Jean Genet – His Ha(s)te of and for the ‘Mother Tongue’

¹ The choice of hate (normally a verb) instead of hatred (noun) in this context, besides the felicitous side effect of preserving the graphonomy hate/haste, is also intended to reflect a thorough-going hope that this article may function not merely as analysis but likewise as a mise-en-abyme of Genet's own ha(s)te of the mother tongue – in uncovering or recovering the latest movements of hate/hatred (we see with more and more frequency ‘hate’ used in the place of ‘hatred’ as the noun of the verb ‘hate’ in English – for example, as in the translation of Mathieu Kassovitz's 1995 film La Haine as Hate).

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Notes

Many thanks to my reviewer Lily Robert-Foley.

¹ The choice of hate (normally a verb) instead of hatred (noun) in this context, besides the felicitous side effect of preserving the graphonomy hate/haste, is also intended to reflect a thorough-going hope that this article may function not merely as analysis but likewise as a mise-en-abyme of Genet's own ha(s)te of the mother tongue – in uncovering or recovering the latest movements of hate/hatred (we see with more and more frequency ‘hate’ used in the place of ‘hatred’ as the noun of the verb ‘hate’ in English – for example, as in the translation of Mathieu Kassovitz's 1995 film La Haine as Hate).

² Jean Genet, Journal du voleur [1949] (Paris: Gallimard, 2004), p.80.

³ Jean Genet, The Thief's Journal, trans. Bernard Frechtman (Paris: Olympia Press, 1959), p.78.

⁴ See, among others, Mairéad Hanrahan, « Sentir/Penser la différence. “Notre-Dame des Fleurs” de Jean Genet », in NEGRON, Mara (dir), Lectures de la différence sexuelle, Paris, éd. Des Femmes, 1994, p.169–183; Patrice Bougon, « Le travail des mots et la décomposition narrative dans Pompes funèbres », Roman 20/50, n 20, décembre 1995, pp.67–83.

⁵ Jean Genet, Journal du voleur [1949] (Paris: Gallimard, 2004), p.20.

⁶ Jean Genet, The Thief's Journal, p.21.

⁷ Jean Genet, Journal du voleur [1949] (Paris: Gallimard, 2004), pp.21–22.

⁸ Jean Genet, The Thief's Journal, p.22.

⁹ Jean Genet, The Thief's Journal, p.22.

¹⁰ Jean Genet, Journal du voleur, p.21

¹¹ Jean Genet, Journal du voleur, p.22

¹² Jean Genet, The Thief's Journal, p.23.

¹³ Jacques Derrida, Glas (Paris: Galilée, 1974), p.166–167.

¹⁴ Jean Genet, Journal du voleur, p.23.

¹⁵ Jean Genet, The Thief's Journal, p.24.

¹⁶ Jean Genet, Journal du voleur, p.24.

¹⁷ Jean Genet, The Thief's Journal, p.25.

¹⁸ Jacques Derrida, Glas, p.291

¹⁹ Jean Genet, Notre-Dame-des-Fleurs [1948] (Paris: Gallimard, 2010), p.92–93.

²⁰ Jean Genet, Our Lady of the Flowers, trans. Bernard Frechtman (Paris: Olympia Press, 1957), p.65–66.

²¹ Jean Genet, Notre-Dame-des-Fleurs, p.91.

²² Jean Genet, Our Lady of the Flowers, pp.64–65.

²³ François Laroque, ‘She gave strange œillades’. King Lear, l'histoire de l'œil’ (http://www.ircl.cnrs.fr/pdf/King%20Lear/Presentation_PDF/F_Laroque.pdf)

²⁴ Jean Genet, Notre-Dame-des-Fleurs [1948] (Paris: Gallimard, 2010), p.43.

²⁵ Jean Genet, Our Lady of the Flowers, trans. Bernard Frechtman (Paris: Olympia Press, 1957), p.31.