, etc.). Unlike lesbian and gay
studies and most feminist theory, queer theory includes a wide range
of non-normative sexualities.
The year 1990 was a pivotal one for queer theory as it saw the
publication of two highly influential studies: The Epistemology of the
Closet by Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick and Gender Trouble by Judith
Butler. Sedgwick does not take sides in the essentialist/constructionist
debate because she views it as one centered on etiology. Both posi-
tions attempt to answer the question: What causes some men to be gay
and some women to be lesbian? For Sedgwick, the drive to eradicate
gays is so fundamentally embedded in our culture that any question
about etiology seems dangerous. Sedgwick replaced the debate with
“minoritizing/universalizing” as more appropriate paradigms for
understanding the significance of homosexual identities. Is same-sex
desire distinct to a small group of individuals who adopt the term
“homosexuality” as an identity category (the “minoritizing” view)? Or
is it a characteristic fundamental to everyone’s sexuality, so that “ho-
mosexuality” becomes part of the “hetero/homo” binary that informs
our entire culture (the “universalizing” view)?3 Sedgwick points out
that Foucault has “assumed that the nineteenth-century intervention of
a minoritizing discourse of sexual identity in a previously extant, uni-
versalizing discourse of ‘sodomitic’ sexual acts must mean, for all in-
tents and purposes, the eclipse of the latter.” Her study aims “to show
how issues of modern homo/heterosexual definition are structured, not
by the supersession of one model and the consequent withering away
––––––––––
3
David Halperin further characterizes Sedgwick’s opposition by adding the
adjectives “anxiously universalizing terms” and “comforting minoritizing ones.” The
former are conceived as a potential threat to gender and sexual identity, while the
latter are conceived as the peculiarity of a small class of deviant individuals”
(“Forgetting Foucault,” 100-01).
xiv FLS, Vol. XXXIV, 2007
of another, but instead by the relations enabled by the unrationalized

coexistence of different models during the times they do coexist” (47).
One of the most significant achievements of Butler’s Gender
Trouble is the “unpacking” of the concept of heterosexualized genders
as something natural and universal. In Sullivan’s words, Butler chal-
lenges or “queers the heteronormative model of identity in which
gender follows from sex, and desire follows from gender (Sullivan
86). She refigures gender as a cultural fiction, a performative effect of
reiterative acts, “a kind of imitation for which there is no original”
(Butler 21). Heterosexuality has been normalized in our culture, thus
making particular relationships and identities seem natural, ahistorical,
and universal. In fact, according to Butler, gender is neither natural
nor innate. It is a social construct, one that operates as a regulatory
mechanism that privileges heterosexuality. Heterosexuality, says
Butler, is naturalized by the performative repetition of normative gen-
der identities: “[I]f heterosexuality is compelled to repeat itself in
order to establish the illusion of its own uniformity and identity, then
this is an identity permanently at risk, for what if it fails to repeat, or if
the very exercise of repetition is redeployed for a very different per-
formative purpose? If there is, as it were, always a compulsion to
repeat, repetition never fully accomplishes identity” (24). For Butler,
any commitment to gender identity works against legitimization of
homosexuality.
Queer theory, then, is based on a social constructionist idea of
gender and sexuality, and on resistance to categorizations of sexuality,
especially the traditional binary ones, and to heteronormativity. It is
my hope that this brief summary of the primary texts and concepts that
have contributed to the development of queer theory will assist readers
of this volume to better appreciate the fourteen essays that compose it.
These essays were presented (with one exception) at the thirty-fourth
annual French Literature Conference held on March 22-24, 2006 at
the University of South Carolina. Scholars attended from various parts
of the U.S. as well as from France, the United Kingdom, Norway, and
Australia to discuss aspects of the conference theme, which is the title
of this volume.
In “Sodomy, Allegory, and the Subject of Pleasure,” Michael A.
Johnson studies a binary opposition found in medieval exegetical dis-
course between allegorical and euphemistic expression, an opposition
Introduction xv
that names the difference between “proper” and “sodomitic” modes of

reading. Johnson claims that the incommensurability of the two in
Jean de Meun’s part of Le Roman de la rose stems from the reading
subject’s relationship to the “body” posited as a figure for textual
truth. The anxiety of reading and the anxiety of sodomy were so
structurally similar that they were often used to designate one another.
In “Divergences et Queeriosités: Ovide moralisé ou les mutations

d’‘Iphis en garçon’ (XIIe-XVIIIe),” Lise Leibacher-Ouvrard applies
a genealogical approach to fictional and theatrical adaptations of the
fable of Iphis and Ianthe, and of translations of these, from the twelfth
through the eighteenth centuries. This approach enables us to perceive
the important role played by heteronormativity, which becomes domi-
nant over time, in the construction of relationships later characterized
as lesbian. Whereas Ovid remained ambiguous, a more explicit and
extensive condemnation is found in the French translations of the
fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. It is especially in the sixteenth cen-
tury that a movement of heteronormative fixation seems to take place
as the disquieting homoeroticism of Ovid is effaced.
In “A Modest Proposal for Queering the Past: A Queer Princess

with a Space of Her Own,” Pierre Zoberman offers a reading of La
Princesse de Clèves in which queer is viewed as creating discomfort
by means of non-conformity. He states that it is useful to think of
queer in terms of a contextual discomfort, that is, behaviors and atti-
tudes that were seen then as threatening. The King’s brother, “Mon-
sieur,” was thus gay but not queer, not threatening to the social order.
In Lafayette’s novel, Mme de Clèves charts a new course for herself
and moves into a space of her own that corresponds to no definable
category. Her conduct was nothing short of queer, which explains the
uncomfortable reactions of the novel’s readers.
In “Rousseau’s Queer Bottom: Sexual Difference in the Confes-

sions,” Angela N. Hunter deals with the problem of sexual differ-
ence. Beginning with the eight-year-old Jean-Jacques’s spanking epi-
sode at the hands of a young woman, Rousseau treats the bottom as a
privileged textual object that disrupts the binary of sexual difference.
He sexualizes the bottom and identifies with the “autre sexe” as the
one that has the bottom as sexual attribute, leading not to the female
xvi FLS, Vol. XXXIV, 2007
pole of difference but back to Rousseau’s own sexuality and its pecu-
liar refusal of that difference.
In “Mademoiselle de Maupin: Fluctuations identitaires et sex-
uelles,” Guri Ellen Barstad shows that Théophile Gautier’s novel
presents a dizzying calling into question of sexual identity. The andro-
gynous figure comes to represent a queer space swarming with possi-
bilities, thanks to which an opening toward the new and the creative
becomes possible. The novel contains a destabilizing element of sen-
suality and playful amorality that ultimately radicalizes the immediate
content by an ornamental dynamism. Sexual subversion radicalized by
ornamental activity threatens to transgress the rigid boundaries
between genders.
In “Gender Convergence in Sand’s La Mare au diable, a Con-
trasexual Reading,” James F. Hamilton offers a queer reading of
George Sand’s novel using Jung’s theory of contrasexual archetypes.
This reading is based on gender convergence, which places the
archetypal Feminine on an equal footing with the Masculine, thus
generating a queer interpretation in its challenge to male/female con-
ventions. Here queer means undermining traditional gender roles and
hierarchies.
In “‘Étrange n’est-ce pas?’ The Princesse Edmond de Polignac,
Erik Satie’s Socrate, and a Lesbian Aesthetic of Music?,” Samuel N.
Dorf examines the circumstances of the composition and reception of
Socrate, an ode to the martyred philosopher for chamber orchestra and
four sopranos by Erik Satie. Satie’s work was commissioned by the
American expatriate and lesbian Princesse de Polignac. Dorf contends
that the work appeals to a particular lesbian and proto-feminist
aesthetic specific to Polignac and her social circle. He speculates that
the special relationship between Polignac and Satie rested on an
unspoken awareness of the other’s precarious sexual position.
In “Outing Proust,” Nathan Guss examines a chapter in Marcel
Proust’s posthumous novel Jean Santeuil in which the eponymous
protagonist engages in the non-normative behavior of cross-dressing.
The possibility that the boy Jean is both a warrior and a cross-dresser
at the same time undermines the binary oppositions of male/female
and gay/straight, suggesting a queer coexistence of male and female in
a sexuality that exceeds normative boundaries. The unspeakable
Introduction xvii
nature of homosexuality in Jean’s social milieu is a paragon of writing

because all lived experience resists expression in language.
In “The Anus of Tiresias: Sodomy, Alchemy, Metamorphosis,”
Ed Madden points out that in Western literature of the twentieth
century, the mythical figure of Tiresias often functions as a cultural
shorthand for non-normative sexual identities and pleasures. In Marcel
Jouhandeau’s 1954 erotic novel Tirésias, a bisexual man renames
himself as Tiresias after being anally penetrated by a young male hus-
tler. While the novel has been noted as a celebration of anal sexual
pleasure, Madden argues further that penetration is part of a larger
metaphorical language of cross-gender sexual transformations. Sod-
omy in the novel creates a transformed and very queer sexual identity
that is emphatically not male.
In “Queer Writing: Homoeroticism in Jean Genet’s Fiction,”
Elizabeth Stephens repositions the contradictory aspects of Genet’s
work and the narrative destabilization they produce as central to the
concept of homoerotic writing formulated in his fiction. Stephens
contends that this aspect of Genet’s work makes a contribution to
contemporary queer studies. The emphasis of gay and lesbian studies
on “homosexual literature” as that produced by authors known to be
homosexual is at odds with the critique of the intending authorial
subject in contemporary literary and cultural studies as a whole.
In “‘Nous sommes un fléau social’: Cinéma, vidéo et luttes
homosexuelles,” Hélène Fleckinger analyzes the turning point, on
both an aesthetic and a political level, introduced by the militant
homosexual French films of the 1970s. Conscious that cinemato-
graphic forms are not neutral, homosexual filmmakers of this era
knew they had to free themselves from the dominant, heteronormative
cinema. Homosexual production needed to tie itself to the most
experimental forms. One can discern in these films the origins of a
queer cinema avant la lettre: they seek to destabilize discourse con-
cerning identity and to propose fluid identities, to criticize essentialist
ideologies, to refuse binary oppositions, and to dissociate sex from
gender.
In “Révélations intimes: Vers une cartographie queer du Sud-
Ouest,” Philippe C. Dubois proposes a cartography of queer space in
the French Sud-Ouest as it is represented in the films of François Ozon
xviii FLS, Vol. XXXIV, 2007
and in the writings of Roland Barthes. The topography of the region

provides both the filmmaker and the writer with a setting in which to
eroticize the normative oppositions of public and private space,
resulting in a dislocation of sex and intimacy in the framework of a
queer reconfiguration.
In “Stop the World, or What’s Queer about Michel Houelle-
becq?,” Douglas Morrey argues that the controversial French novelist
provides a queer critique of heteronormativity with his disillusioned
dissection of the contemporary social organization of heterosexual
relations and his compassion for individuals or groups who have been
marginalized within the dominant sexual economy. Houellebecq’s
disgust at the idea of children, reproduction, and inheritance — his
refusal of reproductive futurism — is the aspect of his novels that is
most queer. His fiction presents a queer challenge to a system of com-
pulsory consumerist heteronormativity.
Finally, in his essay “Recto/Verso: Mapping the Contemporary
Gay Novel,” which was the keynote address of the conference, Law-
rence R. Schehr explores the contemporary gay novel and auto-
fiction in France. Recent years have witnessed a profusion of titles
under this rubric. The trajectories of the protagonists are often the
same: settling in Paris, usually in the Marais district, indulging in as
much pornography and sexual activity as possible, and often becom-
ing seropositive in the process. Schehr hypothesizes that in order to
understand the discursive topography of contemporary writing on
AIDS, one must look at it in its profusion and not limit oneself to texts
of high literary value. In these texts, Schehr demonstrates that desta-
bilization of identity can occur through several mechanisms, including
the introduction of the heterosexual male, the dissociation of repro-
duction from heteronormativity, and even from homonormativity,
among others. Tied to a social situation that is interpreted within por-
nography, these books reinterpret the present as the eminently read-
able and verbal version of pornographic screen images.
Taken as a whole, then, the essays of this volume illustrate the
major characteristics of queer theory: the focus on nonconformity, the
questioning of the binary concepts that define and codify conformity
and heteronormativity, and the undermining of gender and sexual
roles and identities.
Introduction xix
Works Cited
Butler, Judith. Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity.
London and New York: Routledge, 1990.
Foucault, Michel. The History of Sexuality, Volume 1: An Introduction.
Trans. Robert Hurley. New York: Vintage Books, 1978.
Hall, Donald E. Queer Theories. New York and London: Palgrave Macmil-
lan, 2003.
Halperin, David. Saint Foucault: Towards a Gay Hagiography. New York
and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995.
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Minnesota Press, 1993. vii-xxxi.
Michael A. Johnson
University of Texas, Austin
Sodomy, Allegory, and the Subject of Pleasure
This study looks at the opposition set up in medieval exegetical dis-

course between allegorical and euphemistic expression, an opposition
that comes to name the difference between “proper” and “sodomitic”
modes of reading. The allegorical and the euphemistic were understood
to be irreconcilable positions in relation to textual meaning. When made
to speak to one another in Jean de Meun’s section of Roman de la Rose,
they can only speak past one another. I claim that this incommensura-
bility has its origin in the reading subject’s position vis-à-vis the “body”
posited as a figure for textual truth.
________________________
[Lady Nature, speaking to the Narrator]

While in a construction of this kind he
[perverse mankind] causes my destruction, in
his combination he devises a division [Lat.
themesim, or tmesis] in me.
— Alain de Lille, The Plaint of Nature
La tmèse, source ou figure du plaisir [...]

— Roland Barthes, Le Plaisir du texte
Tmesis, origin or figure of pleasure; tmesis,

tear in the fabric of nature.
2 FLS, Vol. XXXIV, 2007
Roland Barthes’s discourse of celebration and the medieval dis-

course of anxiety regarding textual pleasure, although they arrive from
opposite points of departure, avail themselves of a very similar set of
tropes. In effect, the reading pleasure Barthes details in Le Plaisir du
texte looks much like the mode of reading that provoked so much
anxiety in medieval exegetical discourse that it was likened to sod-
omy. Most important among these tropes of pleasure is the metaphor
of the text as a clothed body. The metaphor suggests that various
modes of reading can be distinguished from one another by their
respective ways of situating the “body” veiled behind the clothing of
language. For medieval exegetical discourse, in particular, the cloth-
ing metaphor describes two opposed modes of reading, divided
between what Barthes might call an oedipal and a perverse mode or
between what medieval exegetes might call an allegorical and euphe-
mistic mode. These modes of reading are not only opposed but are
presented as fully incommensurable with one another. It is an opposi-
tion that leads to aporia. This study proposes to examine the incom-
mensurability of these two modes of reading as set forth in both Jean
de Meun’s section of Romance of the Rose and Alan of Lille’s Plaint
of Nature.
The comparison of corporeal and textual sodomy, of body and
text, is at the heart of both Barthesian and medieval discourse on the
literary. Sodomy names a pleasure without aim, a pleasure that
exceeds and cannot be reduced to the teleology of reproduction. To
that extent the comparison of the body of the sodomite to the “body”
of the text of pleasure comes easily. Medieval models of reading
required textual meaning to submit to the teleology of allegorical
truth-revelation. Both the literal and figurative dimensions of the text
were required to function as means to an end, leading the reader ulti-
mately to apprehension of divine truth. But if either the literal or the
figurative were to become ends in themselves, or in other words, if the
pleasure of poetic language were to become the sole purpose of read-
ing, the text would become sodomitic. The necessary pleasure of
reading that should propel the reader towards divine truth might
always also mire the reader in the pleasure of reading for its own sake.
This anxiety of reading and the anxiety of sodomy were so structurally
similar — pleasure is necessary to this structure of meaning but also
Johnson 3
exceeds it, becoming ultimately unthinkable within it — that they be-

came confused with one another and were often used to designate one
another. This confusion explains the referential ambiguity at the heart
of The Plaint of Nature, which has been hailed both as an invective
against corporeal sodomy and as an invective against textual sodomy.
But as Alan of Lille would have it, the target of Nature’s complaint,
whether corporeal or textual, is ultimately undecidable; each can stand
in so perfectly for the other. This interchangeability of corporeal sod-
omy and textual sodomy in medieval exegetical discourse, I would
suggest, allows us to reflect on the erotic materiality of reading.
In the section of Le Plaisir du texte entitled “bords,” Barthes de-
scribes two more or less opposed positions vis-à-vis the body, which
represent for him two distinct modalities of reading, two orders of
pleasure. The first order of pleasure he describes is simultaneous and
part of language itself. Barthes names it intermittence:
L’endroit le plus érotique du corps n’est-il pas là où le vêtement bâille?

Dans la perversion (qui est le régime du plaisir textuel) il n’y a pas de
“zones érogènes” (expression au reste assez casse-pieds); c’est l’inter-
mittence, comme l’a bien dit la psychanalyse, qui est érotique: celle de la
peau qui scintille entre deux pièces (le pantalon et le tricot), entre deux
bords (la chemise entrouverte, le gant et la manche); c’est ce scintillement
même qui séduit, ou encore: la mise en scène d’une apparition-disparition
(19).
The second order of pleasure Barthes describes is mediated and se-

quential. He names it strip-tease as he outlines the opposition between
these two modes of reading:
Ce n’est pas là le plaisir du strip-tease corporel ou du suspense narratif.

Dans l’un et l’autre cas, pas de déchirure, pas de bords: un dévoilement pro-
gressif: toute l’excitation se réfugie dans l’espoir de voir le sexe (rêve de
collégien) ou de connaître la fin de l’histoire (satisfaction romanesque).
Paradoxalement (puisqu’il est de consommation massive), c’est un plaisir
bien plus intellectuel que l’autre: plaisir œdipéen (dénuder, savoir, connaître
l’origine et la fin), s’il est vrai que tout récit (tout dévoilement de la vérité)
est une mise en scène du Père (absent, caché ou hypostasié) (20).
Intermittence is thus simultaneous, immediate, and perverse, while

strip-tease is sequential, mediated, and intellectual (that is, oedipal).
Intermittence names the gap between writing and its referent, between
the material and the ideal, always there, “là où le vêtement bâille” in
any kind of writing. It is not a revelation because it is immediate,
always part of language itself. The particular pleasure one encounters
in this gap Barthes describes as perversion. The perverse reader fix-
ates on the skin that shines out of the gap between two edges and does
not care to know the truth (“connaître l’origine et la fin”). Strip-tease,
by contrast, names the desire to know; the oedipal reader is (s)he who
must peel away progressive layers of figuration — in proper sequen-
tial order — while dreaming of naked truth. Dreaming of it, but also
delaying its final revelation in endless layers of unveiling.
The first order of pleasure is built on the body of the mother —
impossible to sublimate — while the second is built on the — neces-
sarily sublimated — body of the father. The gap itself is erotic and
glimmers, in the first case, while the hope for a naked body to be
revealed (coupled with a fear of this same body) becomes erotic in the
other. In neither case is a body revealed. Both strip-tease and inter-
mittence, that is, both the oedipal and perverse positions vis-à-vis this
“body” are incommensurable with one another. This incommensura-
bility, I will suggest, originates from their means of “coping” respec-
tively with the fact that no body is revealed, that there is no naked
truth, so to speak. Strip-tease is predicated on a necessary but illusory
hope, while intermittence depends on a kind of disavowal. The oppo-
sition (op - position) of these two “means of coping” suggests a cer-
tain positionality of the subject of pleasure. To the extent that Barthes
uses voyeuristic metaphors to situate the reader in relationship to the
text (as a “mise en scène”), both of these orders of pleasure are con-
strued as positions and as such reference a question of subjectivity.
That is, intermittence and strip-tease could be understood to reference
two subject positions, two subject positions which Barthes seems to
understand as being incommensurable. The positionality of the subject
of pleasure becomes quite important in Romance of the Rose, where
the oedipal and perverse subjects of pleasure are made to confront one
another in a staged debate.
In Romance of the Rose this incommensurability is represented in
the form of a scholarly debate wherein two arguments are upheld as ir-
reconcilable with one another. The opposition Barthes stages between
oedipal and perverse modes of reading finds a parallel in Jean de
Johnson 5
Meun’s opposition of scholarly and courtly discourse, which speak

more past one another than to one another.
The aporetic quality of this confrontation is epitomized in the

debate that takes place between Lady Reason and the Courtly Lover.
Their famous debate turns around the castrated testicles of Saturn,
used as an allegorical referent. Reason upholds proper literal reference
to these testicles because proper literal reference is necessary to the
grounding of allegorical meaning. The Lover, in contrast, upholds the
use of euphemistic expressions which prevent these testicles from
being designated literally because the codes of courtly love require
lovers to engage in “courtoise parole.” The linguistic debate is critical
because their failure to agree ultimately causes the Lover to part ways
with Reason. Their positions are irreconcilable. The two can only
speak past one another.
The debate reads as follows. While telling the story of Saturn’s

castration and the birth of Venus, Reason uses the word coilles to refer
to Saturn’s testicles. The Lover protests, claiming she had violated the
codes of courtly love in using such a base word:
Vous, qui tant estes sage et bele,

Ne sai com nommer les osastes,
Au mains quant le mot ne glosastes
Par quelque cortoise parole
Si com preudefame en parole.
I do not know how you dared name them, you who are so wise and fair,
without at least glossing the word with some courteous utterance [quelque
cortoise parole], as a virtuous woman would when speaking of them.
(lines 6924-32)
Reason retorts: she should lose no respect in naming a beautiful thing

by its proper name. As long as the referent is itself a “noble chose”
then it should be referenced openly, using its proper name. Testicles
qualify as a “noble chose” because God endowed them with the power
of generation. As such, they are to be revered; they are in essence a
lesser emanation of divine creation: “Mist dieus en coilles et en viz /
Force de generacion [...]” (lines 6959-63). Her veneration of the
sacredness and nobility of the “force de generacion” harks back to an
earlier discussion in which Reason warns the Lover of the danger of

venal love, which like sodomy, takes pleasure as an end in itself.
In this earlier discussion Reason maintains that not a single per-
son is exempt from love — “touz le mondes va cele voie” — but any
person who experiences love will be tempted to deviate from the path
of “proper” or “reasonable” love. The God of Love is responsible for
all such deviations, Reason explains, with the notable exception of the
sodomites, who apparently were never on the right path to begin with:
C’est li dieus qui touz les desvoie,

Se ne sont cil de male voie
Que genius escommenie,
Pour ce qu’il font tort a nature.
For he is the god that leads everyone astray except those excommunicated
by Genius because their evil ways are an offence against Nature.
(lines 4339-42)
According to her metaphor, love is a path and sodomy and “improper”

love are deviations (“desvoie” or “de male voie”) from that path. The
notion of a straight line or path refers to the linear succession of gen-
erations and to the notion of “proper” love as one that keeps the lines
of genealogical succession “straight,” without interruption or devia-
tion. The association of courtly love with sodomy would suggest that
courtly love, like sodomy, is deviant because it takes pleasure as an
end in itself, ignoring the teleology of sexual pleasure and thus inter-
rupting the straight path of genealogical succession.
Thus when Reason insists on the literal meaning of testicles as
being “force de generacion,” it becomes clear that she is in fact rather
preoccupied with sodomy. Her argument suggests that in his horror at
the word coilles the Lover is implicitly guilty of sodomy. If the literal
meaning of the word coilles, as Reason claims, is “force de genera-
cion,” the Lover’s disgust with the word’s literal meaning is tanta-
mount to disgust with reproductive sexuality, which aligns him with
the sodomites.
Reason also considers the euphemistic codes of courtly love to be
a perverse linguistic practice that deviates from the proper path of
allegorical signification. Throughout the debate she is especially in-
sistent on the importance of transparent literal signification. Literal
Johnson 7
meaning must first be transparent so that it can later be elevated to a

spiritual/figurative meaning. One must, for instance, understand the
literal meaning of the word coilles before one can use this word with
allegorical intent, as she claims to have done in her rendition of
Saturn’s castration. The courtly Lover is a bad reader of her allegory
because he short-circuits this progression from the literal to the figu-
rative. He does not gain access to the figural meaning of Reason’s dis-
course because he will not allow the word coilles to signify literally.
While Reason argues that things can and must be named in order to
become readable figures in the service of truth, the courtly Lover
argues that bodily things, and especially sexual referents, should never
be properly named — they should never be referenced literally.
Rather, the coilles should be covered with figures, draped in euphe-
mistic metaphors.
Reason argues that the Courtly Lover’s resistance to the literal

meaning of the word coilles prevents the word from becoming an
allegorical signifier. The horror that the Courtly Lover demonstrates
when the sexual body is named literally would indicate a resistance to
the process of figuration that Reason upholds. By refusing literal des-
ignation of the body, the Courtly Lover refuses to allow the body to be
figured, thus jamming the sequence whereby it is elevated to the
spiritual. His horror at any proper literal designation of the body,
which leads him to cover the body in veils of euphemistic words, is a
way to hold onto the body. Euphemism prevents its very corporeality
to be first signified and then figured or spiritualized — that is, decor-
porealized. In contrast to what we might expect, the Lover’s horror at
literal designation of the body does not indicate that the Lover is horri-
fied by the body itself, but rather that he refuses to move beyond the
body to the spiritual. By refusing to name the body, by covering this
body with euphemisms, courtly discourse would in fact protect the
body from being made to signify in the service of a higher truth. So
when Reason opposes the meaning she intends for coilles (“en ma
parole autre sen ot”) to what she deems the Lover’s intended, or as she
puts it desired, meaning (“celui que tu i veuls mettre”), she is speaking
in fact of his desire for the body to remain corporeal — resistant and
unmeaning. The body veiled by euphemistic discourse resists appro-
priation into the symbolic and is to that extent a perverse object.
But while Reason is articulate and faultless in her appraisal of the

Lover’s perversion, there is reason to be suspicious of Reason’s own
linguistic practices. According to her, coilles does not just name male
genitalia. The word refers to male genitalia which are construed as
“beautiful” and “noble,” because God endowed them with the power
of generation. As such they are to be revered because they are like a
lesser emanation of divine creation. As much as Reason insists that
coilles must have a literal meaning, she does not allow the supposedly
literal meaning of coilles here to signify the bodily referent (i.e. the
fleshy sac attached to a male body). Rather, the supposedly literal
meaning she constructs is in fact already an ennobling figure: Reason
indeed elevates the testicles by claiming that they are the embodiment
of a divine-like “force de generacion.” She first restricts the literal
meaning of testicles to one meaning — testicles as an organ of pro-
creation, an instrument for the perpetuation of the species and not an
organ of pleasure to be used by an individual — and then claims that
this procreative power of testicles is supposed to be like the divine
power to create. This makes it a figure, a simile. Since procreation is
like divine creation it can be ennobled as such, predicated on a like-
ness. But this happens at the moment she is most forcefully arguing
for the importance of literal signification. The literal meaning she puts
forward is already a figure. In making the supposedly “literal” testi-
cles signify the divine-like power of generation, Reason not only ele-
vates and spiritualizes them, she also in a way severs them from the
body. The coilles which supposedly signify the generative power of
sex are meant to function as an allegorical signifier in a myth that
stages their castration. There is an apparent contradiction between the
literal meaning of the coilles (force de generacion) and their allegori-
cal presentation (cut-off and thus no longer generative in the literal
sense of the word). Reason must disavow this contradiction in order
for her argument to effectively shut down the Lover’s argument.
The accusation Reason levies against the Lover for engaging in

“linguistic sodomy” aligns two modes of linguistic designation — the
allegorical and the euphemistic — with two modes of sexual desire —
the straight and the deviant. They are presented as two incommensur-
able positions. What then is the difference between the situation of the
Johnson 9
sexual referent in Reason’s discourse and the position of the sexual

referent in courtly (euphemistic) discourse? How do their positions
differ in regards to the relation between the body and literal meaning?
It bears reminding: the bodily referent in question is the castrated tes-
ticles of Saturn, the very testicles which produce desire embodied in
the figure of Venus; Venus, who is the personification of courtly love
in the Romance of the Rose. In other words, it is the relationship be-
tween Venus and the body of Saturn, between desire and the castration
of the primal father, that is at stake here.
In the myth of Saturn’s castration Venus, or desire, is produced
from the foam, or excess, released in the act of cutting the father’s
testicles from his body. The testicles must be cut from the primal
father’s body in order for desire to be born. Desire is necessary to the
process of generation. This cut of the testicles from the father’s body
is thus necessary, it seems, to the maintenance of genealogical conti-
nuity. Jupiter, the son, must take them away from his father in order to
desire and ultimately procreate. But this desire is not to be confused
with the animal urge to procreate. She is born out of an excess marked
as the product of linguistic operations. That is to say, she is born out
of the cut which language operates in appropriating body parts as
linguistic signs, in making a penis into a phallus. A cut which is
allegorized here in this account of Saturn’s castration. For this reason
Venus is also associated with the denatured quality of human desire,
its resistance to strictly generational accounts of human desire, and its
tendency to stray from the path of its supposed aim.
To that extent, Venus’s birth allegorically accounts for what
Reason considers to be the disorderly nature of courtly love. The
euphemistic Lover, as a personification of courtly love, is a follower
of Venus. Reading Saturn’s castration as an allegory of the cut
whereby language appropriates the body into meaning, the birth of
Venus out of this cut suggests that we read desire as born from — and
straddling — the gap between language and the body. The advent of
desire is only possible in the gap between body and language and can
only arise in the severing of the primordial body from the body’s (al-
ready fantasmatic) image produced by its appropriation into a system
of meaning. As the allegory of the birth of Venus suggests, this gap is
a source of pleasure. To focus on it as the Lover does tacitly acknowl-
edges the gap, even if it is only “felt” in vaguely erotic intuitions. It is
the origin of desire and the reason why desire cannot, by definition, be
satisfied.
The euphemistic Lover’s rapport with the body focuses his

attention on the gap between the pre-discursive body and the body
inscribed in language, while Reason posits an already figural body
(symbolic of the “force de generacion”) as the ground for allegorical
signification in such a way as to elide the gap on which the Lover is
focused. She operates as though the linguistically inscribed body were
the only body, disavowing the non-coincidence of body and language,
denying the silent and resistant materiality of the body. In her account
this “real” body can be accessed, but only via endless unveilings; it
exists, but only as an endless regression, striptease.
All of these terms come together in a most compact and puzzling
manner in Alan of Lille’s theological allegory Plaint of Nature. Alan’s
allegory gives voice to the allegorical figure of Lady Nature as a way
to reflect upon the relationship between nature and language, and
between the body and language. Lady Nature is described as a sexual
body: she is, like Barthes’s stripper, an allegory representing the
object of reading — interpretation that is necessarily fueled by desire
for knowledge of the nature of things. The reader is presented with
two different desirous positions vis-à-vis the body of Nature. On the
one hand her dress is described layer by layer, down to her underwear,
in a sequential striptease of sorts that keeps promising to reveal more.
On the other hand she is described as already violated. Her dress is
torn in one spot. And this tear, we are led to believe, is caused by
mankind’s sexual perversions. Thus Nature’s body shows itself to the
reader in two ways. The first mode of showing is sequential, associ-
ated with the narrator’s desire to know the true nature of things, a
gradual unveiling. This is the pleasure that Barthes calls properly
intellectual or oedipal. It has a distinct schoolboy sex-fantasy (“rêve
de collégien”) quality to it. The narrator has to imagine how the gentle
curve of her flanks looks beneath her robe and continues to imagine
her more private parts.
As for the other things which an inner chamber hid from view, let a confi-
dent belief declare that they were more beautiful. For in her body lay hidden
a more blissful aspect to which her face showed the introduction. However,
Johnson 11
as her countenance revealed, the key of Dione’s daughter had not opened
the lock of her chastity (75).
The narrator’s reverie on Nature’s genitalia corresponds uncannily to

what Barthes describes as the “espoir de voir le sexe.” The sight of her
face promises something more, a “blissful aspect” hidden in her body.
In other words he dreams of seeing her genitalia while at the same
time acknowledging that they must remain hidden. And like Barthes
in his description of reading as a striptease, Alan of Lille intends
Nature’s striptease to describe the pleasures of reading. The pleasure
comes from imagining the “more blissful aspect” whose existence is
pointed to by the sight of the face. Nature’s figured virginity creates a
temporal narrative difference between the nature we can see and the
nature hidden away by the lock of chastity, between nature clothed
and nature unclothed, between a nature mediated through figures and
a literal (i.e. naked) nature. Although it promises, or points to, the
revelation of a final naked truth, this mode of unveiling can never
fully unveil the true “nature” of Lady Nature because nature is always
already mediated by language. This “always already” mediatedness is
the full meaning of her figured virginity. Nature describes it herself:
In all these things [seasons/aging] the effects of my power shine forth to an

extent greater than words can express. However, for many I have decided to
cloak my face in figures in order to protect my secret from being cheapened,
lest, if I should grant them an intimate knowledge of myself, what at first
had been held in honour by them because they lacked knowledge of it,
should when known be regarded as of less value (123-24).
The value of knowledge depends on its constant deferral, the deferral

of “naked” truth. But Nature’s body also glimmers through the tear in
her dress. Here is the second mode of showing:
[Narrator, addressing Lady Nature] I wonder why some parts of your tunic,
which should approximate the interweave of a marriage, suffer a separation
at that part in their connection where the picture’s phantasy produces the
image of man.
[Lady Nature, in response] From what you have already sampled you can
deduce what is the symbolic signification of the representation of the
parenthesis-like rent. (142)
This tear occurs where synthesis should occur, synthesis figured

by the idea of heterosexual union (the interweave of marriage). In-
stead of marriage, though, this tear represents the gap between the
material and the ideal, a gap that is necessary to the very possibility of
upholding the idea of “nature.” The poetic pleasure gained from con-
templating this tear is what Barthes considers a perverse pleasure,
what Lady Reason considers a sodomitic pleasure. Lady Reason is
suspicious of euphemism because, in refusing to name the body, in re-
fusing literal designation, it holds the body in a state of unmeaning.
Euphemism thus opposes itself to the intense logocentrism of allegory
(which is oedipal, sequential, etc.) in favor of a mode of corporeality
that refuses to sublimate in the way allegory does. Lady Reason’s po-
sition is then irreconcilable with that of the euphemistic Lover because
no system of meaning can be built from his position. The Lover, on
his side, cannot be reconciled with Lady Reason because she has dis-
avowed the gap between body and language in order to build a system
of meaning. To disavow this gap would foreclose the possibility of
finding pleasure or meaning in any given instance of language, any
given body.
Works Cited
Alan of Lille. Plaint of Nature. Trans. James J. Sheridan. Toronto: Pontifical
Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1980.
Barthes, Roland. Le Plaisir du texte. Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 1973.
Jean de Meun and Guillaume de Lorris. Le Roman de la Rose. Ed. and trans.
Armand Strubel. Paris: Livre de Poche, 1992.
Lise Leibacher-Ouvrard
University of Arizona
Divergences et Queeriosités:
Ovide moralisé ou les mutations
d’“Iphis en garçon” (XIIe-XVIIIe)
L’analyse des plus célèbres traductions moralisées qui se multiplient

entre le Moyen Âge et le XVIIIe siècle souligne le rôle hétéronormatif
considérable que la fable d’“Iphis et Ianthé” des Métamorphoses
d’Ovide (Livre IX) a pu jouer dans la construction de relations plus
tard catégorisées lesbiennes. Leur reconnaissant d’abord une certaine
queeriosité (Harvey et Le Brun-Cordier), quoique condamnée, elles les
ont ensuite “fantômées” (Wittig; Castle, Apparitional) par des interpré-
tations allégoriques, morales et médicales qui les ont détournées, à
savoir redressées, pour consacrer une binarité hétérosexuelle obligée
que des interprétations contemporaines (XXIe) remettent à nouveau en
question de nos jours.
________________________
Ovide, on le sait, a probablement été le poète latin le plus estimé

du public lettré de la période prémoderne, doublement classique par
son antiquité familière aux jeunes écoliers (Moss 1), avant de devenir
l’“inspirateur des décors monarchiques” au XVIIe siècle, en France du
moins (Apostolidès 63-87; Bardon 69-83). Mais si ses Héroïdes ont
consacré pour longtemps le motif victimaire des femmes séduites et
abandonnées, l’influence de ses Métamorphoses sur la définition
mouvante des sexes et des genres a peut-être été plus considérable en-
core. La fable d’“Iphis et Ianthé” du Livre IX en témoigne par les
distorsions identitaires variées qu’a permis son motif particulier — le
travestissement en homme, et la passion troublée, d’une jeune fille
pour une autre à qui elle doit être mariée, puis sa métamorphose finale
en garçon. Entre le Moyen Âge et le XVIIIe siècle, cette fable a eu des
“retombées culturelles” variées, allant de l’allusion intertextuelle à des
adaptations romanesques ou théâtrales plus ou moins développées
(Cazanave; Leibacher “Speculum”). Mais l’analyse des plus célèbres
traductions moralisées qui se multiplient à cette même époque n’est
pas non plus à négliger. Une approche généalogique qui, sans pré-
tendre ici à l’exhaustivité, entend surtout contribuer à l’histoire de
notre présent,1 permet en effet d’entrevoir le rôle hétéronormatif
important que la “prodigieuse et nouvelle Vénus” consacrée par cette
Métamorphose a pu jouer dans la construction de relations plus tard
catégorisées lesbiennes. En faisant opérer à la fois “l’inexistant,
l’illicite et l’informulable” — modes de régulation des dissidences
circonscrits par Michel Foucault jadis (111) —, ces traductions leur
ont en effet d’abord reconnu une certaine queeriosité (terme emprunté
au bel ouvrage de Harvey et Le Brun-Cordier), pour la rendre ensuite
activement invisible — la “fantômer”, diraient Monique Wittig (41) et
Terry Castle (Apparitional) — par des interprétations allégoriques,
morales et médicales qui l’ont détournée, à savoir redressée, pour
consacrer une binarité obligée, quand des censures plus ou moins
radicales ne l’ont pas éliminée.
***
La fable d’“Iphis et Ianthé” est considérée par les classicistes
comme un “mythe mineur”,2 à savoir comme une histoire largement
construite par Ovide lui-même, quoique peut-être déjà adaptée de Ni-
candre de Colophon, poète didactique de la fin du IIIe siècle av. J.-C.3
Sans remonter aussi loin, notons qu’au XIIe siècle déjà, cette fable
avait été réquisitionnée pour nourrir une brève réflexion sur
l’homoérotisme, dans une épigramme en latin que son transcripteur du
––––––––––
1
À l’instar de Michel Foucault, dont la recherche historique n’a pas “la seule
connaissance pour objectif. Il ne s’agit pas de faire l’histoire du passé, mais plutôt de
faire l’histoire du présent, c’est-à-dire l’histoire de nous-mêmes” (Éribon 45).
2
“[...] une histoire dont il n’existait pas, à l’époque où Ovide s’en est emparé,
de version littéraire syncrétique et définitive, ou de connaissance large parmi les cer-
cles plus ou moins distingués qui avaient l’habitude des lectures publiques. Le mythe
mineur est donc un mythe à écrire” (Martin, Introduction).
3
L’histoire de la petite Leucippos est en effet très proche; elle se passe elle
aussi en Crète, entre Lampros, le père, et Galatée, sa femme, qui devra finalement
supplier la déesse Léto de changer le sexe de sa fille; voir Brewer 294-304.
Leibacher-Ouvrard 15
XIXe siècle (Hauréau) intitulera “De prohibitis amoribus” tout en refu-

sant de l’attribuer au grand Hildebert de Lavardin, évêque du Mans
puis archevêque de Tours. C’est sans doute parce que ce poème liait
Iphis à Ganymède, pour d’ailleurs mieux les dissocier: “Quand Jupiter
recherche un garçon et Iphis une fille, / le conseil des cieux dit: c’est
un crime. / Je dis que c’est une erreur”.4 L’“erreur”, selon Lavardin,
était de considérer l’homoérotisme masculin comme un crime car,
poursuivait-il, si les dieux ont jugé bon de changer finalement le sexe
de la petite Iphis, ils ont été manifestement indifférents aux jeux des
hommes entre eux: ni Ganymède ni Jupiter n’a dû être métamorphosé
en femme. L’erreur (le glissement stratégique?) de Lavardin lui-même
était de mettre en parallèle deux types de relation érotique qui, tels que
l’antiquité gréco-romaine les définissait, avaient bien peu en commun
puisque deux seuls cas de figure y étaient reconnus: l’activité, à savoir
une pénétration assimilée à la virilité; et la passivité, une pénétrabilité
associée à la féminité (Pintabone 275; Parker 47-65). L’amalgame, ici,
est d’autant plus douteux que l’Ancien Régime reconnaissait plutôt
des actes homoérotiques que des identités homosexuelles (qui sem-
blent cependant construites moins tardivement que Foucault ne le
prétend); ce qui tendait déjà à occulter les amours entre femmes
puisqu’elles n’étaient jamais reconnues comme “agents”. Le caractère
souvent jugé “prodigieux”, “curieux” ou “singulier” de relations pour
ainsi dire toujours déjà queer5 explique pourquoi l’Iphis d’Ovide pou-
vait en effet s’inquiéter de l’union qu’elle jugeait “étrange” (prodi-
giosa) entre deux semblables épousées (nubimus ambae); queeriosité
que n’avait pas du tout le penchant d’un dieu (Jupiter agent) pour un
enfant (Ganymède patient). Lavardin, pour revenir à lui, cherchait
sans doute uniquement à décriminaliser les actes sexuels entre
––––––––––
4
“Cum peteret puerum Saturnius, Iphis Iantha, // Coetus ait superum: ‘Scelus
est.’ Illud voco culpam. // Quo prohibente nefas, ludum ridente virorum, // Altera fit
juvenis, fit femina neuter eorum. // Si scelus esset idem, sententia coelicolarum //
Alterutrum transformaret, neutramve duarum”; Hauréau 177-78. Boswell (237) traduit
cette épigramme ainsi: “When Jupiter seeks a boy, and Iphis seeks Ianthe, / The coun-
cil of heaven says, ‘It is a crime’ / I say this is a mistake, since they prohibit crime,
while laughing at the games of men: / One of the women was made into a youth, but
neither of the men was made into a woman. / If it were really a crime, the sentence of
the gods / Would have transformed one of the men and neither of the women.”
5
À considérer que cet “étrange” vocable “résiste singulièrement à l’attachement
de l’entendement”, et vise à “ouvrir au lieu de consolider les possibilités”, comme
Robert Harvey l’a rappelé (28).
hommes adultes [virorum] de son temps. Mais ce faisant, non seule-

ment il confirmait l’impossibilité, dans sa pensée, des amours d’Iphis
et de Ianthé, mais il les prétendait condamnées, elles, de toute anti-
quité, alors qu’Ovide était resté ambigu (Pintabone 259). Or si ce
poème peut servir d’introduction ici, c’est qu’une semblable condam-
nation, plus explicite et étendue, informe les traductions commentées
de la fable ovidienne aux XIVe et XVe siècles français.
Au début du XIVe siècle, en effet, l’Ovide moralisé6 (en vers) tra-
hit d’abord légèrement l’original latin par une misogynie que le poète
romain n’exhibait pas: c’est parce que “Fame est sans force et sans
valour”, et “Par fame est maint home à dolour” que le père d’Iphis
demande à son épouse Téléthuse d’“occire” l’enfant à venir s’il s’agit
d’une fille, à qui la mère désobéissante donnera un prénom épicène
ambigu (vv. 2791-97). Paradoxalement, le corps même du texte insiste
moins ouvertement7 que l’original sur cette attirance entre femmes
qu’Ovide, lui, disait non seulement “prodigieuse” mais “nouvelle”
(prodigiosa novaeque cura tenet Veneris), en effaçant donc ainsi la
lesbienne Sapho de la mémoire collective pour les siècles à venir,
alors que son Art d’aimer admet bien qu’il la connaît.8 Mais c’est sur-
tout dans sa moralisation que cette traduction médiévale s’écarte du
latin, entre autres lors d’une interprétation littérale (“historial sen-
tence”) particulièrement inventive. Le cas d’Iphis rappelle en effet as-
sez curieusement au glossateur l’histoire d’une femme “de fol corage”
attirée par une autre femme et qui, tout en n’ayant “point de vit [pénis]
/ Ne de membre à ce convenable”, aurait cherché “Contre droit et
contre nature, / De s’amour et de sa luxure / Acomplir en li charnel-
ment...” (vv. 3128-35). Chez Ovide, une seule allusion d’Iphis angois-
sée pouvait évoquer (très vaguement) le recours éventuel de la jeune
––––––––––
6
C. de Boer, vol. III: 291-97. Le manuscrit reproduit en 1936 a deux vignettes;
la première montre une femme au lit (sans doute Telethuse), Isis devant elle, et une
femme tenant l’enfant emmailloté. À la fin de la fable elle-même, une autre vignette
représente un couple homme-femme, sans doute les deux époux dont le mariage
venait d’être mentionné au-dessus. Ces vignettes n’ont pas de légendes; voir Le
romant des Fables Ovide le Grant, s.p.
7
“Qui vit onques mais avenir / Que nulle en si folle beance / Meïst sa cure et
s’esperance!” (vv. 2924-26).
8
“Sachez Sapho par cœur: est-il rien de plus voluptueux que ses poésies?” (Art
d’aimer III: 331).
fille à certains “arts” pour pénétrer sa compagne. 9 L’Ovide moralisé

pervertit donc considérablement le tableau lorsqu’il s’étend sur les
“fole amours” sodomites d’une femme travestie en homme et qui, sur
le conseil d’une méchante maquerelle, va jusqu’à épouser sa parte-
naire ignorante et lui rendre le devoir conjugal par la tromperie d’un
faux pénis (“membre apostis”; vv. 3140-49). Dans l’esprit du com-
mentateur médiéval, la douloureuse Iphis d’Ovide est donc reliée à
l’une de ces curieuses tribades au clitoris ithyphallique (d’ailleurs
elles aussi déjà placées sous la coupe de “prodigiosa Venus”)
qu’étaient les excentriques Bassa et Philaenis pour le poète latin Mar-
tial.10 Contrefaçon d’homme par deux prothèses au moins (l’habit et le
godemiché), le travesti est condamné sans appel: “De tele œuvre n’ait
nulz envie. / Quar trop est et dampnable et vis” (vv. 3156-57). Du
moins cette exégèse donnait-elle un corps concret aux désirs homoé-
rotiques féminins, même s’ils s’imaginaient obligatoirement sur un
mode de pensée génital et viriliste. Mais ce sens “historial”, on le
note, s’accompagnait aussi d’une interprétation dite “allégorique” que
le poète anonyme déclarait préférer: le père qui sacrifie sa fille sym-
boliserait Dieu qui punit l’“ame pecherresse”, alors que la mère-
“sainte Yglise” refuse, elle, de la martyriser, et que sa foi sert à la ré-
générer. Là déjà, la “préférence” allait donc vers un certain effacement
d’une “réalité” homoérotique que le commentateur avait pourtant ren-
due scandaleuse à souhait. Ces deux interprétations continueront
néanmoins de circuler ensemble jusqu’au début du XVIe siècle. On les
retrouvera entre autres dans Cy commence Ovide (1484), dont la prose
reste proche de la version en vers; adaptée du latin par Colard Man-
sion et (annoncée comme) moralisée par Thomas Walleys, elle
s’inspire d’ailleurs surtout de l’Ovidius moralizatus du livre XV des
Reductorium morale de Pierre Bersuire (1290-1362). Dans cet
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9
“[...] huc licet ex toto sollertia confluat orbe, ipse licet revolet ceratis Daedalus
alis, quid faciet? num me puerum de virgine doctis artibus efficiet?”; “Quand tout le
génie du monde affluerait en ces lieux, quand Dédale y reviendrait lui-même, soutenu
dans son vol par ses ailes enduites de cire, que pourrait-il pour moi? Avec toutes les
ressources de son art fera-t-il que de jeune fille je devienne un jeune homme?” (je
souligne).
10
“At tu, pro facinus, Bassa, fututor eras. / Inter se geminos audes committere
cunnos / mentiturque virum prodigiosa Venus. / Commenta es dignum Thebano
aenigmate monstrum, / hic ubi uir non est, ut sit adulterium”; Martial, Epigrammes, I,
épig. 90, p. 44. Sur la tribade Philaenis, voir VII, épig. 67, p. 230.
ouvrage, qui verra aussi le jour sous le titre de Bible des poètes, non
seulement le sens dit “moral” est d’une binarité misogyne plus insis-
tante qu’auparavant — Jésus veut que les “biens spirituels” “soient
aux masles reservez, cest a dire aux bons et parfaits”; d’où la mutation
finale d’Iphis, “de vices en vertus” —, mais le sens “hystorial” main-
tient le pénis postiche, en condamnant même avec plus de précision
encore une “œuvre” sodomite jugée par trop “villaine et vituperable
envers Dieu et le monde.”
Dès le début du XVe siècle cependant, cette glose “tribadique”
perdait déjà du terrain. Chez Christine de Pizan entre autres, bien que
son Livre de la Mutacion de Fortune (1400-1403) s’inspire pourtant
explicitement de l’Ovide moralisé en vers,11 dont il s’écarte donc sur
ce point précis. On y notera d’abord que le passage consacré à “Yplis”
(sic) rend le père plus misogyne encore:
Qui tant ot femmes en hayne / Qu’il commanda a la royne, / Sa femme, qui

ençainte estoit / Et ja d’enfanter s’apprestoit, / Que, soubz peine de vie per-
dre, / Se fille avoit, la feïst ardre / Ou occire de mort obscure, / Car de fille
n’avoit il cure.
On relèvera aussi que c’est à la déesse Vesta (et non à Isis) que la
mère offre des sacrifices dont les effets sont de toute évidence plutôt
judéo-chrétiens: “Miracle y fist grant la deesse, / Car la nuit rempli de
leece / La royne et Yplis sa fille, / Qui filz devint, par la soubtille, /
Deesse Vestis, qui deffit / Son corps de femme et filz le fit” (je sou-
ligne). Mais on retiendra surtout ici que ce passage ne contient plus
aucune glose ou allusion homoérotique. Sans doute parce que Pizan y
reprend la “transmutaction” d’“Yplis” comme modèle essentiel à sa
propre histoire; à savoir “L’estrange cas [...] Comment de femme
homme devins” (vv. 1159-64). On apprendra en effet que, le mari de
Christine ayant chuté de la nef de la vie sur laquelle elle était embar-
quée avec lui, la déesse Fortune avait donné à la jeune femme le seul
sexe jugé propre à mener décemment la barque familiale, et c’est pré-
cisément par la métamorphose d’Iphis et des changements physiques
––––––––––
11
Comme Suzanne Solente l’a souligné dans sa réédition du texte (I: xxxiv),
l’Ovide moralisé (en vers) est cité dès la première partie de la Mutacion; pour le pas-
sage concernant “Yplis”, voir I: 41-45, vv. 1025-1156.
très semblables aux siens12 que Pizan illustre “Que vray homme fus
devenu (v. 1331)”, et autorise son passage à l’écriture. Cette glose
pseudo-féminisante de la fable ovidienne semble être restée un cas
plutôt isolé; à ma connaissance, elle ne resurgira pas avant la guerre
des sexes qui reprendra avec force au milieu du XVIIe siècle, et plus
précisément dans la très ambiguë Pretieuse (1657, II: 48-50) où l’abbé
Michel de Pure13 l’utilisera avec duplicité pour faire goûter l’amer-
tume des espoirs déçus aux salonnières en mal de pouvoir phallique et
d’échanges de rôles stricto sensu. Dans la Cité des dames, Pizan elle-
même reniera d’ailleurs finalement cette mutation qu’elle avait tant
désirée auparavant. Non sans raison, car malgré une transformation
proto-féministe des rôles genrés, elle valorisait d’autant plus la seule
masculinité que la fable d’Iphis célébrait un cas d’irréversibilité
sexuelle, contrairement à l’histoire de Tirésias par exemple, comme
Kevin Brownlee l’a suggéré (172). Une chose, cependant, ne changera
plus guère depuis cette époque, et c’est l’effacement de toute glose ou
même allusion homoérotique qu’effectuait déjà Pizan.
En 1466, l’Ovide moralisé (en prose) en témoigne également.
Non seulement la passion angoissée d’Iphis (que la version versifiée
illustrait encore clairement)14 disparaît du corps du texte, mais la rapi-
dité de sa métamorphose suggère l’autocensure d’un moment jugé
embarrassant, la transmutation d’Iphis devient “spirituelle” unique-
ment, et la glose tribadique n’existe plus. Mais c’est au XVIe siècle
surtout qu’un triple mouvement de fixation hétéronormative semble
avoir lieu: 1) non seulement l’interprétation tribadique est effacée des
versions (en prose) du Cy Commence Ovide qui continuent d’être re-
publiées — entre autres sous le titre de Grand Olympe des histoires
poëtiques (1532) — mais elle disparaît entièrement des nouvelles
adaptations qui sont mises en circulation, pour ne plus reparaître dans
––––––––––
12
Voir vv. 1337-61: “membres senti trop plus fors” (v. 1337); “ma chiere /
Estoit muee et enforcie / Et ma voix forment engrossie / Et corps plu dur et plus
isnel”; “Plus ne me tins en la parece / De Plour, qui croissoit ma destrece, / Fort et
hardi cuer me trouvay, / Dont m’esbahi, mais j’esprouvay / Que vray homme fus
devenu” (v. 1331).
13
Voir Leibacher “Speculum” et l’Annexe IX de notre seconde édition (2004)
d’Iphis et Iante de Benserade, 182-87.
14
L’Ovide moralisé (en vers) précise en effet: “Hyphis rel’aime, et de la touse /
Se desespere, et ne cuide mie / Que joïr puisse de s’amie / Et qu’à lui se puisse
acoupler. / Qui plus embrase la pucele / Hyphis pour Hienté la bele” (vv. 2912-18).
les traductions qui suivront; 2) une explication “morale” de la muta-

