Displacing Political Horizons: Queer Writing and Transnational Activism

Abstract

Focusing on the work of Virginie Despentes, Jean Genet, Guy Hocquenghem, and Abdellah Taïa, this dissertation challenges the antisocial turn taken in queer theory, by means of a parallel study of the authors’ geographical and intellectual itineraries. Beyond a catalyzer for mobility, I demonstrate how the authors’ sexual non-normativity leads them to participate in the elaboration of political alliances redefining social belonging across cultures, races, and borders.

Keywords:

• Alliance
• belonging
• community
• mobilization
• queer
• transnationalism

Notes

1 Maurice Blanchot, Le Livre à venir, Paris, Gallimard, 1959.

2 Maurice Blanchot, La Communauté inavouable, Paris, Éditions de minuit, 1984.

3 Lee Edelman, No Future, Duke UP, 2006.

4 José Esteban Muñoz, Cruising Utopia. The Then and There of Queer Futurity, New York UP, 2009, p. 1.

5 Jean Genet, Journal du voleur, Paris, Gallimard, 1949; Notre-Dame-des-Fleurs, Paris, Gallimard, 1943.

6 Guy Hocquenghem, “Je devenais un homosexuel,” Le Nouvel Observateur, January 10, 1972.

7 “Virginie Despentes en 2017: ‘Ma colère est une colère de vaincue,’” Les Inrocks, May 26, 2017.

8 Karim Boukhari, “Abdellah Taïa, homosexuel envers et contre tous,” TelQuel, June 2007; Abdellah Taïa, “L’Homosexualité expliquée à ma mère,” TelQuel, April 2009.

9 Jean Genet, Un captif amoureux, Paris, Gallimard, 1986; L’Ennemi déclaré, Paris, Gallimard, 1991.

10 Guy Hocquenghem, L’Amour en relief, Paris, Éditions Albin Michel, 1982; Le Désir homosexuel, Paris, PUF, 1972, Fayard, 2000; Le Gay voyage. Guide et regard homosexuels sur les grandes métropoles, Paris, Éditions Albin Michel, 1980.

11 Virginie Despentes, Apocalypse bébé, Paris, Éditions Grasset, 2010; Vernon Subutex, 1, Éditions Grasset, 2015; Vernon Subutex, 2, Paris, Éditions Grasset, 2015; Vernon Subutex, 3, Paris, Éditions Grasset, 2017.

12 Abdellah Taïa, L’Armée du salut, Paris, Éditions du Seuil, 2006; Une mélancolie arabe, Paris, Éditions du Seuil, 2008.

13 Bertrand Westphal, Geocriticism. Real and Fictional Spaces, Palgrave Macmillan, 2011.

14 David Harvey, A Brief History of Neoliberalism, Oxford UP, 2007.

15 J. Jack Halberstam, In a Queer Time and Place. Transgender Bodies, Subcultural Lives, NYUP, 2005.

16 Françoise Lionnet and Shu-mei Shih, Minor Transnationalism, Duke UP, 2005.

17 Mari Ruti, The Ethics of Opting Out. Queer Theory’s Defiant Subjects, Columbia UP, 2017.

18 Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, Multitude, War and Democracy in the Age of Empire, The Penguin Press, 2004, p. 204.

19 Pierre Bourdieu, “Espace social et genèse des ‘classes,’” Actes de la recherche en sciences sociales, vol. 52, no. 1, 1984. [pp. 3–14], p. 10.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Thomas Muzart

Thomas Muzart earned his Ph.D in French from the Graduate Center of CUNY in June 2020. His research examines the correlation between sexuality, geographical mobility, and grassroots political movements in literary texts and cultural productions from the 1970s onward. He is currently a Postdoctoral Associate in French Studies at Duke University.

Maxime Blanchard

Maxime Blanchard is Professor of Literature and French Language at the City University of New York. He is the author of the essay Le Québec n’existe pas (Montréal, Nota Bene/Varia, 2017). He is currently finishing a book about nostalgy.