Mapping Gay Paris: Language, Space and Sexuality in the Marais

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Notes

Notes

1.  A longer version of this study will appear in Provencher, Queer French: Globalization, Language and Sexual Citizenship in France (Ashgate Publishing, forthcoming).

2.  I define sexual citizenship as belonging to the body politic in relation to one's sexual identity. For more on sexual citizenship in France, see McCaffrey.

3.  Weber maintains that early twentieth-century technologies such as the SNCF united French citizens living in Paris and the provinces. Indeed 20th- and 21st-century communication technologies continue to bring the city into the daily lives of all citizens. These newer technologies have especially helped marginalized social groups in their process of self-identification as well as their psychological or physical migration to urban centers, where they can escape humiliation, violence and homophobia. For more on this urban trajectory, see Eribon 24.

4.  See Messian and Mouret-Fourme quoted in Sibalis 12.

5.  See the works of J. Genet, E. Rémès or C. Collard.

6.  Hocquenghem's transformation of space and decentralization of desire in that space has been described as “revolutionary.” See Schehr (“Defense and Illustration” 151).

7.  Michael Sheringham echoes this when he writes: “To see Paris as a set of fields… is to put aside any attempt to pin down an elusive essence” (2).

8.  Similarly, Hocquenghem writes: “Il est des choses que je sais d’instinct: bords de rivières, alentours de gare, jardins publics me sont favorables” (10). The gay guide Petit Futé also includes the Quais as one of many meeting places for gay men (32). The Quais appear in other contemporary French texts dealing with homosexuality For example, see Collard's Les Nuits fauves.

9.  While I include an analysis of only two maps drawn by gay men in this essay, I attempt to integrate the details from a number of participants’ drawings in order to present a composite of spaces and themes mentioned during the range of interviews. Hence my analysis emphasizes the importance of the intertext in the understanding of gay space and identity formation.