Topic outline

  • General

    Collapse all Expand all



  • Useful secondary readings

  • MODULE OVERVIEW

    Highlighted

    The early 1980s marked the beginning of a global AIDS epidemic that prompted vital debates about the representations and cultural politics of sexuality on both sides of the Atlantic. 

    In France, the crisis prompted a wave of new medical research, new government legislations on civil partnerships (such as the PACS, or Civil Pact of Solidarity), and radical forms of gay activism whose ideological consequences mobilized discussions around sexuality, identity, transgression, and deviance.

    Inspired by the political events happening in France, American theorists in the 1990s invented what is known as “Queer Theory”: a critical paradigm that seeks to deconstruct sexual rhetoric and find new, non-heteronormative modes of being and non-binary vocabularies of identity. 

    Faced with pressing debates around LGBTQ+ diversity, this module offers an introduction to critical, literary and visual discussions of queerness in contemporary France. It considers how globalization has impacted local forms of sexuality and identity practice in Francophone-based examples, while addressing key theoretical debates around the nature of performativity (Judith Butler), queer time (Lee Edelman), sexual history (Michel Foucault), and fluid language (Judith Halberstam, José Esteban Muñoz). 


    Key texts we will study (although we will focus on excerpts only, it would be useful for your general understanding of the course if you could read the texts in English or watch the films in advance of the class,)

    A QUEER ICON

    Jean Genet, Notre Dame des Fleurs (Paris: Gallimard, 1951); Our Lady of the Flowers, trans. Bernard Frechtman (New York: Grove Press, 1963)

    *optional (Film) Jean Genet, Un chant d’amour (1950): https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x5n2pa5

    UNDOING GENDER

     

    Anne Garréta, Sphinx (Paris: Grasset, 1986); Sphinx (London: Deep Vellum, 2015)

    (Film) Céline Sciamma, Tomboy (2011)

    TRANSFILIATION: BEING QUEER IN THE MAGHREB

    Abdellah Taïa, L’Armée du salut (Paris: Editions du Seuil, 2014); Salvation Army, trans. Frank Stock (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2009); 

    (Film) Abdellah Taïa, L’Armée du salut (2013)

    AIDS NARRATIVES

    Hervé Guibert, A l’ami qui ne m’a pas sauvé la vie (Paris: Folio, 1990); To the friend who did not save my life (California: Semiotexte, 2020)


    Texts to study from the reader:

    Foucault, Michel, The History of Sexuality, Volume 1: An Introduction, trans. Robert Hurley (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1981), pp.1–13.

    Amin, Kadji, ‘Genealogies of Queer Theory’, in The Cambridge Companion to Queer Studies (Cambridge: CUP, 2020), pp.17–22.

    Butler, Judith, excerpts from Gender Trouble: Feminism and the subject of identity (New York and London: Routledge Classics, 2011), pp.xxx–xxxii ; pp.43–46; and Bodies that matter: On the discursive limits of sex (New York and London: Routledge, 1993), pp.223–242.

    Sedgwick, Eve Kofosky, ‘Queer and Now’, in Tendencies (New York: Routledge, 1994), pp.1–8.

    Guibert, Hervé, Excerpts from To the friend who did not save my life (South Pasadena, CA: Semiotext(e), 2020), pp.15–49, pp.92–143, pp.226–251.

    Bersani, Leo, ‘Is the rectum a grave?’, in Reclaiming Sodom, ed. Jonathan Goldberg (London: Routledge, 1994), pp.249–263; and Crimp, Douglas, ‘Painful pictures’ in Melancholia and Moralism: Essays on AIDS and Queer Politics(London: MIT Press, 2002), pp.274–280.

    Genet, Jean, ‘Interview with Madeleine Gobeil’, in The Declared Enemy, ed. Albert Dichy (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2004), pp.2–8; excerpts from Our Lady of the Flowers, trans. Bernard Frechtman (New York: Grove Press, 1963), pp.47–60.

    Taïa, Abdellah, Salvation Army (Cambridge, Mass.: Semiotext(e), 2009), pp.13–16, pp.40–47, pp.56–57, pp.69–73, pp.96–117.

    Muñoz, Jose Esteban, ‘Performing disidentifications’, in Disidentifications: Queers of Color and the Performance of Politics (London and Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1999), pp.8–12.

    Garréta, Anne, Excerpts from Sphinx, trans. Emma Ramadan (London: Deep Vellum, 2015), pp.1–5; pp.31–46; pp.52–57; pp.86–90.