tion d’Iphis par la piété se substitue aussi à l’interprétation anagogique
(mystique) en portant alors fortement l’accent sur le mariage hétéro-
sexuel et sa fécondité; 3) tandis que le renforcement iconique prend de
plus en plus d’ampleur et de précision au cours du siècle, la fluctua-
tion de certains accords grammaticaux cesse, 15 et les motifs mouvants
des gravures se figent graduellement16 pour s’inspirer ensuite pendant
plus d’un siècle de deux vignettes gravées sur bois par Bernard Salo-
mon. Ces mêmes gravures illustraient déjà, en 1557, la composition
bipartite et hétéronormative de la célèbre Métamorphose d’Ovide figu-
rée (1557, 1583). S’intitulant “Lygde & Teletuse” (et portant donc
l’accent sur les deux parents), un premier huitain en vers y insiste en
premier lieu sur la conjugalité hétérosexuelle (même si Salomon, lui,
représente l’apparition d’Isis à Téléthuse). En portant ensuite sur “La
fille Iphis en fils”, peinte agenouillée avec sa mère aux pieds d’Isis, le
second huitain fait de la métamorphose une récompense pour la foi de
la mère en la divinité. Non seulement la tribade a donc disparu de
l’horizon, mais l’homoérotisme inquiet de l’Iphis ovidienne n’existe
plus non plus.
Cette consécration de l’orthodoxie conjugale hétérosexuelle se
maintiendra sous des formes assez peu variées jusqu’au XVIIIe siècle.
––––––––––
15
En 1532, Le Grand Olympe... parle de “la fortune de Iphis, qui fut de femme
mue en homme”. En 1539, Les XV livres de la Metamorphose d’Ovide (poëte tres
elegãt) contenans L’olympe des Histoires poëtiques... le/la dit “mué en homme”. Les
rééditions de 1554, 1570 et 1574 utilisent le féminin “muée”.
16
Dans l’édition de 1532, la seule gravure est tripartite, assez grossière et de
signification peu claire: y domine une figure de femme, debout, offrant un arc et une
flèche à un jeune homme qui la supplie à genoux, et à qui se joint, dans le troisième
volet, une autre figure agenouillée et de dos. En 1539, la première gravure est une
scène d’intérieur différente: un homme est à genoux devant un couple homme-femme,
debout, alors qu’une autre femme, en second plan sur la droite, observe la scène les
bras croisés; “la transmutation d’Iphis la pucelle en jouvenceau” est illustrée plus loin
par une autre gravure dont le motif (mais non les détails mêmes du dessin) ira en se
stabilisant puisqu’il s’agit de deux femmes (la mère et sa fille?) debout devant le
temple d’Isis (difficile à distinguer autrement que par une tête couronnée) dans le haut
à gauche, sur un dais surélevé de trois marches. En 1554, la gravure illustre cette fois
une scène d’extérieur: sur la gauche, devant un mur, un homme en chapeau à plume
part en avertissant de son doigt levé trois femmes qui sont assises et un chien qui
aboie méchamment. Le texte de 1570 n’a aucune illustration, mais celui de 1574 est
illustré des deux vignettes de Bernard Salomon.
En 1602, par exemple, l’illustration dont Crispijn van de Passe17 em-

prunte un nouveau motif à Antonio Tempesta fonctionne sur deux
plans à la fois. Son arrière-plan droit innove par une représentation de
Téléthuse debout, admonestée par son mari assis, alors que sur le
premier plan gauche, la scène du temple représente Iphis comme
Salomon l’avait fait, mais en garçon cette fois; le costume différent et
les cheveux raccourcis (qui sont dûment mentionnés dans la fable)
rendent donc visibles ici que la masculinisation finale est due à la foi
maternelle. Même insistance surtout, en 1619, dans le dessin très sem-
blable gravé par Jean Mathieu (1590-1672) pour la célèbre traduction
en prose que Nicolas Renouard publie à partir de 1606. Non seulement
le texte lui-même mélodramatise fortement le couple de parents, re-
présentés tendres et larmoyants, mais il insiste sur la virginité perdue
par la jeune épousée. Les dieux, Renouard juge bon de l’affirmer, ont
assisté à la consommation même du mariage “pour faire cueillir à
Iphis les doux fruits du pucelage d’Ianthe, qui perdit avec beaucoup de
contentement cette nuit-là une fleur qu’elle n’avait pas tenue aupara-
vant moins chère que sa vie” — Ovide ne donnait aucun de ces détails
d’un machisme grivois. Quant à l’“Explication morale et historique”
de Renouard, elle insiste sur un amour maternel essentialisé avant de
glisser de la pitié à la piété, la métamorphose allégorisant le secours
accordé au croyant par Dieu le “Tout-Puissant”. Jusqu’à la fin du
XVIIe siècle au moins, les multiples rééditions18 de cette traduction
continueront donc d’entourer Iphis d’un halo d’humanisme dévot. Et
pourtant, une autre petite addition suggérait déjà qu’une glose bien
différente aurait pu avoir lieu: en décrivant l’impossible et “froid”
mariage lesbien d’Iphis et Ianthe, Renouard semblait en effet l’inscrire
également dans la théorie médicale des humeurs. Mais il ne s’enga-
gera pas plus avant dans une interprétation scientifique de la mutation
d’Iphis que la seconde moitié du XVIe siècle avait pourtant déjà
––––––––––
17
Metamorphoseon Ouidianarum typi aliquot artificiosissimè delineati, ac in
gratiam studiosae juuentutis editi per Crispianum Passaeum Zeelandum chalcogra-
phum Anno salutis humanae (Frontispice).
18
D’autres éditions paraissent en 1617, 1619 (édition utilisée ici, p. 267 du
texte, et p. 121 du Discours), 1621, 1625, 1627, 1629, 1633, 1637, 1645, 1650, 1651,
1658, et 1676. Les éditions de 1619, 1637 et 1651 sont illustrées. Nous reproduisons
cette traduction commentée en entier dans l’Annexe I de l’Iphis et Iante de Benserade
(édition 2004), 141-48.
propagée, avant que la seconde moitié du XVIIe siècle ne la consacre

très différemment.
À partir de la Renaissance, en effet, Iphis s’inscrit aussi dans le
discours médical, et sa métamorphose y illustre d’abord l’isomor-
phisme que la théorie galénique concevait entre les appareils génitaux
féminin et masculin. À cette époque, comme Thomas Laqueur l’a rap-
pelé (96-97), bien des configurations étaient jugées possibles le long
du continuum fluide de sexes anatomiques jugés distincts non en
essence mais en degré. Et si les hommes étaient censés porter cette
élévation à son point culminant, c’est que, selon la théorie des
humeurs, leur chaleur vitale plus élevée faisait que leurs organes
s’extériorisaient tandis que ceux des femmes restaient enfermés —
théorie du “gant retourné”. En un clin d’œil taquin à la révision queer,
par Lawrence Schehr (24), du dicton de Simone de Beauvoir — “on
ne naît pas queer, on le devient” —, notons qu’à cette époque prémo-
derne, on pouvait naître indifférencié avant de se voir assigner une
identité genrée; d’où la fascination bien connue pour l’hermaphro-
ditisme tel que Jones et Stallybrass (entre autres) l’ont analysé. Mais
l’important ici est que cette fluidité faisait aussi du changement de
sexe spontané une possibilité jugée tout à fait réelle. Des cas spé-
cifiques ont d’ailleurs été documentés, entre autres par le chirurgien
Ambroise Paré (1510-1590), lui-même témoin de la métamorphose en
homme d’une jeune femme nommée Marie Garnier (29). Pour Mon-
taigne, qui relate la même histoire dans son Journal de voyage en
Italie et dans ses Essais,19 ce changement de sexe pouvait également
s’expliquer par la force d’une imagination féminine “si continuelle-
ment et si vigoureusement attachée” au pénis qu’elle finissait par
“incorporer, une fois pour toutes, cette virile partie aux filles”. C’est
dans ce cadre qu’Iphis apparaît chez lui,20 et c’est donc un “vehement
desir” de pénis qui l’aurait transformée. D’une manière comme d’une
––––––––––
19
“Passant à Vitry le Françoys, je pus voir un homme que l’Évêque de Soissons
avait nommé Germain en confirmation, lequel tous les habitants de là ont connu et vu
fille, jusques à l’âge de vingt deux ans, nommée Marie. Il était à cett’heure-là fort
barbu, et vieil, et point marié. Faisant, dit-il, quelque effort en sautant, ses membres
virils se produisirent; et est encore en usage, entre les filles de là, une chanson, par
laquelle elles s’entradvertissent de ne faire point de grandes enjambées, de peur de
devenir garçons, comme Marie Germain” (“De la force de l’imagination”, Essai I, Ch.
XXI, 96); voir l’excellent article de Patricia Parker.
20
“Iphis remplit garçon les vœux qu’il formait femme” (Ovide, Met. IX, 979).
autre, la mutation, ici, n’est plus un miracle divin mais dans l’ordre
naturel et physiologique des choses.
Mais la complication qui survient vers la fin de la Renaissance
est que les connaissances anatomiques commencent elles aussi à s’y
transformer. En 1610, lorsque le médecin Jacques Ferrand consacre un
développement explicite à ce sujet,21 les témoignages antiques et
contemporains lui paraissent encore suffisamment puissants pour sug-
gérer que “les métamorphoses de Caeneus et Iphis, décrites par Ovide,
pourraient être véritables”. Quelques années plus tard, en 1623, la
nouvelle édition de son ouvrage hésite pourtant à interpréter aussi lit-
téralement “les fables d’Iphis [...] et plusieurs autres jeunes filles
devenues mâles en leur puberté”; ce qui fait que sa conclusion s’écarte
plus ouvertement du discours isomorphique de Galien auquel, disait-
elle depuis le début, “nos modernes Anatomistes contredisent” (11-
12). Ferrand s’appuie en fait sur le médecin André Dulaurens (1558-
1609) qui, en refusant déjà la théorie qu’une femme puisse être jamais
changée en homme (225), avait été l’un des tout premiers à soutenir
un dimorphisme sexuel qui excluait, lui, toute fluctuation. Mais
l’abandon graduel du modèle “unisexe” ne fera pas disparaître Iphis
du discours médical pour autant. Elle y est recyclée différemment. En
1612, le fascinant traité Des Hermaphrodits du médecin Jacques
Duval (1555?-1615?) liera toujours bien la métamorphose de Marie
Garnier à la fable d’Iphis qu’il tire, lui, du célèbre humaniste italien du
XVe siècle, Giovanni Pontano. 22 Mais Duval opère en plus une
––––––––––
21
“Ceux qui ont lu le chapitre 3 du livre 2 de la Génération des animaux
d’Aristote ne trouveront ce changement miraculeux, car il dit que la femme est un
homme imparfait, ne différant du mâle que des parties génitales, lesquelles, dit
Galien, sont en la femme retenues et encloses au dedans, à faute de chaleur suffisante
pour les pousser au dehors, ce que nature n’a voulu faire pour la conservation de
l’espèce. Il peut donc arriver qu’une femme échauffée d’une furieuse amour pousse au
dehors ses parties génitales, qui sont celles de l’homme renversées selon Galien,
auquel nos modernes anatomistes contredisent” (Traité 20-21).
22
“Pontanus raconte une histoire pareille de Iphis, dont il dit: Vota puer solvit,
quoe [sic] foemina voverat Iphis. / Iphis fille promist de beaux voeux présenter, / Que
convertie en fils sçeut bien exécuter” (p. 339). Ce Pontanus que Montaigne citait lui
aussi est sans doute le célèbre humaniste italien Giovanni Pontano (Jovianus
Pontanus, 1426-1503). Avant de parler de Montaigne, le traducteur Georg Sandys
(1578-1644), dans les commentaires de son Ovid’s Metamorphosis Englished [1632],
mentionnera aussi que “Pontanus, who lived in the last Century, makes mention of a
Fishermans wife of Caieta who sodenly became a man, after she had beene fourteene
yeares married of an other, called Aemilia, the wife of Antonio Spensa, a cittizen of
curieuse mutation idéologique qui va absolument tout changer

lorsqu’il ajoute que Marie Garnier ne s’est pas vraiment transformée:
son pénis était simplement toujours déjà là mais caché. Pour Marie —
et donc pour Iphis qui lui est associée, du moins par la pensée —,
Duval va alors inventer le concept étonnant de mutants ambigus qu’il
nomme “gynanthropes”; à savoir des hommes encore mal développés,
apparemment femmes par leur anatomie, mais finalement devenus
“hommes vrais et naturels” lorsque leur pénis décide fermement de
s’extérioriser. Cette splendide contorsion (que j’ai analysée ailleurs) 23
a d’abord pour intérêt manifeste de sauver du bûcher une femme
habillée en homme et accusée de “sodomie” sur celle qu’elle avait
dûment épousée. Mais si ces propos importent ici, c’est surtout qu’à
partir du milieu du XVIIe siècle, les moralisations des nouvelles tra-
ductions d’Ovide se mettent à refléter les débats médicaux provoqués
par un dimorphisme anatomique qui faisait de plus en plus d’adhé-
rents.
Le texte séminal ici est la traduction de l’académicien Pierre du
Ryer, ouvrage dont l’énorme succès éclipse celui de Renouard à partir
de 1655,24 et dont l’“Explication” littérale, entièrement nouvelle
également, est à base médicale essentiellement:
En effet ceux qui ont quelque connaissance de la nature savent bien qu’il
n’est pas impossible qu’une fille devienne garçon, et qu’il y a eu des Iphis
aussi bien dans l’histoire que dans la Fable, c’est-à-dire, qu’il y a eu des
filles qui ont changé de sexe lorsque l’on y pensait le moins, si toutefois
cela se peut appeler changement (156, je souligne).
––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
Ebulano who married and begot children: and of a third when she had had a child.
That in the time of Ferdinand King of Naples, Caroletta and Francisca, the daughters
of Lodouico Quarna of Salern, at fifteene yeares old exchanged their sexes” (334-36).
La fable d’Iphis traduite par Sandys fait partie de l’anthologie du lesbianisme (2003)
publiée par Terry Castle, qui note en préface que les Métamorphoses ovidiennes
“played an extraordinarily influential role in the imaginative rediscovery of homo-
sexuality in early modern Europe” (120).
23
À ce sujet, voir Leibacher-Ouvrard “Tribades”; plus généralement, voir Das-
ton and Park 1-19; Greenblatt 66-93; Laqueur 155-56; Jones and Stallybrass 80-111.
24
Le texte entier et la gravure (semblable à celle de Renouard, en image
inversée) de l’édition de 1660 (412-17) citée ici sont reproduits dans l’Annexe II de
notre édition (2004) d’Iphis et Iante de Benserade, 149-56. Cet ouvrage a connu de
multiples rééditions, entre autres en 1666, 1676, 1677, 1680, 1693, 1702 et 1728.
Par cette dernière restriction, et lorsque du Ryer précise “Car il me

semble que la nature avait seulement différé de montrer ce qu’elles
étaient” (156), c’est l’idéologie nouvelle de la différence sexuelle
innée qu’il embrasse, différence elle-même parfois différée mais
essentiellement toujours déjà là. “On peut donc s’imaginer la même
chose d’Iphis”, conclut-il, “et je crois qu’il n’y a rien de fabuleux en
cet accident, si ce n’est qu’Iphis est peut-être un personnage feint, en
qui l’on a voulu faire voir cet effet de la nature”(156). Notons que
c’est probablement pour les mêmes raisons “médicales” qu’en 1693,
John Dryden allait lui aussi ajouter quelques détails anatomiques à sa
propre traduction de la fable en anglais: “The latent Parts, at length
reveal’d, began / To shoot, and spread, and burnish into Man. The
maid becomes a youth”. 25 Mais pour l’inquiète Iphis ovidienne, le
scénario disséminé par du Ryer allait avoir des conséquences considé-
rables, car si Iphis y a toujours été un homme (bien que latent), ses
sentiments de femme envers une autre femme n’ont tout simplement
jamais existé. Conscient qu’il réduisait en même temps les effets de la
foi, du Ryer les réinscrit comme par manière d’acquis, en subsumant
alors la nature à un Dieu plutôt machiniste et déiste: “Car sans recourir
aux miracles il est constant que Dieu récompense aussi les gens de
bien par des choses que fait la nature qui agit suivant ses ordres”(156).
Par ce même mouvement, cependant, la différence innée des sexes et
l’effacement “naturel” d’Iphis “petite amie des dames” (ainsi que le
Banquet de Platon nommait ces relations) sont également consacrés.
Cette traduction n’avait donc pas tort d’annoncer que ses gloses
seraient non seulement “nouvelles” mais “Historiques, Morales et
Politiques”, et cette rectification médicale d’Iphis a eu du succès
puisqu’elle figurera également dans les “traductions nouvelles” que
les abbés Morvan de Bellegarde et Banier publieront respectivement
en 1701 et en 1732.
Une invisibilisation plus radicale encore provient de l’embarras
que la fable semble provoquer de manière grandissante en cadre lettré.
En latin comme en français, bon nombre d’éditions sont expurgées
depuis le début du XVIIe siècle au moins. Citons rapidement trois
seuls exemples ici: en 1630, l’édition Cramoisy réduit la fable d’Iphis
––––––––––
25
(Je souligne). Merci à Yvonne Noble de m’avoir précisé que cette traduction
a été publiée pour la première fois en 1693, dans l’Examen poeticum (Third Part) édité
par Jacob Tonson.
à son seul travesti — non seulement ses amours mais sa transforma-

tion finale sont omis (176-77). En 1687, c’est la fable entière qui dis-
paraît de l’édition Thiboust et Esclassan. Quant aux collections ad
usum scholarum (à l’usage des écoliers), censurer y est la grande spé-
cialité du père de Jouvancy (1643-1719), qui, au début du XVIIIe
siècle, respectera seulement les quarante premiers vers d’Ovide, en
effaçant lui aussi à la fois la passion lesbienne et la métamorphose
finale. 26 Les troubles d’Iphis sont désormais entrés dans le champ
encore assez nouveau des “obscénités”. En témoigne aussi le recours
stratégique que font les manuels en français à la pratique du “résumé”,
réduisant parfois la fable à sa plus simple expression pour mieux
désamorcer son potentiel d’ambiguïté. Ainsi, en 1685, l’Abbrégé des
métamorphoses de César de Rochefort la résume en neuf mots: “Fut
fille de Ligde. Elle fut changée en garçon” (126-27). À la même
époque, les préfaces des manuels d’histoire française et romaine de
Claude Le Ragois — publiés de 1687 jusqu’à la fin du XIXe siècle —
indiquent que le sujet véritable, quant à lui, était devenu quasiment
innommable. Au point que dans les abrégés publiés par Mme Tardieu-
Denesle en 1808, ou par l’académicien De Rhéville en 1836, “Iphis”
n’existe d’ailleurs plus du tout. Ce n’est pas chez eux qu’Ovide expo-
sera ses jeunes lecteurs aux curiosités des sexes et des genres troublés.
En conclusion ici, notons que ces multiples redressements
straight ou effacements variés des amours entre femmes mettent sur-
tout en relief la différence radicale qu’avait opérée, en 1637, l’Iphis et
Iante de Benserade, pièce pour le moins singulière qu’Anne Verdier,
Christian Biet et moi-même avons rééditée pour la première fois en
2000, puis en 2004 en version augmentée. Cette comédie se distin-
guait en effet par une réinscription queer, particulièrement forte en
son temps déjà. Entre autres divergences, non seulement une réécri-
ture anormale et positive de l’hypotexte ovidien y affichait, sur scène,
la relation sensuelle de deux femmes de vingt ans (et non plus
d’enfants de treize ans), mais en consommant leur mariage avant tout
changement de sexe, ces amantes déclaraient aussi avoir découvert,
lors de leur première nuit, bien des plaisirs que seul le jugement de
––––––––––
26
Voir entre autres les livres Expurgati et explanati de 1705, et la Nova editio
accuratissima de 1725.
Dieu et des autres rendait inquiets.27 En 1676, quand Louis XIV exi-
gera du même Benserade qu’il métamorphose les Métamorphoses
d’Ovide en rondeaux, son “Iphis en garçon” persistera d’ailleurs dis-
crètement dans la subversion en y faisant du changement de sexe et de
l’hétérosexualité obligés une ridicule affaire de “poil au menton”.28 À
la fin de la comédie, Iphis sera bien toujours “hommosexualisée”
(comme l’aurait dit Irigaray, 174). Mais l’intervention dea ex machina
de la déesse Isis y souligne mieux encore que chez Ovide le caractère
culturellement fabriqué et performatif des genres. Ce faisant, elle
prouve également qu’il s’agit moins de différence innée que de diffé-
renciation délibérée (Mathieu), et que l’homoérotisme n’est pas natu-
rellement “invisible”, c’est parce qu’il est effacé qu’il le devient. Les
traductions moralisées, abrégés ou autres éditions expurgées de la
fable d’Ovide en témoignaient déjà sous l’Ancien Régime en faisant
fonctionner à la fois les trois modes de censure mentionnés par Fou-
cault — “affirmer que cela n’est pas permis, empêcher que cela soit
dit, nier que ça existe” (111) —, et ce courant censeur se poursuivra
longtemps puisque même dans les années 1980, une lecture sym-
bolique fait encore de l’“étrange histoire d’Iphis” un “conte de fée”
supposé illustrer la réconciliation “saine” d’une fillette avec sa
féminité (Nicaise 67-71).29 Mais si toutes ces gloses ont renforcé le
courant d’hétéronormativité dans lequel l’homoérotisme lesbien a
longtemps été noyé, signalons que d’autres avatars plus “queer” de la
fable les déstabilisent actuellement à leur tour. Entre autres, lorsqu’en
––––––––––
27
Contrairement à la fable ovidienne, Iante apprend donc tout ici, et son
entêtement à aimer Iphis innove doublement: “Ce mariage est doux, j’y trouve assez
d’appâts, // Et si l’on n’en riait, je ne m’en plaindrais pas” (V, 1, 73). Iphis est tout
aussi téméraire: “Je ne reçus jamais tant de contentements, [...] // J’embrassais ce beau
corps [...] // Je touchais, je baisais, j’avais le cœur content” (V, 4). Sur cette pièce,
voir entre autres Wahl, Robinson, Biet, Verdier, Leibacher “Speculum”, ainsi que
l’Introduction et les Annexes de notre édition (2004).
28
L’Argument persiste à situer le mariage avant la métamorphose — Iphis
“épouse Yante une autre fille, et change de sexe” (je souligne); pour ce rondeau, voir
l’Annexe XII de l’Iphis et Iante de Benserade (193-94).
29
Pour lire Iphis comme un “garçon manqué, dont la féminité ne s’est pas
encore épanouie”, Ianthé comme “la part féminine d’elle-même qu’elle aime”, et le
mariage final comme “la réconciliation avec son être profond”, il fallait effacer rien
moins que le “long monologue où Iphis avoue ses difficultés”, le juger “le plus faible
de l’histoire” et manifestant une “espèce de goût pour le compliqué et le monstrueux
[…] qui n’est pas du meilleur Ovide” (Nicaise 67-71).
Australie, un opéra comique30 (1997-2005) fait d’elle un curieux

“bricolage” (Stanley) où, d’après un commentaire sur Internet désor-
mais effacé, une Télétuze “‘new age’”, et des dieux “dressed like cast
members of the Rocky Horror Show” font naître sur scène une Iphis
androgyne. À suivre un autre spectateur (Strahan), non seulement le
libretto australien se rapproche du scénario de Benserade —
puisqu’Ianthe “ultimately, is not deterred in her passion by the discov-
ery that Iphis is, in reality, female too” —, mais il pousse jusqu’à la
répudiation de l’hétérosexualité. Notons aussi que cette (sub)version a
elle-même été critiquée pour la trop stricte binarité homo/hétéro qui la
sous-tendait, dans un article que Strahan consacre à l’hétérophobie du
nouvel opéra australien dont il déplore le “tribalisme gay”. Au même
moment d’ailleurs, diverses (re)mises en scène de la pièce de Ben-
serade, en Lorraine comme à Paris (2001, 2005),31 rappelaient les
coups qu’il avait lui-même déjà portés à des identités sexuelles cons-
truites sans flexibilité. À considérer tous ces détournements récents
comme autant de nuances variées à base d’un continuum ovidien
d’une grande plasticité, il est clair, au moins, que la très queerieuse
“Iphis” d’Ovide est restée d’une grande utilité pour repenser la cons-
truction contraignante des binarités obligées.
––––––––––
30
Elena Kats-Chernin a composé cet opéra comique, intitulé Iphis, sur un
libretto de Richard Toop; production du Music Theatre de Sydney, dirigée par Aku
Kadogo, en 1997, avant une tournée à Freiburg au printemps 2005.
31
La pièce a, entre autres, été rejouée pour la première fois depuis le XVIIe
siècle à Metz, en avril 2001, par la compagnie Le Studiolo, sur une mise en scène de
Didier Doumergue (dont le “Carnet de scène” est reproduit dans notre édition 2004 de
Benserade, 195-214). Elle a également été jouée en juin 2005 à Paris, au Bouffon
Théâtre, par la troupe des Échantillons, dirigée par Lévy Blancard, avec une reprise
en novembre et décembre 2005. L’intégrale de la pièce a aussi été lue, en solo, par
l’acteur/metteur en scène, Jean-Marie Villégier, le 24 octobre 2005 au théâtre de
l’Université de Metz-Le Saulcy.
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Pierre Zoberman
Université Paris 13
A Modest Proposal for Queering the Past:

A Queer Princess with a Space of Her Own?
Defining queer as distinct from sexual identities, this study argues that
queer as well as gay behaviors/identities existed before the invention of
the homosexual in 19th-century medical discourse (as opposed to a
widespread Foucault-inspired creed) and explores what may have been
considered queer in the past. Searching for a queer seventeenth-century,
it moves from the figure of Monsieur, Louis XIV’s brother (and known
by his contemporaries as a sodomite), whom it is tempting to see more
as gay (already a novel perspective) than truly queer, to the Princess of
Clèves, whose final decision not to marry the Duke of Nemours may be
seen as a queer dénouement.
________________________
Can we use “a queer eye” for the classical text, if we start from
the assertion that the queer eye does not look for definitive answers,
but, rather, seeks to scrutinize differently, to call into question the
“already seen,” if we understand it, in other words, as the queering
eye, and, therefore, as the querying eye? Specifically, my modest pro-
posal for queering the past explores the possibility that queer may not
refer exclusively, or even primarily, to sexuality (at least to homo-
sexuality), but, rather, to the calling into question of traditional, het-
eronormative definitions of gender roles in various historical contexts.
We might be able to say, for instance, that Monsieur, brother to Louis
XIV, who was known to be a sodomite, was gay and adduce criteria to
justify such a characterization.1 What I shall be arguing here is that no

matter how bitter some of the accusations against Monsieur may have
been, he still remained, at the social level, a guardian of the hetero-
normative order. It is facile, but still relevant, to mention his two suc-
cessive marriages, with the many children he fathered, thus fulfilling
his (heteronormative) role and participating in the dynastic and politi-
cal maneuvers of French absolutist monarchy.
A history of homosexuality cannot be simply a history of famous
homosexuals. Yet, Monsieur is a key figure, because he was perhaps
the most visible of the high-ranking sodomites at Louis XIV’s court
and, because of his rank, he gave rise to a large body of texts. While
focusing on Monsieur might lead to selective blindness to the plight of
people who did not belong to his privileged circle, it forces the mod-
ern analyst, on the other hand, to question and put to the test his/her
dogmas about sexuality. And it is specifically on the subject of Mon-
sieur that a rigid endorsement of the Halperin creed2 leads Didier
Godard, in Le Goût de Monsieur, into a major contradiction. Though
he maintains that the concept of sexual identity does not make sense in
the ancien régime and that it did not emerge until the nineteenth cen-
tury, he states, nonetheless, that Monsieur was “truly” homosexual as
we understand the term today, since his choice of sexual objects was
clear and never shifted, and he engaged in heterosexual sex only with
the specific purpose of procreation.3 In other words, even though there
––––––––––
1
See, for instance, Zoberman, “Queer(ing) Pleasure.” This article is based on a
paper delivered at the fifth annual Comparative Studies Conference at the University
of South Carolina, organized by Allen Miller, on “The Desire of the Analysts” (2003).
2
It seems the most apt characterization of an attitude, derived from Foucault’s
History of Sexuality Volume one, but rigidly maintained, which adamantly insists on
denying the possibility for any form of sexual identity to have existed before the nine-
teenth century even in the face of evidence to the contrary. Halperin claims that it is a
willful misreading of both Foucault’s and his own writings, adding that the essays
gathered in How to Do... were written “to uphold [his] historicist commitments” (17;
the introduction is titled, “In defense of Historicism”), a position which I would cer-
tainly sympathize with, and endorse. In the end, however, it is clear that, in his per-
spective, no full (homo-) sexual identity was indeed defined or discernible before the
nineteenth century, and that the homosexual simply did not exist before its invention
by nineteenth-century medical discourse (see chapter 4, “How to Do the History of
Male Homosexuality”).
3
On this contradiction, and on modern analysts’ agendas, see Zoberman
“Queer(ing)”.
Zoberman 37
cannot be such a thing as sexual identity, let alone a homosexual one,

in early modern Europe, there was at least one homosexual, and a
prominent one at that, Monsieur.4 It may seem a futile exercise thus to
go over well-explored terrain. Or is it well explored? The fact that a
society did not have a given conceptual framework to account for its
own makeup does not mean that theoretical instruments that may have
been developed since cannot or should not be tested, better to under-
stand the past, on the one hand, and, on the other hand, to assess and
fine-tune those instruments by testing their adaptability to past con-
texts. If, as Marx claimed, any historical epoch asks only the questions
it can answer, does it follow that we cannot, and, more importantly,
should not, ask other questions of the past, or ask them differently? I
am as eager, here, as Halperin to adopt a historicist position. And I in
no way will defend the idea that contemporary, culture-specific cate-
gories can unproblematically be applied to any culture. Monsieur, for
instance, whether or not he liked to cross-dress, cannot be simply
equated with the modern-day drag queen. I am, however, suggesting
that historically sound positions can be developed by looking at other
discourses than those selected by Foucault, and then Halperin. 5 In
particular, I am arguing that homosexuality might have been
actualized in other discourses with somewhat different traits from
those isolated by nineteenth-century medical discourse. Otherwise, we
are dealing with a simple tautology, one that will prevent any
conceptualization, since conceptualization does entail abstraction.
Godard’s contradictory statement might in fact be useful in
pointing to a discovery. There may have been something like gay
subtexts, a gay subculture, and gay figures even before the recorded
time of sexuality. From the various discursive practices Philippe of
––––––––––
4
Monsieur, I suggest, embodied a kind of paradoxical marginality at the center.
I also would argue that Monsieur’s marginality is very much contained within the
complex hierarchical structure which translates into etiquette. Paradoxically, Mon-
sieur’s renowned piety could be read either as one more camp element (Madame sees
it as yet another example of his taste for ceremony) or as a factor of “reinscription”
within the normative order in the context of a Christian monarchy. Thus, there is
space for further exploration of Monsieur’s queerness — as a deceptive way of fitting
in.
5
On all this, see Halperin (Introduction and Ch. 4, “How to Do a History of
Male Homosexuality”).
Orleans gave rise to, he can be said to represent an (early modern)

incarnation of a gay lifestyle, in part owing to his dedication to pleas-
ure for the sake of pleasure — and pleasure it was that clued in
readers of the Mercure galant, for instance, to Monsieur’s gayness. 6
Monsieur’s gayness may have allowed him to carve out for himself a
place of pleasure: his own court, and, above all, his famed7 house in
Saint-Cloud. There, pleasure ruled, a pleasure of a different kind from
those the monarch provided for his entourage — both freer and
divorced from power stakes. 8
I propose, however, that we move away from the opposition
homo-/hetero-sexual to assess the descriptive, analytic, or, rather,
questioning power of queering practices. First of all, the complacency
with which the nobility viewed itself as overwhelmingly given to
sodomy — what I referred to elsewhere as the aristocratic topos of
sodomy9 — is a strong argument against any offhand characterization
of sodomy as queer in and of itself. Madame’s assertion that “only
commoners [still] like[d] women” (Palatine 111) falls within that
––––––––––
6
For the sake of my argument, I consider this point established. It will be my
contention here that the best way to understand queer is precisely to separate queer-
ness from sexual determinations, to distinguish queer from (homo)sexual identity
(especially since queer tends to question the fixedness of identity). Or rather, I take
queer as pertaining to the questioning of fixed gender roles.
7
In the Mercure’s pages, it is nothing short of “fabulous,” both “magnificent”
and “singular,” terms that Saint-Simon uses as well.
8
I consider this distinction essential to my discussion, though I cannot develop
it at length here. What I call the King’s pleasure is connected to his art of governing.
It is also associated with the suspicion pleasure normally aroused in a Christian
context (with a need to qualify it, linguistically or otherwise). Hence the mention of
“innocent pleasures” or various mechanisms of denial in statements insisting on the
non-corrupting nature of a given pleasure. Whenever pleasure is connected to
Monsieur (and the connection is nothing short of automatic), no such qualification
seems required. I suggested elsewhere that the kind of dedication to dancing, in balls
in which Monsieur’s fêtes culminated, which accounts about Monsieur bring to the
fore might be a good indicator. The King had stopped dancing, and opera-ballet would
not be the top entertainment for another few years (as Georgia Cowart shows, it really
reached its peak after Monsieur’s death; see also Zoberman “Queer(ing)”).
9
In the context of the conference organized by Philippe Salazar in Cape Town,
South Africa, entitled “Rhetoric and Democracy: About an African Athens” in June
2004, where I lectured on “A Democratic Fallacy: Reading Sodomy as an Aristocratic
Topos in the Ancien Regime.”
Zoberman 39
topos, no matter how prevalent sodomy actually was in high circles; 10

the nobility’s eagerness to endorse, rather than simply to acknowl-
edge, sodomy as a distinctive component of its sexual mores invites an
interpretation in terms of a means for a privileged social group to
claim its (exclusive) right to transgress socio-sexual norms, or rather,
its exclusive right not to be bound by the ordinary constraints placed
on sexual practices by socio-religious laws. Prosecution, condem-
nation, even death sentences targeted commoners: sodomy, then, was
seen as a threat (against the socio-ethical order) only in the context of
the lower classes.11
And, secondly, to return to the emblematic figure of Monsieur,
his dedication to an apparently free pleasure did not, however, disen-
tangle him from the King’s economy. If anything, the more extrava-
gant his pleasures were, the more costly they became, and the more he
had to fit in with the King’s designs. Some of Saint-Simon’s peevish,
and sometimes ironic, comments can be used as clues pointing to the
overall defusing of any potential threat that might have stemmed from
Monsieur’s (not so) scandalous overt homosexuality.
If, then, to phrase it tersely, Monsieur was gay, but not queer,12 in
that he did not threaten the (heteronormative) order, it might be most
useful to think of “queer” in terms of a contextual discomfort, as it
were, discrepancy, and unaccountability; in other words, in terms of
behaviors and attitudes which were seen, then, as outside the norm,
even threatening. 13 Where are we to find a queer seventeenth century?
––––––––––
10
The insertion within the pages of Bussy-Rabutin’s Histoire amoureuse des
Gaules, of La France devenue italienne, is extremely significant in this perspective.
11
The testimony of memoirs of the time (Primi Visconti’s, for instance, as well
as Saint-Simon’s) converges here with the expression of social injustice conveyed by
satiric texts that appeared when death sentences were carried out (a relatively rare
occurrence, but always involving commoners). That the difference in legal and social
censure was perceived across society is further demonstrated by the songs that
circulated at the time of Monsieur’s death, with clear references to his sodomitic
practices.
12
One might, however, see the “defusing” I just referred to as an indication that
there might lie, nonetheless, at the core of Monsieur’s unrelenting dedication to
pleasure, and full acknowledgment of homoeroticism, a less univocal way of fitting
in, a gap, or a space, for a more subtle queerness.
13
Though I have been working on Monsieur and queer representations in early
modern France for a few years, this reflection on what may have been seen in the past
It is not a simple matter of bringing to the fore an “envers du grand

siècle.” I will leave aside the most obvious answer: the libertines, the
archetypal individuals seen as living by a rule of pleasure some of
whose names are linked to sodomy as well. 14 Not surprisingly, how-
ever, the most challenging characters are fictional. Looking for the
kind of marginality embodied by Monsieur at the center, we find, as it
were, an enigma in plain view, the title character in one of the most
hotly debated works of fiction of the late seventeenth century, La
Princesse de Clèves. Like Monsieur in real life, the Princess is a cen-
tral character at court in her fictional universe. Like Monsieur, she
calls into question clichés of sexual identities. There often lies, at the
core of queering practices, a feeling of déjà vu, since they imply going
over material that is often well known as well as reevaluating one’s
own and others’ work. Thanks to Nancy Miller, Joan DeJean, and
Peggy Kamuf, among others, we already have at our disposal readings
of Lafayette’s anonymous novel that point to its potential for ques-
tioning sexual identity, in terms of both representation of women
within fictional universes and the distinctive signature of women
writers, in terms of a gendered poetics as well as of a (re-en)gendered
canon. Such readings allow us today to be free from canonic strictures
and, I think, to further examine the contribution Lafayette’s fiction can
make to current-day conceptualizations of the inscription/construction
of sexual and/or queer identities.
––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
as “queer” (in other words a historically contextualized definition of queer) owes a lot
to recent panels at the MLA and at the International Society for the History of
Rhetoric, as well as to discussions at the “QUEER: Écritures de la différence?”
Conference held at Université Paris 13-Villetaneuse in May 2005. I am referring in
particular to the work of scholars like Gary Ferguson and William Spurlin, who ques-
tion past historical contexts or postcolonial situations.
14
D’Assoucy’s entanglements with accusations of sodomy as well as Cyrano’s
representation of homosexual rituals and the value put on replicas of sexual organs in
his fictive universe more than suggest a relationship between libertinage and sexual
transgression. The threatening nature of libertinage (before it was, in a sense, watered
down by being completely moved to the realm of sexual license) has long been noted.
Godard uses the libertines, first concentrating on Théophile de Viau’s generation
(Sect. 1, ch. III, 35-59), then moving on to “other libertines” (D’Assoucy, Cyrano de
Bergerac, etc.) in the following chapter (61-78) in order to assess the extent — and the
limits — of judicial repression.
Zoberman 41
In the following pages, I will limit myself to a few programmatic

remarks.
Readers at the time the novel was published had trouble making
heads or tails of the heroine’s behavior. Nancy Miller rehabilitated the
novel’s plausibility, disparaged by Gérard Genette (see her “Emphasis
Added”). While I largely embrace her analysis, I would like to revisit
the text and propose a reading of the Princess’s behavior that will not,
I think, be totally redundant.
Regarding, in particular, the oft-discussed scène de l’aveu — the
scene that was the occasion of the Mercure’s poll15 and where the
eponymous character tells her husband she loves another man, in
order to secure Monsieur de Clèves’s permission to stay away from
Court and away from the man who she knows loves her and whom she
loves16 — Genette was adamant in his essay, “Vraisemblance et moti-
vation,” that no maxim could support Madame de Clèves’s decision,
and that her behavior was therefore unintelligible to a seventeenth-
century audience. Against Genette, Miller invokes internal motivation
that could be taken as the equivalent of the Balzacian strategies
Genette validated as motivating. As Genette points out, the Princess
herself reflects that she had embarked upon her course of action
almost without having meant to confide in her husband.17 The narrator
––––––––––
15
Je demande si une femme de vertu, qui a toute l’estime possible pour un Mary
parfaitement honneste homme, et qui ne laisse pas d’estre combatüe pour un Amant
d’une tres-forte passion qu’elle tâche d’étouffer par toutes sortes de moyens; je
demande, dis-je, si cette Femme, voulant se retirer dans un lieu où elle ne soit point
exposée à la veüe de cet Amant qu’elle sçait qu’elle aime sans qu’il sçache qu’il est
aimé d’elle, et ne pouvant obliger son Mary de consentir à cette retraite sans luy dé-
couvrir ce qu’elle sent pour l’amant qu’elle cherche à fuir, fait mieux de faire con-
fidence de cette passion à son Mary, que de la taire au péril des combats qu’elle sera
continuellement obligée de rendre par les indispensables occasions de voir cet Amant,
dont elle n’a aucun moyen de s’éloigner que celuy de la confidence dont il s’agit
(Mercure avril 1678).
16
And Joan DeJean has shown most convincingly how important the shift from
a named character to a universal situation was, doubling as it did the shift from a
focus on the author’s life to her plot.
17
“[...] son mari voulant l’obliger à revenir à la cour, Mme de Clèves se trouve
contrainte de lui révéler la raison de sa retraite, comme elle l’avait d’ailleurs prévu:
‘Si M. de Clèves s’opiniâtre à l’empêcher ou à en vouloir savoir les raisons, peut-être
lui ferai-je le mal, et à moi-même aussi, de les lui apprendre.’ Mais on voit bien que
here seems to have her 18 character contradict herself; the fact that the
aveu has been prepared cannot, therefore, be a convincing argument to
disprove Genette’s claim. I will venture another argument, through a
textual pairing, reminiscent of, but different from the kind of paired
reading that was once advocated as a way to reread and redefine the
canon from a feminist perspective: I will use external intertextuality to
move to intratextual intertextuality.
Madame de Clèves’s retrospective considerations on her apparent
lack of control of her own actions parallel Phèdre’s aveu to Hippolyte:
Cet aveu si honteux, le crois-tu volontaire?

Tremblante pour un fils que je n’osais trahir,
Je te venais prier de ne le point haïr.
Faibles projets d’un cœur trop plein de ce qu’il aime!
Hélas! je ne t’ai pu parler que de toi-même.
A character created in the 1670s by a précieuse (and her coterie) was

certainly able to emulate the plight of Racine’s heroine, thus providing
us with a literary justification to her unheard of behavior.19 But let us
be more trusting (or more literal) and believe that Madame de
Clèves’s puzzlement is genuine. It is in keeping with a La Rochefou-
caldean strain in a text that repeatedly stages a contradiction between
motives and actions.20 The Princess finds, again and again, that she
expresses her feelings in spite of a clear decision not to show them;
––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
ce mode de motivation n’est pas décisif aux yeux de l’auteur, puisque cette phrase se
trouve récusée par cette autre: ‘Elle se demandait pourquoi elle avait fait une chose si
hasardeuse, et elle trouvait qu’elle s’y était engagée sans en avoir presque eu le
dessein’; c’est en effet qu’un dessein contraint n’est pas tout à fait un dessein”
(Genette 76).
18
Whether neutral or gendered, the pronoun seems fitting here, despite the male
characterization of the narrator in the avertissement, perhaps because it adds the em-
phasis one more time on the fallacy of ungendered narration.
19
Whether an actual source or not, Phèdre can serve fruitfully as an intertext
because it gives the reader a glimpse at a structure both texts are variants of. In a
sense, I am here harking back to some of Michael Riffaterre’s boldest propositions
(“Sémiotique intertextuelle: l’interprétant,” “La Trace de l’intertexte”). The chrono-
logical likelihood of the Princess’s confession having been written before Phèdre’s is
slim. The argument does not suffer from this.
20
Less so, it is worth noting, in the case of the Duc de Nemours than for the
Prince and Princess...
Zoberman 43
the episode of the letter reveals to her (in retrospect) the alienating
effect of her passion. As for Monsieur de Clèves, he takes the oppor-
tunity of the discovery that Madame de Tournon had not been true to
his friend to launch into a boast of his own, with respect to his over-
riding love for sincerity — only to succumb to jealousy, when his wife
finally takes the hint21 and confides in him. But all this is, in a sense, a
sham. Or rather, it is only one side of the story. Madame de Clèves
experiences or expresses a world view that seems to stem from La
Rochefoucauld’s maxims, 22 only when she is bound by the hetero-
normative order she entered or was thrown into when she was brought
to court as the latest and one of the most desirable marriageable
debutantes.23 But she was, in fact, a Cartesian in hiding,24 and was
simply biding her time.
This is where the pairing I announced earlier will be most illumi-
nating. Genette expressed surprise at Valincour’s silence on the scène
de l’aveu (except for praise of its pathetic effect). But Valincour is
quite vocal, by contrast, about the second aveu, the one, I contend,
that really matters, because it is really free, not a dictate from the
mother or an occurrence forced on the Princess almost against her
will, but one she embraces wholeheartedly. The Duke of Nemours
having enlisted the Vidame de Chartres’s help to force an interview
with the Princess in order finally to declare his passion and secure her
hand in marriage,25 she immediately takes control of the situation that
––––––––––
21
Though, as Peggy Kamuf points out, with an apparently inexplicable delay.
22
And can be characterized as a Phèdre-like character, losing sight of her pur-
pose, a kinship we might want to keep in mind when we analyze the ending.
23
Even though her prospects were traversed by the King’s opposition, thus forc-
ing Madame de Chartres to settle for the Prince de Clèves, not too shabby a candidate,
anyhow.
24
Which makes her, I would contend, a true Cartesian — larvata procedans.
Unfortunately the term crypto-Cartesian carries too many negative connotations to use
it here. But the political associations with the covert activities of an individual in a
group whose values or tenets s/he undermines as s/he pretends to embrace them are
quite relevant here.
25
It is hardly a coincidence that the character whose letter led, first to the intru-
sion of Nemours into the Princess’s room thanks to Monsieur de Clèves’s interven-
tion, and then to the heroine’s first pangs of jealousy, should be the one to allow
Nemours to intrude once again into the Princess’s space, a violation, as in the first
instance, of her explicit refusal to see anybody, and least of all the Duc de Nemours.
has been forced on her and puts an end to all possible misconceptions
(the possibility, for instance, that she might get married again; that is,
get caught in the very order that clearly alienated her from her own
self and that she was disentangled from when she became a widow).
Valincour’s critique is voiced by a spokeswoman who knows how a
lady should behave (a knowledge that probably contributes in no small
measure to raise her above her sex, to take up Valincour’s praise):
“J’entendis l’autre jour parler sur cette conversation cette personne
pour qui vous avez tant d’admiration et que tant de qualités
extraordinaires élèvent au-dessus de son sexe” (Valincour 119). The
lady in question remarks at length on the reversal of gender roles that
the Princess’s declaration implies — the latter speaks, and Nemours
hardly says three words:
Il me semble […] que Madame de Clèves dit tout ce que devrait dire Mon-
sieur de Nemours. C’est elle qui lui parle de sa passion, qui lui découvre
tous les sentiments de son cœur, et qui le fait avec un ordre et une tranquil-
lité qui ne se ressent guère du trouble qu’un pareil aveu donne toujours aux
femmes un peu retenues. L’on dirait qu’elle n’est venue là que pour parler,
et Monsieur de Nemours que pour écouter, au lieu que ce devrait être tout le
contraire. À peine en seize pages trouve-t-il le moyen de lui dire deux ou
trois mots à la traverse. Elle reprend la parole avec empressement; il semble
qu’elle a peur d’oublier ce qu’elle veut lui dire ou qu’elle craint de ne lui en
dire pas assez. (119-20)
In a word, the Princess does not behave as a woman should. What

irks Valincour’s fictive visitor is the gender role reversal. Madame de
Clèves has succeeded in turning the tables on the Duke. Her aveu (and
the character uses the noun, or the verb “avouer,” several times during
the encounter with Nemours) is a declaration which serves, as well, to
assert her freedom. As a widow, she is, indeed, free. 26 She chooses not
to alienate her freedom. The Princess defines her behavior and feel-
ings, in terms of pleasure as much as repos, all the while reclaiming
the singularity which sustained her all through her travails in the male-
––––––––––
26
This is where I think Peggy Kamuf’s assumption that the “Mother’s Will”
still rules is not the most effective way of interpreting the last part of the story. The
Princess’s desire can be termed queer because it does not follow the self-defeating
patterns portrayed in the novel. But, far from being denied a model for her desire, the
Princess creates her own.
Zoberman 45
dominated world of the court. That the Princess refuses to make any
compromise where her pleasure is concerned27 is clearly indicated by
her own statement: “Il est vrai que je veux bien que vous le sachiez et
que je trouve de la douceur 28 à vous le dire. Je ne sais même si je ne
vous le dis point, plus pour l’amour de moi que pour l’amour de vous”
(Lafayette 171). And, this time, as opposed to when she was at
Coulommiers, she is not overheard by a hidden witness — because
this time she faces the right addressee. There is no mistake, at the nar-
rative level, and, in both cases, in true Lacanian fashion, the letter
arrives at its destination. But this time the Princess has total control
over her aveu and it produces all the desired effects (a departure from
the long-term adverse effects Genette lists for the aveu to Monsieur de
Clèves — but which are, at the narrative level, only detours, therefore
necessary stages, for the completion of the story). Having understood
jealousy (through her own and the Prince’s), having read male desire
through her observations, she is, by the time of her final confrontation
with Nemours, fully able to reason out her actions and to use her
passions wisely — which is the basis for my terming her a (hidden)
Cartesian — or maybe a neo-Cartesian, a Cartesian, that is, in a con-
text where Cartesianism is no longer the frame of reference, and
salons have been dabbling in La Rochefoucauldian wit — again a
fictive exception to societal/ideological norms, an exception as well,
since the Princess will not become a Cartesian salonnière.29 After her
––––––––––
27
I have shown elsewhere the role of pleasure and the refusal to give up on
desire (a Lacanian insight) in the definition of truly queer constructions.
28
It has been suggested that the pleasure, though unmistakable, is of a lesser
intensity than would be the consummation of love. I propose that the phrase suggests,
on the contrary, an Epicurean notion of pleasure, where the intensity of pleasure is
divorced from the qualities of its objects (one must be contented with little). And I
will argue that the Princess’s understanding of desire and possession implies that she
would ultimately compromise her pleasure by surrendering. Since I seem here to be
discussing the character’s intentions, thoughts, feelings, I should make it clear that I
envision them only as they are legible in/through the text. I am not considering the
character as a true human being, with a full psychological makeup (among other
constitutive features).
29
Cartesianism played an important role in the establishment of the salons as
spaces over which women, as rational beings, presided (see Harth’s Introduction to
Cartesian Women, and Duggan 40ff, in particular 43). Molière’s inclusion of Carte-
sianism among the femmes savantes’ tenets shows, however, that there is room for
satire. In part, it is the claim to intellectual mastery so prominent in the femmes
declaration, the character does not let Nemours, or the Vidame, or

anyone thwart her intent. Nor can the reader spot any conflict between
intention and effect, between action and motive. 30
In the end, Madame de Clèves charts a new course for herself. 31
In a queer perspective, she eventually moves into a space of her own
that corresponds to no clearly definable category (but has confused
generations of readers, who, supplying the missing norm, have tended
to read the ending as though the character simply withdrew to a con-
vent). The fact is that, after leaving the court (another move that was
rather disconcerting, even though there were plenty of maxims around
to justify it), she split her time between a religious house, where she
obviously had an apartment — which means she did not choose the
enclosure of a convent so often scripted as an ending for widows and
women who renounced the world — and her house, where she led a
life very much withdrawn from society — in other words, refusing, as
well, the mondain space of the salon, the other archetypal feminine
social space at the time. 32 If bourgeois figures in Molière’s theater
typically complain about, and try to limit, the social intercourse that
the salon affords; if Alceste, in this respect hardly different from
Arnolphe, begs Célimène not to be chez elle, because being at home
––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
savantes’ philosophical ambitions that he mocks. But it may also be Cartesianism
itself.
30
We can only derive motives from plot elements and statements attributed to
the character. To that extent, the effect of the Princess’s willing admission of love and
assertion that she will not marry the Duke do not raise the reader’s suspicion. Again,
the fate of Nemours, who eventually resumes his previous way of life at court, jus-
tifies her assessment that she will achieve her goal of pleasure more by withdrawing
than by giving in.
31
We might see it as somewhat parallel to that of Antigone, since both refuse a
mundane, trivial ending for their story and their desire. The Princesse’s subsequent
death might be seen as tragic if we understand the tragic as a positive, fully satisfying
narrative logic, allowing for desire to be wholly and definitively fulfilled, and for the
character to escape the recurring suffering which normally defines the human condi-
tion. This would require, of course, detailed analysis, and would exceed the scope of
this study. The suggestion, however, opens up yet another avenue to assess the end-
ing, and to account for feminine fictional characters that do not conform to plausible
societal norms.
32
A space that resulted partly from the enforced withdrawal of women from
business after the Fronde, but remained a powerful (even threatening) space for cul-
ture.
Zoberman 47
means accepting visits;33 then Madame de Clèves chose a way of

being at home that again was idiosyncratic. Neither the convent nor
the salon; neither the cloister nor the space for visits; yet a space
related to both feminine spaces. Carving out for herself a space of her
own, a paradoxical space, distinct from both archetypal feminine
spaces at the time, the Princess found queer lodgings to end her story
and her life.
La Princesse de Clèves challenged received ideas of narrative as
well as of proper feminine behavior. To tell her husband of her love
for another man was bad enough. To tell the man she loved and who
loved her that she loved him and would not give herself to him was
even more startling. To articulate the normal (scripted) fate of women
in love, yet to eschew the fate of the Epistolary Woman34 was a feat
few real women equaled; moreover it was, to say the least, hard for an
audience to reconcile itself to it. And to leave court in order to find a
space of her own, that certainly topped it all — not only was Madame
de Clèves an “unlikely Princess,” to use Erica Harth’s phrase; 35 judg-
ing from the reactions to the novel at the time, she was nothing short
of queer.
––––––––––
33
On the obsession of traditional bourgeois heads of families with preventing
women to be accessible to social visitors, with closing the feminine (social) space
(with the more or less explicit sexual connotations this formulation suggests), see
Zoberman (“Domestic Economy”).
34
I borrow here Katharine Jensen’s felicitous phrase (see Writing Love).
35
It is the title of the chapter devoted to the Princesse de Clèves in her book,
Ideology and Culture in Seventeenth-Century France.
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pia of the Opera-Ballet.” The Art Bulletin 83.3 (2001): 461-78.
DeJean, Joan. “Lafayette’s Ellipses: The Privileges of Anonymity.” PMLA
(Publications of the Modern Languages Association) 99.5 (1984): 884-
902.
Duggan, Anne E. Salonnières, Furies, and Fairies. The Politics of Gender
and Cultural Change in Absolutist France. Newark DE: University of
Delaware Press, 2005.
Foucault, Michel. The History of Sexuality. 3 vols. 1976-84. Trans. Robert
Hurley. 3 vols. New York: Pantheon, 1978-86.
Genette, Gérard. “Vraisemblance et motivation.” Figures II. Paris: Le Seuil,
1969. 71-99.
Halperin, David. How To Do a History of Homosexuality. Chicago: Univer-
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Harth, Erica. Cartesian Women. Versions and Subversions of Rational Dis-
course in the Old Regime. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1992.
_____. Ideology and Culture in Seventeenth-Century France. Ithaca: Cornell
Jensen, Katharine Ann. Writing Love: Letters, Women, and the Novel in
France (1605-1776). Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press,
1995.
Kamuf, Peggy. “A Mother’s Will. The Princess de Clèves.” Fictions of
Feminine Desire: Disclosures of Héloïse. Chapter 3. Lincoln: Univer-
sity of Nebraska Press, 1982.
Lafayette, Marie Pioche de La Vergne, comtesse de. La Princesse de Clèves.
Pref. A. Adam. Paris: Garnier-Flammarion, 1966.
Mercure galant, Le. Paris. April 1678.
Miller, Nancy K. “Emphasis Added: Plots and Plausibilities in Women’s
Fiction.” PMLA 96.1 (1981): 36-48.
Primi Visconti. Mémoires sur la cour de Louis XIV. Paris: Perrin, 1980.
Palatine, Elisabeth-Charlotte d’Orléans, dite princesse. Lettres de la prin-
cesse Palatine (1672-1722). Paris: Mercure de France, 1985.
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thétique 1-2. Paris: 10/18, 1979. 128-50.
_____. “La trace de l’intertexte.” La Pensée 215 (1980): 4-18.
Saint-Simon, Louis de Rouvroy, duc de. Mémoires. Ed. Yves Coirault. 8
vols. Bibliothèque de la Pléiade. Paris: Gallimard, 1983-88.
Zoberman 49
Valincour, Jean-Baptiste-Henry Du Trousset de. Lettres à Madame la Mar-

quise*** sur le sujet de la Princesse de Clèves. Ed. Christine Montal-
betti. Paris: Garnier-Flammarion, 2001.
Zoberman, Pierre. “A Taste for Ceremony: Reading Monsieur’s Magnifi-
cence.” Cérémonies et rituels en France au XVIIe siècle/Ceremonies
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Wetsel. Romanice 13. Berlin: Weidler Buchverlag, 2002. 29-42.
_____. “Domestic Economy in Molière’s Theater.” Seventeenth-Century
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Early-Modern France.” Ed. Paul Allen Miller and Greg Forter. The De-
sire of the Analysts (SUNY Press, forthcoming, 2007).
Angela N. Hunter
University of Arkansas at Little Rock
Rousseau’s Queer Bottom:

Sexual Difference in the Confessions
This study explores the way that Rousseau’s Confessions disrupts the
binary of sexual difference via Rousseau’s sexualization of and identifi-
cation with the bottom. I argue that Rousseau’s exhibition of his bottom
to groups of women is key for understanding a queer structure of sexu-
ality that begins with the famous spanking episode. Ultimately,
Rousseau’s queer bottom aligns him with the feminine sex while simul-
taneously differentiating him from the typical structures that would fix
sexual or gender difference.
________________________
Book I of the Confessions treats us to Rousseau’s earliest child-

hood and adolescence, laying the groundwork and the stakes for the
understanding of “man” that the text claims to lay bare. One of the
most interesting features is the staging of gender and sexual difference
that Rousseau sees as foundational for his character and his later rela-
tions. The scene that describes Rousseau’s sexual awakening during a
spanking received upon the knees of Mlle Lambercier is the basis for
much speculation about Rousseau’s sexual deviance in the critical lit-
erature, particularly of the psycho-biographical strain. To treat the text
of the Confessions as only symptomatic of Rousseau the man, how-
ever, tells us very little about Rousseau the subject — that is, about
the particular structure of subjectivity that is set up in the text of the
Confessions. Rousseau offers us this text as the beginning of a true
study of man — Confessions is a work, he tells us, “qui peut servir de

premiere piece de comparaison pour l’étude des hommes, qui
certainement est encore à commencer.”1 His readers, in turn, have
found a portrait of the modern subject in Rousseau’s writings. Yet at
every foundational moment of subjectivity — and they are multiple —
in the early books of the Confessions, there is a disruption of the
binary upon which it rests. I want to explore this disruption as it mani-
fests in the problem of sexual difference.
I start with the same canonical object — the bottom — but in
order to arrive at a different end. I treat the bottom as a privileged
textual object that traces the staging of a non-binary structure of sex-
ual difference (and, in the end, of all difference) in the Confessions. 2 I
connect the trace of the spanking episode to two other moments in the
Confessions, both of which are (either explicitly or implicitly) sexual-
ized for Rousseau. The first, recounted shortly after the spanking
scene, is an unfortunate tumble that the same Mlle Lambercier takes
on her way to see a passing royal procession, exposing her bottom to
the assembled crowd along the road. The second is Rousseau’s ado-
lescent penchant for exposing his bottom to groups of women. A close
reading of the terms of sexual difference that emerge from the spank-
ing and traverse these bottom-exposing scenes reveals the bottom as a
sign for a queer configuration of difference in the Confessions.
The Unnatural Consequences of Being a Bottom

After Rousseau’s father is forced to leave Geneva, Rousseau and
his cousin are put in the keeping of the Lambercier family, where the
minister Lambercier is in charge of the boys’ education and Mlle
Lambercier takes on the maternal role. Here Rousseau’s sexuality is
––––––––––
1
I use throughout this study the spelling and punctuation of the original text, as
presented in the Pléiade edition.
2
This study is part of a larger, ongoing project on Rousseau. It offers, in part, a
reading of the romanesque origins of the subject in the Confessions. This study is
excerpted from that project, providing a new focus for some of the larger concerns:
the relation between the unique and the semblable, and the staging of gender and
sexual difference, particularly in relation to love and reading. I ultimately argue that
Rousseau’s sexuality, as presented textually in the Confessions, is a kind of lesbi-
anism. Here I want to sketch the beginning of an analysis of what this sexuality does
to difference.
Hunter 53
awakened on the occasion of his first spanking from Mlle Lambercier.

As Rousseau himself indicates, this scene left a defining trace on his
sexuality and his subjectivity: “Qui croiroit que ce châtiment d’enfant
receu à huit ans par la main d’une fille de trente a décidé de mes
gouts, de mes desirs, de mes passions, de moi pour le reste de ma vie,
et cela precisement dans le sens contraire à ce qui devoit s’ensuivre
naturellement?” (15). Here we find a typical Rousseauian case of
unique determination: the impact that the spanking should have “natu-
rally” had on his development is displaced by an unexpected impact
that unnaturally altered his development from the very beginning. But
beginning with the unnatural in the beginning means that there is no
path that is not already a detour or a deviance, no formation that is not
already deformation.
In the place of proper chastisement and better behavior, we find
sexual arousal and the determination of subjective status through con-
tradiction. Rousseau becomes who he is only once the natural is dis-
placed by something else, but this happens from the very first step: his
sexuality deviates in its origin, and thus there is no proper route or
guide and no priority for the natural. Sexuality and subjectivity, linked
from the beginning, become the consequences of an unexpected
detour that decides the very path of development.
In the wake of this decisive spanking, we find many queer effects
in Rousseau’s relationship to sexual difference. Rousseau continues
after describing the spanking:
“En même tems que mes sens furent allumés, mes desirs prirent si bien le
change, que, bornés à ce que j’avois éprouvé ils ne s’aviserent point de
chercher d’autre chose. […] Tourmenté longtemps sans savoir de quoi, je
dévorais d’un œil ardent les belles personnes; mon imagination me les rap-
pelait sans cesse, uniquement pour les mettre en œuvre à ma mode, et en
faire autant de demoiselles Lambercier” (16).
Rousseau’s inflamed senses cause desire to switch its goal and to sub-
sequently limit its own scope by stopping the search for “autre
chose.”3 The “autre chose” that would naturally be desired is no
––––––––––
3
Here I note an expression resembling the “donner le change” which Derrida
reads so remarkably in De la Grammatologie. Derrida analyzes “donner le change” as
a euphemism for masturbation, and he relates it to auto-affection and supplementarity
longer a possible object because it has already been elided by the

spanking. Rousseau’s awakened sensuality and his desire do not con-
tradict one another here, but rather meet in a singular part of the body
that tricks desire into stopping its continual search for “autre chose.”
This body part is, of course, Rousseau’s bottom.
Suffice it to say that where there is desire, there is a bottom.
Where there is a bottom, furthermore, both exposure to and protection
from the perceived threat of jouissance are found.
Non seulement donc c’est ainsi qu’avec un temperament très ardent, très
lascif, très précoce, je passai toutefois l’âge de puberté sans desirer, sans
connoitre d’autres plaisirs des sens que ceux dont Mlle Lambercier m’avoit
très innocemment donné l’idée; mais quand enfin le progrès des ans m’eut
fait homme, c’est encore ainsi que ce qui devoit me perdre me conserva.
Mon ancien gout d’enfant, au lieu de s’évanouir s’associa tellement à l’autre
que je ne pus jamais l’écarter des desirs allumés par mes sens[.] (17)
Even once he is a man, Rousseau’s subjectivity is protected by his

taste for spanking, which always accompanies and supplements the
otherwise threatening consequences of sexual desire. But from what
exactly does this detoured sexuality save him? What “other” does the
bottom displace by becoming completely associated with it? The
specter of this “other thing” that is not even considered on the path of
desire suggests that there is something more than sexual excitation and
predilection arising from the scene of corporal punishment; there is
also an odd structure of difference.
Same Difference: or, the Same Sex and the Other Other Sex
At several points during the early books of the Confessions we
encounter claims that Rousseau has no natural (or even learned) con-
ception of sexual difference. For example, Rousseau writes that during
his youthful apprenticeship at the engraver’s: “Mes sens émus depuis
longtems me demandoient une jouissance dont je ne savois pas même
imaginer l’objet. J’étois aussi loin du véritable que si je n’avois point
––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
in Rousseau’s work (219-26). This relationship was discussed in a previous paper on
Rousseau and reading.
Hunter 55
eu de sexe” (74). 4 Although Rousseau is “déjà pubere et sensible,” as

noted immediately after this line, he has no understanding of sexual
difference in terms of the body. Rousseau’s failed imaginings are so
far from “the true object” of jouissance that the difference necessary
for recognizing such an object is erased: “que si je n’avois point eu de
sexe.” This lack of sexual difference is ambiguous, however, because
the “true object” is not delineated: if there is no sex, there is no true
object and hence no false or improper object. Without the lynchpin of
a sex or sexual difference, any object is indeterminate; nonetheless,
the object supplied by the spanking seems to lurk behind the scenes
and efface the necessity of recognizing bodily sexual difference. That
object — the bottom — leads to another sexual difference, albeit one
that turns the idea of difference on its head. It does this, perhaps sur-
prisingly, via its alignment with women.
The word “sexe” in the phrase “que si je n’avois point eu de
sexe” can be read in several ways at once. It could mean the sexual
organ as such (whether male or female) or that which marks the dis-
tinction between male and female; but it is also a synonym for woman
as the feminine gender. Another way of saying “woman” in the Con-
fessions (and in general during the time period) is “personne du sexe.”
The Dictionnaire de l’Académie Française of 1694 and of 1762 has as
the first definition of “sexe”: “Ce qui fait la difference du masle & de
la femelle parmi les animaux”; and as second definition: “Quand on
dit, Le beau sexe, ou absolument, Le sexe, on entend tousjours parler
des femmes”. The distinction between male and female is thus closely
related to that which would only be marked in relation to the wom-
anly. Sex is the difference between men and women, and sex is also
that which is found uniquely in women. Women are “le sexe,” and yet
(up to this point in the text, at least) Rousseau himself has no sex and
recognizes no sexual object in women. In this queer situation, “le
sexe” stands as a marker for the two poles of the traditional binary of
sexual difference without properly marking either of them. While
Rousseau continues to devour “les belles personnes” with his eyes, he
both marks and evades the binary of sexual difference.
––––––––––
4
Note the similarity to sexual confusion in passages such as this: “Non seule-
ment je n’eus jusqu’à mon adolescence aucune idée distincte de l’union des séxes
[sic]; mais jamais cette idée confuse ne s’offrit à moi que sous une image odieuse et
dégoutante” (16).
We might say that what is detoured for Rousseau as sexualized

subject in the spanking is thus the difference needed to conceive of the
“autre sexe” as properly other: for if he has no sex, then there can be
no “other sex,” failing the presence of some entity in relation to which
it would be other. However, the other sex does exist for Rousseau, and
it is here that we will discover the terms used to supplement the
seemingly lacking sexual difference. When Rousseau returns, in two
separate textual moments, to the consequences of the spanking, he
writes:
Dans mes sotes fantaisies, dans mes érotiques fureurs, dans les actes
extravagans auxquelles elles me portoient quelquefois, j’empruntois imagi-
nairement le secours de l’autre sexe, sans penser jamais qu’il fut propre à
nul autre usage qu’à celui que je brulois d’en tirer. (17)
Mon sang allumé remplissoit incessamment mon cerveau de filles et de

femmes: mais, n’en sentant pas le véritable usage, je les occupais bisarre-
ment en idée à mes fantaisies sans en savoir rien faire de plus [...]. (88)
These passages, far from denying the knowledge of sexual difference

and the “proper” use of sex, offer a new configuration of that differ-
ence. If Rousseau’s desire seeks no other thing than that which it re-
ceived at the hands of Mlle Lambercier, it nonetheless calls for a kind
of sexualized demarcation, and as we just discovered, women carry
the mark of this demarcation as femininity. The “autre sexe” supple-
ments this scenario of desire, and it does so in a way that is entirely
proper to the deviant structure of difference at play in the Confessions:
there is “no other use” of the “other sex” than Rousseau’s own “other
use.” In other words, there is “nul autre usage” for the “autre sexe”
than that which would involve Rousseau’s bottom. I contend that it is
precisely the bottom that Rousseau “borrows” from the other sex.
Rousseau indicates that he “borrowed in imagination the aid of
the other sex,” but what he borrows is not just the presence of a fan-
tasy woman to spank him à la Mlle Lambercier — it is the bottom
itself as an object. This object becomes the sexual object par excel-
lence — not just the object of desire, but also the object of sexual dif-
ference. In this sense, the erotic desire for spanking can be read as a
desire that ignores traditional sexual difference in favor of a sexual
sameness. This sameness, however, does not efface all difference, but
Hunter 57
rather forces it into new channels. It is predicated on identification

with the “autre sexe” as the one that has the bottom as sexual attribute.
Sexual difference occurs here not between penis and vagina (nor
between penis and its lack), but between bottoms. Such a difference is
no difference at all, however, and since there seems to be for Rous-
seau “nul autre usage” of “l’autre sexe,” that otherness shifts into a
kind of queer sameness. The terms of this sameness in the text also
find their origins with Mlle Lambercier, and this is where the bor-
rowing has its (second?) origin. For it is not only Rousseau’s bottom
at stake in the scenes of erotic furor described in the spanking episode,
it is Mlle Lambercier’s bottom as well. Indeed, Rousseau borrows
Mlle Lambercier’s bottom and turns it into his propre sexe.
Shortly after recounting the spanking and its resultant effects on

his tastes, Rousseau writes that he would like to prolong his (writerly)
pleasure in recounting more of “cet heureux âge” spent with the Lam-
berciers. He then adds the following fragment: “Si je ne cherchois que
le vôtre [plaisir], je pourrois choisir celle du derrière de Mlle Lamber-
cier, qui, par une malheureuse cullebutte au bas du prés, fut étalé tout
en plein devant le Roi de Sardaigne à son passage” (22). The readerly
pleasure of this episode notwithstanding, Rousseau notes that “je ne
trouvai pas le moindre mot pour rire à un accident qui, bien que co-
mique en lui-même, m’alarmoit pour une personne que j’aimois
comme une mere, et peut être plus” (22). This “plus” connotes pas-
sionate amorous attachment, and suggests that there is more to this
story than the amusing pleasure it bestows on the reader or the fond
memory of a childhood idyll for the writer. This moment only hints at
the erotic with its addition of a “plus” to the love for the maternal that
Rousseau felt, but it will reappear in later moments fully marked. That
is, the exposure of Mlle Lambercier’s bottom leads us directly to the
exposure of Rousseau’s own bottom, and it does so via two paths: one
is the immediately preceding textual moment that details the fixing of
Rousseau’s sexualized subjectivity in the spanking, and the second is
Rousseau’s exposure of his bottom to groups of women for pleasure.
Rather than fetishizing the female bottom in his later erotic encoun-
ters, Rousseau borrows it and detours it in order to eroticize his own
bottom. We will need to read the scene that exposes this borrowing in
order to understand the queer difference set up by Rousseau’s text.
Exposing Non-Difference: the Ridiculous vs. the Obscene
We can now return to a passage whose elements were presented

above. At the beginning of Book III, Rousseau writes:
Mon sang allumé remplissoit incessamment mon cerveau de filles et de
femmes, mais n’en sentant pas le véritable usage, je les occupois bisarre-
ment en idée à mes fantaisies sans en savoir rien faire de plus [...]. J’aurois
donné ma vie pour retrouver un quart d’heure une Demoiselle Goton. […]
J’allois chercher des allées sombres, des réduits cachés où je pusse
m’exposer de loin aux personnes du sexe dans l’état où j’aurois voulu pou-
voir être auprès d’elles. Ce qu’elles voyoient n’étoient pas l’objet obscene,
je n’y songeois même pas, c’étoit l’objet ridicule; le sot plaisir que j’avois
de l’étaler à leurs yeux ne peut se décrire. (129-30)
The verb Rousseau chooses here is not innocent: he gets pleasure from
displaying or exposing — “étaler” — his bottom, which is the same
verb he used to describe what happened to Mlle Lambercier’s bottom
before the King of Sardinia. This repetition provides a retroactive link
from Rousseau’s bottom to Mlle Lambercier’s exposed bottom that
brings along with it the “plus” of attachment that Rousseau felt for
her. The alignment of Mlle Lambercier’s bottom with Rousseau’s own
is a supplementary identification with the feminine that focuses on
that which is not typically a sexual characteristic. Indeed, the bottom
is the same for men and for women and it thus refuses the usual lines
of sexual differentiation. But if there is normally no meaning of dif-
ference attached to the bottom, this is where we see Rousseau’s
queering of the typical poles of sexual difference, for it is neither
properly a difference nor a sameness.
To put it slightly differently, in the Confessions there is a differ-

ence between bottoms — but it is a difference that only exposes itself
through an apparent sameness. It is what we could call a type of non-
difference, that is, a difference of a different order, or rather, a differ-
ence of a same order (here we feel most acutely how queer our lan-
guage becomes when the binary no longer functions properly). For as
much as Rousseau can identify the “autre sexe” without understanding
it properly as object, that other sex is only sexualized in as much as he
can identify with its object, that is, with the bottom. Rousseau’s identi-
Hunter 59
fication with Mlle Lambercier’s bottom leads us not to the female pole
of sexual difference, but back to Rousseau’s own sexuality and its
peculiar refusal of that difference — its rerouting of that difference.
This shifts the terms of difference so that Rousseau views himself
as both the same and as different from women: but both this difference
and this sameness originate in the same object. It is not other men he
desires, it is women; but the supposed otherness of the women is
reduced to Rousseau’s own sexual attribute. This non-difference of the
bottom means that Rousseau can identify with the body of a woman
and eroticize it at the same time, without having to define himself
fully and explicitly as the same or as different. After all, he does not
expose his bottom to men or to mixed crowds, but only to “personnes
du sexe.” These feminine persons, demarcated as different by the very
fact of being “du sexe,” allow Rousseau to inhabit one difference
while denying another one; that is, he is quick to create a new mark of
sexual difference that hides the normal terms of the sexual binary. The
terms of difference will not be male and female, as implied in the
word “sexe,” but instead, as delineated in the above passage, the
“obscene” and the “ridicule.”
Although the exposure of the bottom references the treatment of
spanking Rousseau would wish to have from a woman, it also refer-
ences that which marks him as indistinguishable from a woman. The
refusal of the penis — the “objet obscene” — as a sexual object fur-
ther emphasizes the queer structure of sexual difference set up in the
Confessions. Much like his professed inability to conceive of a (sex-
ual) object that would bring jouissance or even the proper usage of the
other sex into such a scenario, here Rousseau does not even dream of
the (unnamed) penis. It is the furthest thing from his mind because it
signals a difference that cannot be covered over with sameness, and
thus it cannot become the site of Rousseau’s pleasure. The indescrib-
able pleasure he receives from exposing his bottom, however, derives
from the identification of the “objet ridicule” with women, which we
can read through the link to Mlle Lambercier’s bottom by way of the
verb “étaler” (and the pleasures taken in each episode of exposure).
The obscenity of the penis stands in for the obscenity of differ-
ence in its ordinary binary structure with man and woman on either
side, each with different sexual organs. But in denying the importance
of and/or usage of the penis Rousseau nonetheless recognizes it. What

he does not recognize, however, is any characteristic on the side of
woman that would match it or allow the “véritable usage” of a
woman. Paradoxically, it is in identifying himself with women and
refusing a certain kind of difference that Rousseau maintains the lack
of the supposedly proper object that would satisfy him. Although
Rousseau wants to expose his bottom to “personnes du sexe,” we must
note that this seems to be a rather deviant usage of the term “sexe”:
that is, the difference of women is missing; it is covered over by a
sameness that nonetheless maintains the position of the “autre” in the
“autre sexe.” A queer otherness indeed.
After Rousseau has described his desire to show his bottom to
women, he recounts an episode where he does just that to some ser-
vant women. He writes: “Dans cette confiance j’offrois aux filles qui
venoient au puits un spectacle plus risible que seducteur” (89). Rous-
seau’s own peculiar non-difference is figured as laughable, ridiculous,
something not to be taken seriously. It would seem that only the “objet
obscene” would be counted as “seducteur” or threatening, and it plays
no part in Rousseau’s schema. One of its avatars, however, plays a
part in the end of this particular story. A failed attempt at easy escape
through some underground tunnels nearby ends in Rousseau being
trapped by the group of women along with a man they’ve brought
with them in the chase. The scene is described thus:
En un moment je fus atteint et saisi par un grand homme portant une grande
moustache, un grand chapeau, un grand sabre, escorté de quatre ou cinq
vieilles femmes, armées chacune d’un manche à balai, parmi lesquelles
j’apperçus la petite coquine qui m’avoit décelé, et qui vouloit sans doute me
voir au visage. (89)
The “grand homme” with his “grand sabre” takes on an air of phallic
potency and seriousness that belies the “risible spectacle” Rousseau
claims to have meant to offer the women, and in effect, the women’s
broomsticks join in this phallic threat. What Rousseau exposed is not
what “la petite coquine” is looking for now in her attempt to “dé-
celer,” that is, to uncover or bring out of hiding. When Rousseau’s
back is against the wall to this crowd, it is his front that is exposed.
The bottom is nowhere in sight, and the threatening aspect of the
assemblage, figured especially in the desire of the “petite coquine” to
Hunter 61
see his face, aims at something else entirely. The “ridiculous object”
has lost a bit of its comical aspect once this obscene array of phallic
objects is pointed at Rousseau’s face. Moreover, we should note that
even though Rousseau categorizes his exposure as laughable rather
than seductive, we should not be thrown off the track by this refusal of
the sexual, for the scene of Mlle Lambercier’s “cullebutte” had
exactly the same textual effect. It should be comical but in fact, its
narration shows something more: for the former, the occasion for
Rousseau to proclaim a love for Mlle Lambercier that exceeds the
maternal (“comme une mere”) and bordered on the erotic (“plus”),
and for the latter, an exhibition (and a self-presentation) that aim at a
sexuality untroubled by difference (and this through the crafting of a
unique difference).
Rousseau’s ambiguous position with regards to being or having
(a) “sexe” allows him to privilege the “ridiculous object” as an
unthreatening lack of difference — he isn’t exposing anything differ-
ent, after all, from what these women already possess. But exposing
the ridiculous always means risking the obscene; and neither of these
terms provides enough cloth to cover the contradictions inherent in
Rousseau’s struggle with sexual difference. In revealing the ridiculous
object, Rousseau reveals the non-difference that is a mark of his sub-
ject position. In the opening page of the Confessions Rousseau claims
to show himself to his “semblables” “un homme dans toute la vérité
de la nature,” offering himself as the exemplar most like all other men,
but at the same time unique, entirely other: “au moins je suis autre”
(3). This queer structure of sameness and difference is perhaps
uniquely visible in the text of the Confessions, but it is not the symp-
tom of an individual man alone; it is rather a marker of the troubled
terrain of the modern subject.
Ultimately, Rousseau tries to contain the spanking scene and to
redirect it to the proper path just a few short pages after having ex-
plained that it (de)formed the very structure of his subjectivity. His
attempt to block its path textually uses the same language we have just
isolated in our analysis of its proliferating detours:
J’ai fait le premier pas et le plus pénible dans le labyrinthe obscur et

fangeux de mes confessions. Ce n’est pas ce qui est criminel qui coute le
plus à dire, c’est ce qui est ridicule et honteux. Dès à present je suis sur de
moi: après ce que je viens d’oser dire, rien ne peut plus m’arrêter. (48)
The obscure labyrinth of the Confessions, much like the dark and
labyrinthine tunnels in which Rousseau hides after having exposed his
bottom to the servant women, may reveal the ridiculous rather than the
criminal (and we could echo, the ridiculous rather than the obscene),
but the difference that Rousseau’s text tries to set up — and ultimately
fails to maintain — reveals a fascinating and problematic displace-
ment of the binary poles of sexuality and subjectivity.
Works Cited
Derrida, Jacques. De la grammatologie. Paris: Minuit, 1967.
Dictionnaire historique de la langue française. As collected under Diction-
naires d’autrefois, by The Project for American and French Research on
the Treasury of the French Language (ARTFL). University of Chicago.
5 May 2006. <http://www.lib.uchicago.edu/efts/ARTFL/projects/dicos/
ACADEMIE/>
<http://colet.uchicago.edu/cgi-bin/dico1look.pl?strippedhw=sexe>
Rousseau, Jean-Jacques. Confessions. Œuvres complètes. Vol. 1. Ed. Bernard
Gagnebin and Marcel Raymond. Bibliothèque de la Pléiade. Paris: Gal-
limard, 1959.
Guri Ellen Barstad

University of Tromsø, Norway
Mademoiselle de Maupin:
Fluctuations identitaires et sexuelles
Mademoiselle de Maupin présente une vertigineuse remise en question

de l’identité sexuelle. Le contenu immédiat se voit ultérieurement radi-
calisé par un dynamisme ornemental et créateur qui se manifeste dans le
texte à travers des constellations significatives mimant des figures
ornementales. Parmi ces figures se trouvent l’arabesque et les constella-
tions triangulaires incluant l’androgyne. Ces figures permettent de saisir
le dynamisme qui naît de la relation entre la matérialité du texte et le
sujet subversif de l’identité sexuelle. L’androgyne en vient à représenter
un espace queer foisonnant de possibilités, grâce auquel une ouverture
vers le nouveau et vers la créativité devient possible.
________________________
Dans la société française de 1835, la parution de Mademoiselle

de Maupin offre une vertigineuse remise en question de l’identité
sexuelle. Ce roman de Théophile Gautier raconte deux histoires
parallèles qui finissent par se rejoindre: celle de Madeleine de Maupin
qui, travestie en homme, quitte sa vie de femme et acquiert graduel-
lement une identité masculine sous le nom de Théodore de Séranne, et
celle du Chevalier d’Albert désireux que “le roman de [sa] vie [soit]
plus entortillé et plus compliqué qu’un imbroglio espagnol” (99). À
l’instar de Tirésias il rêve de changer de sexe, et dans sa quête de la
femme idéale, chose étrange, c’est l’homme idéal qu’il découvre. Et
pour compléter le tableau, la maîtresse de d’Albert, Rosette, est en ré-
alité amoureuse de Théodore, ignorant qu’il est une femme. D’Albert
tombe amoureux de ce même Théodore, ne pouvant décider si ce bel

androgyne est une femme ou un homme, et Théodore lui-même finit
par ne plus le savoir, se considérant comme faisant partie du troisième
sexe... et cætera. Après maintes complications, trompe-l’œil et che-
mins sinueux, d’Albert et Madeleine finissent par devenir amants,
mais une seule nuit, et tout porte à croire que cette même nuit Made-
leine devient aussi l’amant(e) de Rosette, avant de disparaître immé-
diatement en laissant à ses deux amants une lettre où elle leur recom-
mande: “Aimez-vous tous deux [...], et dites-vous quelquefois mon
nom dans un baiser” (416).
Cette confusion identitaire et amoureuse signale déjà que le
roman de Gautier résiste aux notions binaires et traditionnelles de la
normalité sexuelle. Nathaniel Wing montre la tension qui existe dans
ce roman entre le besoin de maintenir un modèle hétérosexuel et bi-
naire et les nombreuses ruptures qui menacent de subvertir ce modèle.
Le résultat en est une fin qui est loin d’être close quant aux constella-
tions identitaires et sexuelles. Michelle Mielly pour sa part, souligne
l’aspect dynamique et constructiviste de l’identité bisexuelle de
Madeleine. Le personnage passe — dit-elle — par un processus dia-
lectique complexe de rupture sociale et sexuelle qui la mène à une
réconciliation avec son identité bisexuelle. Mais à mon avis il y a plus.
Le roman contient un élément déstabilisateur de sensualité et d’amora-
lité ludique qui soutient et radicalise ultérieurement le contenu immé-
diat par un dynamisme ornemental et créateur, dynamisme ornemental
qui métamorphose la remise en question de l’identité sexuelle en un
véritable feu d’artifice. Ce dynamisme se manifeste dans le texte à
travers des descriptions invitant à la contemplation du Beau, et à tra-
vers des constellations significatives mimant des figures ornementales.
Dans cet article, je me pencherai sur le rôle joué par deux de ces fi-
gures: l’arabesque et les constellations triangulaires incluant la figure
de l’androgyne. Ces figures permettent de saisir le dynamisme qui naît
de la relation entre la matérialité du texte et le sujet subversif de
l’identité sexuelle. Avant de passer à la démonstration, quelques mots
sur l’ornement.
L’ornement
Dans l’histoire de l’art, l’ornement jouit d’une aura d’amoralité.
Alors qu’à l’origine il était une simple décoration, un encadrement au
Barstad 65
rôle marginal, un faire-valoir de l’œuvre principale qu’il encadrait, les

enlumineurs du XIVe siècle créent une situation nouvelle: leurs
encadrements deviennent si “amples” qu’ils menacent “d’étouffer le
texte” (Henry 70). Plus tard l’arabesque rococo évoluera de la même
manière: en volutes, en spirales, les ornements de feuilles d’acanthe
ou de coquillages “enflent” et s’aventurent hors des frontières de
l’encadrement, poussant dans le tableau leurs incursions insidieuses et
de plus en plus envahissantes, au point de menacer de détrôner
l’œuvre principale. Ni véritablement “tableau” ni œuvre à part entière,
mais plus qu’un ornement, ce nouveau genre hybride de l’arabesque
rococo concrétise la confusion et la transgression, voire l’éphémère,
l’érotisme, le chaos, les forces des ténèbres. On accuse son manque de
précision, son jeu irresponsable, sa volonté de destruction morale.
Vertige, voile, trompe-l’œil, métamorphoses, transgression des caté-
gories fixes, telles sont les formes que peut prendre l’ornement. Mais
voilà qu’en 1800 l’arabesque devient la figure centrale du Roman-
tisme; Friedrich Schlegel lui accorde ses lettres de noblesse: il fait
l’apologie de sa multiplicité et de ses contradictions; pour lui, la
confusion est belle, et le chaos, un principe humain fondamental,
capable d’engendrer un monde nouveau.
Comme l’ornement, le queer représente la marginalité par rapport

à un centre qui tient à garder sa position dominante. Dans le roman de
Gautier, la subversion sexuelle radicalisée par une activité ornemen-
tale, menace de déconstruire, de renverser les frontières rigides entre
les genres, de pervertir la rectitude de la vision dite saine. De même
que l’ornement entraîne la marginalité vers le centre, de même
l’identité fluide et ambiguë fait-elle pression sur les valeurs établies
(hétérosexualité, identité binaire, famille, religion) pour renverser une
prétendue “normalité” identitaire. Les frontières rigides s’estompent;
contre le stable, contre la fixité des formes et des genres, s’élèvent
l’incertain, le mouvement, tout ce qui est fluctuant, fluide. Les préci-
sions qu’Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick apporte sur le queer dans “Cons-
truire des significations queer”, donnent une impression tout ornemen-
tale de mouvement, de tourbillon et de métamorphoses: “Queer is a
continuing moment, movement, motive — recurrent, eddying,
troublant” (xii).
La pensée queer me semble tout à fait apte à traduire le potentiel

significatif qui, dans le roman, se dégage de la rencontre dynamique
entre forme et contenu.
L’arabesque
L’arabesque se manifeste dès le début du roman, quand d’Albert
décrit sa vie ennuyeuse et monotone, une vie qui, dit-il, ressemble à
une boîte où, à chaque instant, il se heurte aux murs et bute de tous
côtés contre l’horizon. Il compare son existence au coquillage repo-
sant sur un banc de sable, au lierre enserrant un arbre, et s’étonne de
ce que ses pieds n’aient pas déjà pris racine. Certains jours, plongé
dans un curieux état entre rêve et réalité, il parcourt fébrilement les
rues, quelque chose d’indéfinissable le poussant à avancer; “Rien n’est
fatigant au monde comme ces tourbillons sans motifs et ces élans sans
but” (73), se plaint-il. Quand tout se calme, d’Albert retourne dans sa
“boîte”. Cette description correspond à un principe fondamental du
texte, et s’applique également à la description que donne d’Albert de
sa relation avec Rosette. De temps à autre, d’Albert ressent le besoin
de respirer et d’élargir son espace vital, mais comme dans l’exemple
précédent, il se trouve contraint de revenir au point de départ, qui est
maintenant Rosette: “comme elle dirige habilement les petits mouve-
ments de l’âme! comme elle fait tourner la langueur en rêverie tendre!
et par combien de chemins détournés fait-elle revenir à elle l’esprit qui
s’en éloigne” (140). On peut considérer ce type d’exemples comme
l’expression du principe ornemental du texte et des arabesques psy-
chiques qui caractérisent les personnages. Dans l’arabesque, les multi-
ples “chemins détournés” reviennent au point de départ, et une
nouvelle structure ornementale se crée. Le détour, c’est le mouvement
ludique, ce sont les tourbillons tels qu’ils s’expriment dans le désir de
d’Albert pour une vie marquée par l’extrême: aventures sans nombre,
coups de têtes, fantaisie et vagabondage au rythme du hasard, aspira-
tions à une vie compliquée et pleine d’imbroglios; tout cela fait partie
de l’ornement.
Le mouvement effréné de d’Albert s’oppose aux termes utilisés

pour décrire les rapports entre d’Albert et Rosette qui suggèrent une
formation ornementale stable, tel que l’enlacement du lierre connotant
aussi l’étouffement. La description se caractérise par une vitalité et
Barstad 67
une volonté de détachement de la part de d’Albert. D’Albert qui tente

de transgresser le cadre à l’intérieur duquel il est placé, transgression
qui vaut aussi sur le plan de la signification, où les métamorphoses se
succèdent dans un réseau compliqué d’entrelacs. Madeleine de Mau-
pin devenant l’androgyne, Théodore efface les frontières entre les
genres masculin et féminin et représenterait donc le “troisième sexe”.
D’Albert à qui d’autres hommes reprochent une apparence trop fémi-
nine porte également en lui des possibilités androgynes. Et les compli-
cations ne s’arrêtent pas là. On peut lire Mademoiselle de Maupin
comme une longue rêverie ou comme un état intermédiaire entre le
rêve et la réalité; dans cet état d’Albert parvient à réaliser tous ses
fantasmes dont les principaux sont de rencontrer son idéal de beauté,
d’être beau, et de changer de sexe. Son désir d’être beau se réalise
dans le personnage de Théodore que l’on peut comprendre comme une
version plus belle de d’Albert. Mais une telle lecture déclenche des
réactions en chaîne, dynamiques et transgressives sur le plan du sens.
Le roman joue avec la possibilité d’une homosexualité masculine:
d’Albert tombe amoureux de Théodore. Or si Théodore est d’Albert,
et parce que Théodore est en réalité une femme, alors d’Albert se
trouverait aussi être femme à un certain moment de son excursion
contournée; ainsi réalise-t-il son désir de changer de sexe et d’être
femme dans une relation avec un homme. Dans les possibilités of-
fertes par les métamorphoses, on voit aussi réalisé le rêve lesbien:
dans son état de femme, d’Albert a une relation avec Rosette. Le tout
se complique encore davantage étant donné que Théodore (et donc sur
un autre plan d’Albert) développe une amitié ambiguë avec une jeune
fille travestie en page. Ainsi les métamorphoses peuvent-elles conti-
nuer à l’infini avant que l’ordre ne se rétablisse, mais de façon
instable.
Le motif de la démultiplication de la personne se manifeste expli-

citement dans la fascination de d’Albert pour les dieux indiens et leurs
avatars: “ce que j’envie le plus aux dieux monstrueux et bizarres de
l’Inde, ce sont leurs perpétuels avatars et leurs transformations
innombrables” (127). Cette démultiplication se réalise dans la démul-
tiplication de ses rôles à travers le roman. Dans son désir de constam-
ment déplacer le centre, d’Albert entre dans ce monstrueux et dans ce
bizarre qu’il attribue aux dieux; Théodore serait ainsi son “avatar”, sa
métamorphose. Le monstrueux et l’effrayant se trouvent donc au
centre de l’expérience d’un d’Albert obligé de briser des tabous, et

dont la notion du naturel se voit graduellement brisée. Sue-Ellen Case
dit bien: “queer revels constitute a kind of activism that attacks the
dominant notion of the natural. The queer is the taboo-breaker, the
monstrous, the uncanny” (Hall 55). Mais cette note d’effroyable
pourrait aussi évoquer le sublime.
La constellation triangulaire
Les excursions effrénées de d’Albert peuvent être comprises
comme la recherche d’autres espaces, hors du centre et hors de son
centre. Cependant, sa formation ornementale avec Rosette suggérée
par leur enlacement le contraint à revenir à sa place fixe, auprès de sa
maîtresse. Mais voici qu’un jour, la châtelaine Rosette amène son
amant frustré à la campagne. Nous apprenons que dans ce château
Rosette avait déjà vécu une aventure romantique mais platonique avec
Théodore qui, ainsi que d’autres invités, ne tardera pas de venir
rejoindre le couple. D’Albert tombe amoureux de Théodore et, hor-
rifié, écrit à son ami Silvio: “j’ai découvert l’affreuse vérité [...],
j’aime... Oh! non, je ne pourrai jamais te le dire... j’aime un homme!”
(220)
Le tournant décisif a lieu lors d’une représentation théâtrale de
Comme il vous plaira, où Théodore a accepté de jouer le rôle féminin
de Rosalinde. Devant l’apparition parfaite de Théodore habillé en
femme, d’Albert, qui espère qu’il s’agit malgré tout d’une femme,
exprime sa soudaine difficulté à faire des observations précises. Le
reflet comme venant d’un rêve et le chatoiement des couleurs influen-
cent son regard, ils le rendent captif de la magie et de l’ambiguïté
ornementales. Les contours se font vagues, d’Albert qui regarde
Théodore le voit tantôt principalement homme, tantôt surtout femme,
mais le doute revient toujours. C’est la confusion ornementale qui se
manifeste ainsi, un trompe-l’œil où, à tout moment, l’interprétation
dépend des contours du motif ou de la figure ambiguë qui se trouvent
au premier plan.
Devant un Théodore sublime dans son costume de femme, la
vision des spectateurs se fait donc double. Ils voient réunis au même
instant, en une seule et même personne, et un homme et une femme.
Cette double tension, cette ambiguïté déclenchent une tension érotique
Barstad 69
triangulaire puisque le personnage androgyne fascine tout autant les

hommes que les femmes, une fascination de l’androgyne où, comme
dans l’ornement, la confusion joue un rôle important. Un point com-
mun important est aussi la sensualité inhérente à l’“aura” de
l’ornement. L’ornement et l’androgyne ont en commun ce qui est
caché, ce qui est voilé, mais aussi la mobilité de la vision des specta-
teurs, l’inconstance et le changeant. Dans notre perspective du roman,
l’androgyne devient une figure ornementale préférable à la figure que
Rosette tente de former avec d’Albert. Au premier abord, l’univers de
Rosette évoque la perfection et l’homogénéité circulaires de la rosette
tandis que la figure de l’androgyne représente l’hétérogène et le
bizarre, ou le queer. Et pourtant... Rosette possède d’autres aspects.
Une lecture ornementale inspirée de l’arabesque n’a pas de fin abso-
lue: de nouveaux motifs, de nouvelles complications se forment sans
cesse. À la fin du roman, quand l’ordre semble rétabli, il se passe en
réalité quelque chose d’autre. Lorsque Madeleine-Théodore disparaît
en recommandant à Rosette et d’Albert de s’aimer l’un l’autre en se
disant “quelquefois [son] nom dans un baiser” (416), il s’agit en
réalité de la formation d’un nouvel ornement, d’un motif triangulaire,
où l’androgyne se trouve encore une fois être au centre de l’intérêt
érotique des deux sexes attentifs. Au lieu de quelque chose de sta-
tique, c’est le mouvement infini du texte qui domine, et qui met le
texte en condition de se prêter à un nouveau jeu avec l’identité sous un
déguisement ornemental.
Cette constellation triangulaire renvoie à d’autres formations du
même type rencontrées dans le roman. Elles n’ont pas toutes la même
fonction mais sont toujours liées au désir dans sa diversité, ainsi
qu’aux questions d’identité multiple et fluide. “Pensez à moi quelque-
fois dans un baiser...” Cette situation n’est pas sans ambiguïté: à qui
d’Albert songera-t-il? à l’homme ou à la femme? à Madeleine ou à
Théodore? ou même aux deux à la fois? Et il en va de même pour
Rosette. Semble alors se profiler à l’horizon la possibilité d’un nou-
veau ménage à trois, voire à quatre, où relief et arrière-fond alterne-
ront; et le queer est assuré d’une part par ce potentiel que représente la
présence de l’androgyne, d’autre part par leurs expériences respectives
avec ce personnage équivoque. L’androgyne représente ainsi
l’élargissement de l’existence des personnages et de leurs expériences
sur un plan mi-rêve, mi-réalité.
L’androgyne, un espace de liberté

Cette compréhension de la fin du roman diffère des lectures qui
qualifient la fin de décevante. En considérant d’Albert et Madeleine
comme deux parties de l’androgyne, qui se cherchent, se trouvent,
mais se séparent à la fin, beaucoup concluent à l’échec de la bisexua-
lité, l’échec de l’androgyne. Car rien ne semble avoir changé à la fin.
Concluons plutôt que tout a changé. D’Albert désirait une vie
“plus entortillé[e] et plus compliqué[e] qu’un imbroglio espagnol”
(99), ce que nous traduisons par “ornementale” et queer. Théodore est
l’accomplissement de ce vœu, et Rosette est le fil qui les a réunis.
Dans cette optique, la constellation triangulaire de la fin représente un
espace de liberté, un espace de possibilités. David Halperin se sert de
la métaphore de l’espace pour parler de cette “invention de soi”, cen-
trale dans la théorie queer inspirée par Foucault. Pour Halperin et sa
lecture de Foucault, le queer est un espace foisonnant de possibilités,
lié précisément à une volonté de devenir autre, de se marginaliser pour
pouvoir, à partir de cette marginalisation, inventer du nouveau. Il
s’agit d’une construction positive et créatrice de modes de vie diffé-
rents. Le désir d’ouverture et de nouveauté guide Madeleine et
d’Albert.
Quand Madeleine de Maupin proclame appartenir au troisième
sexe, elle fait un acte subversif qui touche au fondement même d’une
société basée sur la distinction binaire du masculin et du féminin.
C’est, dans la société, une rupture d’avec le dualisme fondamental et
dominateur, c’est l’introduction du désordre dans un univers ordonné.
Dans ses transformations successives, d’Albert fait un parcours nou-
veau sans aucune référence à quoi que ce soit de connu; il n’y a pas de
base connue et fixe, c’est du nouveau sans référence emprisonnante.
Pour tous deux, la quête identitaire est un mouvement en avant vers un
espace de possibilités; comme l’arabesque qui ne se réfère à aucune
réalité précise mais représente une “écriture” à la fois détachée des
normes significatives sociales et porteuse d’une aura amorale et sub-
versive.
Le motif triangulaire est à considérer comme un élargissement de
la constellation étouffante formée par Rosette et d’Albert dont la
vision se bornait à eux-mêmes. Tout porte à croire qu’ils resteront
Barstad 71
ensemble grâce à la formation d’un nouvel espace. L’androgyne

Théodore-Madeleine représente cet espace queer grâce auquel une
ouverture vers le nouveau et vers la créativité devient possible.
Ouvrages cités
Gautier, Théophile. Mademoiselle de Maupin. 1835. Paris: Gallimard Folio,
1973.
Hall, Donald. Queer Theories. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003.
Halperin, David. Saint Foucault. Paris: EPEL, 2000.
Henry, Freeman. “Théophile Gautier: enluminures et danse macabre”. Bulle-
tin de la Société Théophile Gautier 18 (1996): 67-77.
Mielly, Michelle. “Madeleine séductrice/Théodore séducteur: Rupture et
réconciliation dans Mademoiselle de Maupin”. Nineteenth-Century
French Studies 25. 1 & 2 (1996-97): 50-59.
Sedgwick, Eve Kosofsky. Tendencies. Durham: Duke University Press, 1993.
Wing, Nathaniel. “‘Vous êtes sans doute très surpris, mon cher d’Albert’:
Improvisation and Gender in Théophile Gautier’s Mademoiselle de
Maupin”. Between Genders: Narrating Difference in Early French Mo-
dernism. Newark: University of Delaware Press and London: Associa-
ted University Presses, 2004. 29-50.
James F. Hamilton
University of Cincinnati
Gender Convergence in Sand’s La Mare au diable,

a Contrasexual Reading
A contrasexual reading of Sand’s La Mare au diable (1846) offers a

new, “queer” reading by converging the roles of Germain and Marie as
co-equals in a joint venture. Instead of viewing Germain as an ego-hero
according to the prevailing model in Western culture (as if he were the
projection of a male author), Marie replaces his centrality as an ego-
heroine; Germain functions then as an Animus-hero (a kind of male
muse) who serves her voyage to completion, while undergoing a trans-
formation of his own. This model, more in line with the psyche of its
woman author, lends a new interpretation to the novel’s title, sheds new
light on the roles of secondary women characters, and reveals greater
psychological depth in the struggle of two male suitors. The concluding
scene of Germain alone in nature presents a challenge to this contra-
sexual reading, unless viewed in its broad archetypal context of the
Great Mother.
________________________
Contrasexual theory, based on the premise of a psychic bisexual-

ity in all human beings, provides a more complex understanding of the
creative process in La Mare au diable (1846). My thesis of gender
convergence in Sand’s novel places the archetypal Feminine on an
equal footing with the Masculine and generates a “queer” interpreta-
tion in its challenge to conventional objectivity. The latter assumes
that Sand’s hero, Germain, represents literally a man on a heroic jour-
ney, as if his story had been written by a male author projecting his
ego onto the hero of the same sex. This standard approach conforms to
Joseph Campbell’s model of “the composite hero of the monomyth,”

which incorporates the Western experience of ego development, a
breaking out of unconsciousness in opposition to Terrible Mother fig-
ures in the form of dragons, witches, devils, etc. (37). One speaks then
of “the ego as hero” or the ego-hero (my preference) on a cultural
mission (Henderson 110), and the antihero is defined as the one who
has failed to complete the hero’s journey (Clift 127). From this gen-
dered perspective, little parity appears between Germain and his
young traveling companion, Marie, whose role becomes limited to
that of Anima guide or inspiratrice/muse.
Contrasexual theory makes a more balanced reading possible by
positing a gender convergence on a bias corresponding to the psyche
of its female novelist. Following this logic, Marie replaces Germain as
an ego-heroine, and he functions as an Animus-hero (a kind of male
muse) who serves her voyage to completion through the secondary
masculine in women, while undergoing a transformation of his own.
My model points to an adventure of coequals but with Marie as the
center of initiative. This shift of viewpoint helps to explain the title to
La Mare au diable.
The first part of the title, “la mare,” identifies the element of wa-
ter, the precondition of life and the evolutionary origin of humanity,
which is reenacted with every fetus. So too, the element of water
points mythically to the Great Mother archetype, representation of the
original state of collective unconsciousness and source of dream and
fantasy.1 From this female-centered view of the world, the second part
of the title, “au diable,” points in the context of Sand’s rustic tale to
the Animus-hero who awakens feminine consciousness, whether as a
lover-knight, a rapist-intruder, or bandit-devil.
Implicit support for a contrasexual reading of La Mare au diable
as a tale centered on an ego-heroine paired with an Animus-hero can
be found in Maria von Franz — “grande dame” of Jungian theorists
and specialist in fairy-tale analysis. She exhorts her fellow psycholo-
gists to remain true to their understanding of contrasexual theory when
writing interpretative studies and to shun the “sheer cowardice” of
––––––––––
1
See Neumann: “The Great Goddess is the flowing unity of subterranean and
celestial primordial water [...]. To her belong all waters, streams, fountains, ponds,
and springs, as well as the rain. She is the ocean of life [...]” (222).
Hamilton 75
conventional approaches (The Feminine in Fairy Tales 18). Jung’s

contention of a psychic bisexuality uniting the sexes is reflected in the
insistence of Franz upon the variability of gender in the projected
narrative voice: “There are many tales whose leading characters can
be interpreted as representing either the anima or the animus. [...]
Most tales of mutual development are of this type” (Interpretation of
Fairy Tales 144).
Latitude for a contrasexual reading comes also from second-
generation Jungian analysts such as June Singer who asserts a “devel-
opmental factor” in the Anima/Animus (187), while some psycholo-
gists “insist that everybody has both anima and animus conscious-
ness” (Ulanov, The Archetypal World 113). This interpretative stance
proves to be central to the practice of self-proclaimed gay therapist
Robert H. Hopcke; he identifies a “male anima,” based on his dream
analysis of gay men (35). However, revisionism has its limits. A
crucial one remains the basic distinction between archetypes such as
the Anima/Animus and stereotypes. The former are patterns of
psychic energy in image form arising from the collective unconscious
and acting autonomously in compensation to the ego as a bridge to the
Self: “Anima and animus affect our identity in ways central to being.
They act against stereotypes foisted onto us by the strictures of soci-
ety, by people’s unconscious fears and needs, by our own neuroses”
(Ulanov, Transforming Sexuality 49). Finally, explicit confirmation of
my approach of ego-heroine and Animus-hero comes from Ann
Ulanov’s analysis of The Wizard of Oz. She refers to “Dorothy, the
ego” and to her four male companions as “facets of the animus func-
tion” (The Feminine 277, 280). The straw man, the tin man, the lion,
and the Wizard represent aspects of Dorothy’s personality which, as a
girl, she needs to develop and to assimilate.2 Moreover, Jung makes
reference to the “animus-hero,” in one instance, as the promoter of
courage in a young woman (Symbols 307).
––––––––––
2
This paragraph treats controversies within Jungian analysis. For example,
archetypes are generally not seen as being capable of development; they just are.
However, women analysands often observe that therapy has strengthened their
Animus, which allows them to be more decisive, to feel more in control, to relate
better to their sexuality. In fact, It may be that their egos have undergone change
through more conscious exposure to the Animus. Nevertheless, the world reported on
is theirs and the self-observations of women need to be honored.
Overlapping of the Feminine and the Masculine, authoress and

hero, consciousness and unconsciousness occurs in the images of the
introductory chapters of La Mare au diable, which prepare the story of
Germain and Marie. This phenomenon of gender merging should not
surprise, for as Eileen Sivert observes in regard to Lélia, “slippage” in
sexual roles typifies characterization in Sand’s novels (59). As the
undisguised narrative voice, Sand begins La Mare au diable with an
extended critique of Holbein’s allegorical woodcarving featuring a
haggard peasant plowing an unending furrow into the setting sun
behind two emaciated horses whipped by a skeletal figure of death. In
rebuttal, Sand offers a life-affirming landscape, an athletic peasant
masterfully driving four pairs of powerful oxen forcing the point of a
plow through fresh sod and urged on by an angelic little boy. Animal
energy and sexual imagery fill the scene. The will to dominate excited
by resistance, “la feinte violence” (20) and accompanied by the sweet
power of song, “ce chant si doux et si puissant” (21), generates a
gender ambiguity that comes to a head in the woman narrator’s identi-
fication with the muscular young peasant in a virtual superimposing of
contrasexual images: “Heureux le laboureur! Oui, sans doute, je le
serais à sa place, si ma poitrine, devenue puissante, pouvait ainsi
féconder et chanter la nature [...]” (23).3
The narrator dreams metaphorically of incorporating both the
powerful, penetrating point of the iron plow and the opened furrow in
the soil, which joyously “exhalait une vapeur légère” (17).4 Indeed, the
difference between the male peasant (who turns out to be Germain)
and the female narrator does not arise from gender but from the inter-
nal quality of consciousness: “Il lui manque la connaissance de son
sentiment” (24). The purpose of his story, taking the form of the
hero’s journey, will be that of increased awareness. From the stand-
point of “convergence,” this consciousness-raising will need to take
place also on the part of readers female and male, anyone blinded by
appearance and its incomplete reality. The narrator addresses directly
those whose heart has been stilled by the mind, “car cette erreur
effroyable [...] a tué votre cœur” (24).
––––––––––
3
Quotations refer to the Garnier edition of La Mare au diable.
4
“The plough has a well-known phallic meaning (cf. Fig. 15), and the furrow,
as in India, stands for woman. Psychologically this image is a symbolic equivalent of
copulation, the son being the edible fruit of the field” (Jung, Symbols 340).
Hamilton 77
The heroic journey in La Mare au diable assumes then the

general challenge of arriving at greater consciousness and, from our
contrasexual perspective, the specific challenge of psychic gender
merging by assuming one’s own Anima/Animus through interaction
with the “other.”5 Successful integration of the inner woman or man
within leads to a completeness referred to in the ideal goal of con-
junctio or inner marriage and, in practical terms, to personal serenity
and harmony with one’s partner. The obstacle to such a worthy goal,
the precondition for personal happiness and collective well-being,
arises from imbalance between the Masculine and the Feminine, both
the primary kind of egos male and female, but also the secondary kind
of men’s lack of feeling and passivity in women. Both conditions
thrive in unconsciousness and cultural convention. Such is the situa-
tion which opens the plot in La Mare au diable, a story replete with
archetypes — Germain as wounded hero, Father and Mother Maurice,
Marie as the virginal maiden, Petit-Pierre as Child, the wealthy widow
as Puella, the Crone, the lecherous landowner as negative Animus, etc.
The problem of gender imbalance opens La Mare au diable and
makes itself felt by the absence of the feminine factor, a device typical
of the fairy tale: “Germain, lui dit un jour son beau-père, il faut pour-
tant te décider à reprendre femme” (26). Two men discuss the neces-
sity of finding another woman for Germain and mother for his
children, the burden placed on women in the household who care for
his children, and the future welfare of the family. All of this happens
without the benefit of a woman’s voice. 6 Likewise, the secondary
feminine in man’s Anima shows itself to be silenced. Two years after
the passing of his wife, Germain still feels at a loss about what to do
and what he wants. In this regard, attention has been called to
Germain’s passivity. He defers to Father Maurice’s materialistic
reasoning and he acquiesces to undertake a journey to court the
wealthy widowed daughter of Maurice’s old friend. Seemingly
lacking a sense of self, Germain’s inability to make his own way and
to assert his will has been characterized “as a serious psychological
––––––––––
5
See Singer who suggests using the term “the repressed Other,” if the
Anima/Animus archetypes pose a problem (193).
6
See Franz: “In our Christian civilization, as I mentioned, the image of the
woman is incompletely represented. As Jung has said, she has no representative in the
Upper Parliament” (The Feminine in Fairy Tales 3-4).
weakness which he never fully overcomes,” “a childlike obedience”

(Grant 212, 216). My forthcoming article in Nineteenth-Century
French Studies accounts for Germain’s passivity as the understandable
depression of mourning, as a starting point in his journey which he
overcomes in an encounter with his Shadow, the evil within: during a
nocturnal campfire scene, he reaches out unconsciously and then
consciously to the sleeping Marie, and the shock awakens him to his
repressed desire and love of life.
There is another possible reading, less dramatic perhaps than that
of the ego-hero but just as insightful and perhaps closer to everyday
experience. Germain may not be the carrier of the male ego and to ex-
pect a conventional manly attitude is to ignore the contrasexual
grounding of the text. To view Germain instead as a kind and gentle
but passive Animus projection of a strong female author is simply to
recognize the correspondence between this inner “coupling” and the
external one of couples in everyday reality, a union composed of
complementary opposites.
Continuing on this tack within the novel, the pairing of Germain
and Marie appears to be inappropriate for anything other than a jour-
ney of convenience to neighboring destinations. It is true that both are
reluctant travelers, Germain a grieving widower unready to go court-
ing and Marie, a young neighbor tearfully leaving the home of her
grandmother for the first time in order to seek employment as a shep-
herdess. Moreover, each operates from a different stage of life and in
different circumstances. Germain hails from a landowning extended
family and searches for a widow with wealth. His age of twenty-eight
is viewed with disenchantment by Marie, a penniless maiden of six-
teen. She confesses her fear of ridicule by peers if she were to be
engaged to a man of Germain’s years. Nevertheless, from the stand-
point of contrasexual theory, we shall see that the two have comple-
mentary psychologies making them a compatible couple, drawn
together for reasons arising from the author’s psyche.
The relationship between Germain and Marie goes beyond role
reversal to embody contrasexuality at work. Although Germain holds
the reins to their horse during their journey on horseback, it literally
Hamilton 79
does not belong to him but to the extended family, to the collective. 7
By the same token, it is Marie and not the father of Petit-Pierre who
determines his inclusion on the trip. She thinks of a way to advise the
family of the boy’s departure (having found him sleeping by the road);
she justifies his contribution to the journey as a test of the rich
widow’s attitude toward children, and Marie volunteers to care for the
boy (thus assuring a demonstration of her maternal qualities). In addi-
tion, when they become lost in the woods at night, it is Marie who
finds a dry camping site, builds a fire, magically produces food and
drink (leftover from lunch), and she makes a bed for Pierre. Marie’s
authority bears the psychic signature of her creator.
Leadership on the material level is matched on the moral one.
Marie directs the conversation in ways helpful to Germain and their
journey. Indeed, if Marie is eventually rescued by Germain, both from
abuse by her employer and from poverty, she also saves him from a
kind of “death,” a loss of libido through despair and pessimism. From
the start, Marie directs his thinking away from negativity. For exam-
ple, she urges him to believe in the purpose of his trip (47), to trust his
intuition (53), not to regret lost opportunities (54), to have patience
and to see the positive side of circumstance (63), not to doubt every-
thing (64), to show more courage and not to undermine hers (77), etc.
Marie’s challenge will be to help Germain get outside of his head, to
reconnect with his body through emotions and, while doing so, to
undergo her own “awakening” into womanhood; this she will need to
achieve differently than Germain. While he becomes conscious
through desire by twice approaching the sleeping Marie and while he
awakens to life through a rude encounter with his Shadow by fright-
ening her (and himself), Marie remains unconscious in her maiden-
hood; she does not understand why Germain is leaning over her face:
“Marie, sentant une haleine chaude comme le feu courir sur ses lèvres,
se réveilla et le regarda d’un air tout effaré, ne comprenant rien du tout
à ce qui se passait en lui” (81-82).
Hence, from a contrasexual perspective, La Mare au diable
chronicles Marie’s coming into awareness of womanhood, and
Germain serves that purpose as an Animus-hero. From this view of
––––––––––
7
Psychologically, the mare carrying Germain, Marie, and Pierre symbolizes the
grounding of their journey in animal instincts.
Marie as ego-heroine, the roles of two minor women characters in the

novel make more sense. While the wealthy widow Guérin constitutes
merely a digression in the journey of Germain as the conventional
ego-hero, she plays the role of Marie’s opposite archetype. The widow
incarnates the traits of the Puella archetype, the coquette (or would-be
courtesan) who enjoys leading men on, toying with their emotions,
having a good time at the expense of suitors without serious inten-
tions. The wealthy widow Guérin had been playing the game of being
courted by a group of suitors for two years (the same length of time as
Germain’s mourning).
By projecting her Shadow on the Puella archetype represented by
the wealthy widow, Sand as authoress identifies with its opposite in
the Madonna/Mother archetype, an orientation shared by her ego-
heroine, Marie. The latter makes contact with her opposite archetype
directly and indirectly. In the first instance, Marie and Petit-Pierre are
turned away from the door of the wealthy widow’s house. The ser-
vants who do so, reflect the cold, unfeeling character of their mistress.
The collective lack of hospitality in the country setting shocks Ger-
main when he hears of it. As an Animus-hero in the service of Marie
as a projected ego-heroine, Germain also carries forward the destiny
of Marie while pursuing her. (Archetypes overlap and exchange in-
formation in the collective unconscious, which like a primordial pool
corresponds metaphorically to the “devil’s pond.”)8 This psychic inter-
action on the unconscious level between Marie and Germain comes
into play at the devil’s pond during his encounter with a delirious old
hag, a veritable Crone archetype. Without this insight into the subtex-
tual psychic connection between the hero and heroine, this scene
would continue to puzzle critics. With the insight, it still remains par-
tially ambiguous by yielding two contrary but, from a contrasexual
perspective, complementary interpretations.
The ravings of the Crone surprise Germain while following
Marie and Pierre after their departure from the widow’s house. The
short conversation between them takes place on two disconnected
levels of the rational and the mythical. In answer to his inquiry, the
Crone rants about the story of a boy drowned by “les mauvais esprits”
––––––––––
8
“In the unconscious all archetypes are contaminated with one another. It is as
if several photographs were printed one over the other; they cannot be disentangled”
(Franz, Interpretation 10).
Hamilton 81
(109). If we view Germain as the ego-hero within the traditional mode

of archetypal psychology, the Crone’s rantings refer not literally to
Petit-Pierre but to the boy within Germain, a kind of untried innocence
of an inner Child sacrificed at the devil’s pond in his encounter with
evil, the repressed desire to take Marie by force, a manifestation of the
Shadow archetype. Germain’s successful surmounting of temptation
frees his desire and his energies to attain psychological maturity, a
breakthrough that allows him to accept Marie’s initial rejection of his
declaration without whining. A very different story of loss makes
itself known when we view the scene with the Crone (whose name
heads the chapter, “La Vieille”) from the standpoint of a woman’s
story about Marie as ego-heroine.
From our vantage point of contrasexual theory, the Crone speaks
to the ego-heroine through the intermediary of Germain as Animus-
hero. 9 Textual support for the indirect connection between the two
women materializes spatially. The Crone appears at the very spot in
the woods next to the pond at the campsite where Marie had left her
mark: “Le feu fumait encore; une vieille femme ramassait le reste de
la provision de bois mort que la petite Marie y avait entassée” (108).
From the viewpoint of Marie as narrative center, the crazed warning
of the Crone about the boy drowned in the devil’s pond echoes her
lost opportunity to conceive a child, the son who could have been
impregnated by the presence of Germain over her.10 In this vein, the
Crone channels the all-knowing wisdom of the collective unconscious,
in the mythical tradition of the Sphinx.11 The Crone’s ambiguous
warning about times past and lost opportunities to escape “the woods”
(which I interpret metaphorically as referring to the vagaries of life)
––––––––––
9
Sivert intuits the cross-gender intermediation of identities (from heroine
through a male poet to her sister) in Sand’s Lélia (1833): “What has happened in fact
is that Lélia’s contained, masculine identity has been destabilized and she slips into
that of Pulchérie through Sténio” (Sivert 59-60).
10
Ponds, swamps, and marsh represent in myth the medium of female powers:
“For this reason the female powers dwell not only in ponds, springs, streams, and
swamps but also in the earth [...] — along with the dead and unborn — in the
underworld” (Neumann 260).
11
The Crone’s enigmatic message authorizes the analogy with the Sphinx and
opens insights; the Sphinx functions as a “theriomorphic” representation of the
repressed libido or instincts; of hybrid character, half female human and half animal,
the Sphinx can have a bisexual character in women’s dreams by hiding “a masculine
figure” (Jung, Symbols 180, 183).
implicitly contradicts Marie’s intention, as expressed at the campfire,

to wait many years before marrying in order to amass a dowry (109).
The Crone’s crazed voice in the desert functions as a kind of primitive
cry to trust one’s instincts and to live in the present moment.
The dimensions of being in time, space, and feeling intersect in

the subsequent scene of violence wherein Germain unhorses the lust-
ful landowner and would-be seducer of Marie. Seemingly incarnating
the voice of the unconscious, which tends to speak in classical tones,
Marie strikes the pose of a true heroine before Germain as her knight.
With high dignity, she rejects his title of “master” for her employer in
favor of a pledge of loyalty to Germain: “ — Mon maître? Dit-elle
fièrement; cet homme-là n’est pas mon maître et ne le sera jamais!...
C’est vous Germain, qui êtes mon maître. Je veux que vous me
rameniez avec vous... Je vous servirai pour rien” (112). Lest one be
tempted to see Marie as chattel being fought over by two men, let us
not forget our contrasexual context. The two men represent but two
contrary aspects of woman’s psyche, the positive Animus (fair and
friendly) and the negative Animus (dark, dangerous, and mounted on a
black horse); they function to bring Marie into consciousness of her
desire. 12 In deferring to Germain, Marie submits merely to a higher
aspect of herself, one in harmony with her character and values. As
proof of their compatibility, Germain breaks the landowner’s riding
crop, “son bâton,” in a symbolic gesture of freely renouncing the
advantages of male power and authority.
Symbolic gesture receives concrete affirmation in commitment

through Germain’s service to love, despite a continuing ambiguity.
(Marie had previously rejected his declaration in absolute terms.)
Throughout the winter, he leaves anonymous gifts of firewood and
provisions for Marie and her grandmother without hope for happiness.
However, the intermediation of Mother Maurice bridges differences of
class, age, and gendered communication. (Here, we see how another
archetype helps the Animus/Anima complex in its task of bringing the
ego closer to union with the Self.) Shared love becomes the great
––––––––––
12
“The transformative animus figure [...] looks to move a woman into better
relations to her instincts [...] to wake her up to her own sexual longings” (Ulanov,
Transforming Sexuality 109). “The animus awakens passion in a woman” (Franz,
Interpretation 143).
Hamilton 83
equalizer. Happiness between individuals brings peace to the commu-

nity. However, the final scene of the novel challenges a contrasexual
reading of La Mare au diable and requires amplification.
***
The closing scene found at the end of the Appendice is this: on

the third evening of the marriage celebration at midnight, Germain
leaves the few remaining guests (who are unable to rise from the
table) and goes out into the fields to tend his oxen. Falling on his
knees in muted prayer, Germain gives thanks for his blessings. From
the standpoint of ego-hero, Germain is reborn by integrating the
archetypal energies represented by Marie and Petit-Pierre in a kind of
internal marriage (if only nascent) between the masculine ego and the
Anima in the individuation process. Herein lies the rub: Why is Marie
not present in the final scene or is she present indirectly? Her apparent
absence threatens to disallow a contrasexual reading of her story as
ego-heroine. However, if we resist the tendency to identify with the
ego-hero and if we continue to view Germain as an Animus-hero, a
projection of the inner masculine of Sand’s psyche, another more
mythic landscape unfolds, ultimately more pleasing in its profound
convergence. From the contrasexual perspective, Germain’s final pose
represents but a return to his origins in the Feminine, its positive side
in fertile nature as opposed to its dark, chthonic side represented by
the devil’s pond. At the end of the novel, womb symbolism again
dominates. Germain finds himself enclosed in the April aroma of
flowers, fresh soil, morning dew, and singing birds. Germain remains
contained between heaven and earth in the primal vessel of life
absorbed by the marvel of rebirth: “L’alouette, qui chantait en mon-
tant vers les cieux, lui semblait être la voix de son cœur rendant grâce
à la Providence. Le givre, qui brillait aux buissons décharnés, lui sem-
blait la blancheur des fleurs d’avril précédant l’apparition des feuilles”
(175). This reading finds support in “the vestiges of ancient fertility
cults” uncovered in peasant culture, a pagan “subservience to the
Great Mother” continued in a fundamental matriarchy underpinning
Sand’s rustic tales (Grant 214-15). I would go farther in maintaining
that Sand succeeds in mining this archaic stratum within the collective
unconscious, a kind of ancestral pool (a veritable devil’s pond) where

archetypal energies commingle in unforeseeable combinations.13
In conclusion, the ending to Sand’s pastoral tale projects the eter-
nal dance between the Masculine and the Feminine onto the cosmic
canvass of continuing life, which was introduced in the sexual sym-
bolism of the introductory landscape scene — the iron tip of the plow
opening the moist furrow in the earth. It is probably irrelevant to
decide who is the container and who the contained, Germain or Marie.
Both approaches of ego-hero/Anima and ego-heroine/Animus, based
on male and female-centered views of existence, generate probing
insights, which need each other for a balanced view of life in an
archetypal tale such as La Mare au diable — written by a female
author in a male-dominated culture, converging gender and genre —
in the ambience of fairy tale. From my experience, the contrasexual
approach confronts one’s knowledge of theory, forces one to use both
sides of the brain, and produces a “queer” reading by bringing both
the Masculine and the Feminine into play, sometimes in stark con-
trasts and often in complementary movements. Points of reference,
once customary, turn upside down (or right-side up) and familiar land-
scapes gain in depth and color. Moreover, contrasexual theory acts as
a mirror to reflect us back on our collective journey. 14
––––––––––
13
Ancients viewed the earth as the vessel containing all life: “This is why the
Great Mother was sometimes depicted with a male phallus [...]” (Clarke 15). This
contrasexual coexistence (with male contained in the mother) reappears unconsciously
in paintings of the Madonna and child and in shrines of the Virgin with a little door in
her abdomen containing “the Christ within” (Harding 192).
14
“In that way, one can say that such tales mirror typical phases in the process
of individuation of many people. [...] Then comes the phase where the ruling religious
and social system no longer expresses the basic psychological needs of the people; so,
there arise these compensatory tales, which emphasize or bring to light what is now
needed” (Franz, Individuation 215-16).
Hamilton 85
Works Cited
Campbell, Joseph. The Hero With A Thousand Faces. 1949. Third Printing.
Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1973.
Clarke, Robert B. An Order Outside of Time. Charlottesville, Virginia:
Hampton Roads Publishing Company, 2005.
Clift, Jean D., and Wallace B. Clift. The Hero Journey in Dreams. New
York: Crossroad, 1991.
Franz, Marie-Louise von. “The Process of Individuation.” Man and His
Symbols. Ed. Carl Jung. New York: Dell, 1968.
_____. Interpretation of Fairy Tales. Dallas: Spring Publications Inc., 1970.
_____. Individuation in Fairy Tales. Boston and London: Shambhala, 1990.
_____. The Feminine in Fairy Tales. 1973. Boston and London: Shambhala,
1993.
Grant, Richard B. “George Sand’s La Mare au diable: A Study in Male Pas-
sivity.” Nineteenth-Century French Studies 13 (1985): 211-23.
Hamilton, James F. “Sand’s La Mare au diable, Awakening through ‘Evil’
and the Hero’s Journey.” Nineteenth-Century French Studies, in press.
_____. “Psychological Geography and Sacred Space in Sand’s La Petite
Fadette,” Geo/Graphies: French Literature Series 30 (2003): 87-98.
_____. “Symbolic Incest in Sand’s François le Champi: the True Protagonist
or Redeeming the Father — a Fairy Tale Interpretation.” Kaleidoscope:
Essays on Nineteenth-Century French Literature in Honor of Thomas
H. Goetz. Ed. Graham Falconer and Mary Donaldson-Evans. Toronto:
Centre d’Études Romantiques Joseph Sablé, 1996: 51-68.
Harding, M. Esther. Psychic Energy: Its Sources and Its Transformation.
1963. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1973.
Henderson, Joseph L. Shadow and Self. Wilmette, Illinois: Chiron Publica-
tions, 1990.
Hopcke, Robert H. Persona, Where Sacred Meets Profane. Boston and Lon-
don: Shambhala, 1995.
Jung, Carl G. Symbols of Transformation. Trans. R.F.G. Hull. Rev. 1967 ed.
Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990.
_____. The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious. Trans. R.F.G. Hull.
1959. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990.
_____, ed. Man and His Symbols. 1964. New York: Dell, 1968.
Neumann, Erich. The Great Mother. Trans. Ralph Manheim. 1955. Seventh
edition. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1991.
Sand, George. La Mare au Diable. François le Champi. Paris: Garnier, 1962.
Singer, June. Boundaries of the Soul, the Practice of Jung’s Psychology.
1972. New York: Anchor Books, 1994.
Sivert, Eileen Boyd. “Lélia and Feminism.” Yale French Studies 62 (1981):
45-66.
Ulanov, Ann and Barry. Transforming Sexuality, The Archetypal World of
Anima and Animus. Boston and London: Shambhala, 1994.
Ulanov, Ann. The Feminine in Jungian Psychology and in Christian Theol-
ogy. Evanston, Illinois: Northwestern University Press, 1971.
Vierne, Simone. “George Sand et le mythe initiatique.” George Sand: Col-
lected Essays. Ed. Janis Glasgow. Troy, N.Y.: Whitson, 1985. 288-305.
Samuel N. Dorf
Northwestern University
“Étrange n’est-ce pas?”: The Princesse Edmond

de Polignac, Erik Satie’s Socrate, and a Lesbian
Aesthetic of Music?
The commission and early reception of composer Erik Satie’s Socrate

(1918) stands stylistically apart from the rest of the canonical modernist
and neoclassical works from the interwar period. Commissioned by the
lesbian American Princesse Edmond de Polignac, the work represents a
unique window into a private queer musical aesthetic hitherto unac-
knowledged by scholars. By examining Socrate and Polignac’s salon
against the background of other liberal wealthy American lesbians in
Paris, other salons, and political and social concerns, a richly complex
narrative of sex, gender, nationality, politics, and identity emerges.
________________________
In 1916 the wealthy lesbian American expatriate Princesse

Edmond de Polignac (née Winnaretta Singer) approached Erik Satie
with an unusual commission, asking for music to accompany a read-
ing of Plato’s dialogues in the ancient Greek for herself and two of her
close friends. The work that became Socrate (an austere ode to the
martyred philosopher, for chamber orchestra and four sopranos) has
only confused countless scholars who have tried in vain to place it
within one specific style or movement. The work’s clear, simply
adorned musical lines have been viewed as modernist, neoclassical,
and even minimalist, but all scholars seem to agree that it really defies
categorization. Its singularly bizarre qualities were not lost on the
composer himself, either, for after the first public performance of
Socrate, the composer turned around to witness the audience giggling
and snickering. “Étrange n’est-ce pas?” he remarked to the man sitting

next to him. 1
In my examination of Socrate — its author, the culture of its
patron’s salon, and its early performance history — what emerges is a
complex counter-narrative to the established detached modernist
account. My perspective appeals to a particular proto-feminist and
lesbian aesthetic specific to the circle of the Princesse de Polignac and
her salon. While I do not doubt the significance of the modernist
reception, this study sets out to emphasize a different narrative, one
specific to the woman who commissioned this most unusual work.
In January of 1917, within a week of completing the music for
the ballet Parade, Satie had already begun his next work, a piece for
four voices and small orchestra based on the life of Socrates.2 His first
descriptions of Socrate, even before significant work had begun on the
piece, indicate the tone in which the composer sought to create this
music, “blanche & pure comme l’Antique,” as he wrote to his friend
Valentine Gross. 3 Less than two weeks later he was to write Gross
again:
Je travaille à la “Vie de Socrate.” J’ai trouvé une belle traduction: celle de

Victor Cousin. / Platon est un collaborateur parfait, très doux & jamais
importun. Un rêve, quoi! / J’ai écrit à ce sujet à la bonne Princesse. / Je nage
dans la félicité. Enfin! je suis libre, libre comme l’air, comme l’eau, comme
la brebis sauvage. / Vive Platon! Vive Victor Cousin! / Je suis libre! très
libre! Quel bonheur!…4
––––––––––
1
This story is retold in James Harding’s biography of the composer (183).
2
Satie’s original working title, Vie de Socrate, was eventually replaced by the
simpler Socrate, which was later replaced with the official title: Socrate: Drame
Symphonique en trois parties avec voix. The final title reflects Satie’s genre definition
of the work; it expresses his desire for the work not to be staged, but rather to be
performed in a concert hall setting.
3
Je m’occupe de la “Vie de Socrate.” / J’ai une frousse de “rater” cette œuvre
que je voudrais blanche & pure comme l’Antique. J’en suis “tout chose” & ne sais
plus où me mettre. / Ce qu’il y a une belle chose à écrire avec cette idée, c’est
“innouï” — inoui est mieux, pour le vulgaire, bien entendu. (Erik Satie to Valentine
Gross, 6 January 1917, Correspondance presque complète 273-74).
4
Erik Satie to Valentine Gross, 18 January 1917, Correspondance presque
complète 277-78.
Dorf 89
In other letters and writings, wherever the composer refers to Socrate,

he describes it in new terms, differentiating it from his other works. In
a letter to his friend Henry Prunières, Satie states,
Je travaille à un “Socrate” pour la Princesse de Poliganc. Mon collaborateur
est... Platon. / Cet ouvrage avance. [Jane] Bathori en a chanté un coin à la
Princesse. Ce n’est pas russe, bien entendu; ce n’est pas non plus persan, ni
asiatique. / C’est un retour vers la simplicité classique, avec sensibilité
moderne. Je dois ce retour — aux bons usages — à mes amis “cubistes.”5
Before a performance of the work, Satie gave a short speech, which he

scribbled down on the cover of a notebook:
…. En écrivant cette œuvre, ... je n’ai nullement voulu ajouter à la beauté
des Dialogues de Platon: .. ce n’est, ici, qu’un acte de piété, qu’une reverie
d’artiste,... qu’un humble homage …. / ... L’esthétique de cet ouvrage je
voue à la clarté;... la simplicité l’accompagne, la dirige... C’est tout:... je
n’ai pas désiré autre chose...6
Again, he restates his aesthetic aims — clarity and simplicity — and

reveals that the work is “only an act of piety.” A few years after com-
posing the work, Satie writes to another friend, “En écrivant ‘Socrate,’
je croyais composer une œuvre simple, sans la moindre idée de
combat; car je ne suis qu’un humble admirateur de Socrate & de
Platon — deux messieurs semblant sympathiques.”7 These short ex-
cerpts from Satie’s writings introduced a brand new set of adjectives
with which to describe the work: white, pure, antique, gentle, free,
clear, classical, simple, modern, cubist, precise, and new. He posits
these descriptions against words like: troublesome, Russian, Persian,
and Asian (descriptors that Socrate was NOT supposed to be). From
these words alone one can easily see how the ascetic modernist recep-
tion evolved. The world of Winnaretta Singer, the Princesse Edmond
de Polignac, relied on a similar lexicon as well.
––––––––––
5
Erik Satie to Henry Prunières, 3 April 1918, Correspondance presque
complète 325.
6
The handwritten note is reproduced in Volta 64.
7
Erik Satie to Paul Collaer, 16 May 1920, Correspondance presque complète
406.
In her memoirs, the Princesse states that the initial conception for
her commission to Satie was to find a composer who would
write music for the Death of Socrates, and after much thought suggested
that the scene should be set in a small salon in the Empire Style in which, in
armchairs, Madame de Wendel and Argyropoulo who knew Greek per-
fectly, and I myself, would read in turns the glorious words of Plato (Singer-
Polignac 138).
Determined to bring something new and special to her salon, the

Princesse looked for a composer who was not only modern but also
decidedly anti-Wagnerian, someone who would fit her newly fash-
ioned proto-modernist, proto-neoclassical aesthetic. She mentioned in
her memoirs that she was drawn to the Grecian aspect of some of
Satie’s works: “Nothing could be more simple and poetical than the
Greek dances Gymnopédies or the [Gnossiennes] and many of the
beautiful piano duets in Morceaux en forme de Poire [sic]” (137).
However, Socrate is not at all like any of the composer’s earlier
Greek-inspired works. In the earlier allusions to ancient Greece
through the Trois Gymnopédies (1888) and the six Gnossiennes
(1889-91 and 1897), Satie reinvents that ancient culture in an orien-
talist vein not only through his inspirations — a world of dancing,
nakedness, myth, and mystery — but also in the music. The works
were inspired primarily by “exotic” influences, such as Flaubert’s
novel Salammbô, ancient Greek myth, and the Romanian music that
the composer heard at the 1889 World Exhibition in Paris — and not
by the hallowed texts of Plato read with almost religious reverence in
this period. Musically, Satie creates this exotic effect by way of
undulating seductive dance rhythms, constant repeating accompani-
ments, bare harmonies, and unusual modalities. Each of these unique
touches adds a piquant flavor to these otherwise ordinary waltzes.
In contrast, Socrate’s modalities are diatonic: the composer does
not use flattened leading tones for effect within a line, but rather they
appear as diatonic to the mode in which the line is written. In Socrate,
there are no piquant notes, no overt dance rhythms, no “slippery”
notes. Rather, we get smooth quasi-plainchant vocal lines, and a much
broader sense of fluidity. The infinite quality of the early works finds
voice in Socrate as the women’s voices gently draw the listeners into
an ancient and distant world, albeit an ancient world radically
different from the Gnossiennes and Gymnopédies.
Dorf 91
Already we see a marked shift between what the Princesse seems

to have envisioned (music to accompany readings of Plato) and what
Satie ended up creating for her (a quasi-oratorio). Nonetheless,
Polignac and Satie clearly worked on the early stages of Socrate
together over dinners at her home, especially the libretto. Perhaps
Polignac herself even helped select which passages of Plato’s dia-
logues to set, since Satie notebooks clearly show that the libretto was
written and finalized before the composer started making musical
sketches. Whole blocks of completed libretto appear neatly written on
the inside covers of his Socrate sketchbooks. Regardless of whether
Polignac played a direct role in the crafting of the libretto, both she
and her composer referred to their project as “their” work in corre-
spondence. 8
Polignac obviously thought long and hard about the original
“salon” conception that she and Satie ended up discarding. She not
only gives a detailed description of what she wanted, but also
mentions by name the individuals who were supposed to accompany
her in reading the Greek dialogues: Madame de Wendel and Madame
Argyropoulo. The two women were sisters from Greece; moreover,
they were close confidantes of Polignac’s very good friend and
sometimes lover, the Comtesse Anna de Noailles, who facilitated the
Princesse’s introduction to the Argyropoulo sisters (Mignot-Ogliastri
397; Kahan 405 and 416).9 Describing Noailles’s two greatest friends,
Polignac’s early biographer Michel de Cossart writes, “When unwell,
highly strung and feverish, she [Comtesse Anna de Noailles] would
only allow her friend Madame Argyropoulo near her; she could
endure no one but her sitting holding hands and watching over. But
when well in body, the countess knew no greater comfort than the
music with which Winnaretta soothed her agitated spirit” (Cossart 91).
Noailles certainly held an important place in Winnaretta’s close
inner circle. The Princesse first met her after she married the Prince de
Polignac during her frequent visits to Anna’s mother. There,
Winnaretta spent time with the Princesse de Brancovan’s young and
––––––––––
8
See Erik Satie to the Princesse Edmond de Polignac, 10 October 1918, Corres-
pondance presque complète 341.
9
The Argyropoulo family tree, like all wealthy families’ trees, is complicated.
Mother Hélène Argyropoulo (known as Mme Argy by her friends) had three children:
Catherine, Périclès and Natalie.
artistically talented daughters, Hélène and Anna de Brancovan

(Mignot-Ogliastri 33; Kahan 82-83). 10 They remained very close
thereafter, as confidantes and as important social contacts; they used
each other as conduits into other social circles where they wanted to
gain access. Anna and Hélène also helped introduce Winnaretta to
other bisexual and lesbian women, including their Venetian neighbor,
the “bisexual woman of letters,” Augustine Bulteau (Kahan 111).
Together these four women, Anna de Noailles, Hélène Caraman-
Chimay, Augustine Bulteau, and Winnaretta Singer-Polignac com-
prised a tightly knit and quasi-secretive group of queer women.
For example, when the lesbian composer Ethel Smyth wished to
gain access to Winnaretta, whom she loved madly, she saw her way
into the Princesse’s inner sanctum by winning the friendship and trust
of her friends: Noailles, Caraman-Chimay, and Bulteau. For a short
period, “[t]he women became a ‘fivesome,’ sharing a love of litera-
ture, music and lively conversation, crossing the Continent and the
Channel to visit one another’s city and country homes” (Kahan 134).
After Polignac refused Smyth’s advances and took up with Baroness
Olga de Meyer, the fivesome returned to a foursome.
The romantic relationship between Polignac and Smyth was
short-lived, according to Kahan; the two were “too much alike —
willful, indefatigable, and controlling — to sustain a romantic
relationship” (134-35). Smyth continually pursued the Princesse but to
no avail; Winnaretta was resolute in her decision to maintain both a
platonic relationship with Smyth and her heterosexual façade —
something Smyth was not willing to accept.
Within the foursome, Winnaretta was the closest to Anna. Their
long friendship flourished due to a certain kinship concerning their
delicate aristocratic standing in Parisian high society, their
“outsider/insider” status as foreigners (Winnaretta was an American
and Anna the daughter of a Romanian princess), and their similar
artistic interests. Both women shared a profound love of art and litera-
ture from ancient Greece and the Renaissance (Perry 165-242), and
the two carefully negotiated the boundaries between public and
private life. Scandals were important to avoid. Both women had their
––––––––––
10
Hélène Caraman-Chimay (née Brancovan, 1878-1929) married Prince
Alexandre Caraman-Chimay in 1898.
Dorf 93
share of them in their youth and feared dirtying their precarious posi-
tions in society with repeat transgressions.
Restraint and decorum were paramount to Polignac’s survival in

Paris. And distance from some of the more flamboyant lesbian
personalities was important for social reasons. It was not only neces-
sary to carefully guard her actions in public, but also to shield her
private life from the close scrutiny of her enemies. Even when she
used the utmost discretion in her love affairs, the gossip columnists
and even her friends still found ways to make her the target of their
writings. Comte Robert de Montesquiou, her onetime friend, took
particular pleasure in ridiculing Winnaretta and her husband, and even
Marcel Proust took a stab at her and her recently deceased husband in
an article for Figaro. Proust, in a deliciously devilish Proustian twist
remarked how the only marital problem between the happy Polignacs
was the Prince’s propensity to catch cold, and the Princesse’s love of
the fresh warm air. Proust however explained it as: “elle avait toujours
trop chaud, et lui était extrêmement frileux,” which can all too easily
be read as comment on the Princesse’s extracurricular sexual activities
(Proust 3).
In particular, the Princesse worked very hard to distance herself

from Natalie Barney, another lesbian American expatriate. Though it
is clear that the Princesse de Polignac’s good friends Anna de Noailles
and her sister had spent some time in Natalie Barney’s outdoor
“Lesbos in Paris,” Winnaretta made a decided effort to keep Barney
out of her memoirs and family papers (Cossart 84). One tantalizing
morsel of evidence, however, verifies that the Princesse was only too
familiar with Barney and the consequences of her friendship. Michel
Cossart relates a story where Polignac and Barney were introduced
face to face at a reception. Comte Robert de Montesquiou noticed that
Winnaretta
gave no sign of having met Barney already, as she had, and he chose that
precise moment to tell Madame Maurice Barrès in a stage whisper: “Lord
Alfred Douglas wants to marry her but she prefers [Mademoiselle] Liane de
Pougy [an infamous bisexual courtesan].” Montesquiou knew that his
comment, uttered as their hands touched, would embarrass the princess
much more than a young Amazon like Miss Barney (Cossart 85-86).
These scandalous incidents and indictments reflect the polemic

differences between the two reigning queens of Paris’s lesbian
community: one the flamboyant Natalie Barney, who wore her sexual-
ity on her sleeve, and the other, the reserved Princesse Edmond de
Polignac, who carefully kept her private life private. Regardless of
their differences, there can be no denying that the two knew each
other; they supported some of the same artists and traveled in similar
circles, they even shared lovers like Romaine Brooks. But Polignac
was not at all like Barney. Sylvia Kahan writes that the Princesse “was
a textbook example of someone who succeeded by working inside a
system: she used the codes and mores of the nobility’s rigidly circum-
scribed world, and was protected by them” (96).
While both women shared an interest in things from ancient
Greece, just how they expressed these interests demonstrates the
different nature of their characters. Barney learned Greek to read
Sappho for her Sapphic Circle. Polignac began learning ancient Greek
around 1909 in order to be able to read Aristotle, the tragedies of
Euripides, and Plato’s Dialogues.11 A trip to Greece in April of 1914
to see the ancient ruins was an almost religious experience for the
Princesse (Kahan 188-89). Natalie Barney, on the other hand, had
different scholarly interests; she was a devout Orientalist. The deca-
dent goings-on at her salon at 20 rue Jacob clearly drew from the
tradition of such sensualists as Wilde, Baudelaire, and Pierre Louÿs
(Reynolds 292). On the other hand, the Princesse de Polignac, as
Kahan and Cossart have demonstrated, clearly was seen and wanted to
be seen as the antithesis of Barney’s outlandish personality and behav-
ior. Winnaretta worked hard to maintain her respectability and to earn
her title, and it was not in her nature to put it all at risk. Her lesbian
relationships and interests constituted a fundamental pillar of her
identity; nonetheless, decorum and restraint were foremost, the prized
virtues of the stoic Polignac.
It is critical to view Satie’s initial commission for the Polignac
salon within this atmosphere. It might be tempting to see in this work
an act of sexual defiance: an opportunity for the Princesse to express
her sexuality within the safe setting of her salon. However, what is
––––––––––
11
Other influences on Winnaretta’s interest in the philosophy of the ancients
came from her friends the Abbé Mugnier, the philosopher Henri Bergson, and the
diplomat Sir Ronald Storrs (see Cossart 98-99 and Singer-Polignac 138).
Dorf 95
most striking is the great care taken by Satie and Polignac to eliminate
any reference, even oblique, to sex from Plato’s original text. Most
strikingly, Satie’s libretto excises all references to the body from
Plato’s texts. Characters are essentially made asexual, and this is par-
ticularly striking when we think about the texts Satie and Polignac
chose to set. The first movement of Socrate takes its text from Plato’s
Symposium, one of Plato’s most sexually explicit dialogues. All refer-
ences here to the sexual relationship between Alcibiades and Socrates
are removed.
It is possible that the personal lives of Polignac and Satie would
have prevented them from depicting overt displays of sexuality within
such a work. Perhaps, Satie’s radical reduction of Alcibiades’s speech
in Socrate, has something to do with the composer’s own hyper-
morality and his very vocal disapproval of male homosexual
activities. 12 Questions regarding the composer’s sexuality were first
addressed by Marc Bredel in 1982, and then, more recently, by Sophie
Fuller and Lloyd Whitesell in the introduction to their recent Queer
Episodes in Music and Modern Identity (Bredel 84-85 and 90-91;
Fuller and Whitesell 14-16). Satie’s particular sexual preferences are
for the most part irrelevant in this context. It is only significant to note
that while he traveled in mostly homosocial circles, his friends
adamantly defended his “not being” homosexual after his death, opt-
ing instead for the designation of asexual, despite his propensity for
off-color sexual humor and the fact that he regularly attended orgies
— “but only to watch,” he said.
A retrospective queer/feminine reading of Polignac, Satie, and
their social circles sheds light on the special public/private dichotomy
that the two of them shared. They both ensured that their private lives
remained quite private (especially their love lives): while they both
publicly tried to distance themselves from overtly homosexual circles,
they nonetheless were intricately involved in these in their private
lives. This type of behavior was not uncommon; many individuals
(musicians included) feared being officially “outed” in Parisian
––––––––––
12
Orledge focuses on this hyper-morality, while perhaps overlooking the
composer’s propensity to travel and socialize in male homosexual circles. While Satie
might have publicly raged against the immorality of male homosexuality, this
certainly never prohibited him from having very close personal relationships with
homosexuals.
society at this time, especially after the fallout of the infamous Oscar
Wilde trial in 1895, and the wave of other public trials and scandals
involving homosexual men in the early years of the twentieth century
(Cossart 58-59; 83).13 It is hard to imagine someone as reserved as the
Princesse de Polignac allowing her private life to become public at a
time when harsh penalties to both status and liberty were inflicted
upon homosexual men of privilege.
To defend herself against such criticism, and in order to safe-
guard her activities, Polignac built up a wall of aristocratic respecta-
bility and formality to thwart accusations from her enemies and the
press. In order to avoid being placed in association with the likes of
Barney, she differentiated herself by attempting to resurrect a more
“neoclassical” version of ancient Greece, something decidedly modern
and un-romantic. If it was the Princesse’s aim for Socrate to accom-
pany an intimate assemblage of like-minded women sitting in arm-
chairs reading Plato’s dialogues in their original language with the
bare and austere music of Satie as background, this would contrast
sharply with the “scandalous” activities involving young girls dressed
as pageboys under the bust of Sappho in Barney’s garden. While
Socrate neatly represents the other end of the spectrum, opposite the
sensualist orientalism of the Chansons de Bilitis and the poems of
Natalie Barney, I would argue that the four female soprano voices of
Socrate nonetheless create what Elizabeth Wood calls a “Sapphonic”:
a “mode of articulation, a way of describing a space of lesbian
[musical] possibility [...] among women who sing and women who
listen” (27-28).14
Obviously, Socrate is not an overtly sexual work, let alone an
overtly homoerotic work in the same way that many of Sappho of
Lesbos’s poems were not overtly sexual or homoerotic in nature.
What imbues her poems, like Socrate, with this secret power is the
––––––––––
13
Not only aristocrats like the Princesse de Polignac and her late husband, but
also artists as well, including Maurice Ravel, had similar fears (see Whitesell).
14
A work does not need to be written by a lesbian for it to be Sapphonic. Wood
gives the example of Natalie Barney, who in a Don Giovanni-like move treats her
angry lover, Renée Vivien, to some inspiring music. Barney had the famed soprano
Emma Calvé sing for Vivien Orfeo’s lament, “J’ai perdu mon Euridice,” from
Gluck’s Orfeo ed Euridice, and sections from Carmen. It wasn’t until Calvé sang the
second verse of Carmen’s “Habañera” (“L’amour est enfant de Bohême...”) that
Vivien threw open her window to invite Barney’s pursuits (Chalon 76-78).
Dorf 97
hidden eroticism totally unnamed. Again, it is not always what is said,

but sometimes more importantly, what is not said. It is what this invo-
cation of Archaic Greece could mean to the listener, and for many in
Polignac’s circle, a veiled lesbian eroticism lies at its core.
The very idea of women reading Greek to music can be seen as
Sapphonic. In the early twentieth century, the Greek language was a
privileged right of male intellectuals enabling them to keep knowledge
and the door to higher education out of the realm of women. Reading
Greek was itself a transgressive act for women, and in many circles a
badge announcing proto-feminist sympathy (Marcus 86). In countless
letters, Satie (expressing Polignac’s wishes) vehemently insisted that
the work only be performed with female voices, preferably four —
one for each role.
“Socrate” (mon œuvre maîtresse. Oui. Drame symphonique avec 4 voix —

quatre soprani; deux aigus, deux mezzo). / Cet ouvrage — chose curieuse
— n’est nullement rasant. / Il a été composé pour la Princesse de Polignac,
& lui appartient. Je ne crois pas qu’elle refusera de le laisser monter à
l’étranger. Elle compte donner “Socrate” à Paris avec un ouvrage de
Strawinsky & une œuvre de Falla — &, peut-être, une chose de Ravel.15
C’est fait... Quel est donc ce concert?... Qui “chantera”?... / ... Où ce

concert aura-t-il lieu?... J’espère que vous aurez de jolies voix (femmes)...? /
“Socrate” est écrit pour soprani. Je desire qu’en “public” il soit donné
comme je l’ai écrit... “avec 4 soprani.”16
J’ai expliqué, dernièrement, à la Princesse que jusque là [at Pierre Bertin’s

concert series] cet ouvrage ne sera présenté qu’avec moi & Madame
Balguerie — ou mieux: Madame Balguerie & moi. C’est une convention. /
Nous désirons que l’effet des 4 voix soit réservé. / Données ainsi, ces
auditions conservent une intimité de lecture à laquelle nous tenons, La
Princesse & moi. Vous voyez? / Toutefois, nous sommes, Madame
Balguerie & moi, à votre disposition “à titre gracieux,” bien entendu... 17
––––––––––
15
Erik Satie to Henri-Pierre Roché, 1 December 1918, Correspondance presque
complète 347-48.
16
Erik Satie to Madame Meyer-Bertin, 16 April 1919, Correspondance presque
complète 361.
17
Erik Satie to Pierre Bertin, 14 May 1919, Correspondance presque complète
366-67.
The original concept of simple music to accompany the Princesse and

her female friends reading Plato in Greek, sitting in armchairs in an
intimate setting, also suggests that Socrate can be Sapphonic. Perhaps
the Princesse de Polignac and Erik Satie’s special relationship rested
on an unspoken awareness of each other’s precarious sexual position,
and that this relationship yielded the enigmatic, modernist,
“Sapphonic” work, Socrate.
* * *
Upon the death of Anna de Noailles, the Princesse cancelled the

rest of her musical activities in her salon until she could organize a
suitable memorial concert for her dearly departed friend and lover. On
23 May 1933, she reopened the doors of her home and welcomed
select guests to hear Satie’s Mort de Socrate. After the performance,
Winnaretta and two of her closest female friends retired to the little
salon adjacent to the atelier, where, sitting in armchairs, in this
intimate setting, they read Anna’s poems. The similarities to the initial
commission for Socrate are almost eerie: “étrange n’est-ce pas?”
Works Cited
Bredel, Marc. Erik Satie. Paris: Editions Mazarine, 1982.
Chalon, Jean. Portrait of a Seductress: The World of Natalie Barney. Trans.
Carol Barko. New York: Crown, 1979.
Cocteau, Jean. My Contemporaries. Trans. Margaret Crosland. London:
Owen, 1967.
Cossart, Michel de. The Food of Love: Princesse Edmond de Polignac (1865-
1945) and Her Salon. London: Hamish Hamilton, 1978.
Fuller, Sophie, and Lloyd Whitesell. Introduction to Queer Episodes: In
Music and Modern Identity. Ed. Sophie Fuller and Lloyd Whitesell.
Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2002.
Harding, James. Erik Satie. New York: Praeger Publishers, 1975.
Kahan, Sylvia. Music’s Modern Muse: A Life of Winnaretta Singer, The
Princesse de Polignac. Eastman Studies in Musicology. Rochester:
University of Rochester Press, 2004.
Dorf 99
Marcus, Jane. “Liberty, Sorority, Misogyny.” Representations of Women in

Fiction. Ed. Carolyn G. Heilbrun and Margaret R. Higgonet. Baltimore:
Johns Hopkins University Press, 1983. 60-97.
Mignot-Ogliastri, Claude. Anna de Noailles: une amie de la Princesse
Edmond de Polignac. [Paris]: Fondation Singer-Polignac and Librairie
des Méridiens-Klincksieck, 1986.
Orledge, Robert. Satie the Composer. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge
Perry, Catherine. “Anna de Noailles and the Romantic Tradition: A Parting
of Ways.” Chapter 3 in Persephone Unbound: Dionysian Aesthetics in
the Works of Anna de Noailles. Lewisberg: Bucknell University Press;
London: Associated University Presses, 2003. 165-242.
Proust, Marcel. “Le Salon de la Princesse Edmond de Poliganc: musique
d’aujourd’hui; échos d’autrefois.” Figaro. 6 September 1903.
Reynolds, Margaret, ed. The Sappho Companion. New York: Palgrave, 2002.
Satie, Erik. Correspondance presque complète. Ed. Ornella Volta. Second
Edition. [Paris]: Fayard, Éditions de l’IMEC, 2003.
Singer-Polignac, Winnaretta. “The Memoirs of the Late Princesse Edmond
de Polignac.” Horizon 12, no. 68 (August 1945): 137-48.
Volta, Ornella. L’Ymagier d’Erik Satie. Paris: Editions Francis Van de Velde,
1979.
Whitesell, Lloyd. “Ravel’s Way.” Queer Episodes in Music and Modern
Identity. Ed. Sophie Fuller and Lloyd Whitesell. Urbana and Chicago:
University of Illinois Press, 2002. 49-78.
Wood, Elizabeth. “Sapphonics.” Queering the Pitch: The New Gay and
Lesbian Musicology. Ed. Philip Brett, Gary C. Thomas, and Elizabeth
Wood. New York and London: Routledge, 1994. 27-66.
Nathan Guss
Clemson University
Outing Proust
This paper examines a remarkable chapter of the little-known, posthu-

mously published Jean Santeuil where the eponymous protagonist
cross-dresses. Unlike the narrator of La recherche, Jean, a character
who transparently resembles Proust, engages in non-normative behavior
rather than simply being a voyeur to others’ transgressions. The narrator
frames these near avowals in an allegory of a reading that does not
regain lost time. The hidden, unspeakable nature of homosexuality in
Jean and Proust’s social milieu is a paragon of writing because it is not
simply homosexuality that resists expression, but all lived experience.
________________________
A remarkable chapter from Marcel Proust’s Jean Santeuil — a

posthumously published novel that recounts the development of its
eponymous protagonist from a young boy into a great writer — poses
some fascinating questions about the relation between sexuality and
writing. This semi-autobiographical novel, containing moments of
stylistic brilliance and characters and episodes evocative of À la
recherche du temps perdu, is a precursor to Proust’s masterwork. On
the other hand, the lack of coherence between chapters in Jean
Santeuil, along with Jean’s occasionally maudlin sentiments and the
work’s sometimes petty shots at people in Proust’s life, make for a
novel of uneven quality. But the chapter in question, entitled “La
Querelle de Jean avec ses parents,” is one of the highpoints, because
of the fraught subjects it broaches and its rhetorical richness. The
chapter recounts an argument between the protagonist and his parents
that causes Jean to retreat to his room, break a glass, and eventually
return to the dining room wearing one of his mother’s old coats.
Although this work is generally considered to pass over male homo-
sexuality, 1 one of the fascinating aspects of this episode is that the pro-
tagonist, who bears a strong resemblance to Proust and the later first-
person protagonist of La recherche, comes closer to coming out as
both a homosexual and a Jew than in any other part of his work.
Rather than simply being a voyeur of others transgressing the bounds
of normative sexuality as in Proust’s more famous novel, Jean himself
cross-dresses. The chapter concludes when Jean’s mother makes a
clear reference to her family’s Judaism. This near avowal is illumi-
nating because it draws attention to the significance of speaking hid-
den truths in this chapter. Proust seems to be saying things about his
protagonist and by extension admitting things about himself that he
hides in his other writings and that he might not have expressed if he
had revised and intended to publish the novel. This chapter appears to
be fertile ground for the long line of commentators who have tried to
“out” Proust starting in 1896 with critic Jean Lorrain, who called
Proust “one of those pretty little society boys who’ve managed to get
themselves pregnant with literature” (cited in Painter 256-257), up to
recent critics like Rivers2. However, the narrator frames these near
avowals with a discussion of reading that complicates these consid-
erations. Jean’s cross-dressing follows a scene where he cannot read
and the narration lingers on the process of misreading and the poten-
tial illegibility of a text. Jean’s reading difficulties, in a mise en abîme,
correspond to the reader’s difficulties in understanding the ultimate
meaning of this episode. The rhetoric of this chapter, simultaneously
asserting and denying that the narrative is a coming-out, problematizes
the very possibility of speaking a hidden or any other kind of truth
about lived experience.
Several problems of communication and expression provide a
significant context for reading cross-dressing in this chapter. When
Jean retreats to his room after his initial argument with his mother, the
––––––––––
1
For instance, see Rivers 107.
2
Lorrain wrote that Les plaisirs et les jours was full of “those elegant, subtle
little nothings, thwarted affections, vicarious flirtations, all in a precious and pre-
tentious prose, with Mme. Le Maire’s flowers strewn by way of symbols all over the
margins […]” (cited in Painter 257). For readers of the time, these remarks were “a
public accusation of homosexuality” (Painter 257). Proust was so angry that he fought
Lorrain in a duel (see Painter 256-58). For a discussion of Rivers, see chapter 3.
Guss 103
narrator describes his concerns in a way that stands out to any reader
of Proust. He notes that Jean tries to read and write so that he will not
lose time stewing in anger. The narrator explains that he reads or
writes because he is concerned about losing time (in Proust’s words,
“par scrupule du temps perdu”) with words that echo both the title and
the chief preoccupation of Proust’s famous novel. Such words situate
this chapter of Jean Santeuil alongside moments in La recherche that
explore language’s relation to lived experience and give this episode
an allegorical charge. Of course lost time does not merely imply the
mild annoyance of wasted time in Proust, but the failure of the narra-
tor’s project to attain the essence of lived experience in art. In this
sense, the anticipatory language sets up this chapter, not just as a sin-
gular episode when Jean is simply too distracted to read, but as a more
general exploration of the possibility that language cannot capture
lived experiences and consequently, in Proustian terms, lost time can-
not be regained.
In this chapter, reading and writing do not allow Jean to recuper-
ate lost time because his anger prevents him from reading. Trying to
read, he is unable to concentrate, and is left simply “mettant une lettre
devant l’autre” (Proust 307). He fails to move beyond the material,
visual quality of the words to their meaning. That he has to put one
letter in front of another suggests that the words and even individual
letters have a mobility that prevents reading. Words retain this motil-
ity in a subsequent comparison of Jean to a sleepy reader whose
fatigue blends the meaning of one word with another. Given Jean’s
fixation on the material qualities of the signifier, this comparison
evokes the possibility of words inappropriately blending together
based on their sounds or shapes. Because successfully reading would
ostensibly have allowed Jean to avoid wasting time, the rest of his
actions in the chapter are under the auspices of lost time. His failure
suggests that what follows is an exploration of lost time.
In a certain sense, Jean’s failure to read seems irrelevant to lit-
erature and the evocation of lost time, a coincidence. His inability to
read is not necessarily related to any radical failure of language that
might imply that lived experience necessarily resists language. Any
shortcoming of literature in this scenario seems clearly on the side of
the distracted reader, not the text. It is possible to imagine that if Jean
could have calmed himself, he would have been able to read and there
would never be any question of lost time. Nevertheless, it may not be

coincidental that when the narrative broaches the question of the rela-
tion of literature and lost time, it comes up against representational
problems that make his momentary reading difficulty more significant
than it initially appears. The rhetoric of this passage already suggests
that the question of language goes beyond a lack of concentration and
a momentary fit of anger. As Jean tries to read, unable to concentrate
on his book because of the anger and adrenaline racing through his
body, the narrator makes a startling comparison. Jean is “[…] comme
un homme qui veut lire pendant qu’on joue de la musique près de lui,
ou que deux hommes se disputent, et ne peut s’empêcher d’entendre
non les paroles du livre mais le son du chant ou l’éclat de la querelle”
(Proust 307). The comparison of Jean to a man distracted by music is
not unusual. But the narrative takes a strange turn when it shifts into
the second simile, the comparison to someone reading while people
are arguing next to him. There is something jarring about this com-
parison because the narrator clearly derives the image from the previ-
ous scene when Jean argues with his mother. This comparison is not
exemplary of Proust’s diegetic metaphors that, according to Genette,
render the trope more convincing by making it seem more natural
through its coherence with the plot (41-66). The metaphor too literally
springs from the plot. It is not an aspect of the scene that makes its
way into the metaphor, but the entire scene. The resultant image is not
an illustration, not a clarification, but a tautology, both in the sense of
being an extraneous repetition and in its identification of cause and ef-
fect (because the narrator compares the cause of his inability to read,
the argument, with the effect, his inability to read). In a certain sense,
this trope representing a moment of misreading is appropriately insuf-
ficient as the figurative breaks down into the literal. The narrator fails,
stutters at precisely the moment that Jean strains to bring meaning to
his reading. It is possible that the narrative succeeds in translating
Jean’s reading troubles in its very failure. This strategy is effective be-
cause the reader may actually experience a similar frustration to Jean’s
as he tries to understand the words of a bumbling narrator. But there is
a key difference between these two readers. In this case, the problem
shifts from the reader to the text. The narrative moves from misread-
ing to illegibility as it grapples with the aporia of how to legibly repre-
sent the unreadable. Stumbling on the problem of legibly representing
the experience of the illegible suggests that there are certain aspects of
Guss 105
lived experience, certain aporias inherently resistant to literature or,

graver still, that this particularly striking aporia points to a general-
ized, irremediable gap between literature and life.
A few paragraphs later Jean encounters an inverse literary trouble
that confirms the suspicion that this problem goes beyond a simple
dysfunction on the part of the reader. A difficulty in writing or expres-
sion occurs later in the episode when he is unable to articulate his an-
ger: “ayant le besoin de frapper et de lui rendre avec des mots qui
porteraient comme des coups un peu du mal qu’elle lui avait fait. Mais
les paroles qu’il ne pouvait pas dire restait en lui […]” (Proust 308).
At a microcosmic level, Jean strives for the same goal as Marcel in À
la recherche du temps perdu: to find a language that would have the
same reality as real experiences and actions. He tries but fails to find
words that would be the equivalent to lived experience, words that
would be like punches. Unable to adequately speak his anger, he loses
control over his body and expresses himself by smashing his mother’s
Venetian glass.3 This destruction conveys a meaning that words can-
not express.
This action is a moment of failure when he is unable to utter the
words that would be a substitute for lived experience. He fails to say
the words that would replace striking with his fist, so he resorts to the
act. This moment presents another narrative quandary. How is it pos-
sible to capture in words a gesture that has no verbal equivalent? In
other words, how does a writer represent the failure of representation?
Appropriately, the narrative shies away from the moment when Jean
breaks the glass, skipping its destruction to a depiction of the shards
lying on the floor. The narrator passes directly from his desire to strike
to the broken glass without describing the action itself. That the mo-
ment when Jean fails to express himself is also a gap in the narrative
implies that the problem is not specific to Jean, but to literature in a
more general sense. Clearly there are certain key moments that escape
the narrative of Jean Santeuil (both the novel and its eponymous pro-
tagonist). The rhetorical strategy of the passage implies that there are
certain aspects of lived experience that resist literary representation.
––––––––––
3
That the glass in question is Venetian is itself a reference to Jean’s deviant
sexuality. Colleen Lamos notes the connection between the ambiguous space of
Venice in its murky relation to the polarities of land and water and occident and orient
to the exploration of sexual ambiguity in La recherche (186-89).
The key question is whether these particular moments, these aporias

are exceptional cases or whether they apply to all literature and
experience. The scattered glass fragments, resonating with his earlier
description of Jean’s reading as he attempts to put one letter before
another as if letters and words tended to dispersion, suggests the latter
possibility. The shards of glass, pieces of a forever-lost whole, are an
allegory for the irretrievable loss, the unbridgeable gap between repre-
sentation and experience.
The cross-dressing is similarly structured as a gesture, a bodily
experience that replaces the unspeakable, and its narration faces the
similar problem of representing representation’s failure. In this case,
the narration possesses an instability that evokes Jean’s failure to read.
The rhetoric of the passage presents readers with an undecidable
question that corresponds to Jean’s inability to find a solid meaning
when he tries to read. On the one hand, donning his mother’s coat
seems to reveal a hidden truth, the hidden homosexuality of Jean or,
given the often transparent relation between Marcel and Jean, Marcel
Proust himself, that might be the real meaning of the passage. Do
words written about wearing the coat express a meaning about the
author’s sexuality that would strike his parents like a fist? On the other
hand, the narrator constantly undermines aspects of the passage that
would definitively answer this question.
According to Edmund White, Proust based this chapter recount-
ing an argument between Jean and his parents on an episode in his
life. During his youth, Proust had a violent dispute with his parents,
who had forced him to stop frequenting his lover Lucien Daudet
(Alphonse Daudet’s son) because they feared a scandal (White 34).
Certainly, it would be an oversimplification to equate cross-dressing
with an admission of homosexuality. Nevertheless it would be hard to
ignore the correspondence of this unique instance of a Proustian pro-
tagonist so openly challenging sexual norms and this biographical epi-
sode. Although Jean is not overtly portrayed as a homosexual, this
chapter of Jean Santeuil portrays a similar scene where Jean’s parents
forbid him to see his friend Henri de Reveillon. The dispute begins
when Jean tells his mother that he will dine at Henri’s “tout seul”
(Proust 302). The narrator explains that Jean’s mother understands
that “tout seul” means without Henri’s parents but with women and
other rowdy friends. Readers are left with this explanation from the
Guss 107
narrator, since Jean’s mother simply orders him to stay home without
giving an explanation. This omission might suggest that she has other
concerns similar to the worries of Proust’s real mother in the bio-
graphical episode. In this context, wearing the dress and writing about
Jean’s cross-dressing could be an assertion of the sexual freedom that
his mother (both fictive and real) and propriety demand he stifle.
The rest of this episode progresses in similar fashion, with rhe-
torical tensions that undercut both the affirmations of a narrator who
takes pains to assert Jean’s heterosexuality and any reader seeking a
definitive statement about his homosexuality. This moment presents
on the one hand an action like many in other episodes in Proust’s
work where a character challenges normative gender definitions, but
on the other, it takes pains to deny its significance. The narrator care-
fully notes the extenuating circumstances for Jean’s actions. The
description of Jean’s selection of the coat and putting it on both rein-
forces and undercuts this denial. Having broken the glass and spent
some time crying, he starts to feel a chill. His eyes full of tears, he
blindly reaches into his closet to find something warm to put on. It
happens that his mother uses his closet to store her old clothes and that
rather than pulling out one of his jackets, he pulls out one of her old
coats. His momentary blindness presents the selection of women’s
clothing as a matter of chance rather than as a conscious choice. The
smell of the coat provokes the involuntary memory of a specific day
when she kissed him, and thoughts about her lost youthful beauty
inspire him to drape the garment around his shoulders. The memories
he indulges in suggest that he wears the coat to relive affection he
shared with this beautiful woman, not in order to become one.
Furthermore, the narrator notes that rather than feeling around in
the dark closet for the separation between their clothes, he simply
grabs the first garment within reach. Not only is he blinded by tears,
but in his agitated state he simply grabs the first jacket he touches:
“[…] Comme sa main était déréglée et comme folle, elle n’accomplit pas
comme d’habitude la petite révolution mathématique qui consistait […] à
sentir […] le jambage de bois […] qui séparait ces manteaux de ceux de
Jean […]. Non, elle arracha le premier manteau qu’elle rencontra” (Proust
309).
The “non” is puzzling in this sentence because it is not entirely clear

in context what is negated. The negation probably refers back to the

previous sentence, also a negation, indicating that Jean does not ac-
complish his usual gesture that permits him to find his own clothing.
Even if this is the case, the extra negation that enters into this sentence
expresses a desire to emphasize that the choice of the coat was not a
result of his usual, very deliberate procedure. Conversely, perhaps it is
an incongruous, floating denial that settles into this sentence and
reflects a wish to counteract any questions that the reader may start
asking about the sexual significance of the act. This redundant nega-
tion, even while it functions to deny Jean’s desire to wear women’s
clothing, can easily be read as a nervous overcompensation that only
reveals what it attempts to hide. Alternatively, the excessive flourish
of this “non” could have an ironic, comical charge of a narrator
mocking either Jean’s actions or the narrator’s own denials of the epi-
sode’s sexual significance.
The second word of the sentence, “elle,” undecided in itself,
heightens the ambiguity of the first. Employing a hypallage that shifts
Jean’s mental state to his hand, the narration shifts the agency from
any decision that might take place in Jean’s mind to his hand. But the
very narrative move that seeks to exculpate Jean begins to undermine
his normative masculinity. The pronoun choice is curious because the
masculine pronoun, which is possible if the narrator chooses to refer
to Jean rather than his hand, would better counterbalance the effemi-
nacy of donning women’s clothing. The feminine pronoun, given the
context, enables a reading in which the referent strays from the hand
to the protagonist himself, thus reinforcing the uncertainty of his gen-
der identity, which is called into question by his willingness to wear
his mother’s coat. The ambiguity of the pronoun in this case poses the
question whether the “il” might in some ways be an “elle” and wheth-
er this sentence might be an admission. But the verb “arracha,” as a
gesture of vigorous violence that sets the stage for the subsequent rape
imagery, seems to reinforce the denial of the sexual implications of
the act that the sentence describes. Bearing the same meaning as the
etymological origins of “rape,” rapio, the verb inserts Jean into a sce-
nario of heterosexual violence whose shocking force is a cover for
wearing women’s clothing.
The description of the jacket continues the contradictory move-
ment of this sentence:
Guss 109
C’était un manteau de velours noir bordé d’aiguillettes, doublé de satin

cerise et d’hermine, qui meurtri par la violence du coup, entra dans la
chambre au poing de Jean comme une jeune fille saisie aux cheveux par un
guerrier (Proust 309).
The description of the colors, frills, and materials of the jacket leaves
no doubt as to the highly feminine quality of this garment. Yet has
anyone ever been depicted with such a stark image of hyperbolic mas-
culinity when donning women’s clothing? The metaphor and the verb
choice evoking immanent rape present Jean as a masculine, even
macho heterosexual warrior who has seized a woman as his bounty of
war. Such an image might assure readers of Jean’s heterosexuality.
But the comical juxtaposition of a warrior and a cross-dresser is
another instance where the narrator possesses more than a hint of self-
mocking irony. The very adamancy behind the denial of the sexual
significance of the act again heightens the ambiguity of the narrator’s
words because it so conspicuously carries the exaggerated force of a
denegation.
This tension suggests the more radical possibility that this juxta-
position is not even asking the either/or question of Jean or Marcel’s
sexuality. What if the raging warrior and women’s clothing are not as
irreconcilable as my line of inquiry has suggested to this point? What
if Jean really is a warrior and a cross-dresser at the same time? This
possibility upsets the very terms of the oppositions male/female and
gay/straight that seem to structure this chapter. These images may
suggest a “queer” coexistence of male and female, in the sense that the
sex and sexuality of the protagonist exceed normative binaries. The
rhetorical tensions suggest the possibility that the text is so richly con-
flicted because it reflects the indefinable complexity of Jean’s sexual-
ity or perhaps even sexuality in general.4 In this case, time may not be
regained through literature, but language’s dynamism and ambiguity
echo lived experience’s anarchy.
––––––––––
4
Eve Sedgwick’s discussion of the representation of Albertine’s sexuality
suggests the possibility of unclassifiable sexualities in Proust (229-42). In a similar
line of thinking, Kaja Silverman describes the problematic sexuality of Marcel, who,
in a kind of “lesbianism,” neither valorizes the phallus nor locates the vagina as the
site of castration (373-88).
This possibility points back to the original, seemingly simple

scene where an angry Jean fails to read, feeling that he is losing time.
The etiology of his failure is an inability to go beyond the signifier’s
materiality as the shape and sounds of words direct his reading rather
than their possible meanings. This passage uses imagery of definite
contours dissolving under a rising tide into the open, mobile spaces of
the ocean. He compares the loss of meaning from the text to the des-
truction of a sandcastle on a beach: “il avait beau, en mettant chaque
lettre, l’une devant l’autre, essayer de faire un sens, la lame de sa
colère venait se briser dessus et il n’en restait pas plus qu’un château
de sable à la marée montante” (Proust 307). In the same paragraph, the
metaphor persists as the narrator compares the blurring together of
words in aqueous terms: “il sent [...] mêler de son eau aveugle et
montante un mot dépourvu de son sens avec le sens d’un mot déjà
englouti” (Proust 308). The water metaphors represent the dynamic,
independent life of the signifier so prevalent in Proust’s style and so
conspicuous in this passage where the expression “lame de colère”
seems to generate the metaphorical language that follows it. Aqueous,
wide-open spaces emerge as the expression of irremediably lost time,
of language’s split from lived experience.
Time is lost with language’s defining, delimiting powers, but
something else is gained. It may not be possible to find the essence of
meaning in language the way someone might reassuringly find a clear
orientation in a well-delineated landscape, but literature gains the
dynamic motility of open water. He may lose the essence of lived
experience against the resistance of the signifier, but this stable core of
existence was never really to be had in the first place. Life exceeds
language, but at the same time, language exceeds life. In a certain
sense, the signifier’s independent mobility, while not definitively
capturing or having any direct relation to the real core of the self or
the past, reflects the chaos of lived experience. This confrontation
with the reading-related aporias and the enigma of sexuality demon-
strates how reading is enriched in its inevitable failure.
Ultimately, the significance of Jean’s act is undecidable. In the
context of Jean’s reading difficulties and the narrator’s play with rep-
resentational aporias, misreading and illegibility haunt the potential
avowals. Indeed, the reader cannot find a definitive truth about
whether this episode is a coming-out for Proust or Jean. The depiction
Guss 111
of cross-dressing presents an inverted world to readers of La

recherche accustomed to the Proustian narrator’s belief that literature
completely captures the authentic core of lived experience. As Leo
Bersani notes, the self in Proust “is exuberantly scattered along the
surfaces of its disguises” (Bersani 85). In this chapter, language can-
not reveal the truth of life or the self (if such a thing exists) because
the rhetoric of the avowal is the surface that scatters different possi-
bilities of the self. This understanding of language puts to question
whether it is possible to really come out and express in words how
you live your sexuality and anything else or, critically speaking,
whether it is really possible to out Proust.
Works Cited
Bersani, Leo. A Future for Astyanax. Boston: Little, Brown, and Company,
1976.
Genette, Gérard. Figures III. Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 1972.
Lamos, Colleen. Deviant Modernism: Sexual and textual errancy in T.S.
Eliot, James Joyce, and Marcel Proust. Cambridge: Cambridge Univer-
sity Press, 1998.
Proust, Marcel. Jean Santeuil. Paris: Gallimard, 1952.
Rivers, Julius Edwin. Proust and the Art of Love. New York: Columbia Uni-
versity Press, 1980.
Sedgwick, Eve. Epistemology of the Closet. Berkeley: University of Califor-
nia Press, 1990.
Silverman, Kaja. Male Subjectivity at the Margins. New York: Routledge,
1992.
Ed Madden
The Anus of Tiresias:

Sodomy, Alchemy, Metamorphosis
In Western literature of the twentieth century, the mythical figure of

Tiresias often functions as a cultural shorthand for non-normative sex-
ual identities and pleasures. In Marcel Jouhandeau’s 1954 erotic novel,
Tiresias, a bisexual man, renames himself as Tiresias after being anally
penetrated by a young male hustler. While the novel has been noted as a
celebration of anal sexual pleasure, I argue further that penetration is
part of a larger metaphorical language of cross-gender sexual transfor-
mations, located in the assumption of a Tiresian identity and in the
related esoteric language of alchemy. Sodomy, in the novel, creates a
transformed and very queer sexual identity that is emphatically not
male.
________________________
...que je ne sois plus seulement un homme.

Tirésias! Tirésias!
Marcel Jouhandeau, Tirésias
Fucked for the first time, an aging bisexual man announces to the
young male hustler he has hired: since you have done this to me, I am
no longer a man. Well, I am a man, he says, but now I am a woman,
too. And he renames himself: Tirésias. Early in Marcel Jouhandeau’s
erotic novel Tirésias — the third and final volume of his autobio-
graphical Écrits secrets — the aging narrator undergoes this Tiresian
metamorphosis. In a scene of sexual initiation filled with language
both erotic and sacramental, the young man tells the older, “Reçois-la
comme si je te douais par la vertu de ma baguette d’un second sexe”
(14), the young man’s phallus the magic wand that will transform his
partner into another sex. After this act of anal sex — fictionally repre-
sented as initiatory for the narrator, though Jouhandeau had been
having homosex well before — the narrator says, “Ainsi… tu as fait
cela de moi que je ne sois plus seulement un homme. Tirésias!
Tirésias,” (14), and he later admits, “Je suis certes un homme mais
une femme aussi” (23). For this Tiresian narrator, in a novel that is a
celebration of sodomitical pleasures, to be penetrated is to be fem-
inized. The pleasure he experiences in being penetrated releases
within him a phantasmatic feminine identity. “Sa forme est en moi,”
he later insists, “ce n’est pas une métaphore” (22). And the name for
this — this experience of anal sexual pleasure, this queer body, this
phantasmatic form, this transgender identification — is Tiresias.
In Western literature of the twentieth century, the mythical figure
of Tiresias often seems to function as a kind of ambiguous cultural
shorthand for variant or deviant sexualities. Gilbert Herdt ties the
figure of Tiresias to the “folk ideology of homosexuality”; the repre-
sentation of androgynous figures in a culture, he states, is critical to
“understanding the emergence of culturally-constituted third-sex and
third-gender roles” (61-62). Tiresias has long been a figure for vision-
ary liminal identity, representing the special knowledge attributed to
— or acquired as the result of — the crossing of epistemological and
ontological boundaries. In the twentieth century, the boundaries
crossed or embodied by Tiresias are more often than not sexual
boundaries, and the liminal or visionary knowledge integral to
Tiresian mythologies is predicated on some form of sexual knowl-
edge. In the Ovidian tale, the origin of such figures, Tiresias lives
sequentially as a man, then a woman, then a man, but Tiresian figures
of the last century have their origins in late nineteenth-century sexol-
ogy as much as they do in classical literature. Sexology imagined the
homosexual man as a female soul or sensibility trapped in a male
body, a figure that equated sexual difference with gender difference,
even as it registered the cultural fantasies and fears of a penetrated
male body.
Because Tiresias knows, to some extent or in some way, what it
means to be sexually penetrated, he is often portrayed as a feminized
Madden 115
man, morphologically or psychologically, in sexological and literary

fantasies of the last century. 1 In the early 1920s, though T. S. Eliot
doesn’t explicitly queer his Tiresias in The Waste Land, he puts
breasts on him and offers him as a contradictory fantasy, a voice of
poetic and prophetic power shot through with the poem’s repeated
threats to male psychological and sexual integrity, a man who imag-
ines himself in the position of the raped female.2 In 1942, American
modernist Glenway Westcott wrote to Katherine Ann Porter about the
special human empathy of gay men — a capacity he tied to his sexual
experience as a “somewhat Tiresian man,” both penetrator and pene-
trated. 3
Jouhandeau’s Tirésias falls clearly within this cultural tradition
— his Tiresias a sexually penetrated man, both feminized and homo-
sexual. Jouhandeau depicts anal penetration as transformation —
epistemological and ontological transformation — and nonnormative
sexual pleasure as mystical. Both senses — transformation and mysti-
cal knowledge — combine in a central figure of Tiresias, the pene-
trated prophet, as well as in Jouhandeau’s representation of homosex-
ual sex as an alchemy of pleasure, “l’alchimie du Plaisir” (19).
Jouhandeau’s Tiresias — relies on sexological and folk morphologies
of sexual inversion (the female soul in a male body), and it echoes
sexological obsessions with symptomatic morphologies and etio-
logical narratives; however, Jouhandeau queers this figure by revising
the pathological narratives of cause and effect and by multiplying both
the Ovidian metamorphoses and the sexual morphologies. While in
sexological literature a transgendered soul is presumed to be the
––––––––––
1
Tiresias less frequently represents female-to-male transgender identifications
— in Apollinaire’s Thérèse, from Les Mamelles de Tirésias, who releases her breasts
as balloons, grows a beard, and renames herself Tiresias, or more recently the lesbian
transsexual performance artist Kate Bornstein, named in an interview a “transgender
transsexual postmodern Tiresias.” The transsexual use of Tiresian metaphors makes
sense, given the Ovidian tale of Tiresias’s sex changes.
2
An extended analysis of Tiresian figures can be found in my forthcoming
book, Tiresian Poetics, which traces the transformations of Tiresias through the work
of late nineteenth-century and twentieth-century writers.
3
Quotation from Wescott’s letter to Katherine Anne Porter, 3 April 1942, from
the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Yale University, the Wescott
collection, Box 57, Katherine Anne Porter correspondence, 1938-42, ZA MS 70.
Porter’s side of the correspondence may be found in the published edition of her
letters (231).
ontological grounds for sexual inversion, Jouhandeau transforms

cause into effect, a feminine soul not the origins of homosexual
behavior but instead the result of his being penetrated. And through a
sequence of mythical transformations, he puts into play a number of
sexual morphologies — some spectral, some physiological, some
queerly metaphorical. As a result, Tiresias become a figure for the
pleasures of being penetrated, and a name for a queer identity — a
sexual identity that is emphatically not male.
***
Jouhandeau published Tirésias anonymously in 1954 (in a small

private edition of 450 copies), the last in a series of three autobio-
graphical novels, the Écrits secrets. It was republished in 1977 under
the penname Theophile, by Jean-Jacques Pauvert, a publisher of con-
troversial erotic texts, and republished posthumously under Jouhan-
deau’s name in 1988. In Scandal in the Ink, a study of homosexuality
in twentieth-century French literature, Christopher Robinson calls the
novel an “apologia for anal sex,” a text that celebrates homosexual
anal sex “as the release of the feminine element within the male” (69,
80). The novel includes four sections, each structured around a sexual
relationship — three with young men, the male hustlers Richard,
Philippe, and Pierre, and one a sexual encounter with a dwarf. Robin-
son notes that the male-male sexual dynamics repeatedly destabilize
heteronormative operations of power and value — especially the gen-
dered structures of vision, possession, and action (gaze and object of
gaze, possessor and possessed, activity and passivity). I argue further
that the Tiresian metaphors of transformation that suffuse the text are
rich with further mythical and morphological instabilities.
Richard, the first lover, inducts him into the pleasures of recep-
tive anal sex, the critical transformation that requires his renomination
as Tiresias. Despite Robinson’s emphasis on the destabilization of
heteronormative structures, Jouhandeau figures the act of anal sex in
explicitly gendered terms, the penetrated male feminized — taking a
feminine role, experiencing female sexual pleasure. Not only does the
narrator rename himself Tiresias, but he admits to Richard that he had
anal sex before, at age 23, with a lover whom he describes as a “mis-
tress,” and who always took, he says, the receptive role, “le rôle d’une
Madden 117
femme” (15). The man’s one attempt at reversing roles was an act of
force that left the narrator filled with horror rather than pleasure — a
scene that clearly maps domination onto sex, replicating heteronor-
mative themes of possession and power. In contrast with this one act,
the representation of anal sex throughout the novel, as Robinson sug-
gests, emphasizes “mutuality of desire and unity in pleasure” (253). In
this first sodomitical scene with Richard, the mutuality and reciprocity
of the act are rendered in mutual cries and simultaneous orgasm: “sa
douceur en moi se répandait, ma douceur inondait ses mains,” his
sweetness poured out in me, my sweetness flooded his hands (14).
Richard, though, is himself a border figure, described as “mi-
chemin entre l’adolescent et l’homme fait,” as well as having the air
of just having come from a bath — “Il a toujours l’air de sortir du
bain” (18) — an echo, perhaps of the another Tiresian tale, his
encounter with Athena bathing. Whether Hera blinding him because
he claims women have more sexual pleasure than men, or Athena
blinding him because he sees her naked, in the traditional Tiresian
mythographies, the threat of the feminine is rendered as blinding or
castrating goddesses. In later variants, the threat is refigured as pene-
tration: a threat to the integrity of the (heterosexual) masculine subject
or body through effeminization or penetration, the male body rendered
female in the act of anal sex. The Tiresian tale offers a metaphorical
figure for this understanding — Tiresias’s prior experience when he
lived as a woman mapped onto his body and psyche as memory, as
specter, and perhaps more importantly as a form of pleasure (since in
the Olympian court he says that women have greater sexual pleasure
than men, a pronouncement that provokes Hera’s blinding).
In proposing woman as the site of pleasure (and the male as the
signifier of knowledge, of power), the Tiresian tale clearly represents
the way woman may function in the binary cosmologies of men — by
naming woman as the site of pleasure, Jupiter and Tiresias assume the
power of knowledge over pleasure. As Maurice Olender points out, if
the myth names woman “l’être de jouissance,” it follows that “La
femme a dû ainsi, souvent, se fondre dans une cosmographie virile où
elle avait son rôle à jouer, une position à assumer dans, pour et contre
l’imaginaire masculin” (179), that she dissolves into a virile male
cosmography where she functions as a figure within, for, and against
which the masculine constructs itself. Or as Gayatri Spivak succinctly
puts it, “The discourse of man is in the metaphor of woman” (169).

The “feminine,” a social and cultural construct, is neither universally
nor essentially nor biologically female. The Tiresian story — in its
allegorization of pleasure and knowledge, pleasure and power through
the terms of gender — warns that constructions of the Tiresian body,
to whatever ends used, risk essentializing the feminine, deploying the
feminine. The Tiresian body, a performative body, produces what it
pretends to have been: the category of the feminine.
Is the female psyche, then, a cause or an effect? Which comes

first, the male body or the female soul? Can sodomy (ef)feminize the
psyche? According to medical historian Alice Dreger, that very fear
was at work in early studies on hermaphroditism and sexual inversion,
one doctor lamenting in 1894 the formation of “accidental hermaph-
rodites”: although such young men were already feminine in appear-
ance, through an “indoctrination into pederasty” “their souls become
feminine too” (Dreger 52). In the discourse of sexology, the meta-
morphotic itself was a discourse of pathology. In the foundational
work of sexology, Psychopathia Sexualis, Richard Von Krafft-Ebing
used “sexual metamorphosis” to designate a specific sexual aberra-
tion, that of the man or woman who not only assumes the clothing and
identity of the opposite sex, but also operates under the “paranoid”
delusion that the body itself has changed to match that interiorized
sexual (mis)identification.4 By the middle of the twentieth century,
about the same time as Jouhandeau was writing his Tirésias, sexual
metamorphosis would be listed alongside sexual inversion in standard
medical dictionaries as a perversion, a pathologization of transgen-
dered identities: “A perversion in which one adopts the habits and
dress of the opposite sex” (Taber S-36).
––––––––––
4
See Krafft-Ebing (261-80). As Magnus Hirschfeld elaborates, “Typical is that
they feel that their genitals have changed into those of a woman. They imagine that
they are growing women’s breasts, . . . that their clothing is women’s when in fact
they are men’s” (183). In Hirschfeld’s study of transvestites as “sexual inter-
mediaries,” in which he distinguishes between the act of “simply” cross dressing and
a more fundamental “sexual drive to change” (which Prosser identifies as a nascent
attempt at transsexual definition [121-23]), Hirschfeld suggests “sexual metamor-
phosis” as a logical term for the assumption of a transgendered identity, but he rejects
it because of its specific history in Krafft-Ebing as a paranoid disorder (233-34).
Madden 119
The Tiresian tale allows for confusions of sexual and psycho-

sexual cause and effect — Tiresias being a floating signifier of queer-
ness, a figure standing in for a narrative — but Jouhandeau is more
precise. In the novel, sodomy creates the feminine, or more precisely,
the sexual pleasure of being penetrated allows a man to imagine a
female sensibility within himself. He describes the female identity as a
spectral form within his body and a trace written on its surface — a
sweat, the trace of another man on his skin, an odor that suffuses his
body, a demonic halo around him, a silence that imbricates his most
anodyne words (89). For Jouhandeau, however, this is not metaphoric:
as the soil remembers the plowshare, he says, so his trembling flesh
remembers the penetration, and the experience changes the very
expression on his face (22). It is deeply written in the body itself, his
very blood and marrow changed (24). All of this produced by the
force of Richard’s magic phallic wand. In Jouhandeau’s Tiresian
narrative, anal sex produces the feminine interior associated with the
Tiresian body.
***
Although the first transformation of the narrator into Tiresias is

the central and titular transformation of the text, the novel is suffused
with metamorphosis and boundary crossings. With his second lover,
Philippe, Theophile/Maurice/Tiresias discovers that sexual pleasure is
not tied to love or to desire for one man, that it can be found with
more than one — Philippe his lover on Tuesdays, Richard on Thurs-
days (43), neither dominating his passions or affections. This multipli-
cation of desire is echoed in the multiplication of mythic transforma-
tions in the chapter. Philippe is both a god and a beast (47-48) — a
sexual animal: “c’est mieux pour ce que nous devons faire” (46). The
young men are repeatedly metaphorized as animals — cougars, lions,
dogs, bulls — and the dwarf is a gorilla and a shark (chien de mer,
dogfish). Similarly, sex is figured as harnessing and riding — Phil-
ippe’s arms a harness on the narrator beneath him (40), or the narra-
tor’s legs as reins on the neck of Pierre, the young bull mounting him
(76). Even Philippe’s rough and bestial nature is described as the
roughness of an ignorant stable-boy — “une bêtise de palefrenier”
(47).
These bestial metaphors are coupled with mythical metamorpho-

ses. As Philippe rides the narrator like a horse, the two men together
become a Centaur, half-man and half-horse (40). With his last lover,
Pierre, the narrator becomes a unicorn as well as woman to Pierre’s
phallic Taurus (76). The dwarf — hairy and well-endowed — is
described as a satyr, with “cette culotte de fourrurre” (57). With the
satyr, an efficient and effective if unattractive lover, the narrator
realizes that sexual pleasure may be separate from — and more
important than — the physical beauty of the partner.5 The narrator
himself becomes a sexual monster with the dwarf; in fact, just as the
name Tiresias is a figure for a narrative of pleasures and transforma-
tions, so he then becomes Pasiphae — as well as the bull, the mino-
taur, and the labyrinth — with Ariadne’s thread running through his
entrails (58).
These bestial metaphors and transformations indicate Jouhan-
deau’s own complicated understanding of queer sex, and they empha-
size the metamorphotic sensibility of Jouhandeau’s narrative. As the
narrator recalls near the end of the tale, Zeus often took the form of
animals to have sex with mortal humans (85) — as if in some way
debasing himself, finding a lower plane. “La mythologie montre sans
cesse les dieux et les monsters en coquetterie” (85). If the narrator’s
sexual partners are beasts, then, they are also gods, and this duality of
gods and beasts — or gods and monsters — suggests the duality
Jouhandeau locates in queer sex: its bestial, almost mechanical pleas-
ures, and its mystic (for him even sacramental) possibilities for self-
transformation. The myths of metamorphosis, writes Jouhandeau, are
simply sublime prefigurations of the private metamorphoses that
shake and unsettle our passions and our bodies (27), and the central
mystery of mythology is that each person experiences multiple meta-
morphoses within the self (49).
Sex is transformation, according to Jouhandeau. Men become
beasts and gods, a man becomes a man-woman, people receive new
and mythological names, bodies and psyches are transformed, trans-
figured — all during the sexual act. With Pierre, Jouhandeau writes,
“Entre mes mains, son visage se change en un masque de bronze”
––––––––––
5
The sex is mechanical — like an affair with a machine (57). On one’s knees,
Jouhandeau explains, one doesn’t see or know who is behind, sensing only the
approach of the penis (82); it is simply pleasure that needs no justification (58).
Madden 121
(47). As Pierre reaches orgasm, his face is transformed into a mask of

bronze, an alchemical transformation of flesh into precious metal.
Jouhandeau represents gay sex as an alchemy of pleasure, and gay
sexual cultures as secret realms of esoteric knowledge into which one
must be initiated. His central metaphor for this sexual and initiatory
alchemy is the image of communicating vessels, or “les vases com-
muniquent” (19) to suggest the relation of bodies and knowledge in
gay sexual practices. He writes:
Ce qui m’amuse dans l’amour entre hommes, c’est au passage du regard le

côté mécanique des gestes, le côté clinique et symbolique des opérations,
quand les vases communiquent, le sexe prenant volontiers des airs
d’alambic pour expériences, auxquelles ne serait pas étrangère quelque
recherche mystérieuse, analogue à celle de l’alchimie. C’est l’alchimie du
Plaisir” (19)
The alchemical passage appears in the first chapter, appropriate given

that chapter’s focus on the narrator’s transformation into Tiresias,
prophet and vessel of mysterious knowledge. Sexual relations are
sacred mysteries into which the narrator is initiated (26); his transfor-
mation into a phantasmatic woman — or something other than a man
— is achieved by “cette magie cérémonielle” (23). For Jouhandeau,
the secret subcultures of homosexual cruising and sex are a culture
and a discourse of esoteric knowledge — mysterious and strange
knowledge distilled in the alembic of sexual experience, the word
expériences suggesting both the experimental and the experiential
nature of this form of knowledge. Though sexual relations seem both
mechanical and clinical (the narrator, after all, is paying for sex), they
are also symbolic and mysterious.
The image of “les vases communiquent” may derive from André

Breton’s book of the same name; in surrealism, communicating ves-
sels allow contrary things — such as dream and reality — to flow into
one another, the two connected vessels allowing for the convergence
and merging of distinct realms. Both Jouhandeau and Breton refer to a
contraption familiar from physics class experiments and from al-
chemical lore. Communicating vessels are vertical vessels — tubes or
vases — connected by a tube or reservoir at the base, allowing any
fluid poured into one to rise to a point of equilibrium in the other, or
allowing two different things to flow into one another, the vessels
sharing — in a secret base of connection — their distinct contents.
The image is suggestive, fluids rising in equilibrium in two bod-
ies, a metaphor for the two male bodies in erection. Fluids suffuse this
text and spill onto and into men’s bodies — semen, milk, hot liqueurs,
lava. Like communicating vessels, sex between men offers alchemical
unions of contrary things — gods and monsters, purity and impurity,
tenderness and brutality, pleasure and pain. From the first experience
with Richard, anal sex is represented as both pleasure and pain, “dou-
ceur” and “douleur” (13).6 And Philippe’s bestial nature is a roughness
tempered with sweetness — a sweetness that comes between them
“comme une coulée d’huile de noix entre nous” (47) — that shot of
nut oil between their bodies literalizing sweetness in a sexual pun. 7
The suggestion of equilibrium and complementarity in the image
of the vases communiquants finds fulfillment in the final chapter about
Pierre, with whom the narrator feels such sexual complementarity that
he describes them as two sides of a coin (one the faces of two gods,
the other the bodies of two beasts), and as the right and left arms of
the same body (75). With Pierre, complementarity is so important that
he apologizes when they don’t experience simultaneous orgasm, and
the narrator writes with delight of falling asleep with Pierre’s phallus
still hard inside him. They are — almost literally — vases communi-
quants, two vessels sharing a connection that allows for the secret
sharing of fluid. Pierre also offers the narrator his fullest initiation into
sacred mysteries. Sex with him is both religious tragedy and physio-
logical scandal (74), and the narrator says the result is a kind of secret
stigmata, present in him but not visible to others (75).
***
The final chapter with Pierre also offers the strangest of all the
bestial metamorphoses in the novel: “En moi maintenant il est né,
––––––––––
6
Robinson notes that the rhyming words make delight and pain “almost
homophonous” (255).
7
As Frank Paul Bowman has noted in a study of Jouhandeau’s religious
metaphors of homosexuality, the reader is faced with a very real problem of tone
(303). While a reader may find this passage, like others in the novel, comic in its
earnestness, Bowman notes that even the comic and sacrilegious equations of
homosexual sex with religious or mythic meaning are driven by serious intent.
Madden 123
l’oursin, qui tient autant de la flore marine que de la faune terrestre.”

Within him is born the sea urchin he says, “végétal et animal à la fois”
(80). No longer god and monster, man and woman, he is now both
animal and vegetable. This metaphor has a specific physiological
location: the urchin is his rectum, which receives the finger or penis of
a lover — the “anneau” or sphincter which opens and closes again,
“comme s’il respirait autour du doigt adamantin de Pierre” (80).
French psychoanalyst René Nelli reads the eroticized “anal zone”
as a specifically Tiresian site of sexual metamorphosis and gender
transgression. Focusing on heterosexual anal sex, Nelli argues that the
eroticization of the anus, an organ similar on the bodies of both men
and women, symbolizes simultaneously a flouting of the very category
of the feminine and an exchange of masculine and feminine polarities,
the woman symbolically masculinized in her equivalence to a sodom-
ized male partner, the man symbolically feminized to the degree,
according to Nelli, that he dreams of penetrating himself through the
figure of the female body. 8 Further, the male sodomizer is thus
haunted or obsessed by a “femme mythique” which he imagines
within himself, the possibility that he might be penetrated thus, too.9
Nelli also reads homosexual anal sex as transgressively meta-
morphotic, at first in the expected stereotypical assignment of active
and passive gender roles, the receptive male thus feminized (though a
receptive female is masculinized), but then Nelli insists that homo-
sexual passions find a higher signification of sexual transgression in
the continual exchange and reversibility of sexual and gender roles. 10
For Nelli, then, the interchangeability of “gender” constructs within
homosexual male sex serve a representational function, transforming
categories and states of gender identification into processes of
––––––––––
8
In a survey of sexual themes in literature, John Atkins suggests that
traditionally “sodomy” or “buggery” masculinizes the penetrated woman,
transforming her into an imagined male — which may be, in fact, the desired object
(245-46).
9
Nelli writes, “La sodomisation, en effet, masculinise symboliquement la
femme, mais, indirectement, féminise l’homme dans la mesure où il rêve de pénétrer,
sous les espèces d’un corps féminin objectif, le mâle qu’il est, lequel est précisément
hanté déjà par la présence en lui d’une femme mythique” (141).
10
See Nelli (141-42).
identification and refiguring sexual identity as phantasmatic rather

than corporeally grounded. 11
Through the metaphor of the sea urchin, Jouhandeau transforms
the anus of Tiresias into a transgressive and performative figure. Ear-
lier Jouhandeau described Richard’s penis as a gourd full of milk (20),
and Philippe’s mouth as he orgasms as a squirming oyster (48). With
Pierre, these vegetal and marine figures and these pleasures are re-
imagined in the rectum of Tiresias. The sea urchin is a non-sentient
creature ruled only by appetite, a ring of spines around a central
mouth that functions simultaneously for respiration, excretion, and
nourishment. Moreover, in Jouhandeau’s text, it breathes and blooms,
around “le tétin” (85) — language that refigures anal sex as nursing,
non-normative sexual pleasure as infantile appetite.
In the midst of his use of the image of the urchin, Jouhandeau
also describes the rectum as a vulva, a sheath opening up to pleasure
(82). Leo Bersani has noted “the widespread confusion in heterosexual
and homosexual men between fantasies of anal and vaginal sex”
(211). But the psychosexual confusions here are multiple and self-
consciously representational — as phallic, vulvic, oral, and anal
pleasures and drives are located not in the anus of Tiresias, per se, but
in the metaphor of the sea urchin. Reframing both phallic and phan-
tasmatic vaginal pleasures in one very queer figure, the sea urchin be-
comes a strange concatenation of sexual identifications and pleasures.
––––––––––
11
Because his analysis is oriented around penetration, lesbianism appears only
tropologically in an analysis of a transsexual “limit case.” In the case of a female-to-
male transsexual, Nelli (using the feminine pronoun throughout his discussion) says
that “her”/his preference for oral sex with women (“la façon d’une lesbienne”) leaves
the person confused as to whether s/he is a male so excessively attracted to the
“appearance” of the female genitialia that he has become a lover of the clitoris, or a
“tribade” (meaning either a lesbian, or more specifically a masculinized lesbian with a
presumably large clitoris) who was, s/he realizes always and “naturellement” a false
woman, “une fausse fille” — that is, in an epistemologically charged oxymoron, she
was naturally counterfeit in terms of gender. Further, when s/he “suffers” or submits
to anal sex, s/he thinks it means that s/he really wants to be either a masculine
homosexual or a “veritable” woman. Nelli says of this “unstable androgyne” (marked
by both interior and exterior metamorphoses) that sexual identity is always in process
both in loving and in being loved, and the acts of identification and desire so fluid that
“she” had always loved as a man the man with whom she had been in love as a
woman — “Elle aimait toujours comme homme, en réalité, l’homme dont elle avait été
amoureuse comme femme” (142).
Madden 125
The metaphor — like the use of Tiresian myth — seems prob-

lematic in its appropriation of the female as a trope for the gay male
body. The rectum is not a vagina and the narrator is not literally a
woman, he is a penetrated man. Still, Jouhandeau’s figure offers more
than a reductive gender cosmology that would simply assign pleasure
to the female and knowledge and power to the male, and more than an
implicit and important valuation of anal sexual pleasure.12 The femi-
nine and the Tiresian are the tropes by which the body is renamed as
not male, no longer male: “je ne sois plus seulement un homme.
Tirésias!” (14). If heterosexual masculinity is structured around dis-
avowals of both the homoerotic and the feminine — melancholically
identifying with the father and repudiating the feminine in the body of
the gay male, then the gay male may claim and adapt that repudiated
category.
Perhaps that is why Jouhandeau’s revision seems so efficacious.
Keeping the terms of the sexist myth — the feminine as site of mutual
pleasure — Jouhandeau deploys and transforms the myth of the
Tiresian body to revalue homosexuality, and to imagine a queer body
that is male but also not male. The phantasmatic feminine provides a
conceptualization for this experience of pleasure. The mythic story of
Tiresias provides a name. And Jouhandeau’s proliferating metonymies
and menageries of transformation — “la ménagerie que je suis” (85)
— offer a means for imagining this capacity of sexual being, this
queerness.
––––––––––
12
The classical tradition from which the figure of Tiresias derives, a tradition
organized around phallic norms of activity and passivity, is one in which the
mutuality of sexual pleasure was assigned to women. As the tale of Tiresias confirms,
women get more pleasure because they both give and receive. David Halperin notes
that few ancient texts acknowledged that men might enjoy “passive” sex, and for the
most part the role of being penetrated was represented for the adult male as an
indignity; for a man to take pleasure in such was “a symptom of moral incapacity”
(270-71). The celebration of anal pleasure is, therefore, important.
Works Cited
Atkins, John. The Classical Experience of the Sexual Impulse. Vol. 2 of Sex
in Literature. London: Calder and Boyars, 1973.
Bersani, Leo. “Is the Rectum a Grave?” AIDS: Cultural Analysis, Cultural
Activism. Ed. Douglas Crimp. Cambridge: MIT Press, 1988. 197-222.
Bowman, Frank Paul. “The Religious Metaphors of a Married Homosexual:
Marcel Jouhandeau’s Chronique d’une passion.” Homosexualities and
French Literature: Cultural Contexts/Critical Texts. Ed. George Stam-
bolian and Elaine Marks. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1979. 295-
311.
Dreger, Alice D. “Hermaphrodites in Love: The Truth of the Gonads.”
Science and Homosexualities. Ed. Vernon Rosario. New York: Rout-
ledge, 1997. 46-66.
Eliot, T. S. The Complete Poems and Plays, 1909-1950. New York: Harcourt
Brace and World, 1971.
Halperin, David M. “Why Is Diotima A Woman? Platonic Eros and the Fig-
uration of Gender.” Before Sexuality: The Construction of Erotic Ex-
perience in the Ancient Greek World. Ed. David M. Halperin, John J.
Winkler, and Froma I. Zeitlin. Princeton: Princeton University Press,
1990. 257-308.
Herdt, Gilbert. “Introduction: Third Sexes and Third Genders.” Third Sex,
Third Gender: Beyond Sexual Dimorphism in Culture and History. Ed.
Gilbert Herdt. New York: Zone Books, 1994. 21-81.
Hirschfeld, Magnus. Transvestites: The Erotic Drive to Cross Dress. 1910.
Trans. Michael A. Lombardi-Nash. Buffalo: Prometheus Books, 1991.
Jouhandeau, Marcel. Tirésias. Écrits Secrets III. Paris: Arléa, 1988.
Krafft-Ebing, Richard von. Psychopathia Sexualis: A Medico-Forensic Study.
1886. First unexpurgated edition in English. Trans. Harry E. Wedeck
(from Latin). New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1965.
Nelli, René. “Tirésias ou les Métamorphoses de la Passion.” Nouvelle Revue
de Psychanalyse 21 (1983): 133-42.
Olender, Maurice. “De l’absence de récit.” Le récit et sa représentation.
Paris: Payot, 1978. 175-80.
Ovid. The Metamorphoses. Trans. Mary M. Innes. New York: Penguin, 1955.
Porter, Katherine Anne. Letters of Katherine Anne Porter. Ed. Isabel Bayley.
New York: Atlantic Monthly Press, 1990.
Madden 127
Prosser, Jay. “Transsexuals and the Transsexologists: Inversion and the

Emergence of Transsexual Subjectivity.” Sexology in Culture: La-
belling Bodies and Desires. Ed. Lucy Bland and Laura Doan. Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1998. 116-31.
Robinson, Christopher. Scandal in the Ink: Male and Female Homosexuality
in Twentieth-Century French Literature. London: Cassell, 1995.
Spivak, Gayatri. “Displacement and the Discourse of Woman.” Displace-
ment: Derrida and After. Ed. Mark Krupnick. Bloomington: Indiana
University Press, 1983. 169-95.
Taber, Clarence Wilbur. Taber's Cyclopedic Medical Dictionary. Seventh
edition. Philadelphia: F. A. Davis Company, 1956.
Wescott, Glenway. Continual Lessons: The Journals of Glenway Wescott
1937-1955. Ed. Robert Phelps, with Jerry Rosco. New York: Farrar
Straus Giroux, 1990.
_____. Letter to Katherine Anne Porter, 3 April 1942. Westcott manuscript
collection. Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale Univer-
sity Library.
Elizabeth Stephens
Centre for the History of European Discourses
University of Queensland
Queer Writing: Homoeroticism

in Jean Genet’s Fiction
While previous criticism of Jean Genet’s fiction, particularly that

undertaken within the context of GLBTQ studies, has concentrated pre-
dominantly on the autobiographical framework of his narratives, this
study will offer new critical approaches to Genet’s homoerotic writing
that do not rely on traditional notions of authorial intention. The concept
of homoerotic writing elaborated in Genet’s narratives, this study
argues, demonstrates how attempts to inscribe sexual specificity need
not be framed as the direct expression of a stable, intending sexual sub-
ject. Attention to this widely overlooked aspect of Genet’s work has a
potentially important contribution to make to contemporary GLBTQ
criticism in that it thinks through what a specifically queer writing
might be, neither naturalising nor negating the role of the writing
subject, and emphatically resisting not only a simplistic identification of
the writing subject with the text produced, but also the erasure of that
subject from the scene of the text.
________________________
Jean Genet
ou: Je n’ai
ou: jean jeûné
ou: j’en jeûné
ou encore: n’ai-je
ou neige.
— Jean Genet, letter to Antoine Bourseiller
(“Il faut désacraliser l’auteur” 94)
Of all the strange and self-invented characters found in Jean

Genet’s fiction — the transsexual street hustlers and imitation gang-
sters and nationless vagrants — the most compelling is undoubtedly
that of Genet himself. In a series of texts framed as autobiographical,
Genet’s eponymous narrators recount the events of a life whose
improbabilities and contradictions would strain credulity if it had not
already been widely reported in the national press. Genet is the reform
school boy and prison inmate with only the most rudimentary educa-
tion who was hailed by Cocteau during a court appearance as “le plus
grand écrivain de l’époque,” before he had published a single book
(Cocteau 326-27); the author of ground-breakingly explicit homo-
erotic texts written during the German Occupation of Paris, when
identified homosexuals risked deportation to concentration camps, but
whose works defend acts of gay bashing; the chronicler of degradation
and vagrancy whose prose is so seductive that the conservative
novelist François Mauriac begged him to follow Rimbaud’s lead and
cease writing altogether, in order not to corrupt the reading public (1);
the author of a series of insistently autobiographical novels whose
eponymous narrators continually warn the reader they are lying and
unreliable. The controversial circumstances in which Genet’s writing
first came to public attention, coupled with the shape-shifting qualities
of both author and fictional narrator, has had a determining influence
on the critical reception of his work ever since. When Bataille
declared that “dépouillé du halo dont l’entoure un snobisme littéraire,
Genet seul est plus digne d’intérêt” (202), he succinctly articulated an
approach that still dominates critiques of Genet’s fiction, which have
continued to focus almost exclusively on the autobiographical frame-
work of his narratives, reading Genet’s texts as primarily important
for what they reveal about their author’s own experiences as a homo-
sexual, hustler, or prisoner.
In many respects, this approach is one encouraged, even im-
pelled, by the texts themselves, which repeatedly and deliberately ob-
scure the dis/continuities between the author and narrators. For Genet
is a character who famously, and spectacularly, exceeds the pages of
his novels, and whose first literary invention can be found not in his
early published work, but in the series of court records, government
documents, and newspaper reports in which the petty criminal known
variously as Genest, Gejietti, Jenet, Genêt, Ganetti or Gallien
Stephens 131
transformed himself into the literary thief Jean Genet. 1 The Genet who
features as narrator in the author Genet’s novels is a similarly plural
and transformative character, continually both foregrounding and
problematising his connection to the author Genet. As a consequence,
while it is impossible to ignore the relationship between the author
and narrator Genet, given that this is such a central preoccupation of
his texts themselves, the identity of this figure remains obscure and
irreducibly multiple. As Didier Eribon recognises, whatever one says
about Genet’s work, it is always equally possible to argue the oppo-
site: “on peut toujours trouver chez Genet une phrase qui contredira
celle qu’on cite,” Eribon notes, making it impossible to stabilise the
meaning of Genet’s texts or the identities of their narrators: “il faut
toujours être conscient [...] que l’on ne peut dessiner qu’un Genet pos-
sible” (30). It is precisely for this reason that Genet’s fiction enjoys
the unusual distinction of disturbing its supporters and detractors in
equal measure, and is so often cited as exemplary of opposing read-
ings: critiqued as both revolutionary and reactionary, abject and dandi-
fied, homoerotic and homophobic. The aim of this study is not to
resolve the contradictory aspects of Genet’s work, however, but rather
to reposition these, and the series of narrative destabilisations they
produce, as central to the concept and practice of homoerotic writing
formulated in his fiction. This widely overlooked aspect of Genet’s
work has a potentially important contribution to make to contempo-
rary queer studies, drawing attention to the potentiality of writing
itself as a way to negotiate the conflicting demands of a difficulty that
remains of ongoing importance to GLBTQ studies as a whole: how
one might inscribe a recognisably queer specificity without reproduc-
ing traditional notions of an intending author, in a way consistent with
queer theory’s deconstruction of concepts of stable sexual subjectiv-
ity.
Although the difficulty of writing the specificity of marginalised
subjects’ experiences and desires within linguistic systems that are
inherently normative remains an issue of central concern to many
areas of contemporary critical theory, Genet’s treatment of these
issues, and thus his potential contribution to this area of critical and
cultural studies, remains a curiously under-examined part of his work.
––––––––––
1
For Genet’s use of these respective aliases, see White’s Genet (60-61, 130,
162, 191-93, 259, 288, 293).
In particular, the consequences of his texts’ narrative instability for

their homoerotics has received very little critical attention. Instead, the
destabilising aspects of Genet’s work have been the focal point for the
widespread critical discomfort with his fiction. For some critics,
Genet’s work is simply confusing and difficult to analyse: Bettina
Knapp, for instance, compares reading his fiction to “being thrust into
a labyrinth or seeking a footing on quicksand” (i). While a small pro-
portion of Genet’s readers recognise the elusive and metamorphic
quality of his narratives as centrally important to their composition, 2
by far the greater majority of his critics have focused on resolving
these contradictory aspects of his work, primarily by drawing on the
texts’ autobiographical status to stabilise their meaning, and the iden-
tity of their narrators, in the figure of the author Genet himself. Gene
Plunka typifies this approach to Genet’s work when he asserts that “it
is essential to sort out the myth from the reality [of Genet’s life] if we
are to assess Genet’s oeuvre” (18). This tendency to focus the details
of Genet’s life as a way of stabilising his narratives, providing a bio-
graphical template against which the fictionalised autobiographies can
then be measured, has been a dominant feature of Genet criticism
since the first full-length critical study of his work, Sartre’s Saint
Genet: comédien et martyr, influentially positioned Genet’s writing as
a direct response to the circumstances of his life. While, on the one
hand, such a critical emphasis is unsurprising, even inevitable, as the
relationship between the author and narrator Genet is a central subject
of these texts, it is also one problematised by the narrators’ explicit
and repeated warnings not to assume a direct relationship between the
narrator and author’s actual biography or history. As the narrator of
Journal du voleur taunts the reader: “Ce que j’écris fut-il vrai? Faux?
[...] Les faits qui lui servirent de prétexte? Je dois en être le déposi-
taire. Ce n’est pas eux que je restitue” (84). Announced unreliability
of this kind features prominently in Genet’s fiction: Genet’s narrators
both declare and disguise their identities, forcing the question of the
relationship between author and narrator while simultaneously ren-
dering it unanswerable. In Pompes funèbres, Genet’s narrator, mourn-
ing the death of his lover Jean Decarnin, explicitly draws a connection
between his unreliability and the destabilisation of his own subject
position: “Ce livre est sincère et c’est une blague. Je le publierai afin
––––––––––
2
See, for instance, Marchand or Jones.
Stephens 133
qu’il serve la gloire de Jean, mais duquel?” (687). Characters who

openly declare their duplicity, like narratives that celebrate their
inconsistency, problematise the reader’s attempts to resolve textual
meaning around a privileged perspective or coherent centre, to stabi-
lise the relationship between (authorial) subjectivity and text. Ac-
cordingly, the aim of this study is not to resolve the instability in
Genet’s narratives in order to identify the “real” Genet once and for
all, but rather to examine the function of this slippage in their compo-
sition. This study will hence examine the ways Genet’s character
functions as a centrifugal rather than centripetal force, propelling
meaning towards the margins of the text rather than concentrating it at
its centre, and thereby disseminating the single, unified author into a
proliferating narrative multiplicity. While it is impossible to ignore the
autobiographical framing of Genet’s narratives, it is equally impossi-
ble to read the identity of the author Genet as directly accessible
through his texts. Rather than approaching Genet’s fiction as autobio-
graphical, then, this study will instead read his autobiography as part
of his fiction, arguing that the public figure Genet is as much a literary
construct as the characters who appear in his novels.
While such a reversal of textual status may be unremarkable,
even conventional, within the context of contemporary critical theory
as a whole — informed as it is by the poststructuralist deconstruction
of authorial intention and unified textual meaning — the implications
of this critical shift remain profoundly under-examined in gay and les-
bian studies, for which the relationship between the sexuality of the
author and the specificity of the texts s/he produces remains of central
concern. Studies such as those in Bristow’s Sexual Sameness: Textual
Differences in Lesbian and Gay Writing and Lilly’s Lesbian and Gay
Writing: An Anthology of Critical Essays explicitly concentrate, as
does Robinson’s Scandal in the Ink: Male and Female Homosexuality
in Twentieth-Century French Literature, “almost exclusively on works
with strong homosexual themes by openly homosexual writers”
(Robinson viii). In some respects, such a focus is the necessary and
inevitable consequence of the attempt to recover literary and cultural
traditions that have historically been marginalised and effaced by a
heteronormative culture, a foundational project within gay and lesbian
studies (Lilly 1-9). At the same time, however, this critical emphasis
has also encouraged a tendency to understand “homosexual literature”
as that produced by authors themselves known to be homosexual in a

way that is at odds with the problematisation of the author/text rela-
tionship found in Genet’s work and the critique of the intending
authorial subject in contemporary literary and cultural studies as a
whole. In consequence, although it would appear redundant to argue
that Genet’s texts problematise the role and stability of their narrators,
given how pivotal the deconstruction of an intending authorial pres-
ence has been to contemporary critical theory, the implications of this
theoretical shift have not yet been systematically taken up with
GLBTQ studies. This cannot be understood simply as a critical over-
sight, however, a failure to think through the implications of the
deconstruction of humanist models of the self for the category of
“homosexual literature” as a whole. On the contrary, it demonstrates
the ongoing political and philosophical importance to GLBTQ studies
of the relationship between subjectivity and language, because it is
here that the possibility of “queer writing” resides. How to retain a
concept of writing recognisable as specifically queer without repro-
ducing essentialist concepts of the subject that underpin such a rubric
remains an issue of central concern to GLBTQ critical theory and
practice.
It is precisely this ongoing importance of authorial identity to
GLBTQ texts that informs most gay criticism of Genet’s fiction, for
which his (often deliberately) provocative representations of same-sex
relationships and desire have been predominantly read autobiographi-
cally, as representative of their author’s views on and experiences of
homosexuality as a whole. 3 It is for this reason that, while Genet’s
texts are widely recognised as ground-breaking within the context of
twentieth-century homosexual literature, they also occupy an uneasy
and contentious position within gay literary histories. Works such as
Alan Sinfield’s Gay and After, Christopher Robinson’s Scandal in the
Ink, Mark Lilly’s Gay Men’s Literature in the Twentieth Century, and
Paul Robinson’s Homosexual Autobiography reflect a pronounced
tendency to focus on their author’s own sexual psychology rather than
on the cultural and linguistic constraints in which these narratives
––––––––––
3
It is significant to note, in this context, that Genet’s novels themselves never
use the term “homosexualité,” instead employing a range of terms to designate acts
and identities defined by various kinds of same-sex desire — such as pédé and tante
— that never cohere into a generalized (homo)sexuality.
Stephens 135
were produced. Mark Lilly, for instance, sees Genet’s representations

of homosexuality as directly reflecting their author’s own discomfort
with his sexuality in a way that could only be the product of a “terribly
confused” person (86). He argues that “the extent of Genet’s self-
oppression, and his having internalised the homophobic values of the
surrounding culture, can hardly be doubted” (90). This view is one
echoed by Grace Russo Bullaro, who positions Genet as a victim of
prevailing cultural homophobia: “Like most homosexuals of his time,”
she contends, “Genet suffered from self-hatred, shame, and contempt
for other homosexual men” (75).
Although I do not want to suggest that such interpretations are
“misreadings” (or “false” readings) of Genet’s work, against which its
“true” meaning can then be revealed, it is important to recognise that
this critical tendency to read Genet’s narratives as a direct expression
of their author’s own views and experiences of homosexuality
assumes a stable and singular relationship between the sexual subjec-
tivity of Genet as author and textual meaning that Genet’s work
repeatedly problematises. That is, the widespread assumption evi-
denced within gay critical studies of Genet fiction, that the most
disturbing and problematic aspects of his representations of homo-
sexuality represent their author’s — or even narrator’s — uncritical
internalisation of dominant cultural values, assumes a sincerity and
constancy his narrators themselves repeatedly warn against. More-
over, such readings presuppose a degree of transparency between
author and text that Genet’s narratives critique at length in the series
of metafictive commentaries by which his narratives are punctuated,
and which focus in great detail on the difficulty of writing about mar-
ginal subjectivities and experiences within a language hostile to the
expression of such difference. Genet’s narratives are filled with con-
cerns about the role of language in constructing meaning, repeatedly
foregrounding the extent to which his writing is formulated within a
language that distorts or mistranslates the experiences of marginalised
subjects. Of the lives led by the reform school boys at the Mettray
penal colony in Miracle de la rose, Genet’s narrator reflects: “ce que
nous disions et pensions, je le sens maintenant, ne pourra jamais être
traduit par la langue française” (216). The distrust Genet’s narrators
express for a language that seems inadequate to their purposes leads
them to explicitly distance themselves from the words they use: “Avec
une distance un peu farceuse j’accepte ici ou là un mot du vocabu-

laire,” he cautions in Un Captif amoureux. “C’est tout” (153). This
problematisation of the relationship between the writing subject and
the dominant language is a central subject of Genet’s metafictive nar-
ratives, and it is this which enables the concept and practice of writing
developed in his work.
The implications of this aspect of Genet’s work — the conse-
quences of the way it both draws attention to and problematises the
terms in which it is written — have a profoundly important contribu-
tion to make to contemporary GLBTQ studies, enabling not only a re-
evaluation of Genet’s homoeroticism but also a reconsideration of
inscriptions of sexual specificity that do not depend on a direct, inten-
tional relationship with the author. It is writing itself, Genet’s fiction
shows, that provides a way to mediate between the ongoing impor-
tance of textual specificity and contemporary critiques of stable sub-
jectivities. Accordingly, this study will depart from previous readings
of Genet’s representations of homosexuality by attending not simply
to what Genet’s narratives have to say about same-sex desire and
relationships in inter-war era Paris, but also to their discussions of the
difficulties involved when doing so, and the strategies they develop in
response. That is, rather than reading through Genet’s texts to the lives
and histories they describe, as though these were directly accessible to
the reader, this study will instead examine the way in which these are
written and the problems posed by language itself. The importance of
this aspect of Genet’s work for contemporary GLBTQ studies as a
whole is that it represents an important rethinking of the role of writ-
ing in the inscription of homoeroticism, demonstrating how this
enables a reconceptualisation of the relationship between sexual sub-
jectivity and language as a mutually constitutive and (in)forming one.
Rather than reading Genet’s work as constrained by its author’s in-
ability to see homosexuality outside the parameters of heterocentric
thought, then, I see Genet’s novels as providing what remains one of
the most detailed accounts of the difficulties of writing homoerotically
within an inherently heteronormative language. Genet’s strategy, as
the remaining part of this analysis will show, is to formulate a new
kind of writing, one in which the relationship between subjectivity and
language is constantly re/de/constructed. Pre-empting the move from
the concept of a stable homosexual literature to that of a queer writing,
Stephens 137
homosexuality in Genet’s novels is not “represented” — seen as

external and prior to language — but rather written — shaped and
transformed through its engagement with other languages, bodies and
subjectivities. In this respect, the very characteristics that have made
Genet’s novels problematic for his gay critics — his elusive and meta-
morphic narrators, his perverse and contradictory descriptions of
same-sex desire — seem remarkably prescient when considered from
the context of queer theory, anticipating the shift towards fluid and de-
centred notions of sexuality by which queer studies are characterised.
Distinguishing between “gay” and “queer” critical practice in this
way is, I am aware, highly problematic, given the extent to which the
meanings of these terms themselves have been subject to differing
interpretations and their dominant usage has changed over time. For
instance, David Halperin’s recent How to do the History of Homo-
sexuality explicitly defines its critical methodology against the identity
politics approach he sees as reflecting an essentialist understanding of
the term gay, while still retaining use of that word: “I wanted to show
that there was more to gay studies than acts of recovery, stories of
‘great homosexuals in history,’ or forms of political affiliation — that
the relationship of gay scholarship to gay identity was more subtle and
complex than is often imagined” (6). The central distinction between
essentialist and constructivist understandings of homosexuality which
informs Halperin’s argument in this respect parallels that of Jonathan
Dollimore in Sexual Dissidence: Augustine to Wilde, Freud to Fou-
cault, which also distinguishes between two opposing traditions in
homosexual literature. In the first, which Dollimore sees as exempli-
fied by Gide, homosexuality is represented as the “natural” expression
of a fixed and essential identity; while in the second, exemplified by
Wilde, all sexuality is seen as contingent and provisional. This differ-
entiation between naturalised, or essentialised, understandings of
sexuality as the manifestation of a stable identity, and that of a fluid
and contingent sexuality not anchored in a unified sexual subjectivity,
is precisely how the terms gay and queer have popularly come to be
distinguished from one another. However, following Eve Kosofsky
Sedgwick’s critique of the “unidirectional narrative of supercession”
(46) in Epistemology of the Closet, in which she argues that modern
definitions of homosexuality “are structured, not by the supercession
of one model and the consequent withering away of another, but
instead by the relations enabled by the unrationalised coexistence of

different models during the times they do coexist” (47), we might see
gay and queer concepts of sexuality not as fundamentally opposed to
one another but rather as simultaneously informing the way that con-
temporary sexualities are understood.
This is nowhere more evident than in the ongoing debates sur-
rounding the unresolved issue of sexual subjectivity and the continued
privileging of authorship in queer critical practice. Despite queer the-
ory’s widespread association with a critique of identity politics, the
role of sexual subjectivity remains a subject of ongoing debate even
within queer theory itself. As Lisa Duggan cautions, queer’s emphasis
on destabilisation and fluidity has been read by some as an attempt to
“‘deconstruct [...]’ the gay community before it even comes into full
visibility” (57). A similar ambivalence can be seen in queer literary
practice, which, despite its critique of the concept of stable sexual
subjectivities, in application nonetheless reveals a continued invest-
ment in traditional notions of authorship. Richard Dyer’s qualification
regarding the relationship between authorial sexuality and the speci-
ficity of film texts in The Culture of Queers is exemplary of this: “Not
believing in a sole or determining authorship does not mean that one
must not attach any importance whatsoever to those who make films
[...]. [I]f the poor old text alone has to bear the burden of being les-
bian/gay, one will come up with few lesbian/gay texts” (33-34). Dyer
is by no means alone in this assumption that the specificity of the text
remains dependent on that of its author. Rather, this is a perspective
that informs a great deal of contemporary GLBTQ critical texts, which
often do not provide an explicit justification for their inclusion of texts
by authors themselves known to be homosexual, reinforcing the
assumption that there is an inherent connection between authorial
sexuality and the queerness of the text produced. While analyses
whose focus is on queer readings — in which queer(ing) is understood
as something done to the text rather than as an inherent property of the
text — may appear to be the exception here, as these do often focus on
texts by heterosexual authors or texts with ostensibly heteronormative
narratives, the fact that studies of such texts are seen to require expla-
nation in a way that those by homosexual writers do not, further
attests to the enduring importance of the relationship between author-
ship and textuality in contemporary GLBTQ studies.
Stephens 139
It is not my intention here to attempt to resolve the question of

the role of the subject within contemporary queer theory, but neither
do I think it can be simply dismissed or ignored. On the contrary, I
think the irresolvability of this issue is itself necessarily central to
queer studies, and that its effects need to be taken more carefully into
account. As such, while it is important to avoid essentialist under-
standings of queer writing, it is equally important to resist reductive
interpretations of the “death of the author” debates within critical the-
ory for GLBTQ studies. Just as Elisabeth Daümer cautions that “to be
queer implies that not everyone is queer in the same way” (97), recog-
nising the ongoing importance of sexual subjectivity to queer reminds
us that its celebration of multiplicity and fluidity also requires accept-
ing other concepts of queer that do not emphasise multiplicity and
fluidity.4 In keeping with David Halperin’s observation that queer “de-
marcates not a positivity but a positionality” (Saint Foucault 61), and
the frequently cited formulation in which queer is understood as a
verb — a process of interpreting and interacting with the text — rather
than a noun — a stable and identifiable property of a text5 — we
might understand queer as a series of multiple and intersecting histo-
ries that cannot be reduced to a single orthodoxy. Rather than clarify-
ing — or policing — what queer means, then, we might instead more
productively focus on how queer means.
It is precisely such a shift that is reflected in the concept and
practice of writing elaborated in Genet’s fiction. Genet’s narratives, as
we have already seen above, describe themselves as composed in and
against a hostile, normative language. In emphasising the extent to
which homoeroticism cannot simply be represented in language, but to
which language itself must be actively worked on to allow the articu-
lation of marginalised experiences and desires, the concept and prac-
tice of writing elaborated in Genet’s novels is very similar to the post-
structuralist idea of writing as a play of differential relations that
––––––––––
4
As Nikki Sullivan recognises in A Critical Introduction to Queer Theory, the
theorisation of queer as fluid and unstable, as something that eludes definition or
categorisation, is itself a form of operative definition. Sullivan writes: “the term queer
does inform the ways in which a range of practices and identities are interpreted,
judged, evaluated and positioned: queer does signify in specific, if unacknowledged,
ways” (67; original emphasis)
5
In his Queer Theories, Donald Hall sees these not as alternatives but as
multiple possibilities of queer (12-15).
operates without positive terms. This is nowhere more evident than in

his celebration of lying, in which duplicity is seen to open up a space
of doubleness within language, through which it can be made to sig-
nify differently. Genet describes this strategic approach to, and appro-
priation of, dominant languages in a light-hearted but nonetheless
accurate way in his short article “What I Like About the English is
That They are Such Liars,” in which, after praising the falseness and
duplicity of the English, he notes slyly:
I do, of course, realise that I am not popular among the English. And I sup-
pose from one point of view it might even be courteous on my part to recip-
rocate this sentiment. On the other hand, it might be amusing for me to
announce just how much they were admired by me, me, a Catholic, a thief,
a Frenchman and a queer as well (11).6
The approach to a disapproving culture outlined here — in which,

rather than resisting or confronting it, Genet conversely, and per-
versely, enthusiastically agrees with it, on the principle that this will
be more disruptive than any direct opposition — is central to the
writing practice developed in his fiction.
The term Genet uses for the various strategies by which this re-
signification can be effected is “perversion,” his descriptions of which
reveal an investment in the semantic and political potentiality of flu-
idity and multiplicity similar to that found in queer theory. In Notre-
Dame-des-Fleurs, for instance, Genet describes the process by which
the macs formulate their argot through a corruption and denaturalisa-
tion of bourgeois language: “les expressions venues du monde habi-
tuel, et violées par les macs, adaptées par eux à leurs besoins
mystérieux, perverties, dénaturées, jetées au ruisseau” (NDF 42). This
perversion of words is central to Genet’s homoerotics, often taking the
form of a linguistic eroticisation that teases out unexpectedly salacious
meanings from within regular words in a way that both mobilises and
transforms their usual meanings: “Le mot violon,” Genet notes in
Notre-Dame-des-Fleurs, “commençant par viol” (65-66). As Genet’s
discussions of his writing process make clear, he views perverting the
dominant language as a way to disrupt its normativity, producing
corollary transformations of the dominant culture as a whole. In an
––––––––––
6
This text has only been published in English.
Stephens 141
interview with Michèle Manceaux, he explained: “je ne pouvais pas

changer le monde tout seul. Je ne pouvais que le pervertir, le corrom-
pre un peu. Ce que j’ai tenté de faire par une corruption du langage,
c’est-à-dire à l’intérieur de cette langue française qui a l’air d’être si
noble” (L’ennemi déclaré 56). The connection Genet here emphasises
between a linguistic perversion — a corruption of the meaning of par-
ticular words — and a perversion that affects and infects other cultural
systems — inciting a broader cultural change — is a key part of
Genet’s work. As Scott Durham recognises in his editor’s preface to
In the Language of the Enemy, Genet’s writing is
less a matter of representing a marginal subjectivity in the language of the

official culture than of making a subaltern or perverse use of that language
itself. [...] Genet invites us to read his works as [...] sites that do not so much
attempt to overturn the monuments and forms of the dominant culture as to
corrupt them, putting them in promiscuous contact with languages and
practices that give expression to other desires and antipathies, and that
thereby draw from them unintended effects. (2)
Accordingly, perversity in Genet’s work is not simply the subject of

his narratives, with their celebration of handsome condemned murder-
ers, their defence of brutal penal institutions for children, and their
eroticisation of the French militia. This perversity is also an integral
part of their style and structure — reflected in their disorienting shifts
in perspective and tone, their tendency to conflate or discard charac-
ters, their homoeroticised use of a highly ornate literary French. The
importance of this approach to language for Genet’s writing of homo-
eroticism is that it reframes perversion so that it is no longer seen as
the expression of a queer exteriority — of a perverse author whose
intentions determine the meaning of the text — but rather as a
dynamic within the text itself.
In this respect, Genet’s use of perversity pre-empts Dollimore’s
theorisation of the perverse dynamic in Sexual Dissidence as that
which problematises the traditional relationship between dominant
and subordinate terms, revealing “certain instabilities and contradic-
tions within dominant structures which exist by virtue of exactly what
those structures simultaneously contain and exclude” (33). Homo-
sexuality itself exemplifies this, Dollimore argues, as it is paradoxi-
cally both socially marginal and symbolically central: this is the
“paradox of perversion,” he writes, “it is very often perceived as at

once utterly alien to what it threatens, and yet, mysteriously inherent
within it [...]. [T]he perverse dynamic signifies the potential of those
paradoxes to destabilise, to provoke discoherence” (121). Genet’s
description of writing as perverting regular or literary French operates
in a similar way, enabling the articulation of homoerotic experiences
and desires within a language that seems oppressively heteronorma-
tive, and doing so, moreover, in a way that does not depend on the
transparency to language of an identifiable sexual subjectivity. Ac-
cordingly, Genet’s perverse use of French foregrounds the potential of
writing itself as a way to think through the tension between sexuality
and subjectivity in contemporary queer theory.
If this aspect of Genet’s work has been so widely overlooked, it
is because the issue of writing itself remains under-theorised within
both gay and queer criticism. One of the only substantial examinations
of the idea of queer writing can be found in Lee Edelman’s Homo-
graphesis: Essays in Gay Literary and Cultural Theory. Edelman
argues that writing about same-sex desire and relationships needs to
take into account the extent to which inscriptions of (male) homo-
sexuality occur “within a tropology that produces him in a determin-
ing relation to inscription itself” (9). In response, Edelman develops
the concept of writing he terms homographesis, which, as he explains,
“would name a double operation: one serving the ideological purposes
of a conservative social order intent on codifying identities in its
labour of disciplinary inscription, and the other resistant to that cate-
gorisation, intent on de-scribing the identities that order has so oppres-
sively inscribed” (10). The instability and uncertainty that arise from
this double function are, Edelman emphasises, central to the problem-
atic of homographesis. Like the double operation of homographesis,
Genet’s perverse writing figures sexuality as a play of differential re-
lations along a chain of signification. Moreover, in writing perversity
as a dynamic, rather than an identity, Genet avoids representing sexu-
ality as a single, stable identity or practice, shifting the focus instead
to the process of its writing. Perversity, then, provides a way to main-
tain the centrality of sex and eroticism to the narrative without
assuming these to be the coherent expression of a stable sexual
identity. The important contribution Genet’s writing has to make to
GLBTQ studies in this regard is that it enables us to see queer itself as
Stephens 143
something that arises from the play of terms along a set of differential
signifying relations: that is, as itself structured like writing. As such,
Genet’s metafictive problematisation of the difficulty of writing ho-
moerotically demonstrates that queer writing need neither naturalise
nor negate the role (or queerness) of the writer. In this way, Genet’s
writing thus helps us think through what queer writing might entail
because it emphatically resists not only a simplistic identification of
the writing subject with the text produced but also the erasure of that
subject from the scene of the text.
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Bristow, Joseph, ed. Sexual Sameness: Textual Differences in Lesbian and
Gay Writing. London, New York: Routledge, 1992.
Bullaro, Grace Russo. “Genet: Gay Deceiver or Repressed Homosexual?”
Flowers and Revolution: A Collection of Writings on Jean Genet. Ed.
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_____. How to do the History of Homosexuality. Chicago: University of Chi-
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Hélène Fleckinger
Université Paris I Panthéon-Sorbonne
Nous sommes un fléau social:

Cinéma, vidéo et luttes homosexuelles
Au début des années 70, en France, sous l’impulsion d’un nouveau

militantisme homosexuel, radical et révolutionnaire, et dans le contexte
d’un renouveau du cinéma militant, des gays et des lesbiennes commen-
cent à s’emparer de la caméra pour lutter contre leur oppression spéci-
fique, exprimer leur désir et étendre leur combat. Cinéma et vidéo
doivent non seulement appuyer le mouvement homosexuel, mais encore
subvertir les normes sociales oppressives grâce à un travail critique. Il
s’agira de montrer en quoi le cinéma militant homosexuel des années 70
introduit une rupture tant du point de vue politique qu’esthétique, grâce
à une démarche politique d’autoreprésentation, une esthétique fondée
sur la représentation de la sexualité et une remise en cause des normes
qui permet d’y voir les prémisses d’un cinéma queer.
________________________
“La pensée d’une vie possible n’est un luxe

que pour ceux qui savent déjà qu’ils sont pos-
sibles, qu’ils existent. Pour ceux qui cher-
chent encore à devenir possibles, la possibilité
est une nécessité”. — Judith Butler, Défaire
le genre (249)
10 mars 1971, salle Pleyel, à Paris. Des filles du Mouvement de

Libération des Femmes (MLF) et des homosexuels des deux sexes
interrompent l’émission publique de Ménie Grégoire consacrée à
l’homosexualité, qu’elle envisage comme un “accident ”, “une imma-

turité” qui ne peut que rendre malheureux/euse et provoquer la cul-
pabilité. L’estrade est rapidement envahie et les invité-e-s s’enfuient
sous les cris: “Ce n’est pas vrai, on ne souffre pas”, “Les travelos avec
nous!” Au cours de cette action, est créé le Front Homosexuel
d’Action Révolutionnaire (FHAR), qui marque l’apparition d’une
nouvelle forme de militantisme homosexuel en France, très influencé
par les mobilisations de mai 68, dans un contexte de répression de
l’homosexualité.1 C’est un mouvement informel, non centralisé et non
hiérarchique, à l’image du mouvement des femmes, 2 qui appelle les
homosexuel-le-s à ne plus “raser les murs”, qui entend dénoncer le
“racisme sexuel des hétéro-flics”,3 “prendre d’assaut et [...] détruire la
‘normalité sexuelle fasciste’” (FHAR 11).
Au même moment, dans la foulée des “États généraux du
cinéma” fondés le 17 mai 1968, dont l’un des objectifs est de rendre
l’expression cinématographique accessible à toutes et à tous, le ciné-
ma dit “militant” connaît un renouveau. Il entend traiter de “tous les
problèmes de la vie concrète” de celles et ceux que le capitalisme
opprime et “que le cinéma officiel oublie au profit de l’illustration des
mythologies personnelles des ‘artistes’ et des ‘auteurs’” (Hennebelle,
Lebel et Serceau 52). Il donne ainsi la parole à des personnes qui en
avaient été privées jusque-là, et il adopte souvent la forme documen-
taire.
C’est dans ce contexte que des gays et des lesbiennes — parmi
lesquel-le-s Lionel Soukaz, Maria Klonaris et Katerina Thomadaki, les
femmes du collectif “Vidéa” — commencent à s’emparer de la caméra
pour s’exprimer et accompagner les luttes en élargissant la prise de
1
En 1960, un sous-amendement déposé par le député Mirguet fait de
l’homosexualité un “fléau social” que les pouvoirs publics doivent endiguer, aux côtés
de l’alcoolisme et de la tuberculose. L’offensive homophobe de l’État est ainsi
renforcée, dans la lignée des lois vichystes de 1942 qui réintroduisaient la volonté de
réprimer l’homosexualité alors que la Révolution française avait fait disparaître le
crime de sodomie en 1791.
2
Il importe de souligner le lien étroit qui, dès les années 70, unit mouvement
féministe et mouvement homosexuel dans le combat pour “la libre disposition de son
corps” — et de sa sexualité.
3
Le FHAR donne cette définition de l’“hétéro-flic”: “qui érige(!) son hétérosex-
ualité en seule forme ‘normale’ d’amour et en profite pour réprimer ceux et celles qui
ne l’imitent pas” (14).
Fleckinger 147
conscience. Cinéma et vidéo sont alors conçus comme des moyens de

combattre leur oppression: dénoncer le “racisme sexuel” mais aussi
figurer la révolution du désir. L’esthétique cinématographique se voit
dotée d’une fonction politique. Entendus comme des discours visuels
susceptibles de poser en images les questions politico-sexuelles, les
films et vidéogrammes doivent contribuer à la transformation de la
société par la mise en œuvre du principe politique “mon corps
m’appartient”. Dans quelle mesure la production homosexuelle des
années 70 en France témoigne-t-elle de la puissance du cinéma pour
“défaire le genre” (Butler), se dégager de sa violence normative et
créer les conditions d’une vie possible?
Vers une visibilité active

Jusque dans les années 60, en France, la culture, les arts et surtout
la littérature ont souvent servi de refuge à l’expression des désirs
homosexuels. Le très respectable groupe “homophile” Arcadie, fondé
par André Baudry en 1954, s’appuie ainsi sur un terrain préparé par
les écrivains: il se présente comme une “revue littéraire et scienti-
fique” visant à éclairer les causes de l’homosexualité et à éduquer les
“homophiles”. Le cinéma s’est aussi fait l’écho de cette “histoire
secrète”, mais dans une moindre mesure. Les spectateurs et specta-
trices, tel-le-s Serge Daney, pouvaient surtout “décoder” les films à
l’aune de leur désir: “Devenir, le plus consciemment du monde,
cinéphile, c’était s’identifier à autre chose” (82).
Si la présence des gays, et surtout des lesbiennes, demeure mar-
ginale jusqu’aux années 60, les personnages homosexuels n’ont
cependant jamais été exclus du champ cinématographique. Il faut donc
se garder de croire en un scénario idéaliste, selon lequel, dans les
années 70, les homosexuel-le-s perceraient enfin l’écran, passeraient
de l’invisibilité à la visibilité. Le cinéma n’a jamais cessé de montrer
des gays et des lesbiennes, seulement il l’a fait “en leur assignant des
rôles différents suivant les contextes” (Bourcier 14), et le plus souvent
à coups de clichés dévalorisants. Or “quand les [gays] et les lesbiennes
sont rendus visibles de façon stéréotypée par ou pour un public hétéro,
ils restent invisibles pour un public [gay] et lesbien”, souligne Marie-
Hélène Bourcier (13). Il convient donc plutôt de s’interroger sur les
différentes formes de visibilité et de distinguer une “visibilité
passive”, celle où les gays et les lesbiennes sont représenté-e-s par

d’autres, et une “visibilité active”, qui caractérise les images produites
par eux/elles-mêmes.
C’est précisément ce qui se joue dans les années 70. Alors que les
militant-e-s du FHAR, puis du GLH-PQ,4 appellent les homosexuel-
le-s à ne plus se cacher ni céder à l’idéologie de la honte, le cinéma
acquiert un véritable pouvoir politique. Conscient-e-s que le cinéma
ne reflète pas seulement des attitudes sociales mais qu’il contribue à
les renforcer, concient-e-s que la quasi totalité des images sont
conçues par (et pour) des hommes hétérosexuels, les gays et les les-
biennes décident de prendre en charge leur image comme ils/elles
prennent en charge leur libération. Si la décennie 70 marque une rup-
ture, c’est donc dans la mesure où la visibilité active coïncide désor-
mais avec une démarche politique d’autoreprésentation. Le cinéma
devient un outil pour s’affirmer, se (re)trouver et instaurer un nouveau
rapport de force:
Nous sommes avec les femmes le tapis moral sur lequel vous essuyez votre
conscience. Nous disons ici que nous en avons assez, que vous ne nous cas-
serez plus la gueule, parce que nous nous défendrons, que nous pourchasse-
rons votre racisme jusque dans le langage. Nous disons plus: nous ne nous
contenterons plus de nous défendre, nous allons attaquer. (FHAR 9)
Dans cet effort pour lutter contre les images hétéronormatives, il

s’agit moins de créer des personnages homosexuels positifs pour faire
contrepoint aux personnages négatifs des fictions commerciales, que
d’inventer des modèles de désir, de lutte et de résistance.
La bande vidéo Le FHAR (1971), réalisée par Carole Rousso-
poulos en collaboration avec les militant-e-s du mouvement, relève de
cette démarche politique et peut être considérée comme le premier
documentaire militant homosexuel. La réalisatrice, féministe radicale
et pionnière de la vidéo en France, raconte qu’elle s’est rendue à l’une
des premières réunions du FHAR aux Beaux-Arts, d’abord sans
caméra, et que très vite, les camarades lui ont demandé de filmer le
4
Le FHAR disparaît en 1974. Sur ses traces, se créent, entre 1974 et 1976, les
Groupes de Libération Homosexuelle (GLH), qui se scindent à leur tour en plusieurs
tendances, dont les plus importantes sont la tendance “Groupes de base”, réformiste,
et la tendance “folle”, révolutionnaire, appelée “Politique et Quotidien”.
Fleckinger 149
défilé du 1er mai. C’était la première fois qu’apparaissait un cortège

homosexuel. Les slogans fusent: “Les pédés dans la rue”, “Nous
sommes un fléau social”, “À bas les phallocrates!” Carole Rousso-
poulos participe à la manifestation, caméra au poing, et filme ensuite
les discussions animées qui se déroulent à l’université de Vincennes
lors de la projection des rushs qu’elle a tournés.
À l’image du FHAR, les films militants homosexuels sont tournés
avec de faibles budgets, en marge du système commercial de produc-
tion-distribution, et s’assignent une tâche d’intervention politique à
court terme ou de pénétration idéologique à long terme. Leur diffusion
se fait dans des réseaux spécifiques: réunions militantes, sections de
festivals expérimentaux, notamment super 8, mais, surtout, festivals
de films de femmes, à forte participation lesbienne, 5 et festivals à thé-
matique homosexuelle, où les films gays sont largement majoritaires. 6
Ces festivals se multiplient dans la seconde moitié des années 70
et, véritables tribunes politiques, jouent un rôle décisif dans le
développement du mouvement homosexuel. On y montre en effet des
films fondateurs, comme Un chant d’amour (1950) de Jean Genet,
mais aussi des réalisations contemporaines ouvertement militantes. En
1978, le festival de la Pagode permet d’amplifier la campagne du
GLH-PQ, qui, au printemps, annonce qu’il présentera cinq candidats
homosexuels aux élections législatives. Le but est de donner la parole
aux homosexuel-le-s, d’interpeller les candidat-e-s des différents
partis, de demander la suppression des lois discriminatoires et le droit
pour les mineur-e-s de vivre librement leur sexualité.
5
On peut citer le festival Musidora, premier festival de films de femmes,
organisé à Paris en avril 1974, et le festival international de films de femmes de
Sceaux (qui s’installera ensuite à Créteil), fondé en 1979. Ce n’est qu’à partir de 1989,
avec la création du festival non mixte “Quand les lesbiennes se font du cinéma”
(repris en 1991 par l’association “Cineffable”), que les lesbiennes se verront consacrer
des projections spécifiques.
6
Après la “Semaine homosexuelle” mise en place par Frédéric Mitterand dans
son cinéma l’Olympic en avril 1977, les programmations du Festival de la Rochelle et
du Festival d’Hyères la même année, Lionel Soukaz organise en 1978, en collabora-
tion avec le GLH-PQ, la “Quinzaine du cinéma homosexuel”, au cinéma La Pagode à
Paris. Cinquante films sont programmés, mais dix jours après l’ouverture, Michel
d’Ornano, ministre de la culture, interdit à la projection plus de dix-sept films: des
copies sont saisies par la police. Voir Jablonski.
À travers le cinéma militant, les réalisateurs et réalisatrices

homosexuel-le-s souhaitent retrouver des filiations artistiques et poli-
tiques, s’inscrire dans une histoire dont ils/elles entendent faire
l’archéologie à la manière de Foucault. Un enjeu de ces films et vi-
déos consiste à enrichir les savoirs sur les homosexualités et à répon-
dre à une volonté et une exigence de (re)découvertes historiques.
Réalisé entre 1978 et 1979 par Lionel Soukaz en collaboration
avec Guy Hocquenghem, le film Race d’Ep: un siècle d’images de
l’homosexualité,7 est en France le premier film militant qui raconte
l’histoire de l’homosexualité (surtout celle des hommes) depuis
l’invention du mot en 1869 par un médecin hongrois, jusqu’aux an-
nées 80. Le film se compose de quatre parties: “Le temps de la pose”
ou “le temps des esthètes” (1880-1920), centré sur le baron von
Gloeden et ses photographies de jeunes Siciliens; “Le troisième sexe”
ou “des années folles à l’extermination” (1920-1945) autour du Berlin
d’avant-guerre, avec l’explosion du mouvement homosexuel, puis la
violente répression par les Nazis; “Sweet sixteen in the sixties” ou la
libération générale des mœurs et les plaisirs qu’elle amène à Amster-
dam, Berlin, la côte Ouest et San Francisco; enfin “Royal Opéra”, qui
représente le retour au ghetto dans les années 80, à travers une nuit de
drague entre un Américain de passage et une “folle” parisienne. Les
réalisateurs ne prétendent pas être exhaustifs, mais décident de “partir
d’évènements réels, pour faire un film d’information et de fiction”
(Hocquenghem et Soukaz 108).
En pleine contestation des pratiques idéologiques et institution-

nelles des universités et dans un contexte d’émergence des études gays
et lesbiennes, une première génération de chercheur-e-s et de militant-
e-s entreprend de reconstituer l’histoire des individus, des commu-
nautés, des mouvements, à partir de la perspective même des dominé-
e-s. Félix Guattari souligne ainsi: “Mai 68 nous a appris à lire sur les
murs et, depuis on a commencé à déchiffrer les graffitis dans les pri-
sons, les asiles, et aujourd’hui dans les pissotières. C’est tout un ‘nou-
vel esprit scientifique’ qui est à refaire!” (Recherches 3).
7
En octobre 1979, le film est classé X par la “commission de contrôle cinéma-
tographique”. Grâce à une pétition parue dans la presse et signée notamment par
Foucault, Barthes, Duras, Deleuze, Beauvoir et Sartre, le film sort finalement en salle,
mais avec de larges coupes. Il fait plus de 100 000 entrées et devient une référence.
Fleckinger 151
Les films et vidéos militants homosexuels des années 70 parti-

cipent donc à la création de ce nouveau contre-savoir aux formes
variées et originales, aux côtés des publications écrites.
“Nous ne jouissons pas dans le système”8

Dans les années 70, les films militants homosexuels se font le
relais d’une conception révolutionnaire de l’homosexualité. Ils
dénoncent l’invention récente de l’homosexualité comme “catégorie
psycho-policière” produite par le discours médical, et l’envisagent
comme allant de pair avec sa répression par les “flickiâtres”, néolo-
gisme associant les mots “flics” et “psychiatres”. La société capitaliste
fabriquerait de l’homosexuel-le comme elle produirait du prolétaire, et
un-e homosexuel-le conscient-e ne pourrait qu’être révolté-e (Hoc-
quenghem Désir 25-26). Le combat homosexuel se veut alors radical,
loin de toute volonté de banalisation et encore moins de “normalisa-
tion” de l’homosexualité. “Vous dites que la société doit intégrer les
homosexuels, moi je dis que les homosexuels doivent désintégrer la
société!” (Girard 81), lance ainsi Françoise d’Eaubonne à André
Baudry. Le cinéma militant homosexuel représente la réalité du désir
homosexuel, en l’inscrivant dans les rapports de pouvoir qui régissent
la société.
Les films de Lionel Soukaz, souvent considéré comme le pion-
nier du “cinéma gay” en France, incarnent ainsi l’idée de Daniel
Guérin d’un passage possible, sinon nécessaire, “d’une dissidence
sexuelle à la révolution”. Le Sexe des anges (1977), en s’attaquant aux
clichés sur l’homosexualité et à la difficulté d’être un jeune homo-
sexuel dans une société de répression, montre la voie d’une dédra-
matisation de la sexualité. “Notre trou du cul est révolutionnaire!”: le
réalisateur fait sien cet énoncé performatif qui dévoile la zone privée,
interdite, du corps bourgeois. La conclusion du film — “Les anges ont
un sexe et ils s’en servent pour leur bonheur” — fait directement écho
à un formule de l’époque: “Il existe des pédés heureux!” Car c’est la
question de la (sur)vie — savoir si la vie même sera possible — qui
est au cœur du cinéma militant homosexuel. Comme le dit Judith
Butler à propos du genre et de la politique féministe:
8
La formule est employée dans un tract du FHAR distribué en juin 1971 au
moment de la sortie du film Mort à Venise de Visconti.
La conception de la politique qui opère ici est principalement concernée par

la question de la survie; il s’agit de se demander comment créer un monde
dans lequel ceux qui définissent leur genre et leur désir comme étant non
normatifs peuvent vivre et s’épanouir sans la menace extérieure de la vio-
lence et sans le sentiment envahissant de leur irréalité, qui peut conduire au
suicide ou à une vie suicidaire. (248)
“Vivre”: tel est précisément le mot récurrent d’un autre film de

Lionel Soukaz: Ixe (1980).9 Un film plus âpre et violent que Le Sexe
des anges, qui articule désir homosexuel, autodestruction et critique
politique de la société en général. Comment réussir à vivre dans une
société qui vous tue? “X est un écartèlement: aux quatre points cardi-
naux, aux quatre extrémités de la croix, la Guerre, le Sexe, la Religion
et la Drogue”, déclare Lionel Soukaz. Un jeune homme, “pédé”, se
pique pour “éprouver toute l’horreur du monde face à sa télé”. Des
images “autorisées” — celles de la télévision — interfèrent avec des
images “non autorisées”: celles de la vie du réalisateur. Les images du
pape qui condamne les homosexuel-le-s s’entremêlent avec des ima-
ges de scènes de sodomie, des images de Jacques Chirac en débat avec
des images de séances de shoot. Lionel Soukaz, non seulement oppose
systématiquement représentations sociales dominantes et dominées,
mais encore les réagence pour les subvertir et mieux les dénoncer. Les
images du réel viennent détruire l’imagerie officielle.
Blasphème, nus, étreintes, drague, drogue, shoots, détournements d’images

et de sons: un déferlement de collages qui nous rappelle qu’instant par
instant il faudrait ne pas oublier de vivre. [...] on dirait la version pop fréné-
tique des textes de Michel Foucault sur ‘l’usage des plaisirs’. Ixe c’est le
pamphlet ultime, rédigé au nom du désir. (Nicole Brenez, inédit, décembre
2001)
À travers leurs films, les cinéastes militant-e-s homosexuel-le-s

entendent proposer une nouvelle vision de la sexualité, une vision
politique, dégagée de la contrainte à l’hétérosexualité10 et où le plaisir
9
Lionel Soukaz réalise ce film pour encourir délibérémment les foudres de la
censure. Le film est effectivement interdit en 1981, avant d’être réhabilité grâce à la
mobilisation de personnalités.
10
“L’hétérosexualité est une construction culturelle qui justifie le système entier
de domination sociale fondé sur la fonction de la reproduction obligatoire pour les
femmes et sur l’appropriation de cette reproduction” (Wittig 102).
Fleckinger 153
devient premier. Monique Wittig souligne ainsi: “À partir du moment

où pour nous la sexualité n’a pas d’autre finalité que son exercice, ce
doit être par-dessus tout un exercice de subjectivité qui inclut la
recherche du plaisir et qui ne saurait faire l’objet d’aucune réduction
hétérosexuelle” (108).
Il faut pourtant distinguer le cinéma militant lesbien du cinéma
militant gay en raison de la complexité des rapports entre hommes et
femmes. Se trouvant à l’intersection des mouvements homosexuel et
féministe, les lesbiennes hésitent d’abord entre ces deux alliances,
mais quittent très rapidement le FHAR pour rester au MLF:11 “Les
femmes sont opprimées en tant que femmes avant de l’être en tant
qu’homosexuelles; les hommes ne sont réprimés qu’en tant qu’homo-
sexuels, jamais en tant qu’hommes”, déclare François d’Eaubonne
(Girard 102).
Ainsi, dans la production militante lesbienne, c’est un point de
vue féministe qui domine le plus souvent. Or, dans les années 70, les
femmes envisagent la sexualité en termes difficiles, à travers les
drames de la maternité non voulue et les violences. Les féministes
sont en lutte pour l’avortement, contre le viol, elles s’opposent à la
pornographie, et s’intéressent encore peu aux expérimentations
sexuelles féminines. Les lesbiennes ne se retrouvent donc pas dans
l’approche souvent joyeuse, ludique et crue dont les gays témoignent à
travers leurs films. Comme le dit Carl Wittman, théoricien du “Gay
Liberation Front”: “Le sexe a d’abord été pour eux [les gays] un ins-
trument de libération, alors que pour chaque femme, au départ, il est
une menace de récupération et d’aliénation” (Girard 88). Certes, à
l’image des autres femmes, les lesbiennes envisagent la sexualité
comme le nœud de leur oppression: l’instrument de la domination et le
levier de leur libération. Mais c’est le côté sombre de la sexualité qui
prévaut. Dans les années 70, en France, très peu de films militants
lesbiens abordent clairement la question du plaisir.
La plupart des réalisatrices lesbiennes proposent un cinéma
d’intervention fondé sur un travail de contre-information. Ainsi, les
11
Les lesbiennes quittent le FHAR dès 1971 pour créer les “Gouines rouges”,
groupe qui disparaît en 1973. Elles s’investissent peu dans les GLH. En 1980, au sein
de la revue Questions féministes, une querelle oppose Christine Delphy et Monique
Wittig qui se déclare en faveur du séparatisme lesbien. Les débats provoquent une
scission théorique et politique, qui donne naissance au courant du lesbianisme radical.
femmes du collectif Vidéa,12 majoritairement lesbiennes, entendent se

servir de la vidéo “pour exprimer des revendications féministes et lut-
ter par là contre l’oppression masculine et le chauvinisme mâle”
(Hennebelle 147). Seule la bande vidéo Charades (1977), réalisée par
Catherine Lahourcade, raconte une série d’histoires qui évoquent les
balbutiements de la culture lesbienne. Dans Manifestation contre la
répression de l’homosexualité: juin 1977 (1977), réalisé par “le
Lézard du péril mauve” et “Ortie 14, avatar de Vidéa”, à l’occasion de
la manifestation de gays et surtout de lesbiennes contre les déclara-
tions homophobes d’Anita Bryant, chanteuse populaire nord-
américaine et égérie de la droite religieuse fondamentaliste, c’est une
approche de la vidéo comme contre-pouvoir qui prévaut. La vidéo
alterne interviews des commerçant-e-s et des passant-e-s et images de
la manifestation. Aux déclarations homophobes — “C’est contre
nature”, “C’est pire qu’un homme et une femme”, “C’est une histoire
de chromosomes” — répondent slogans, banderoles et pancartes: “Je
n’ai pas honte, j’ai peur”, “Hétér-autorité Héterrorisme”, ou encore
“Avez-vous choisi d’être hétérosexuelle?”
Michèle Mayer, dans Que font les femmes de San Francisco?
(1979), est l’une des rares à aborder de front la sexualité lesbienne.
Elle y filme en super 8 les manifestations de rues, la fête homo-
sexuelle de 1978, et interviewe des lesbiennes sur la self-défense, la
masturbation, le sado-masochisme et l’insémination artificielle. On
trouve également, dans le champ expérimental, des expressions positi-
ves du désir féminin chez le couple de réalisatrices Maria Klonaris et
Katerina Thomadaki, qui développent un “cinéma corporel” entière-
ment fondé sur leur désir réciproque: “mes images sont brillance du
regard amoureux”, “mes images sont peau de regard”, “mon regard est
folie de toucher”, “ma beauté est celle du corps exposé dans ses désirs
et ses blessures” (10).
La production militante homosexuelle des années 70 en France se
divise donc en deux ensembles, que différencie leur approche de la
sexualité: des vidéos et des films réalisés par des lesbiennes en lien
avec le MLF, qui se présentent avant tout comme féministes, qui
traitent rarement du plaisir sexuel et dont la visiblité est souvent
12
Le collectif Vidéa, animé par Catherine Lahourcade, Syn Guérin, Anne-Marie
Faure et Isabelle Fraisse, est fondé en juillet 1974. C’est le premier collectif vidéo
composé exclusivement de femmes.
Fleckinger 155
moindre; et des films réalisés par des gays, pour la plupart expéri-
mentaux, dans la lignée du cinéma américain underground des années
60, beaucoup plus sexualisés, parfois pornographiques.
Expérimentations politiques, expérimentations esthétiques

Si le cinéma militant homosexuel est d’abord mal reçu par la
critique de cinéma, y compris militante,13 ses réussites esthétiques sont
progressivement reconnues. À la fin des années 70, certain-e-s
commencent à le considérer, aux côtés du cinéma féministe, comme
ouvrant des voies inédites dans le cinéma militant. C’est qu’il porte en
lui le projet des nouvelles luttes et d’abord le combat contre toutes les
normes. Conscient-e-s que les formes cinématographiques ne sont pas
neutres et qu’une esthétique militante ne peut qu’être fondée sur la
nécessité des luttes, les cinéastes homosexuel-le-s doivent s’affranchir
du cinéma dominant, hétéronormatif: la production homosexuelle se
lie ainsi aux formes les plus expérimentales du cinéma.
La spécificité des luttes homosexuelles — ouvrir un conflit poli-
tique à partir de l’intime — conduit le cinéma militant gay et lesbien à
mettre l’accent sur l’expérience vécue et le quotidien. Loin de glisser
dans la confession ou l’autofiction complaisante, il s’agit de partir de
soi-même pour développer une analyse politique, de dévoiler les rap-
ports de domination à partir du biographique, voire de l’autobio-
graphique. Le cinéma militant homosexuel incarne, d’un point de vue
esthétique, le principe “le personnel est politique”. Ainsi, Maria
Klonaris et Katerina Thomadaki mettent en scène leur propre corps,
par l’autorévélation:
En m’autorévélant, je passe de l’individuel au social. Je projette sur le social

mon je/femme-différence, femme-parole, femme-identité, femme-création:
mon je/femme interdit. Je vide sur le social le vécu de mon quotidien, de
mon inconscient, de mon imaginaire, de ma sexualité rebelle. Je pars d’un
vécu amoureux absolu et politique. (10)
13
L’affirmation que l’homosexualité peut être révolutionnaire est très mal
perçue par les milieux d’extrême-gauche “orthodoxes” et la réception du cinéma
militant homosexuel souffre de ce rejet politique.
Les films militants homosexuels partagent ainsi une approche

matérialiste: révéler que “des problèmes soi-disant subjectifs, ‘indivi-
duels’, ‘privés’ sont en fait des problèmes sociaux, des problèmes de
classe” (Wittig 62). Le sexe comme le genre y sont entendus comme
le produit de relations de pouvoir: l’homosexualité serait étroitement
liée — et modelée par — un contexte socioculturel particulier, un
moment historique donné. L’identité homosexuelle serait “faite de
pièces et de morceaux, comme une construction en force” (Hocquen-
ghem et Soukaz 110).
C’est ainsi que l’on peut discerner dans le cinéma militant homo-
sexuel des années 70 les prémisses d’un cinéma queer,14 bien que le
concept n’existe pas encore. Les films militants gays et lesbiens
déstabilisent tout discours en matière d’identité: ils critiquent les
idéologies essentialistes, refusent les oppositions binaires, dissocient
“sexe” et “genre” et proposent des identités multiples et fluctuantes.
Les catégories de l’identité y sont perçues comme catégories normali-
satrices et/ou point de départ d’une contestation, et les films témoi-
gnent d’une résistance à nommer le désir, à le catégoriser, l’analyser,
le contrôler. De fait, le FHAR semble avoir défriché certaines problé-
matiques de la future théorie queer, qui en déplacera toutefois les
enjeux. On perçoit dès ses débuts le refus de l’assignation des homo-
sexuel-le-s à une identité fixe:
[...] nous, homosexuels, refusons tous les rôles: parce que c’est l’idée même
de Rôle qui nous répugne. Nous ne voulons être ni hommes, ni femmes —
et les camarades travestis peuvent l’expliquer le mieux. Nous savons que la
société a peur de tout ce qui vient du plus profond de nous-mêmes, parce
qu’elle doit classer pour régner. Identifier pour opprimer. [...] Notre incohé-
rence, notre instabilité, effraient les bourgeois. (FHAR 73)
Du côté du cinéma militant gay, une filiation avec le queer se

dessine à travers une esthétique camp,15 qui permet un jeu critique sur
14
Le mouvement queer est né aux états-Unis au début des années 90. Le terme,
qui résonne d’abord comme une injure, renvoie à ce qui est de “travers”, par
opposition au straight (ce qui est droit) et qui désigne les hétérosexuel-le-s, mais il
peut aussi se traduire par “bizarre” ou “étrange”.
15
Le mot camp apparaît dans l’Angleterre victorienne du début du XXe siècle
pour désigner la gestuelle exagérée des “folles”. D’abord identification injurieuse, les
gays se réapproprient ensuite le terme dans un état d’esprit d’autodérision et de
subversion.
Fleckinger 157
les stéréotypes sexuels. Le camp, dont les quatre éléments de base

sont l’ironie, l’esthétisme, la théâtralité et l’humour, permet aux réali-
sateurs homosexuels de montrer que les modèles sociaux ne sont pas
“naturels”, mais artificiels. Il devient arme de résistance par sa capa-
cité, politiquement puissante, à dynamiter normes et conventions.
La “folle”,16 “patchwork de rue, d’art, de préciosité et de vul-
garité qui form[e] le tissu complexe d’un mode d’appréhension du
monde sans fadeur ni bon sens” (Hocquenghem Dérive 141), devient
ainsi une figure récurrente du cinéma militant gay des années 70. Elle
incarne avec panache l’idée d’une performativité du genre et la possi-
bilité qu’il soit collectivement resignifié. La “folle”, en tant que
“trans-genre”, est en effet cousine du “drag”, dont Judith Butler
souligne la signification politique: “Avec le drag, il ne s’agit pas
simplement de reproduire un spectacle agréable et subversif, mais
d’allégoriser les moyens spectaculaires et lourds de conséquences par
lesquels la réalité est à la fois reproduite et contestée” (248).
On retrouve ainsi des personnages de “folles” dans les films de
Lionel Soukaz, mais également dans des films antérieurs qui l’ont
influencé, notamment Boxing Match (1973) d’Isobel Mendelson,
tourné avec les amis du “Petit Robert”, célèbre restaurant, bar, cabaret
gay parisien, ou encore La Banque du sperme (1975) réalisé par
Philippe Genet et Pierre Chabal, qui met en scène le même groupe
avec les “gazolines”17 du FHAR. C’est dans le même esprit que Lionel
Soukaz réalise des films comme Boy Friend 1 et Boy Friend 2 (1976-
77) ou Le Sexe des anges (1977), “provocateurs et généreux”, conçus
comme des “films publicitaires, des manifestes”. Les rapports de
l’image et du son y renforcent une impression de légèreté: “La voix
off me donne la possibilité d’entrer de plain-pied dans le monde de la
poésie mais aussi du mensonge, du détournement”, déclare Lionel
Soukaz (Garsi 52).
Du côté des femmes, Maria Klonaris et Katerina Thomadaki, par
leur rejet des définitions closes, s’inscrivent également dans la pers-
pective queer. Elles refusent d’ailleurs d’être classées comme
16
Le FHAR donne cette définition des “folles”: “nos frères. Les homo-flics
comme les hétéro-flics leur reprochent d’être efféminés, maniérés, de s’afficher. Objet
de mépris pour beaucoup de gens, les folles ne sont acceptées que si elles amusent
(notamment dans les milieux des arts et des lettres)” (14).
17
Tendance “folle” du FHAR.
“réalisatrices lesbiennes” et disent espérer que le “cinéma de l’homo-

sexualité féminine” ne sera jamais une catégorie, “que ce ne sera que
des femmes en train d’explorer leur vécu et de le donner à vivre aux
autres. Et que ces images, ces désirs, ces paroles, ces dérives seront
trop singuliers pour pouvoir être classés dans une quelconque caté-
gorie” (23). Maria Klonaris et Katerina Thomadaki invitent à penser
l’éclatement des identités sexuelles, qu’elles filment comme une
complexité en mouvement dès 1975-76, avec Double Labyrinthe. Leur
premier film, qu’elles qualifient de “film intercorporel”, se présente
comme une
quête d’identité à travers une série de travestissements qui n’ont pas lieu par
l’intermédiaire de costumes mais par celui de gestes, de matières et d’objets.
Théorème du travestissement: superposant un autre comportement au quoti-
dien, à celui qui est socialement défini, les sujets recherchent les couches les
plus intimes de leur identité. (http://www.klonaris-thomadaki.net)
Le cinéma militant homosexuel se caractérise donc par le lien

intrinsèque qui unit — dans l’expérimentation concrète — ruptures
politique et esthétique, comme l’incarne le manifeste de Maria Klo-
naris et Katerina Thomadaki “14 slogans pour un cinéma de rupture”:
Contre l’institution cinématographique et ses mécanismes d’asservissement

du mental et du corps.
Contre les images illustratives prisonnières des fables sociales vendues par
le cinéma capitaliste. [...]
Pour une explosion d’images, de structures et de significations.
Pour un corps rebelle. [...]
Pour une réflexion active.
Pour toute identité rejetée par l’ordre social, identité culturelle, identité
mentale, identité sexuelle. (7)
Partir de son vécu, le transposer en images pour mieux le

transformer: telle est la démarche des cinéastes militant-e-s homo-
sexuel-le-s en France dans les années 70. “Nous sommes libres, c’est-
à-dire que nous voulons être dans notre nécessité et la comprendre”,
écrit un militant dans le premier bulletin du FHAR. Il n’est plus
question désormais de se laisser emprisonner, et les films et vidéos se
révèlent d’une efficacité redoutable pour “défaire le genre” et s’affran-
chir de sa violence normative.
Fleckinger 159
Le cinéma militant homosexuel invite, par ses découvertes for-

melles, à penser l’union entre engagement politique et recherche
esthétique, et à montrer les choses comme nous ne les avions encore
jamais vues. Comment en effet “changer la vie” sans changer la
vision? Par son lien avec le cinéma expérimental, il appelle à dyna-
miter les représentations habituelles du cinéma militant et remet en
cause la fracture souvent admise, et pourtant discutable, entre deux
cinémas d’“avant-garde” — politique et formel.
Mais les films militants homosexuels ne sont pas seulement sub-
versifs, ils se veulent profondément révolutionnaires. Ils travaillent la
spécificité du mouvement qu’ils accompagnent en révélant ce qu’il y a
de politique dans le privé, à travers la question de la sexualité.
La tradition révolutionnaire maintient comme évidente la division du public

et du privé. L’intervention homosexuelle possède cette caractéristique
propre de faire intervenir le privé, le petit secret honteux de la sexualité,
dans le public. (Hocquenghem Désir 158-59)
À la suite du féminisme, les luttes homosexuelles introduisent

une rupture dans la conception du militantisme selon un modèle de
“désubstantialisation”: la militance ne se fait pas au nom d’un discours
abstrait, mais au nom d’une nécessité existentielle. Le cinéma militant
homosexuel est l’héritier de cette caractéristique: il attaque la société
en figurant la révolution du désir et devient ainsi un “lieu de mobilisa-
tion érotique” (Garsi 48), entre politisation du désir et érotisation de la
politique.
Ouvrages cités
Biet, Christian, et Olivier Neveux, dir. Théâtre et cinéma militants (1966-
1981): Une histoire critique du spectacle militant. Vic-la-Gardiole:
L’Entretemps, 2007.
Bourcier, Marie-Hélène. “Le ciné Q de l’invisibilité à l’autoreprésentation”.
In ZOO, “Q comme queer”. Les Cahiers Gai Kitsch Camp 42 (1998).
Butler, Judith. Défaire le genre. Trad. Maxime Cervulle. Paris: Éditions
Amsterdam, 2006.
Daney, Serge. Persévérance. Paris: P.O.L., 1994.
FHAR. Rapport contre la normalité. Paris: Éditions Champ libre, 1971.
Garsi, Jean-François, dir. “Cinémas homosexuels”. CinémAction 15 (1981).

Girard, Jacques. Le Mouvement homosexuel en France 1945-1980. Paris: Sy-
ros, 1981.
Guattari, Félix, et al. “Trois milliards de pervers”. Recherches 12 (1973).
Hennebelle, Guy, dir. “Cinéma militant”. Cinéma d’aujourd’hui 5-6 (mars-
avril 1976).
_____, Jean-Patrick Lebel et Daniel Serceau. “L’irrésistible ascension du
cinéma militant”. Écran 31 (1974).
Hocquenghem, Guy. La Dérive homosexuelle. Paris: Éditions Universitaires,
1977.
_____. Le Désir homosexuel. Paris: Fayard, 2000.
_____, et Lionel Soukaz. “Du passé faisons table rose”. Masques 1 (1979).
Jablonski, Olivier. “De l’ouverture du ghetto à la dépolitisation: Les festivals
de films gais et lesbiens en France en questions”. Revue H 5-6 (1997).
Klonaris, Maria, et Katerina Thomadaki. Manifestes 1976-2002. Paris: Paris
Expérimental, 2003.
Wittig, Monique. La Pensée straight. Paris: Balland, 2001.
Filmographie sélective
Le F.H.A.R. (Front Homosexuel d’Action Révolutionnaire). Réalisation:
Carole Roussopoulos. 1971, vidéo 1/2 pouce, noir & blanc, 25 min.
Distribution: Centre audiovisuel Simone de Beauvoir.
Boxing match. Réalisation: Isobel Mendelson. 1973, super 8, couleur, 15 min.
La Banque du sperme. Réalisation: Philippe Genet et Pierre Chabal. 1975,
super 8, couleur, silencieux, 15 min.
Double labyrinthe. Réalisation: Maria Klonaris et Katerina Thomadaki.
1975-76, super 8, couleur, silencieux, 55 min.
Boy friend 1. Réalisation: Lionel Soukaz, 1976, super 8, couleur, 11 min.
Boy friend 2. Réalisation: Lionel Soukaz, 1977, super 8, couleur, 35 min.
Charades. Réalisation: Catherine Lahourcade. 1977, vidéo 1/2 pouce, noir &
blanc, 25 min.
Manifestation contre la répression de l’homosexualité: juin 1977.
Réalisation: le Lézard du péril mauve et Ortie 14, avatar de Vidéa.
1977, vidéo 1/2 pouce, noir & blanc, 23 min. Distribution: Centre
audiovisuel Simone de Beauvoir.
Le Sexe des anges. Réalisation: Lionel Soukaz. 1977, super 8, couleur, 40
min.
Fleckinger 161
Que font les femmes de San Francisco? Réalisation: Michèle Mayer. 1979,
super 8, couleur, 75 min.
Race d’Ep: un siècle d’images de l’homosexualité. Réalisation: Lionel
Soukaz et Guy Hocquenghem. 1978-1979, couleur, 90 min. Édition:
Platypus Vidéo. Voir aussi le livre publié aux Éditions libres-Hallier
(Paris) en 1979.
Ixe. Réalisation: Lionel Soukaz. 1980, 16 mm, couleur, 48 min. Édition:
Re:voir.
Philippe C. Dubois
Bucknell University
Révélations Intimes:
Vers une Cartographie Queer du Sud-Ouest
Cet essai propose une cartographie de l’espace queer, de ses manifesta-

tions et de ses modes de représentation, tels qu’ils sont pratiqués dans le
cinéma de François Ozon et l’écriture de Roland Barthes. Le Sud-Ouest
de la France et sa topographie particulière sont l’occasion pour l’un
comme pour l’autre de mettre en place des stratégies d’érotisation de
l’espace où se confondent les oppositions normatives public/privé. Se
dégage alors de ces pratiques une délocalisation transgressive du sexe et
de l’intime inscrite dans le cadre d’une reconfiguration (du) queer.
________________________
En France, le queer a été décrit comme “avant tout l’art de ne

jamais être où l’on vous attend” (Bourcier, Zoo 56). La formulation
souligne bien un de ses traits essentiels, à savoir l’ubiquité protéi-
forme de la pensée queer. Se jouant des attentes et déjouant la rigidité
des positionnements, l’art du queer remet en question notamment une
conception homogène de la sexualité, et ce aussi bien dans les rangs
hétéros que gais et lesbiens. On le sait, si certaines revendications
sociales se sont concrétisées dans une acceptation souvent superfi-
cielle de l’homosexualité, le désir d’intégration — nécessairement
normalisateur — s’est traduit dans les pays occidentaux par
l’embourgeoisement d’une certaine portion privilégiée de la popula-
tion homosexuelle (essentiellement blanche et masculine) de classe
moyenne. Sur le modèle hétéronormatif, la tentation du confort s’est
accompagnée ces dernières années d’une tendance marquée vers la
célébration du couple. Face à l’approche monolithique et au travail de
nivellement de certains discours conservateurs sur la sexualité, la

théorie queer s’est chargée de rappeler le rôle politique que joue la
pluralité transgressive des sexualités et de ses pratiques telles le SM,
le fisting, ou encore le leather queer (cuir queer ou queer2), sans
oublier les lesbiennes queer, les queer-bi, les straight queer, les trans-
queer etc. En se proclamant pro-sexe, le queer prend son (contre-)pied
par rapport aux campagnes anti-sexe et souvent homophobes, exigeant
du même coup un élargissement de la conceptualisation des sexualités
et de ses spatialisations réelles, fantasmatiques ou novatrices, telle le
cyberespace de drague par exemple, dernière forme en date d’un ima-
ginaire sexualisé.
Cet essai propose une cartographie de l’espace queer, de ses
manifestations et de ses modes de représentation. Géographiquement,
la discussion se concentre sur la région du Sud-Ouest de la France
dont la topographie particulière semble privilégier la circulation des
désirs et encourager leur mise en scène. Au cinéma, l’érotisation des
lieux, pratiquée de manière systématique et stratégique par François
Ozon, entraîne entre autres conséquences la dissolution des conven-
tions normatives qui opposent public/privé. L’acte de transgression se
situe ici dans un espace érotisé qui cherche à faire de l’intime ce que
Roland Barthes appelle le lieu d’une affirmation (Fragments 459). De
cette relocalisation de l’intimité, rendue possible au moyen de divers
processus d’énonciation, émerge un discours amoureux dont il sera
nécessaire de commenter les articulations. Pour cela, nous sera très
utile l’approche de Barthes précisément pour qui l’écriture participe
clairement à un désir d’érotisation de l’espace (critique cette fois)
transitant lui aussi par l’intime. Sous la lumière du Sud-Ouest, se
dégage alors un espace de drague situé en dehors de toute doxa et
reconfiguré selon une idée queer qui “se veut adjective et non subs-
tantive, relationnelle et non essentielle, stratégique et non dogmati-
que” (Le Brun-Cordier 36).
Alors que l’espace queer urbain a fait l’objet de représentations
littéraires et de commentaires renouvelés, certaines zones moins cen-
trales, jugées plus provinciales, restent encore en grande partie
ignorées par la critique. Situé à la périphérie du territoire français, le
Sud-Ouest constitue pourtant une excellente manifestation géogra-
phique de ce que Marie-Hélène Bourcier appelle les Queer Zones. Son
caractère excentré en fait presque une excentricité, un autre pays (le
Dubois 165
Pays basque), un espace traversé de désirs et de plaisirs multiples.

Dans son Journal (4) par exemple, l’auteur de bandes dessinées
Fabrice Neaud s’attache précisément à définir, entre le réalisme
critiqué du dessin et la médiation intimiste du journal, une topographie
du désir masculin orientée vers le Sud-Ouest:
C’est bien des années plus tard, avec la complicité de Guillaume,

l’archéologue bordelais, lui-même basque d’origine, que se dessinera une
cartographie érotique de haute précision. […] Peu nationaliste sur ce point,
il englobera une bonne partie de la Gascogne et centralisera cette caverne
d’Ali-Baba de la beauté masculine en un pentagone sacré. (28)
Ce pentagone, qui va de Mont-de-Marsan à Bayonne et jusqu’à

Tarbes, couvre une zone hybride dont la perméabilité des frontières
(géographiques, politiques, sociales etc.) va défaire les oppositions et
engendrer une reformulation de l’érotisme lié à la spatialisation.
Géographiquement, le Sud-Ouest est bien une zone frontalière,
un carrefour d’influences, une hybridité de traditions et d’expériences
placée à l’intersection des cimes montagneuses des Pyrénées, de col-
lines boisées et d’un arrière-pays où serpentent des routes de campa-
gne qui mènent ultimement à l’océan Atlantique; ou pour citer Roland
Barthes, enfant du Sud-Ouest: un “paysage métissé de Béarn et de
Pays basque” (Lumière 720). Fils du Sud-Ouest lui aussi et compa-
triote de Barthes (qu’il fait tourner dans Les Sœurs Brontë), André
Téchiné donne à son cinéma la lumière si particulière de son pays; et
le Sud-Ouest a été bien souvent pour lui Le Lieu du crime (1986).
Dans Ma Saison préférée (1993) ou encore Les Égarés (2003), les
paysages lumineux du Sud-Ouest servent chez Téchiné de contrepoint
aux drames familiaux, aux tensions internes et à l’exploration de la
sexualité. Si Hôtel des Amériques (1981) met en scène la ville bal-
néaire de Biarritz, ses vitrines de luxe, ses plages et ses surfeurs,
Téchiné aime surtout illuminer la beauté des contrastes qui marquent
l’arrière-pays comme par exemple dans La Matiouette ou l’arrière-
pays (1983) adapté pour la télévision d’une pièce de Jacques Nolot, ou
encore dans Les Roseaux sauvages (1994) où l’on retrouve Nolot dans
le rôle de l’instituteur. J. Nolot, présent aussi dans Ma Saison préfé-
rée, a plusieurs fois représenté son Sud-Ouest natal, et a fourni entre
autres le scénario de J’embrasse pas (1991), dans lequel un jeune pro-
vincial selon un modèle narratif classique quitte sa région pour tenter
de réussir à Paris. Si la majeure partie du film montre les tribulations

émotionnelles et économiques du jeune protagoniste dans la capitale
face aux tentations de la prostitution, il se termine pourtant à Mont-de-
Marsan par un ultime acte de défi lancé sur la plage. Sous la lumière
intimiste d’une région qui lui est chère, la prépondérance des lieux
dans le cinéma de Téchiné souligne l’exacerbation des conflits inter-
nes sous la pression du contexte extérieur. C’est le cas par exemple
dans Les Roseaux sauvages où identités sexuelles et nationales sont
explorées sur fond de politique de décolonisation à l’occasion du pas-
sage à l’indépendance du peuple algérien en 1962. Jarrod Hayes a pré-
cisément articulé dans Queer Nations les rapports intimes qui unissent
sexualités (homos et hétéros), discours colonisateur et construction
nationale. Téchiné aborde certaines de ces questions dans Loin (2001)
où l’on retrouve au Maroc Serge (Stéphane Rideau) et François (Gaël
Morel), déjà présents dans Les Roseaux sauvages. Ici, l’espace post-
colonial permet de poursuivre l’exploration de problématiques déjà
évoquées dans le cadre d’un Sud-Ouest qui reste proche aussi bien au
niveau géographique que thématique. En effet, la ville de Tanger,
représentée aussi dans Les Temps qui changent (2004), devient zone
frontière de passage et d’échange où l’hybridité cartographique et
culturelle propose un espace propice à la reformulation des désirs et
l’articulation de ses enjeux.
Le Sud-Ouest comme espace privilégié de représentation des
désirs a aussi été adopté à plusieurs reprises par François Ozon, qui
cependant préfère aux vallons de l’arrière-pays les grandes étendues
de sable qui bordent l’Atlantique. Le cinéma d’Ozon fait de la plage
un espace de révélations intimes où se mêlent, s’embrassent et
s’embrasent les sens, les jouissances et les plaisirs. Cinéaste des corps,
de l’érotique et des désirs, Ozon avoue volontiers: “Pour filmer, j’ai
besoin d’avoir du désir pour les acteurs, de les rendre beaux et désira-
bles […]. Je pense que l’intérêt du spectateur vient de l’éveil de son
désir face à un écran” (Rouyer 42). Dès ses premiers films, Ozon
insiste sur la représentation des désirs dans leur pluralité et leur com-
plexité. Depuis Sitcom (1998), ses longs métrages tels Sous le sable
(2000) ou Swimming Pool (2003) n’ont cessé de tremper dans les eaux
fluides et troubles des pulsions et des désirs révélés dans un espace
érotique dont la mise en scène constitue clairement la force motrice du
cinéma d’Ozon: “D’ailleurs, dans Swimming Pool, j’ai voulu montrer
comment l’érotisation était constitutif (sic) de l’acte de création”
Dubois 167
(Rouyer 45). Dans Sous le sable, inspiré d’un souvenir d’enfance, la

plage landaise et ses paysages multiples engagent la dynamique
narrative durant le premier tiers du film, qui y retourne pour s’y
conclure. Entre-temps, même à Paris l’érotisation s’investit en partie
dans le personnage de Jacques Nolot dont l’accent du Sud-Ouest ne
peut que séduire Charlotte Rampling qui le prendra comme amant.
Quelles que soient ses formes, l’érotisation des corps et des décors
tient donc une place essentielle dans le processus d’exposition du désir
chez Ozon: “Une Robe d’été est le seul à être érotique du début à la
fin. Dans Sous le sable, il y a une érotisation des situations et des
personnages, mais cela participe à quelque chose de plus vaste”
(Rouyer 45). L’érotisation des lieux, essentielle à la représentation des
jouissances et des sexualités chez Ozon, transforme la plage en un
espace où sont favorisées les pratiques queer.
Ce processus est très clair déjà dans Regarde la mer (1997),
moyen métrage de cinquante minutes dans lequel une routarde,
Tatiana, vient planter sa tente dans le jardin d’une maison de vacances
située sur l’île d’Yeu où s’ennuient une mère et son bébé en attendant
que le mari/père puisse se libérer de son travail à Paris et venir les
rejoindre. L’extrême pesanteur du film tient en partie à la densité du
désir qui s’installe entre les deux personnages féminins, et qu’Ozon
manifeste dans l’utilisation qu’il fait de l’espace et des paysages. Lors
d’un épisode particulièrement révélateur, la mère, n’en pouvant plus
de curiosité et de désir, abandonne son enfant endormi sur la plage et
part à la rencontre de ces hommes mystérieux qui draguent sur la dune
et que la routarde s’était bien chargée de désigner. La scène de
sexe dans le sous-bois qui s’ensuit représente un acte essentiel selon
Ozon: “Pour moi, ce sont des moments où les personnages ne sont
plus dans le discours, mais dans la vérité des corps […]. Tout d’un
coup le personnage se dévoile, et, là, il raconte sa vérité […]. Toutes
mes scènes de sexe représentent un enjeu” (Rouyer 43). L’enjeu ici se
situe dans l’exploration de la sexualité en dehors du contexte intimiste
du couple et de son confort intérieur. La transgression tient dans
l’exécution publique de l’acte sexuel, ainsi que dans la représentation
de la jouissance féminine en extérieur, plus souvent réservée aux
hommes car jugée dangereuse pour les femmes.
De la même façon, Une Robe d’été (1996), court métrage de
quinze minutes, met à profit la topographie spécifique des plages de la
région landaise en proposant une cartographie érotique des côtes du

Sud-Ouest. Tourné près de Cap Ferret, le film articule clairement une
dynamique d’érotisation autour du réseau complexe de désirs et de
jouissances constitué par la plage. La critique est unanime: “Tout dans
ce film est sensuel: la lumière, les corps, les accents, les couleurs”
(Jousse 12). Le film s’ouvre sur une scène de ménage entre deux
garçons d’une vingtaine d’années, l’un brun aux airs de macho repro-
chant à l’autre (blond décoloré) d’être vraiment trop folle alors qu’il
exécute une chorégraphie suggestive et sinueuse sur un titre de Sheila,
Bang Bang, reprise de la chanson de Cher, toutes deux icônes de la
culture gaie. Ici encore, la vérité se trouve dans le corps en mouve-
ment, le geste que Barthes voit “comme un condensé miraculeux de la
présence” (Fragments 669). Pour Ozon, “que les corps bougent pour
faire l’amour ou pour danser, ce sont toujours des moments de vérité.
Quand le garçon danse au début d’Une Robe d’été, c’est une manière
de séduire l’autre” (Rouyer 44). Se dérobant à cet acte de séduction, le
jeune macho irrité prend sa serviette de bain et son vélo pour se rendre
à la plage. Nu sur le sable, il est alors abordé par une jolie Espagnole
(jouée par Lucia Sanchez qui tient le rôle de la bonne dans Sitcom) qui
fera découvrir à notre protagoniste sa première expérience hétéro-
sexuelle. L’originalité du film tient en partie dans son renversement
du script traditionnel; il part d’une relation homosexuelle et de ses
fonctionnements au quotidien pour présenter l’exploration de la
sexualité. L’expérimentation — hétérosexuelle cette fois — est prati-
quée dans une mise en scène de la géographie érotique où la sexualité,
insouciante et déculpabilisée, se décline selon un continuum libéré des
contraintes et des étiquettes. Dans Regarde la mer et Une Robe d’été,
l’espace est érotisé et sexualisé selon trois zones distinctes: la plage, la
dune et le bois de pin. Cette topographie particulière encourage la cir-
culation des désirs dans l’errance érotique sans cesse renouvelée de la
drague où la plage est conçue comme zone d’exposition, alors que les
alcôves ombragées du bois de pins servent de zone de consommation,
sans oublier la dune comme zone de transition, de négociation et de
circulation entre ces deux espaces.
Dans les deux films, on note que l’acte sexuel a lieu sous l’œil
voyeur d’un observateur, renforçant pour le spectateur complice la
dissolution des frontières entre le privé (ou l’intime) et le public. La
transgression se situe donc moins dans l’acte sexuel lui-même que
Dubois 169
dans sa représentation (sa performativité dirait Butler) ouverte. Ces

pratiques d’exposition correspondent non seulement à une réappro-
priation de l’extérieur comme lieu de désirs mais contribuent égale-
ment à faire de l’espace public une zone où peut se négocier une
reformulation queer de l’intimité et des identités sexuelles. La dépri-
vatisation des plaisirs engendrée par de telles pratiques s’emploient à
défaire la fusion stratégique du couple intimité/sexualité, faisant ainsi
éclater toute l’artificialité des processus de normalisation sexuelle. La
mise en scène des désirs et des plaisirs en extérieur ainsi que
l’érotisation des paysages chez Ozon se situent dans une économie
performative qui passe par la fétichisation de la nature. Ainsi, l’acte de
transgression, la réappropriation de l’espace public et sa fétichisation
participent au processus de construction identitaire. Ces trois pratiques
forment et transforment les personnages, et de la même façon contri-
buent à la formation et à la transformation d’Ozon en tant que réalisa-
teur. Les procédés d’érotisation chez Ozon queerisent l’espace, alors
que dans un mouvement simultané l’espace, ici de la plage, queerise
le sujet. Ainsi, la pratique queer du cinéma chez Ozon se situerait
moins dans la volonté de queerisation que dans l’acceptation par les
personnages, le réalisateur et ultimement les spectateurs de se laisser
queeriser par l’espace de jouissance proposé.
Ce processus se manifeste clairement dans la juxtaposition des
scènes de dunes. Portant short et t-shirt lorsqu’il monte la dune à son
arrivée, le jeune protagoniste d’Une Robe d’été est obligé lorsqu’il en
redescend de porter la robe (évoquée dans le titre) que lui prête la
belle Espagnole, puisque ses affaires, laissées sur la plage, ont dispa-
rues alors qu’ils étaient dans les bois. Une fois dépassées les bornes
normalisatrices qui l’empêchaient au début du film de décoder et
d’accepter l’acte de séduction exécuté par son ami danseur, notre
héros peut désormais poursuivre la refonte ou reformulation identitaire
commencée sur la plage et aller retrouver son amant qui lui fera
l’amour passionnément sur la table de la cuisine. La transformation est
marquée cinématographiquement par un renversement de perspective
au cours du film. Dans un des rares commentaires critiques sur ce
court métrage, Thibaut Schilt note: “the film opens in a close-up shot
of a speedo-wearing young man’s crotch, revealing Ozon’s desire to
present the male body and male sexuality distinctly and precisely in
contemporary French cinema”. On ajoutera que ce premier gros plan
sur le maillot de bain est lui-même suivi d’un panoramique vertical

qui remonte lentement et langoureusement le long du corps hâlé du
personnage masculin. À l’issue du film, cette première séquence, où
dominent la fermeture et la verticalité, contraste fortement avec
l’ouverture et l’horizontalité de la dernière scène dans laquelle un plan
clairement horizontal cette fois montre le déplacement du bateau qui
emporte au loin la belle Espagnole. La reconfiguration queer des lieux
participe à un mouvement de déterritorialisation — aussi bien géo-
graphique que cinématographique — pratiquée de façon récurrente par
le jeune réalisateur. Andrew Asibong a noté avec justesse comment
Sitcom par exemple attribue au terme un sens proche de la définition
qu’en donnent Deleuze et Guattari lorsque le père notamment se trans-
forme en un rat géant aussi monstrueux que fantasmatique. Dans Une
Robe d’été, la déterritorialisation est plutôt comprise comme une
défamiliarisation exercée par les lieux sur des corps en vacances de
conventions, sensibles à une sémiologie érotique de l’espace où se
reformulent les sexualités au gré des désirs et des jouissances.
L’érotisation des signes nous ramène enfin à Barthes. Traversant
l’œuvre de part en part, la signalisation de l’érotique s’impose claire-
ment comme un projet barthésien à partir de ses réflexions sur Le
Plaisir du texte. Graduellement, l’intime opère alors une sorte de
détournement critique pour donner une écriture faite de détours, de
digressions que Barthes nomme excursions. Les excursions de Barthes
dans l’intimité de son Sud-Ouest sont nombreuses; mentionné dans la
deuxième partie d’Incident par exemple, le trajet menant de Paris à
Urt près de Bayonne est le moyen pour lui d’échapper à des soirées
parisiennes souvent monotones. Si Jarrod Hayes voit dans Incidents et
Soirées de Paris une négociation linguistique et économique de la
sexualité prise dans un rapport au discours colonial (45-46), Lawrence
Schehr note plutôt qu’ “Incidents starts with a structuralist model,
soon to be abandoned in favor of a nonoppositional mixture, a combi-
nation of sign and object, of desire and its inscription, of self and
other” (137). C’est cette pratique assidue de la non-opposition, le refus
insistant de la doctrine et la transcription de ces stratégies dans
l’écriture des désirs que nous commenterons en dernier lieu.
Barthes introduit de cette façon dans La Lumière du Sud-Ouest la
région de son enfance: “Je connais ainsi, subjectivement, trois Sud-
Ouest” (719). La construction tripartite qui va structurer le texte dans
Dubois 171
son entier lui permet de multiplier de façon productive les intervalles

aussi bien que les configurations plurielles de ses interstices. Si son
premier Sud-Ouest semble très vaste, “un quart de la France”, le
deuxième Sud-Ouest de Barthes correspond à une ligne, celle de
l’itinéraire en auto qui va de Paris au pays de son enfance: “un bos-
quet de pins sur le côté, un palmier dans la cour d’une maison, une
certaine hauteur des nuages qui donne au terrain la mobilité d’un
visage” (Lumière 720). La troisième évocation du Sud-Ouest corres-
pond à une zone plus réduite suggérant elle aussi la mobilité, celle du
trajet entre son village et la ville de Bayonne. Elle-même tripartite, la
description propose trois routes possibles qui serpentent entre les
coteaux, les pins et l’Adour. Ici donc aucune opposition, on évite
soigneusement les binarismes grâce à la multiplication des trinômes
conduisant à une triangulation de l’espace et de l’intimité. Plus
qu’ailleurs peut-être, la géographie intime se dévoile dans le Roland
Barthes par Roland Barthes où l’on trouve par exemple une photo de
Barthes enfant sur la plage, et une autre dans les Landes où la famille
se décline par trois: sa mère, son frère et lui. À l’occasion de la
publication de ce texte, Barthes ne signe-t-il pas un article qu’il
intitule Barthes puissance trois? Et puis, il y a la maison familiale à
Urt avec son jardin: “D’un seul tenant, le jardin contenait cependant
trois espaces symboliquement différents (et passer la limite de chaque
espace était un acte notable)” (Roland 90). Deux pages plus loin, on
revient sur cet espace privilégié à l’occasion d’un commentaire autour
d’une photo du jeune Barthes debout dans l’allée du jardin, et l’on
apprend que “quelques épisodes de sexualité enfantine y eurent lieu”
(Roland 92). Une telle pratique de l’intime comme mode de relation
au monde transgresse et transforme la conception de l’espace critique.
L’acte le plus queer de Barthes ne relèverait pas alors d’une
inscription ponctuelle de sa sexualité dans l’écriture, mais plutôt de la
distillation à long terme des jouissances, des désirs et des plaisirs; une
érotique des corps, du texte et des signes qui passerait par tous les
sens. Une écriture sans doctrine donc, échappant à la doxa, aux fas-
cismes de tous acabits, ceux de la langue aussi bien que du sexe.
Pour les questions de sexe également, on retrouve chez Barthes le
même parti pris tripartite, la même insistance sur la non-opposition,
seule génératrice pour lui d’un éros. Dans son excellente analyse de
cet éros particulier, Pierre Saint-Amand a rappelé combien Barthes
cherche en effet une distanciation par rapport au sexe, une sorte de

neutralisation:
Actually, faced with a sexuality that has been normalized into active and
passive, masculine and feminine, Barthes wishes to create a Neuter, a new
place that would ‘un-realize’ the antinomies and binarisms that restrain
sexual experience (152).
Si elle veut tenter d’échapper à l’effet normalisateur des labels et des

étiquettes, l’identité se doit d’être constamment en mouvement,
constamment subvertie par un troisième élément. La préférence pour
la circulation dans les interstices, le fluide, et donc le rejet du solide
(de même nature que le stéréotype), est à mettre en rapport avec une
reconsidération de l’éros qui semble prendre ses distances par rapport
à la rigidité du phallus. Pour Barthes, il est plutôt question de liquider
le sexe que de valoriser sa solidification. Dans un mouvement compa-
rable à l’érotisation de l’espace cinématographique chez Ozon,
Barthes lui aussi préfère à la verticalité, l’horizontalité qui dans son
Sud-Ouest encourage la circulation transversale des désirs. Saint-
Amand abonde dans ce sens: “the erectile-phallic body gives way in
Barthes to a horizontal erotics. The flat surface is valorized” (158). À
partir de cette circulation des flux naît une forme érotique qui margi-
nalise les éléments jusque-là centraux du phallus et du génital. Ainsi,
il n’est plus question de sexualité mais de sensualité comme Barthes
l’explique dans Fragments pour H.:
M’irrite la sorte de mauvaise foi avec laquelle on désire une partie de l’autre
[…]. Aucun désir clair de “génitalité”, mais l’envie d’une “sensualité”
commune. Sensualité: champ du rapport défini (limité) par cela qu’un corps
ne m’est pas interdit. Distinguer: “ne pas être interdit” / “être accessible”.
Vivre selon, sur des nuances. (1297)
Une fois le sexe posé, déposé, l’érotisme s’expose. Une des diffi-
cultés du sexe justement est qu’il porte en lui ses propres limites
imposées par la mécanique génitale, alors que l’érotisme et la sensua-
lité ne connaissent aucune fin et engendrent plutôt les possibilités
d’une circulation sans cesse renouvelée, réinventée: “Le plaisir sexuel
n’est pas métonymique: une fois pris, il est coupé […]. La tendresse
au contraire n’est qu’une métonymie infinie, insatiable” (Fragments
669). La réinscription de l’érotisme ne cherche donc plus à se
Dubois 173
constituer à partir de l’érection d’un phallus, mais bien d’un locus

favorisant la multiplication illimitée des jouissances. D’une telle
reformulation de l’érotique se dégage alors un espace de l’intime dans
lequel pourrait se penser le futur queer. Réfléchissant sur les condi-
tions de cet avenir, Robert Harvey a récemment proposé lui aussi de
mettre l’organe entre parenthèses, d’en faire abstraction en préconi-
sant une généalogie sans organe. Ce qui le conduit immédiatement à
poser deux questions essentielles: “Quelles masculinités (nécessaire-
ment plurielles) sont possibles sur un corps sans organes? Y a-t-il des
pratiques d’êtres neutres, non-genrées, sans masques et sans recours à
l’émasculation” (141)? Certains éléments de réponse se situent selon
nous dans les processus d’érotisation mentionnés plus haut dans la
mesure où ils refusent toute assignation identitaire précise pour privi-
légier des pratiques non oppositionnelles de l’intimité liées à l’espace.
Les excursions de Barthes et d’Ozon dans l’espace lumineux du Sud-
Ouest, de ses plages et de ses vagues érotiques, sont pour eux l’occa-
sion de déployer une poétique érotique du vague neutralisant toute
politique de normalisation. Enfin, Saint-Amand au sujet de Barthes ira
même plus loin:
Through this “moral indecisiveness”, this will to upset sexual culture, it can
be seen that Barthes participates in the “redemptive reinvention of sex”
theorized by Leo Bersani — “a radically revised imagination of the body’s
capacity for pleasure” (158).
Une fois les zones de plaisirs renégociées, cette politique diffuse

de l’érotisme prend comme lieu de jouissance tout le corps dont la sur-
face réceptive peut alors s’étendre de façon à exposer l’intime trans-
versalement et globalement: “De la même façon, mon Sud-Ouest est
extensible, comme ces images qui changent de sens selon le niveau de
perception où je décide de les saisir” (Lumière 719). Alors que se
déploie la cartographie érotique, le corps refuse désormais toute déli-
mitation spécifique du désir et privilégie plutôt le pluriel de ses sur-
faces. Plutôt qu’une localisation typique du génital, Barthes, conclut
Saint-Amand, affectionne l’organe complexe de la peau, son étendue
atypique ainsi que la diversité des sensations qu’elle procure:
Barthesian nirvana is this hypnotic contract, an uninterrupted contact, an

orgasm of skins, an apotheosis of touch. It must be understood that all these
cutaneous activities (touching, caressing, hugging) strive together to
neutralize the old position of domination; they accomplish the desired

reversibility of the partners. (163)
Dans la mesure où son écriture cherche constamment à déjouer

l’assignation, le modèle barthésien nous aide à penser la géographie
d’un espace érotique renouvelé, où le refus de toute délimitation
spécifique ouvre les possibilités d’une délocalisation des plaisirs en
dehors d’un espace normatif et monolithique: “La tendresse, de droit,
n’est pas exclusive […]. Là où tu es tendre, tu dis ton pluriel” (Frag-
ments 670). Révélé dans sa pluralité, le sujet peut alors jouir de sa
vulnérabilité en même temps qu’il accepte la queerisation opérée sur
lui par son propre discours amoureux.
À partir du relevé des mécanismes d’érotisation de certaines
zones spécifiques, tend à se définir une érotique de l’espace articu-
lable en une pratique visuelle et poétique du queer, plaçant ainsi la
politique et la pensée queer dans une pratique poétique du palpable.
C’est à travers de telles pratiques que peut se perpétuer de façon stra-
tégique la pensée queer définie par Le Brun-Cordier en introduction,
et qu’elle continue de résister à la récupération dogmatique qui la
menace à l’heure où l’on s’interroge sur l’arrivée du moment post-
queer. Si le queer est en effet en passe de devenir lui-même un label,
une orthodoxie avec ses propres hiérarchies et exclusions, de nou-
velles stratégies de subversion des espaces de représentation seraient à
chercher plutôt dans le passage de l’utopie (dans le sens de contesta-
tion) à l’atopie. Les constantes renégociations inhérentes au queer
pourraient alors se poursuivre de façon atopique, hors des délimita-
tions de tout lieu, des limites de tout lieu commun.
Enfin, nous aimerions proposer avec Robert Harvey une ultime
atopie, une essentielle déterritorialisation:
[...] le destin du queer n’est donc pas le sexe ni même le genre. C’est la pen-
sée […]. C’est la pensée qui se défait de soi comme nous nous défaisons de
la filiation […]. Le destin du queer […] se défait de moi pour laisser la
place pour le penser de l’autre (155).
L’effort de cartographie des espaces queer passe donc bien par une
reconsidération des formes changeantes, libres et décentrées de
l’intime dans un mouvement érotique de délocalisation sans bornes où
l’autre se diffuse en moi.
Dubois 175
Pour Yannick — à l’image de son pays et de sa lumière
Ouvrages cités
Asibong, Andrew. “Meat, Murder, Metamorphosis: The Transformational
Ethics of François Ozon”. French Studies 59.2 (2005): 203-15.
Barthes, Roland. “Barthes puissance trois”. Œuvres complètes. Éd. Éric
Marty. Vol. 3. Paris: Seuil, 1995. 253-55.
_____. Fragments d’un discours amoureux. Œuvres complètes. Éd. Éric
_____. “Fragments pour H”. Œuvres complètes. Éd. Éric Marty. Vol. 3.
Paris: Seuil, 1995. 1297-98.
_____. “La Lumière du Sud-Ouest”. Œuvres complètes. Éd. Éric Marty. Vol.
3. Paris: Seuil, 1995. 719-22.
_____. Roland Barthes par Roland Barthes. Œuvres complètes. Éd. Éric
Bourcier, Marie-Hélène. Extrait flyer “zoo”, 1997. Q comme Queer: les
séminaires Q du Zoo (1996-97). Dir. Marie-Hélène Bourcier. Lille:
Cahiers Gai Kitsch Camp, 1998.
_____. Queer Zones. Paris: Balland, 2001.
Butler, Judith. Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity.
New York: Routlege, 1990.
Deleuze, Gilles, et Félix Guattari. Kafka: pour une littérature mineure. Paris:
Éditions de Minuit, 1975.
Harvey, Robert. “Une généalogie sans organes dans le sillon de Deleuze et de
Platon!”. Cahiers de recherche des instituts néerlandais de langue et de
littérature française 44 (2005): 141-55.
Hayes, Jarrod. Queer Nations: Marginal Sexualities in the Maghreb. Chi-
cago: University of Chicago Press, 2000.
Jousse, Thierry. “Ozon!” Cahiers du cinéma 505 (1996): 12.
Le Brun-Cordier, Pascal. “Un Cabinet de queeriosités”. Rue Descartes 40
(2003): 36-47.
Neaud, Fabrice. Journal (4): Les riches Heures. Angoulême: Ego comme X,
2002.
Ozon, François, réalisateur. Regarde la mer. Mars Distribution, 1997.
_____. Sitcom. Avec Lucia Sanchez. Mars Distribution, 1998.
_____. Sous le sable. Haut et Court, 2000.
_____. Swimming Pool. Mars Distribution, 2003.
_____. Une Robe d’été. Avec Lucia Sanchez. Mars Distribution, 1996.
Rouyer, Philippe, and Claire Vassé. “Entretien François Ozon: La Vérité des
corps”. Positif: Revue mensuelle de cinéma 521-22 (2004): 41-45.
Saint-Amand, Pierre. “The Secretive Body: Roland Barthes’s Gay Erotics”.
Trad. Charles A. Porter et Noah Guynn. Yale French Studies 90 (1996):
153-71.
Schehr, Lawrence. Alcibiades at the Door: Gay Discourses in French Lite-
rature. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1995.
Schilt, Thibaut. “François Ozon”. Senses of cinéma. March 2004. <http://
www.sensesofcinema.com/contents/directors/04/ozon.html>
Téchiné, André, réalisateur. Hôtel des Amériques. Parafrance, 1981.
_____. J’embrasse pas. Scénariste Jacques Nolot. Bac Films, 1991.
_____. La Matiouette ou l’arrière-pays. Mars Distribution, 1983.
_____. Le Lieu du crime. AMLF, Visa Films, 1986.
_____. Les Égarés. Mars Distribution, 2003.
_____. Les Roseaux sauvages. Avec Gaël Morel, Jacques Nolot, et Stéphane
Rideau. Pan-Europeenne Productions, 1994.
_____. Les Sœurs Brontë. Gaumont, 1979.
_____. Les Temps qui changent. Gémini Films, 2004.
_____. Loin. Avec Stéphane Rideau et Gaël Morel. UFD, 2001.
_____. Ma Saison préférée. Avec Jacques Nolot. AMLF, 1993.
Douglas Morrey
University of Warwick
Stop the World, or What’s Queer about

Michel Houellebecq?
Michel Houellebecq is rightly known for the considerable energy that

he devotes to describing and analysing the sphere of heterosexual
activity. Despite this, his analysis of the moribund institutions of hetero-
sexuality is of particular use to a queer critique that would seek to un-
derstand and challenge heteronormative systems. Although Houellebecq
frequently reinvests in traditional heterosexual and patriarchal power
structures through his romantic plots and his disingenuously “post-
feminist” sexism, a close reading of him alongside dissimilar feminist
critics reveals a symptomatic message that a feminist and queer politics
cannot afford to ignore.
________________________
To ask what is queer about Michel Houellebecq may at first

glance seem like a counter-intuitive, not to say an absurd and even
offensive question. After all, few contemporary writers offer such
lengthy consideration of heterosexual relations, and few give so much
space to the explicit depiction of straight sex, much of which is clearly
modelled upon fantasy scenarios familiar from pornographic culture
(Morrey). The few gay characters who appear in Houellebecq’s fiction
tend to be pathetic alcoholics, such as Desplechin in Les Particules
élémentaires, or else the “lesbians” who occur in Lanzarote and
Plateforme almost exclusively as figures of wish fulfilment in the pre-
dictable male fantasy of sleeping with two women at the same time
(Clément 67, 107-10). Meanwhile, Houellebecq’s only response to the
AIDS crisis is to see it as a convenient excuse for certain individuals
to withdraw entirely from sexual competition (Particules 234), or else

as a unique and overlooked opportunity to solve the world’s popula-
tion problems (La Possibilité d’une île 446). Houellebecq’s frequent
deployment of a quasi-biological discourse and appeal to arguments
drawn from evolutionary theory and natural selection tends inevitably
to naturalise heterosexual relations, a gesture reinforced by the
rehearsal of such hackneyed opinions as the supposed “évidence
géométrique” (La Possibilité d’une île 110) of male-female genital
copulation. If it is important therefore not to over-state Houellebecq’s
affinity with a queer culture or sensibility, I will nonetheless argue
that his disillusioned dissection of the contemporary social organisa-
tion of heterosexual relations, and in particular his compassion for
those groups and individuals that are marginalised within the domi-
nant sexual economy, is at the very least of use to a queer critique of
heteronormativity, and may arguably be labelled “queer” if we accept
the broadest definition of “an anti-normative positioning with regard
to sexuality” (Jagose 98). What is perhaps even more surprising is that
Houellebecq’s criticism of this sexual arena, when it implies condem-
nation of queer cultures or practices, stems less from an unthinking
homophobia than from a reasoned analysis that bears some compari-
son to radical- and lesbian-feminist critiques of the queer cultural
economy. In short, then, this essay makes no attempt to argue that
Houellebecq is queer, nor even really to reclaim his work as queer
writing. Instead, it suggests that Houellebecq’s analysis of the mori-
bund institutions of heterosexuality is of particular use to a queer
critique that would seek to understand and challenge heteronormative
systems. Although Houellebecq frequently reinvests in traditional het-
erosexual and patriarchal power structures through his romantic plots
and his disingenuously “post-feminist” sexism, this study will expose
— in the process of reading Houellebecq alongside such unlikely bed-
fellows as the lesbian feminist critic Sheila Jeffreys and the queer
heroine Valerie Solanas — how his symptomatic message can be use-
fully appropriated into the armoury of a queer sexual politics that
would look to destabilise, and possibly dismantle, the straight mind
and the bodies in which it is housed.
Given his phenomenal success, not only in France but in transla-
tion around the world, Houellebecq’s morbid diagnosis of Western
heteronormativity has already become quite familiar. His simple but
Morrey 179
powerful thesis was first put forward in his debut novel Extension du
domaine de la lutte (1994). Houellebecq argues that the economic
market of liberal capitalism is paralleled in our Western societies by a
sexual market that is just as ruthless and generates just as much ine-
quality and misery. In the same way that a handful of entrepreneurs
make millions while others live in poverty, so in the sexual economy
certain individuals multiply their sexual encounters while others are
condemned to solitude and masturbation (Extension 114-15). Houelle-
becq suggests further that, within this market, the goal of the sexual
encounter is not so much pleasure as narcissistic gratification (Inter-
ventions 42-43). Sexual success has become the main criterion of
social superiority (Particules 63-64) and is the object of a brutally re-
ductive quantification: if people’s economic value can be measured in
two simple figures — annual income and hours worked —, then their
sexual success — or, no: really their sexual value — can similarly be
reduced to a handful of numbers: age, weight and vital statistics
(Interventions 65-66). Houellebecq suggests that this quantification
and hierarchisation of sexual beings was begun by the pornography
industry but was soon picked up and popularised by women’s maga-
zines. And indeed:
“Si la hiérarchie économique simplifiée fit longtemps l’objet d’oppositions

sporadiques (mouvements en faveur de la ‘justice sociale’), il est à noter que
la hiérarchie érotique, perçue comme plus naturelle, fut rapidement intéri-
orisée et fit d’emblée l’objet d’un large consensus” (Interventions 66).
Houellebecq is clear that this depressing situation has arisen as a

direct result of the sexual “liberation” of the 1960s. In Les Particules
élémentaires, the calamitous sex lives of the fraternal heroes Bruno
and Michel are explicitly connected to the promiscuity of their hated
hippie mother, Janine. Preferring the dissipation of a counter-cultural
lifestyle in the ‘60s, she abandons her sons and, as the narrative
implies, leaves them psychologically scarred. Michel’s sexual life is
almost completely sublimated in his scientific work, while Bruno goes
through a series of tragic-comic adventures in what the French call le
libertinage. At his mother’s deathbed, Bruno tells her: “Tu n’es
qu’une vieille pute […]. Tu mérites de crever” and promises to piss on
her ashes (Particules 256). The sexual liberalism of this era appears as
the apotheosis of an ideology of individualism, with the dissolution of
the family removing the last communal barrier that protected the indi-
vidual from the brutality of the market (Particules 116). According to
Houellebecq’s extremely partisan and spectacularly misinformed
understanding of feminism, the women’s movements of the sixties and
seventies have contributed to this untrammelled individualism by
freely adopting “masculine” values while systematically undoing all
the structures of domestication which had held in check, more or less
successfully, men’s primitive instincts towards violence, fucking, and
drunkenness for the past couple of millennia (“L’Humanité, second
stade” 64). The resulting vision, in Houellebecq’s novels, is of a world
in which everyone — whether in a partnership or not — is constantly
on the prowl for potential sexual conquests, constantly calculating
their advantages, and yet rarely actually achieving any sensual pleas-
ure because their standards have become unrealistically high, their
window of potentially happy sexual activity has become improbably
small, and paranoia and mistrust reign on all sides. As Houellebecq
puts it in Plateforme:
“Nous sommes devenus froids, rationnels, extrêmement conscients de notre
existence individuelle et de nos droits; nous souhaitons avant tout éviter
l’aliénation et la dépendence; en outre, nous sommes obsédés par la santé et
l’hygiène: ce ne sont vraiment pas les conditions idéales pour faire l’amour”
(236).
Houellebecq’s work can be read as a catalogue of the disastrous

consequences of sexual liberation, which is not without parallels in the
radical feminist work of Sheila Jeffreys. Houellebecq’s nostalgia for
the family (which may be more apparent than real as we shall see be-
low) and his resentment of feminism preclude any identification of the
sexual revolution with a shoring up of patriarchal power, such as is
demonstrated by Jeffreys. In Anticlimax she shows that the period
actually coincided with a statistical strengthening of the marriage in-
stitution, the sexual “revolution” thereby appearing as a roundabout
way of containing the threat posed by women’s greater economic
power and significance (93-95). Nevertheless, Houellebecq would
surely agree with Jeffreys’s suggestion that this “liberation” marked
the point at which sexual activity became “mandatory” and thereby
stigmatised anyone who wasn’t doing it. Personal tastes and interests
increasingly became irrelevant and were instead relabelled as inhibi-
tion or repression: the development of a certain erotic efficiency was
Morrey 181
subsequently to be expected (Anticlimax 110). Sexual liberalism

effectively signals the elimination of a domain of private experience
— this is, then, the further consequence of the importation of eco-
nomic logic into the private sphere (Abecassis 811-12) — since even
the members of the same family are not exempt from sexual competi-
tion with each other, as Bruno discovers when his son reaches puberty
and suddenly becomes a strange, rival male, better placed to engage
with the fifteen-year-old girls to whom Bruno is equally attracted
(Particules 166-67).
Which brings us to another important point in Houellebecq’s
analysis: the sexual market also encourages a cruel ageism whereby
individuals beyond a certain age are definitively eliminated from
competition. In the West, suggests Houellebecq in Plateforme, this
point may arrive as early as the late twenties, such that many indi-
viduals spend the vast majority of their adult lives in a state of near-
permanent erotic deficit (233). This argument has taken on a new im-
portance in Houellebecq’s latest novel, La Possibilité d’une île (2005),
where he goes so far as to suggest that the only “perversion” regarded
as beyond the pale within today’s sexual arena is that of being old
(213). He imagines a time in the not-too-distant future where old age
has come to be seen as so socially unacceptable — such an affront to a
pleasure-driven economy — that suicide becomes the single biggest
cause of death in the world, voluntary deaths euphemistically renamed
as “departures” as the average age of death in the West falls to around
fifty (91-93). In this, Houellebecq echoes — with his customary dose
of exaggeration — an argument recently made by Lynne Segal, who
notes the systematic effacement of older people from discourses (in-
cluding queer discourses) of sexuality: as Segal puts it, “The sexually
dissident subject has yet to age” (5). And Segal’s insistence that
women are disproportionately affected by this ageism would hardly be
contradicted by Houellebecq’s tragic portraits of middle-aged women
— such as Annabelle in Les Particules and Isabelle in La Possibilité
d’une île — who are reduced to solitude, drug addiction and ulti-
mately suicide. Meanwhile, our culture’s exclusive valorisation of
youth is seen as responsible for encouraging paedophilia, a situation
satirised in La Possibilité d’une île with its sardonic portrayal of
Lolita, a magazine ostensibly for teenage girls that indirectly targets
both their envious mothers and their lecherous fathers (31-32). At the
same time, of course, the media demonisation of paedophilia and calls

for the chemical castration of sex offenders are more prominent than
ever: “Augmenter les désirs jusqu’à l’insoutenable tout en rendant leur
réalisation de plus en plus inaccessible, tel était le principe unique sur
lequel reposait la société occidentale” (85).
But there is a serious point here, of course, which is that the

market logic of sexuality leads to an inevitable increase in the profes-
sionalisation of sex, with sex tourism for instance appearing as a logi-
cal solution to Westerners’ erotic stalemate (Plateforme 234). At the
same time, the frustration and resentment generated by the sexual
economy causes a proliferation of violent pornography (Interventions
123-25) and sado-masochism, which Houellebecq defines simply as
“la sexualité des gens qui ne s’aiment pas. Quand il n’y a plus de pos-
sibilité d’identification à l’autre, la seule modalité qui demeure c’est la
souffrance — et la cruauté” (Plateforme 186). Such traditionally devi-
ant areas of sexual activity as SM and porn are, to some extent, the
privileged domain of queer, with its focus on choice and individual
agency, and its desire to highlight erotic practices and sensations
rather than sexual identities. But Sheila Jeffreys has criticised —
rather more lucidly than Houellebecq — the way in which sexual con-
sumerism attempts to repackage and sell as “transgressive pleasures”
the very behaviours, practices and psychosexual structures that have
constituted centuries of oppression for women, gay people and those
marginalised as undesirable within the erotic economy (Jeffreys, Un-
packing 61-62). For Houellebecq, sexual frustration (which, in this
argument, is the structurally dictated norm for the majority of the
Western population) can ultimately lead to a murderous rage and de-
sire for violent revenge upon the smug champions of sexual success,
as dramatised by Tisserrand, who in Extension du domaine de la lutte
follows two young lovers into the sand dunes with a steak knife, intent
on taking his revenge. But if sexual repression and marginalisation
have potentially fatal social consequences, then so too does the un-
checked liberation of sexual desire, which can cause the effacement of
all moral boundaries: in Les Particules élémentaires, David di Meola,
the son of a sixties countercultural icon, pursues his quest for stimula-
tion into a career in satanic murder (Particules 205-12). This is the
logic of a system in which, as Jeffreys argues, “All sexual practices
Morrey 183
are seen as equally morally neutral,” whilst “Abuse is relabelled as the

prudery of the victim” (Jeffreys, Anticlimax 98).
It would be easy to accuse Houellebecq of exaggeration in his
singularly bleak outlook on the fate of Western sexual desire. Or, if
one were feeling less charitable, it might be tempting to see in Houel-
lebecq’s writing, as some critics have, the bitter self-pity of a whining
sexual inadequate. Marc Weitzmann, for instance, maliciously sum-
marises Houellebecq’s social critique in Les Particules élémentaires
as follows: “on fait du mal aux animaux; les petits enfants sont bizutés
à l’école; on ne peut pas baiser toutes les femmes qu’on veut” (Bowd
37). Some rather naïve critics have suggested that Houellebecq’s sex-
starved anti-heroes need only try a little harder or modify their strate-
gies of seduction in order to achieve sexual success. Murielle Lucie
Clément, gamely entering into the spirit of Houellebecq’s economic
analogies, invokes the 80/20 “law” of investment, suggesting that with
20% more effort, a man like Tisserrand might see an 80% improve-
ment in his return on investment (157-58). Mona Chollet, meanwhile,
suggests — with an apparently straight face — that Tisserrand is mis-
taken to continue frequenting nightclubs inhabited only by superficial
people and that he should instead seek out women who are able to see
beyond his appearance. The understanding of these critics is akin to
that of the narrator’s psychiatrist in Extension du domaine de la lutte
who, on learning that the narrator has not had sex in over two years,
suggests that it is no wonder he is depressed. However, when he asks
if she would be prepared to sleep with him, she fails to spot the de-
monstrative power of his rhetorical question and refers him to a male
colleague (172).
Murielle Lucie Clément suggests that the sexual failure of these
men is due to their own self-hatred, blithely ignoring the possibility
that their low self-esteem may have been created as a result of their
marginalisation in the sexual economy (124-27). There is a peculiar
parallel here to Jenny Kitzinger’s observation that the treatment of
victims of childhood sexual violence involves their rehabilitation into
willing (hetero-)sexual partners, rather than any recognition that their
fear and mistrust of sexuality may represent a rational response to the
lived conditions of heteronormativity. Now, it is perhaps a little dan-
gerous to compare victims of child sexual abuse to sexually frustrated
middle-aged men, but the structural point in both cases is the same:
that, within a liberal sexual economy, the solution for anyone

wounded, traumatised, or simply disappointed by sex can only be ever
more and better sex, just as the free-market economy can only offer
more and better merchandise as the universal panacea for the social
ills it creates. Lynne Segal has argued that queer theory, complicit
with sexual consumerism, remains blind to a large section of the
population — notably in the USA — that lives with an enforced sex-
ual ignorance and is denied the right to realistic choices about sex
education and contraception, let alone more exotic practices and life-
styles (4). In much the same way, I would venture that there is a sig-
nificant proportion of the population that is sexually inactive not by
choice and for whom the constant injunctions to enjoy creative sexual
adventures as the only meaningful way of achieving self-realisation
serve as so many reminders of their worthlessness within the all-
pervasive sexual economy. In a recent study, David Fontaine cites
statistics which suggest that as many as twenty-five per cent of
women and fifteen per cent of men over thirty are living without sex
(defined as a period of abstinence lasting for six months or longer)
(15). The explanations for this inactivity are several, from past sexual
traumas or repressive upbringings which render sexual expression dif-
ficult, to the financial and emotional insecurities caused by unem-
ployment and single parenthood. In most cases, though, an ongoing
absence of sexual activity is experienced as a vicious circle or down-
ward spiral whereby a prolonged period of enforced abstinence leads
to increased performance anxiety, which makes it all the more diffi-
cult to rejoin the ranks of the sexually active (Fontaine 42). Mean-
while, when Bruno in Les Particules élémentaires attempts to throw
himself wholeheartedly into a life of sexual liberalism, experimenting
with swingers’ clubs and nudist colonies, he finds himself rejected by
the very milieu that promised his salvation, the ultimate result being
psychological breakdown and indefinite institutionalisation after he
misreads the codes of sexual conduct one last time and exposes him-
self to one of his high school students.
It seems fairly clear, then, that for Houellebecq more sex is not
the answer: on the contrary, the narrator of Les Particules élé-
mentaires states categorically that the sexual drive is “inutile,
dangereuse et régressive” (268). At the end of this novel, we belatedly
discover that it is in fact narrated by a representative of our planet’s
Morrey 185
post-human future. It is revealed that the research in molecular

biology of one of the novel’s protagonists, Michel, has enabled the
replication of genetic code that allows human beings to be cloned
(308). Over the first decades of the twenty-first century, then, the
human race comes to be replaced by a new species, asexual and
immortal (Particules 308), and all sharing a common genetic
inheritance (312-13). Houellebecq imagines this new species taking
over the planet without a struggle, the human population resigned, and
indeed rather relieved at the idea of leaving sexual difference and
sexual reproduction behind them (316). The novel’s retrospective
science-fiction structure gives a “quasi-religious aura” to this narrative
of humanity’s demise (Abecassis 804), a cloned future appearing as
the utopian solution to the problems of sexual liberalism that provides
an equivalent to the Marxist solution to economic liberalism
(Degryse). La Possibilité d’une île similarly imagines a post-human
future brought about through cloning but, if the novel’s neo-humans
are initially proposed by a religious sect in order to promise eternal
life to its faithful, once the decline of humanity becomes ineluctable
through war and environmental catastrophe, the neo-humans establish
a definitive separation from their genetic forebears. More physically
resistant than humans, thanks to the evolution of their metabolism
towards a kind of photosynthesis, the neo-humans decide in addition
to break with the human tendency towards sociability and sexuality,
which they see as “un vestige inutile et encombrant” left over from
humanity’s animal inheritance (La Possibilité d’une île 420). In a
quasi-Buddhist renunciation of desire, the neo-humans live separate
but rigorously identical lives with no place for will or individual
initiative, meanwhile attenuating the sensitivity of the nerve endings
in their skin so as not to suffer from an absence of physical contact
(167-68).
The post-sexual futures of these novels, however, are presented
simply as the logical outcome of the current sexual economy domi-
nating the Western world. Houellebecq offers a vision of a world in
which, if sexuality is more visible than ever before, both in the media
and on the streets, paradoxically it is harder than ever to access, since
the proportion of the population that is young and attractive enough to
be considered fit for sexual relations is growing smaller all the time
(La Possibilité d’une île 84-85). Houellebecq even suggests that
sexuality may shortly become the preserve of an erotic elite, a behav-

iour practised only by specialists and professionals, and those few
remaining masochists willing to subject themselves to the narcissistic
humiliation implied by relations with this elite (421). At the same time
as sexuality becomes a distant and bitterly remembered dream for
many, more and more adults are admitting to not wanting children,
and Houellebecq reports on the first child-free zones in residential
accommodation to spring up in cities in the Western world (69). This
uncompromising refusal of filiation is also demonstrated in La Possi-
bilité d’une île by the textual treatment accorded to the narrator’s son:
mentioned in passing on two or three occasions across the novel, the
character is never given the slightest psychological depth, nor is there
any implication that he has had an emotional impact upon the narrator.
This is neatly summarised in the bathetic sentence, Houellebecqian
par excellence: “Le jour du suicide de mon fils, je me suis fait des
œufs à la tomate” (29).
I would argue that it is this disgust at the idea of children and in-
heritance, and the concomitant evacuation of the (hetero-)sexual field
altogether — it is this refusal of the future that is most queer about
Houellebecq’s novels. For even in the projections of his science-
fiction novels, Houellebecq presents a future without a future, a world
in which the becoming of humanity through a process of filiation and
inheritance has definitively ceased and been replaced by stasis. In
these post-individual worlds, memory, and hence history, are as
meaningless as desire, and hence sexuality. In his recent work entitled
No Future, Lee Edelman has powerfully argued that what he calls
reproductive futurism effectively “impose[s] an ideological limit on
political discourse as such” by positing a mythical Child that exists as
“the fantasmatic beneficiary of every political intervention” (2-3).
Queerness, on the other hand, “names the side of those not “fighting
for the children,” the side outside the consensus by which all politics
confirms the absolute value of reproductive futurism” and thereby
affirms the absolute privilege of heteronormativity (3). It is in this
sense, I would argue, if only in this sense, that Michel Houellebecq is
queer. And it is perhaps this disinterest in the next generation(s), this
apparent lack of concern for the development of humanity such as it is
currently constituted that has left readers and critics so uncomfortable
before the question of Houellebecq’s politics: because, by narrating
Morrey 187
the abandonment of sexuality itself, his novels remove the ground for
politics as it is discursively constituted by reproductive futurism. That
said, Houellebecq’s position is not the same as Edelman’s. For Edel-
man, what is at stake here is precisely the present — he seeks to res-
cue the liberty of the present that is threatened with curtailment in the
name of a Child who is to be protected at all costs from “otherness”
(21). For Edelman, furthermore, the figure of the queer threatens to
subvert the social order by revealing the jouissance of which it is con-
stituted, even as the social order seeks to occlude this jouissance by
marginalising the queer and his (her?) pleasures (5). To this extent,
then, Houellebecq’s desertion of the present in favour of a post-sexual
future would not constitute, in Edelman’s terms, a queer resistance to
reproductive futurism. Nonetheless, if Houellebecq’s science-fiction
novels are given a more allegorical reading, then his post-human
narratives may be interpreted as the only possible political response to
an oppressive sexual-economic system that effectively forecloses
political debate by inscribing its hegemony within a naturalising logic
of biological necessity and teleological evolution.
If Houellebecq’s presentation of sexuality — and therefore of
humanity as we know it — as condemned to a rapid decline towards
extinction is of necessary interest to queer critiques of the moribund
institution of heteronormativity, it nonetheless conceals its own dan-
gers. The overcoming of humanity envisioned by Houellebecq can
only fail because the announcement of the “death” of the human re-
mains an all too human, anthropocentric gesture (Ansell Pearson 161).
Worse, the departure of the human marks the suspect return of Grand
Narratives, which tend to disallow all practical political choices by
pre-empting them. This, as Ansell Pearson points out in his trenchant
critique of Jean-François Lyotard, is the danger of being seduced by
the depoliticization of capital, of confusing its monstrous development
— which is nonetheless grounded in social relations of production —
with a reified concept of evolution itself (Ansell Pearson 172-73). We
might argue that Houellebecq falls into this trap, mistaking a certain
promotion of sexuality by consumer capitalism with an organic evo-
lution of humanity’s reproductive competence, and hence of its ca-
pacity for survival. As Fredric Jameson remarks, there is a tendency to
retreat into paralysed awe before the sublime spectacle of postmodern
capital’s unmanageably complex networks (37). It is perhaps this
sense that ultimately lies behind the science-fictional sublime that

colours the end of Les Particules élémentaires and, especially, La
Possibilité d’une île, which closes with a panoramic vision of Spain
returned to nature, the vestiges of human civilisation rapidly re-
colonised by vegetation while the cloned neo-human Daniel25 jour-
neys across a featureless continental shelf to find himself amid a vast
archipelago of sandbanks and pools that was once the Atlantic Ocean.
But this kind of Romantic sublime — as several critics have pointed
out — remains thoroughly bound up with binary gender categoriza-
tions. As Joanna Zylinska argues, for instance, the confrontation with
the sublime produces a feeling of powerlessness, which is discursively
associated with the traits of femininity; this abjection of the feminine
in the process of apprehending the sublime then “serves as a means of
strengthening the precarious foundations of modern subjectivity,
whose universality is acclaimed at the cost of the suppression of sex-
ual difference” (3). By this theoretical sleight of hand, the sublime
becomes a masculine term whereas the feminine is projected onto the
beautiful, characterised by smallness, softness, and delicacy and
intended to inspire sentiments of love and protection aimed, quite spe-
cifically in Edmund Burke’s understanding, at the multiplication of
the species (Day 185-86). As Donna Haraway has further argued, all
apocalyptic narratives (which necessarily entail an appeal to the sub-
lime) are thoroughly complicit with a reproductive politics, presenting
a story of life in terms of individuation, separation, and alienation,
“tempered by imaginary respite in the bosom of the Other” and culmi-
nating in a fantasy of “rebirth without flaw, perfection, abstraction”
(177).
Houellebecq does not escape this (en)gendering of the future,
despite the apparent asexuality of his clones. The slogan overseeing
the installation of the cloned superrace in Les Particules élémentaires
is “Demain sera féminin” (311), whilst the Elohimite sect in La Possi-
bilité d’une île similarly favours a feminine model of the future:
masculinity having become irredeemably associated with war and
destruction, the sect instead encourages its members to explore and
expand their femininity (125). As Luis de Miranda has pointed out,
there is an implied idealisation of the nurturing qualities of women
here that is ultimately consistent with a romantic and sexist stereotype
and ignores the political reality of lived gender relations. Arguably,
Morrey 189
the male subject’s only mode of relating to this feminine future

becomes a masochistic one, since Houellebecq’s visions of worlds
without men appear as so many symbolic castrations (Monnin). In
another surprising twist, Houellebecq’s post-sexual utopia has some-
thing in common with Valerie Solanas’s infamous SCUM Manifesto,
for which Houellebecq wrote a postface when it appeared in a recent
French translation. Solanas argues that, in a society in which auto-
mated work and artificial reproduction have become possible, men are
entirely useless. Cursed with an awareness of his brute animal inheri-
tance, and yet quite incapable of surpassing it, the man is covered with
shame at his own pathetic condition and seeks to disguise it by
busying himself with the labour economy, patriarchal social relations,
wars, and so on (Solanas 1-8). A man like Tisserrand, whose enthusi-
asm for his work in computers fails to mask his overwhelming shame
and self-disgust, is a neat illustration of Solanas’s point. And
Houellebecq’s work as a whole presents an almost identical view of
men as naturally inclined towards cruelty and violence and constitu-
tionally incapable of love. What Houellebecq appreciates about the
SCUM Manifesto is that, unlike those “feminists” (his identification)
who seek only to compete on equal terms with men, Solanas wants to
destroy masculine society altogether and replace it with something
entirely different: the idea of women in the boardroom or in the min-
isterial cabinet is, for her, perverse and counter-productive. Houelle-
becq also admires Solanas’s call to use genetic engineering to fashion
a new species, a future unimaginable so long as humanity remains tied
stubbornly to a vision of community as nothing more than a collection
of individuals, and he suggests that political and philosophical reluc-
tance to embrace such a possibility smacks of a new kind of jealousy,
“une jalousie par anticipation à l’égard des possibilités offertes aux
générations futures” (“L’Humanité, second stade” 69). Ultimately it is
a shame, concludes Houellebecq, that Solanas, in her call to arms,
resorts to precisely those masculine traits she had begun by condemn-
ing: “la mégalomanie, la vanité insensée, la surestimation délirante de
soi (traits qui finissent par la rendre presque aussi ridicule que
Nietzsche)” (67), and this is augmented by a dubious attraction to
violence, murder, conspiracy and revolutionary action.
Of course, such essentialism, whether on the part of Solanas
or Houellebecq, is ultimately unhelpful. If Houellebecq’s work is
politically incendiary to the extent that it presents a queer challenge to

a system of compulsory consumerist heteronormativity in which sex-
ual pleasure is rendered increasingly unattainable by the very market
forces operating within that system, then the transformative political
energy of his project remains blocked so long as he refuses to engage
with a feminist discourse on the social construction of gender identi-
ties. For Houellebecq, feminism is a movement that has simply failed
(or rather, in his limited reading: that has succeeded all too well) and
been replaced by the all-embracing law of sexual consumerism, which
provides equal opportunities to men and women. But, for instance,
Sheila Jeffreys’s critique of male attitudes towards sexual freedom —
that men believe sex should be without consequence or responsibility;
their sense of entitlement towards sex; and the belief in a hormonal
justification for seeking multiple partners (Unpacking 65) — might
offer some much needed illumination to Houellebecq’s supposedly
sex-starved heroes. Where Houellebecq presents a challenge to Jef-
freys, however, is in suggesting that these traditionally masculine
assumptions about sex are increasingly shared by women. The char-
acter of Esther in La Possibilité d’une île is the representative of a
generation for whom sex is merely a kind of entertainment, divorced
from any implications of emotion or attachment; and, if women had a
particular investment in love at a time when they were in greater need
of economic protection, they are now embarrassed by its anachronistic
claims upon their freedom, a freedom defined almost entirely in terms
of purchase power within the leisure economy (340-42). Houelle-
becq’s dispassionate survey of the sexual economy thus offers a cor-
rective to the residual essentialism in Jeffreys’s account of the male
sex drive by demonstrating that this generalisation of a casual attitude
towards sex has been created and managed by the consumer economy
without regard for gender. It is finally in this sense, I suggest, that
Houellebecq’s writing can usefully be read alongside feminist and
queer theory as a work which, despite its compromising reinvestments
in a sexist, patriarchal discourse, nonetheless offers an invaluable
analysis of the contemporary sphere of sexual consumerism, and im-
plies a widespread sense of fatigue, impatience or disappointment with
the system of heteronormativity of the kind that a feminist and queer
politics cannot afford to ignore.
Morrey 191
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Edelman, Lee. No Future: Queer Theory and the Death Drive. Durham, NC:
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Houellebecq, Michel. Extension du domaine de la lutte. Paris: Maurice
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_____. Les Particules élémentaires. Paris: Flammarion, 1998.
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_____. “L’Humanité, second stade.” Postface to a republication of SCUM
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_____. Plateforme. Paris: Flammarion, 2001.
_____. La Possibilité d’une île. Paris: Fayard, 2005.
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Lawrence R. Schehr
University of Illinois
Recto/Verso:
Mapping the Contemporary Gay Novel
Recent years have seen a profusion of titles under the rubric of contem-
porary gay novels and autofictions in France. Largely set in the Marais,
these works often share certain plot mechanisms and similar approaches
to their subject. The trajectories of many of the protagonists involve
settling in Paris, having as much sex as possible, often becoming sero-
positive in the process. There is a shared vision of a high-tech world in
which gay pornography fills the characters’ imaginations and sets the
tone for their own behavior patterns. This article maps this new version
of “gay Paris” in an examination of the recurring motifs of the fictions.
________________________
— Ok, quelques minutes pour recharger les

batteries, et on inverse les rôles (Voirenlion
67).
I shall start with a quote that is more funny than offensive, in part
because of its total lack of literary value:
J’étais en confiance. Je me suis étalé comme une étoile de mer. J’ai fini par
m’ouvrir comme une huître. Après plusieurs tentatives qui s’étaient soldées
par un ‘je t’avais bien dit...,’ il est arrivé à m’empaler. J’étais devenu une
motte de beurre fendue. Son membre large et long glissait lentement. Plus il
venait plus j’en voulais. (Duroi Retour 65)
We are very far from the proper, subtle, and understated world of
Marcel Proust. We are now in a world in which, to quote two other
authors: “Les mecs de magazine de cul étaient donc maintenant en

3D” (Batlo 27) and we are looking at “l’impact du porno sur les gens”
(Jonard 202). It is this world that I would like to explore in this article.
But first, some personal and historical background as a way of sketch-
ing out a trajectory and the problematic at hand.
Some twenty years ago, I was at a dinner in the United Kingdom
with an elderly Oxbridge don as the guest of honor. The host of the
dinner, who has a mischievous sense of humor, made numerous, albeit
slightly veiled, remarks about my “sexual preference,” as it was then
known. Finally the elderly gentleman caught on, and in his best
Oxbridge tones, he declared, “I can imagine doing all sorts of things
about sex, except talking about it.” This was 1984, and while some
people were talking about it, it was nothing like contemporary dis-
course.
By that point, we had lived through approximately fifteen years
of women’s and gay liberation, as it was then known. And while the
former was both text-based and event-based, the latter was predomi-
nantly event-based. For the former, the bestseller, Our Bodies, Our-
selves, had been in print for over a decade. Women were urged to take
knowledge into their own hands, to know about themselves, and to
educate themselves about reproductive rights. In England, Scotland,
and Wales, abortion had been legalized in 1967; in Canada, in 1969.
The landmark case of Roe vs. Wade legalized abortion in the United
States in 1973; abortion would be legalized in France two years later.
As laws and mores changed and as the secular weighed ever more
heavily on Western societies, sexual liberation and sexual education
were accompanied by a production of discourse — both official and
non-official — that ranged from the sensation produced by Deep
Throat (1972) to open talk about sex clubs, swinging, and the like.
In the gay world, the discourse and behavior of liberation took a
different path from the progress narrative of women’s liberation.
Despite groundbreaking work by Guy Hocquenghem and others, gay
liberation did not have as much of a text-based component as
women’s liberation, for it did not arise out of middle-class discursiv-
ity, but out of popular action that rapidly metamorphosed into jouis-
sance. While the seventies were breathtakingly reckless for many, we
now know that there had been a time bomb ticking since the middle of
the decade, ultimately to go off in 1981 with the first reported cases of
Schehr 195
AIDS in the West. Then known as gay-related immune deficiency

(GRID) and soon to be known as AIDS, this syndrome’s etiology was
soon discovered in France with the detection of the retrovirus LAV,
now known as HIV.
By the mid to late eighties, the epidemic of AIDS seemed to give
the lie to gay liberation as a progress narrative. In some circles, there
was silence: Ronald Reagan did not even mention AIDS until the
death of Rock Hudson in 1985; the specularity of Hollywood had
forced Reagan out of a sound-proof closet of his own construction.
But things were no better in Europe: Michel Foucault was said to have
died in 1984 from brain cancer; yet there was a discussion of the
“shamefulness” of his death when it was revealed that he had likely
died of an AIDS-related illness. To this day, there remains controversy
around his death, his knowledge or lack thereof of his illness, and the
behavior and sexual practices that might have led to his infection,
most notably, his supposedly free, taboo-breaking behavior in bath-
houses in San Francisco.
This syncopated silence — not the least of which comes from the
fact that Foucault could not possibly have known how to prevent his
own infection — was accompanied by a profusion of discourses rela-
tive to sex and sexuality, AIDS, and death and dying: discourses about
anal penetration, condoms, and safer sex abounded; discourses multi-
plied about men dying and about unsafe sex, including a subset of dis-
courses about S/M, gay sex clubs, fisting, and pornography. AIDS
skewed discourses and combined a celebration of freedom with a
sense of doom and a growing presence of mourning and melancholia.
The discourses were inevitably intertwined, seemingly never to be
unyoked from one another; they were met in many quarters by a new
set of moralizing discourses that produced both an external war of
words between gay and anti-gay discourses and an internal one that
focused on matters relating to fidelity and safer sex, ultimately to be
accompanied by discourses relating to bareback sex.
In light of that brief historical and conceptual perspective, I shall
fast forward to my two hypotheses. First, there is a new set of dis-
courses that arise partly as a response to the set of previously existing
discourses and partly as a reaction to and a symptom of a radical
change in medical treatment and efficacy. Specifically, in the West,
AIDS is now considered to be a chronic condition in the same

category as multiple sclerosis, Parkinson’s disease, or diabetes.
Second, if we truly want to understand the discursive topography of
contemporary AIDS writing, we need to look at it in its profusion and
not limit ourselves to texts having high literary value. Indeed, one
could argue that literary value itself, while never a prediction of any
episteme as a whole, is even less valid an indicator nowadays in a
world in which literature has lost its primacy as the cultural vehicle of
record. Yet, unlike the scientists whom Foucault studied in his various
analyses of epistemes, the authors I am examining make no claims to
the truth, but see themselves as being able to represent in a verisimilar
or mimetic fashion the locus, the mores, the behaviors, and the
commonplaces of the world they describe, a very unliterary one: “Je
n’ai rien écrit depuis des années. Je n’avais plus le goût de la chose
littéraire” (Duroi Retour 10). And the stabs at literature are few and
far between:
Je lorgne le dernier roman de Dustan là où les livres sont exposés. Pas le

temps de lire un paragraphe pour savoir à quel point c’est sexe, si les mecs
s’entredéfoncent, ou si ce qu’il dit est moral et jusqu’à quel point. (Saron
35)
So it is not the discourses that are opposed to one another here, but
rather the contradictions contained within the set of discourses. These
authors do not agree on everything; yet the same discourses repeat
enough for me to take them as a corpus composed of interchangeable
statements and plot motifs.
A traditional approach to homosexuality described it as the
behavior relative to same-sex desire as well as the institutional repre-
sentations of that desire. Yet that simple definition is not enough for
most of these writers. The trajectory is quickly summarized: go to
Paris, settle in the Marais, and become HIV+: “Ils viennent à Paris dès
qu’ils le peuvent” (Duroi Retour 99). Or as one chapter title has it:
“Direction: Le Marais” (Batlo 28); another novel is entitled Le Tueur
du Marais. Generally, only when that trajectory is marked by real or
potential seropositivity, is a character considered to be queer to some.
The defining moment of male homosexuality is no longer same-sex
desire but rather bareback sex, bug-chasers, gift givers, pitchers and
catchers, and the HIV virus itself. This is certainly a carpe diem
Schehr 197
philosophy to “live free and die young”: “S’il doit mourir demain, il
mourra. Alors autant profiter de la vie, s’arranger afin qu’elle soit la
plus affriolante possible et riche d’enseignements” (Moraux 17). In
the meanwhile, the goal is to have as much sex with as many other
men as possible.
But the trajectory goes far beyond that carpe diem position
because it predicates homosexuality on factors that are not conceived
of in any psychogenesis or representation of same-sex desire. First, a
homosexual has to act on his desire. It is not enough to feel that desire
for or attraction to a member or members of the same sex, but he must
engage it and become other from the person he was meant to be
according to the heteronormative order: “Je suis en train de devenir un
autre” (Polver 26). Second, being homosexual means consciously or
unconsciously accepting to perform a role that depends on being pas-
sive in unprotected anal intercourse. Example after example forms a
litany: “Et puis, ces jours-là, j’étais particulièrement chaud du cul”
(Duroi Retour 112); “Sa teub va au fond de mon cul [...]” (Saron 12);
“Il m’a amené chez lui. Il a voulu m’enculer. Je me suis laissé faire. Je
n’ai pas eu mal” (Polver 27). Noteworthy here is that this last remark
occurs only shortly after the character discovers he has a gay side.
Even if one opts for safer sex by using a condom, the centrality of the
act defines who a character is.
Still, we have moved from the interiority of the cogito into a
radically material existence. The sense of being or existence is exteri-
orized materially and this corporeal definition of self is put with some
tongue-in-cheek eloquence by Érik Rémès as the title of one of his
works: Je bande donc je suis. Or again, the same paradigm: “‘Je jouis
donc je suis...’ Pardonnez-moi, Monsieur Descartes: votre formule est
pertinente mais, je trouve, celle-ci également” (Charuau 55). The defi-
nitional point of homosexuality may be considered the HIV virus
itself, something non-human between organic and inorganic that
potentially makes each person a kind of hybrid or a cyborg in the era
of the “post-human.” Yet what surprise is there in a world in which we
are all, always, now potentially plugged in? It is not the information
within the system, but the possible insidious corruption in it that
defines our current subjectivity in general and that of these characters
in particular.
I have already alluded to a shift in representational paradigms

that can be attributed to the medical breakthrough of combination
therapy; as I am writing this article in the spring of 2006, there is talk
of successful clinical trials for single-pill antiretroviral therapy; if that
is actualized, the paradigm may shift even further away from the ear-
lier one: “On ne dira jamais assez combien la house est, avec les
trithérapies, la raison essentielle du retour au sexe” (Jonard 209). An
individual can still continue to have sex to his heart’s content: “Après
la peur de mourir, la peur de vivre. Il m’arrive de baiser sans capote.
Et de faire le test régulièrement” (Duroi Retour 93). But all the test
will do is determine whether the character needs to start combination
therapy, not change his behavior. Here and there, one does find evi-
dence of the earlier paradigm, a space at which there is a time bomb if
not exactly an atomic bomb; in any case, it is viewed as a site of mas-
sive death, the death of a community: “les séropos au centre de notre
monde [...]. [...] Hirosidashima. Nagasidasaki” (Saron 106). But gen-
erally speaking, the dying, death, and mourning associated with the
first phases of AIDS have been replaced by a nonchalance or even a
jubilant celebration; rebirth after the promise of death in the eighties.
Sex returns with fewer consequences than in the first fifteen or so
years of the AIDS crisis. And while a writer like Rémès may argue in
his fictions — he has taken a different point of view in his non-
fictional narratives — that one must be seropositive to be truly gay
and that it is the responsibility of the one accepting to be penetrated to
decide whether he wants to have bareback sex or not, it is in fact the
case that seroconversion is indeed an act with far fewer direct conse-
quences. The practical consequence is that there is lots and lots of sex;
indeed it is often a marathon: “Jamais Yan n’avait été pris dans autant
de positions en si peu de temps!” (Chuberre 47). Some random state-
ments: “Je ne sais pas où je l’ai rencontré. J’ai couché avec tellement
d’ombres!” (Duroi Retour 52). Or again: “Je n’arrête pas de baiser.
[...]. On a l’impression d’un porno géant” (Sebhan 27). Or again, just
for fun, “Je me suis branlé deux fois en dix minutes” (Polver 27).
I shall return to the body and to pornography below, but I would
like to detour through questions of place and mechanism before
returning to those subjects. The place, as I have indicated, is Paris, a
gay Paris that is usually set as a world apart. Though there are some
exceptions, it is rare for straight men to appear as characters in these
Schehr 199
novels and equally rare for women to appear, except of course in the
few novels in which the protagonist is a practicing bisexual or in those
novels in which there is some version of homoparentality. And,
indeed, in the latter case, the matter is, in a certain sense, beyond
sexuality: “Et voilà que nous nous retrouvions face au casse-tête
chinois de cette grossesse, un écheveau d’émotions fortes et inconnues
où le désir d’enfant s’inscrivait hors de la sexualité” (Vilrouge 119).
Arguably, women and straight men have no place here: this is a sin-
gular world where the entire population has come to Paris to be gay in
the ways that I have just described. And those who just happen to be
there, those who have not come to Paris for that purpose, are essen-
tially invisible. This special, singular universe does not obey the laws
of the world of heteronormativity with which it necessarily coexists.
So the sense of place necessarily moves the construction of Paris
into a zone in which the sense of republican universalism, so funda-
mental to the foundation of modern French identity, is essentially
absent. A communitarian sense of identity is at the heart of the defini-
tion of place and space. Yet while much of these novels is set in one
specific neighborhood, or even in the generally recognized features of
gay Paris beyond the Marais, the sense of communitarian space does
not depend much on this older notion of territoriality, in what
amounted to a gay ghetto. Rather, this is essentially a world based on
networks, cybernetics, exchange, and the possibility of establishing
place and subjectivity at any given time, place, or moment. Even when
the subject matter is not “gay” in these novels, we are reminded of this
systemic interconnectivity and the effect it has on any individual’s
sense of identity and subjectivity: “En ville, il y avait des caméras à
tous les carrefours” (Duroi Retour 19). In these works, we are always
figures of the specular, figures in the society of spectacle, and com-
bined with the figure of the pornographic, this specular will quickly
and easily become a virtual reality, a projection of and from construc-
tions of cyberspace. One author (Gaubert) goes so far as to present his
novel as a set of television seasons, with the chapters given episode
numbers. We will see this specularity at length when we turn to the
role given pornography.
Now in the simplest of senses, this means that contemporary
technology is central to these works: Internet, streamed videos, porn,
and email: “Je suis dans un cybercafé,” states one writer (Sebhan 27),
and another writes of the “réseau téléphonique” (Vilrouge 87). These

are, of course, features of everyday life in the West, along with cell
phones, computers, I-pods, and DVD players. What is interesting here
is the naturalezza with which these recent inventions are incorporated
as essential parts of the discourse about the gay self: one could not
imagine these characters being themselves without cybercafés and the
Internet or without access to and endless playing of porn at home, and
so forth. The subject is always branché: both plugged in and “in the
know.” Yet subjects are never themselves, but always playing the role
of the day: “Pas de quoi s’étonner qu’après tout ça il m’envoie un mail
signé ton soumis du cul” (Saron 101). Or again: “Yan, à côté, est plus
plastique, plus boysband et tellement plus cruel” (Chuberre 33). Still
again: “Le sauna comprenait différents univers à fantasmes” (Batlo
143). Gay identity, in the most essentialist sense relating to same-sex
desire, has given way to a technology of self — to use Foucault’s ex-
pression — that depends on the plugging in not so much of Deleuzian
machines désirantes, but of machines désirées, aided and abetted by a
whole bag of technological tricks.
And indeed, in at least one case (Saron 68), the author provides a
Rabelaisian list of paraphernalia, just as he has previously provided a
list of sexual activities: it would seem that queer sex cannot happen
unless one takes an inventory of the possibilities. But, one might add,
inventory and stockage are fundamental to networks. Just as the net-
works and seropositivity have become defining factors instead of
identity and desire, the materiality of existence in a “smart” world has
in part replaced what we might consider to be face-to-face connection.
The bars exist, but they tend to be more often the back rooms than loci
for social conversation: “[...] ma première backroom, mon premier bar
à ours, ma première baise en public [...]” (Polver 42). Or again: “[...]
les bars à cul avec leurs dédales et leurs backrooms empestant la sueur
et le sperme [...]” (Chuberre 31). So within the communautarian
model that I have mentioned, there is a kind of Deleuzian rhizomatics
for sex: gay bars are labyrinths in which one finds someone to bugger
him.
Of capital interest here is the double constraint or even contra-
diction of the contemporary, the post-post-modern, or alternately,
what one novelist terms “le post-sida” (Saron 73), significantly with-
out capital letters. Let us consider that the decades of the seventies and
Schehr 201
the eighties were, at least in terms of gay culture, part and parcel of
the post-modern: no grand narrative, rhizomatics at play, freeplay of
the individual subjects who would plug in their machines désirantes in
various ways. Fatally and ironically, the eighties saw the rise of a
master discourse — a discourse of death — and a turn toward mourn-
ing, both of individuals and of a subculture and its accompanying
“lifestyle.” By the mid to late nineties, mourning is again displaced bit
by bit, there is no return of desire as desire, no return to machines
désirantes, but rather a turn toward a displaced desire of desire, or, to
put it another way, a turn toward machines désirées and away from
machines désirantes, objects desired by the system, objects desired
because they are validated by the system. And those objects, to be
sure, are reduced to one and one alone; being gay means being the
bottom in an act of anal intercourse. It is a turn toward a Lacanian
incompleteness, the impossibility of fulfilling desire: “En revanche,
question cul, il était bien ‘parisienne.’ Il ne désirait qu’une chose:
m’enculer vite fait bien fait” (Duroi Retour 54).
Born out of the migratory pattern that is the fulfillment of the

subjectivity of the Baudelairian flâneur, since this displacement of
desire can no longer be free-flowing, but is always monitored or con-
trôlé, it winds up making the impossibility of independent subjectivity
permanent. So ironically, the assumption of a queer identity means
never being able fully to assume that queer identity as identity. And
the only ones who seem to be able to assume identity are those few
characters who say that their identity is elsewhere, or at least partially
elsewhere:
Mon tendre amant qui a combattu pour le droit à l’orientation sexuelle dans
le monde n’a pas pu comprendre que je ne m’assume pas totalement dans
mon identité. J’ai passé des heures à lui expliquer que mon père ne s’en
remettrait jamais s’il apprenait que son fils unique était ‘zamel.’ (Trabelsi
16-17)
This last word is Moroccan slang for “pédé.” Or again: “J’avais

l’impression qu’on me prenait pour un Arabe. Peut-être avais-je
attrapé quelque chose là-bas? Un accent, à force de parler avec Nouri,
une attitude?” (Legrand 105). The other is very close; the other risks
perverting the identity of the self that is always already other. But in
this post-post-modern world, the double negation of identity does not

lead to a return to the same, but rather to a further alterity.
As I indicated earlier, the population of these works is by and
large uniformly gay male — and I would add, with very few excep-
tions, it is a young population. Yet, given the last two quotes, anyone
would realize that the only sense of identity that can come out of this
situation occurs precisely when the given locus for identity is put into
question. In some cases, this happens because of general cultural
otherness, whether in the previous two cases that put identity and sta-
bility into question by having the character face the otherness of North
Africa or in various works that involve a half-Finnish, half-French
young man who moves early on to France, a traveler who goes to
Istanbul, or a protagonist who goes to Italy and then travels through
time with his Italian boyfriend back to Ancient Rome and conven-
iently to Hadrian’s Villa, known in its time, according to Suetonius,
for more perverse fun than anyone could possibly handle.
But this destabilization of identity can happen through several
other mechanisms. The first, which I shall pass over rather quickly,
involves the introduction of male heterosexuality as a destabilizing
factor. This is a rare occurrence in these works, not only because the
appearance of heterosexuals is itself rare, but also because the bulwark
stability of male heterosexuality — of phallogocentrism and hetero-
normativity — is fundamental to the repositioning of gay men in these
works: la France profonde is heteronormative; this Paris is not. Yet
occasionally there will be a straight guy who is gay-friendly or a fam-
ily in the know, ready to accept the queer son.
Ultimately more interesting are four other phenomena. First there
is the dissociation of reproduction from any model of heteronormativ-
ity, in order to figure the position of homoparentalité. Clearly a
movement and phenomenon relevant to the real world, to the PACS
and its consequences, homoparentalité has literary consequences as
well because of the way it dissociates, for example, the desire to be a
father from what we would otherwise have thought of as bisexuality:
the desire for paternity is not necessarily combined with the desire for
the feminine other. So for example we read that, “À tâtons, à tabous,
Christine et moi repensons la famille comme d’autres se lancent dans
l’invention de la solitude” (Vilrouge 16). Indeed in such works that
stray across the border of homoparentality there is sometimes one or
Schehr 203
several scenes of comic relief in preparation for the characters having

a baby the old-fashioned way: “Un onguent anti-âge au rétinol actif
spécifie en caractères incrustés dans le verre réclame mes attentions,
mes faveurs. Je trempe ma queue dans le pot. [...] l’érection fut
immédiat [...]” (Vilrouge 19). But in any case, the divorce of desire
and mechanism allows characters to queer their own homosexuality:
“Je refuse d’être figé à une place d’òu il est impossible de se remettre
en question ni de se situer ni même de s’éloigner” (Vilrouge 60).
Strangely, put in these terms, homoparentalité becomes a weapon
against the disidentificatory mechanisms of homonormativity. Re-
turning to reproduction means moving away from the categorizations
typically associated with reproduction: it is, to be blunt, an additional,
albeit different, means for queering heterosexuality and requeering
homosexuality in the process.
The third mechanism destabilizes the act of sex by introducing
something unexpected, something queer, that will, of course, return us
to the system. We are all familiar with Michel Foucault’s famous pro-
nouncement on the function of what were then perceived to be rather
fringe sexual practices such as S/M and especially fisting: the latter, at
least, was an invention of the twentieth century; for Foucault, such
practices functioned as renewals of sexuality. And those practices
somewhat destabilize normative sexualities. Yet at the same time, if,
in 1981-1984, ordinary, garden-variety sodomy may indeed come to
mean death and then a decade or so later is redefined in another way,
it stands to reason that such extreme sexual practices are not really so
extreme because the meanings of sex and sexuality have been radi-
cally altered by that double shift. So rather than engage sexual practice
as a radicalization of sex and sexuality in these books, authors often
choose to blur gender definitions to queer the matter: “Et une les-
bienne qui couche avec un pédé dans une backroom, c’est un acte
homo ou hétéro?”(Jonard 35).
The fourth and final mechanism of destabilization attacks our
notion of identity from within the sexual act. As I have indicated,
sexuality itself is paradoxically destabilized along with identity by the
changes undergone over the past quarter century through the evolution
of the interrelation of sexuality and society and through the impact of
various agents such as AIDS and pornography. Before arriving at that
point, let us look at this final figure of destabilization. Gilles Sebhan

starts his novel with the following:
Pour certains, le sexe est le sexe. Point final. Mais pour Luc, c’est une
espèce de chasse au trésor permanente. Ou une manie d’entomologiste.
Dans son appartement, les garçons sont épinglés au mur comme des in-
sectes. Encadrés une bonne fois pour toutes. Jeunes, en érection, pris au
flash comme dans un bloc d’ambre. (Sebhan 9)
He is not alone here, for elsewhere we read: “Je suis un naturaliste

devant une espèce inconnue” (Polver 44).
In both these cases, sex is translated into a different discourse that
invokes a radically other subjectivity from the two already mentioned:
the independent subject and the destabilized partial subject in the net-
work. The gay individual becomes a knowledgeable searcher, not
exactly the independent hunter described by Michel Tournier in Les
Météores, but rather an individual with intimate knowledge of the
workings of his object of investigation. The post-post-modern gay
man must change subjectivities. Relations to language and number
change, moving away from the individual and toward a kind of Fouri-
eresque madness. I shall come back to Fourier shortly.
In terms of language, the relation to and the relation of language
is intrinsically and inherently queer, or, to use equally charged terms,
but in a different register, language is always already deconstructed
and then retrofitted into a new social construction. If language is seen
traditionally as being supported by and as reflecting a social structure
that it describes, then certainly the language of the French contempo-
rary queer both is a retrofitting of the emerging new paradigms and a
means of creating them by destabilizing any inherited disjecta mem-
bra of older paradigms: “Comment l’homosexuel ne se sentirait-il pas
frère du linguiste, sa doublure roturière, trafiquant de mœurs comme
l’autre est tricheur de mots? (Zagdanski 50). Or at a meta-level, “Les
commentaires du narrateur (qui anticipe, qui brouille, qui déflore et
fout la merde comme par plaisir dérisoire)” (Quérec 15). Language
here — queering and deflowering — is for the cognoscenti who are all
marked by it and by the acts it describes. The acts, both named and
unnamed, and the language, twisted and perverted in skewing its
object, intercombine to complete the destabilization. And yet they are
there precisely to offer a kind of stability to an emerging social struc-
Schehr 205
ture in which ritual has a place and in which those who are not “play-
ers” can be reduced to a functionality, whether it is “l’hétéro beauf”
(Duroi Retour 18) or someone within the community necessarily
reduced to a state of non-being: “L’arrivée au Chant des voyelles à
Châtelet se passe dans l’euphorie et sans histoire. Une tapette nous
demande combien nous sommes à dîner” (Gaubert 84). But aside from
that, everyone speaks the same language and not doing so is unaccept-
able: “Exprime-toi donc comme tout le monde,” one character says to
another (Quérec 7). We are in an updated version of the clone zone.
And as any reader will have guessed, so much of this new lan-
guage does indeed concern the intimacies of sex, both the acts and
results. And in distinction to a situation twenty years ago where the
distinguished gentleman with whom I dined could not conceive of
talking about sex, that is all I am going to do in what immediately
follows. It is all vulgar, but some of it is funny. The sexual act, the
exploration of the sexual, and certainly the result — “au sommet du
jouissif” (Saron 9) — reconfigure language to make it ever more inti-
mate and ever more focused on what used to be called euphemistically
“the unprintable.” This is a world without the polite form of the sec-
ond person, with very few exceptions. One epistolary novel starts as
the correspondence between a teacher and one of his former students,
and that necessarily starts with “vous.” Another features Marcel
Proust himself in the Charlus-like role of admirer of a younger man;
the two characters use “vous.” But basically it is “tu” everywhere, and
were French, like Thai, a language in which more degrees of intimacy
were possible, we would undoubtedly be there: “Dans le cul, un plaisir
tutoie l’autre, l’attire ou le repousse [...]” (Saron 159).
The series and sequences of sexual events became a virtual Fou-
rieriste phalanstère peopled with his queer creatures, every one of
them engaged in various permutations and commutations: “Éric me dit
qu’il pense que quand on baise à deux, on est plus de deux, qu’il y a
aussi tous les autres avec qui on a niqué qui t’accompagnent” (Saron
119). Now obviously, at one level, this is merely a reflection of scien-
tific reality insofar as sexually transmitted diseases are concerned.
Such diseases, including AIDS, are spread in a radiating linear and
sequential way, an echo of the famous “patient zero” theory proposed
by Randy Shilts, author of And the Band Played On. Shilts, following
the findings (later repudiated) of Dr. William Darrow at the Centers
for Disease Control in Atlanta, hypothesized that a Canadian flight

attendant, Gaëtan Dugas, was the first to catch the virus. He then sup-
posedly spread it through repeated sexual activities in various cities,
and the men with whom he had unprotected sex themselves spread it
in the same fashion. So in addition to pointing to a kind of pornotopia
or sexual utopia, it also points to a mythic beginning, a fall into a
sexuality that is necessarily marked by the twin figures of intimacy
and death. This position, the texts seem to be saying, is Janus-like: if
we did not have intimacy, we would not be queer, but the price of
intimacy, the intimacy of this sexual utopia, is death.
This is indeed a pornotopia, a world in which the informing
master mechanism is not literature but the visual world of pornogra-
phy, its language, its material, its ubiquity, and its redetermination of
the spaces and discourses of contemporary French queer sexuality. To
say that Proust and Gide are no longer the master leaders of the gay
discourse, the icons, or the archetypes, is to make an understatement.
The groundbreaking narrative Tricks, by Renaud Camus, appears once
but to little effect (Duroi Kotoba 86), as do Hocquenghem (idem) and
Dustan (Saron 35). And there are even brief stylistic allusions to
Genet: “Les obsèques de Momo les Grandes Oreilles avaient trans-
porté Ami de moi dans les hautes sphères du deuil [...]. [...] Je
l’entendais soupirer, renifler, geindre, magnifier la vie de saint
Momo” (Amstel 141). Yet to be honest, this is not at all a literary
world, despite the fact that we are seeing a profusion of these books
— I read at least thirty of these novels and there are many others. The
contradiction is that in this world of books, little reading is going to go
on in a world in which one narrator writes, “il me faut un mec qui
aime le dialogue cérébral avec un poing dans le cul” (Saron 65).
As with any post-modern or post-post-modern phenomenon,
there is no archetype, there are no longer any master discourses: “je
nique l’archétypal; non, le sexe n’est pas défini depuis toujours à tout
jamais” (Saron 100). The discourses have become fragmented, led in
part by the idea of gay literature, a communautarization of discourses
that is, in its own special way, anathema to traditional concepts of
French universalism and citizenship: “On parle de littérature gaie. Je
lui dis que je comprends pas comment un écrivain gai pourrait avoir
des lecteurs straight” (Saron 62). In passing, readers will have noticed
the increasing Americanization of these discourses, something that is
Schehr 207
pervasive in straight and gay contemporary writing, but particularly so

in French gay writing because the discourse is incorporated along with
a particularly Americanized version of homosexuality, though one
without the attendant underlying traces of Puritanism: “Tu me parles
de quoi? Lui avait demandé son boy friend”(Duroi Kotoba 13). Or
again: “Un escort boy français assassine Yoko Ono” (Amstel 8).
Yet, simply put, the world is defined by porn: “Le sexe appelle le
sexe. Je me branle devant Scandaleux Volume 3” (Jonard 67). Or
elsewhere, another writer (Polver 57) describes someone as “un adepte
de la branlette devant l’écran.” Sex cannot occur without the inter-
vening mediation of porn; thus is great attention paid to reintroducing
the necessities of phallocentrism: “Sarah aimerait me goder avec le
Jeff Stryker que j’aime tant” (Jonard 52); or again, writing of a well-
known contemporary porn star, Rocco Siffredi, who has actually made
a transition to more mainstream films, one author writes: “Ce n’était
pas encore aujourd’hui qu’elle sortirait le nouvel appareil perfectionné
aux dimensions de Rocco Siffredi” (Chuberre 107). And another
notes, admonishingly, “je suis pas un animal à cirque à la Rocco
Siffredi” (Saron 29). And yet they all are creatures of a kind of porno-
circus of the mind. Porn is always nearby: “Il n’y avait rien de pire
pour notre héros que de baiser avec un mec et de sentir que l’esprit du
partenaire était ailleurs, en train de mater un film porno imaginaire,
seul dans son coin” (Batlo 115).
What does this mean? How does this inform the universe? I have
saved pornography for the end, because, in its way, it is as unifying a
figure as the matter of potential seropositivity and is ultimately the
specular figure of this world. If seropositivity is the marker of
belonging, the ubiquity of porn is nevertheless the sign of the virtual
world we are in, what has been called in various circles, teledildonics,
a virtual sexual reality safe from STD’s and encounters. Here,
ironically, the presence of pornography, that two-dimensional, safe
version of sex, counterbalances the immediacy and presence of
potentially viral bareback sex. Porn is the figure of safety internalized
within this world, as if somehow, modeling oneself on pornography,
seeing oneself as the subject of pornography, were that magical,
oppositional antidote to the position of immediacy defined by
bareback sex. That internalized and glorified other is also that
specular, phallic other, the sign and seat of phallic presence presented
as if it were there, when we know that it is not. To say that the charac-
ters introject themselves into a pornotopia is the bare minimum, so to
speak: this is a world where plot is accidental, where the next lay is
around the corner, where all men are gay and well-endowed, where
pleasure goes beyond language to the primal, and where the only real
activity is sex. And yet this screen presence, going well beyond the
literary, is the illusion that the world is like that, that sex is indeed
zipless, that sex is its own representation.
What then can we say about the world of these novels as a sort of
conclusion? The renewed liberation afforded by combination therapy
creates a world in which the microscopic no longer matters and in
which the macroscopic — the internalized “big screen” — is the
ideological substitute for reality, or better, that which replaces reality.
No longer is literature — popular, to be sure, and reasonably
transparent — the product of earlier literature. Tied more directly to a
social situation that is interpreted within pornography, these books
reinterpret the present as the eminently readable and trope-free verbal
version of those screen images. No tropes, then, in this internalized
pornotopia, but only a viral marker that seems endlessly to delay the
last reel of the film that is these characters’ lives.
Schehr 209
Works Cited
Amstel, Paul. Le Tueur du Marais. Brussels: Editions Labor, 2003.
Batlo, Bruno. Des baffes et du sexe. Paris: CyLibris, 2001.
Boston Women’s Health Book Collective. Our Bodies, Ourselves; a Book by
and for Women. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1973.
Brunello, Thierry. C’était au Paradis. Paris: Editions Gaies et Lesbiennes,
2005.
Camus, Renaud. Tricks. Paris: Mazarine, 1979.
Charuau, Benoît. Ton aile. Brussels: Editions Biliki, 2005.
Chuberre, Erwan. Le rôle de ma vie. Paris: CyLibris, 2004.
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FRENCH LITERATURE SERIES

Editions Rodopi B.V. USA/Canada:

Future Conference Topics and Volumes

William Edmiston Daniela DiCecco

Michael T. Cartwright Pierre Ronzeaud

Ross Chambers Franc Schuerewegen

Roland Desné Albert Sonnenfeld

Ralph Heyndels Marie-Odile Sweetser

Norris J. Lacy Ronald W. Tobin

Gerald Prince Dirk Van der Cruysse

The paper on which this book is printed meets the requirements of

An electronic version of this volume is included in print subscriptions.

Sodomy, Allegory, and the Subject of Pleasure

Divergences et Queeriosités: Ovide moralisé

A Modest Proposal for Queering the Past:

Rousseau’s Queer Bottom:

Mademoiselle de Maupin: Fluctuations identitaires et sexuelles

Gender Convergence in Sand’s La Mare au diable,

“Étrange n’est-ce pas?” The Princesse Edmond de Polignac,

The Anus of Tiresias: Sodomy, Alchemy, Metamorphosis

Queer Writing: Homoeroticism in Jean Genet’s Fiction

“Nous sommes un fléau social”:

Révélations intimes: Vers une cartographie queer du Sud-Ouest

Stop the World, or What’s Queer about Michel Houellebecq?

Recto/Verso: Mapping the Contemporary Gay Novel

Queer Sexualities in French and Francophone

In the 1945 Broadway musical Carousel, Oscar Hammerstein

lesbian political activist group, Queer Nation, founded in 1990.

prevailing definitions of sexual identity but — equally and antece-

Two introductions to queer theory, those of Donald Hall and

The adjective “queer” means to abrade the classifications, to sit athwart

Queer theory can trace its ancestry to the publication in 1976 of

of another, but instead by the relations enabled by the unrationalized

that names the difference between “proper” and “sodomitic” modes of

In “Divergences et Queeriosités: Ovide moralisé ou les mutations

In “A Modest Proposal for Queering the Past: A Queer Princess

In “Rousseau’s Queer Bottom: Sexual Difference in the Confes-

nature of homosexuality in Jean’s social milieu is a paragon of writing

and in the writings of Roland Barthes. The topography of the region

Sodomy, Allegory, and the Subject of Pleasure

This study looks at the opposition set up in medieval exegetical dis-

[Lady Nature, speaking to the Narrator]

— Alain de Lille, The Plaint of Nature

La tmèse, source ou figure du plaisir [...]

Tmesis, origin or figure of pleasure; tmesis,

Roland Barthes’s discourse of celebration and the medieval dis-

exceeds it, becoming ultimately unthinkable within it — that they be-

L’endroit le plus érotique du corps n’est-il pas là où le vêtement bâille?

The second order of pleasure Barthes describes is mediated and se-

Ce n’est pas là le plaisir du strip-tease corporel ou du suspense narratif.

Intermittence is thus simultaneous, immediate, and perverse, while

Meun’s opposition of scholarly and courtly discourse, which speak

The aporetic quality of this confrontation is epitomized in the

The debate reads as follows. While telling the story of Saturn’s

Vous, qui tant estes sage et bele,

Reason retorts: she should lose no respect in naming a beautiful thing

earlier discussion in which Reason warns the Lover of the danger of

C’est li dieus qui touz les desvoie,

According to her metaphor, love is a path and sodomy and “improper”

meaning must first be transparent so that it can later be elevated to a

Reason argues that the Courtly Lover’s resistance to the literal

But while Reason is articulate and faultless in her appraisal of the

The accusation Reason levies against the Lover for engaging in