    Kim, Annabel, ‘The Riddle of Racial Difference in Anne Garréta’s Sphinx’, Diacritics, 45.1 (2017), pp. 4-22.


  • WEEK 1: POWER, RESISTANCE, AND SEXUALITY (FOUCAULT)

    Required readings:

    1. Foucault, Michel, The History of Sexuality, Volume 1: An Introduction, trans. Robert Hurley (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1981), pp.1–13.

    Further Recommended Reading:

    Julian Jackson, "Introduction" in Living In Arcadia: Homosexuality, Politics, and Morality In France From the Liberation to AIDS, Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 2009 (Selected excerpts pp 4-6). ==> We'll read the excerpts in class together. 

    Chloe Taylor, “The History of sexuality and Queer Theory”, in The Routledge Guidebook to Foucault's The History of Sexuality (Oxford: Routledge, 2017), pp 173 – 200.

     David Halperin, Saint Foucault: Towards a Gay Hagiography (Oxford: OUP, 1995), pp 15 – 37.

     Nikki Sullivan, “Queer: a question of being or a question of doing?”, in A critical introduction to queer theory (New York: NUP, 2003), pp 37 – 57.


  • Week 2: EMERGENCE OF QUEER THEORY AND PERFORMATIVITY (FOUCAULT AND BUTLER)

    This week, we will trace the genealogical relationship between Foucault and two other canonical founders of queer theory: Butler and Sedgwick.

    Set Reading:

    1. Amin, Kadji, ‘Genealogies of Queer Theory’, in The Cambridge Companion to Queer Studies (Cambridge: CUP, 2020), pp.17–22.

    2. Butler, Judith, excerpts from Gender Trouble: Feminism and the subject of identity (New York and London: Routledge Classics, 2011), pp.xxx–xxxii ; pp.43–46; and Bodies that matter: On the discursive limits of sex (New York and London: Routledge, 1993), pp.223–242.


    Secondary reading:

    Sedgwick, Eve Kofosky, ‘Queer and Now’, in Tendencies (New York: Routledge, 1994), pp.1–8.

    David L. Eng, Judith Halberstam, and José Esteban Munoz, “What’s Queer about Queer Studies Now?, special issue, Social Text, 84 – 85, (2005).

    Meg-John Barker, and Julia Scheele, 'Queer A Graphic History'(Icon Books Ltd, 2016), pp 79-82

    Chris Barker, 'Gender' in The SAGE Dictionary of Cultural Studies, (SAGE Publications, 2004), pp 72-73

    Seminar questions :

    -After reading Butler's chapter, focus on its highlighted parts. Then, explain her theory of gender performativity in your own words. How might we link this to Butler’s thoughts on drag, and what drag reveals about the performativity of gender?

    -In the Big Think video, Judith Butler says: “We act as if that being of a man or that being of a woman is actually an internal reality or something that is simply true about us, a fact about us, but actually it’s a phenomenon that is being produced all the time. So to say gender is performative is to say that nobody really is a gender from the start. I know it’s controversial, but that’s my claim.”

    Does the ‘performance’ of ‘male’ or ‘female’ change over time and according to cultural or geographical context? Why is Butler’s claim controversial, as she notes?


    -Reflecting on your own experiences, what are some examples of the ‘gender performativity’ that Butler discusses? Can you think of specific examples within the French and Francophone cultural context?




  • WEEK 3: BUTLER AND SEDGWICK. TOWARDS QUEER AND QUEER ACTIVISM

    This week will begin with an appraisal of Kadji Amin's 'Genealogies of Queer Theory' and will map the relationship between seminal queer thinkers. This will lay the foundation for thinking about the public health discourses of normatively that circulated during the AIDS crisis in the 1980s. To prepare the session, read :

    Sedgwick, Eve Kofosky, ‘Queer and Now’, in Tendencies (New York: Routledge, 1994), pp.1–8.

    Secondary Reading:
    David L. Eng, Judith Halberstam, and José Esteban Munoz, “What’s Queer about Queer Studies Now?, special issue, Social Text, 84 – 85, (2005).

    Seminar questions :
    Butler:

    • -In the Big Think video, Judith Butler says: “We act as if that being of a man or that being of a woman is actually an internal reality or something that is simply true about us, a fact about us, but actually it’s a phenomenon that is being produced all the time. So to say gender is performative is to say that nobody really is a gender from the start. I know it’s controversial, but that’s my claim.”
    • Does the ‘performance’ of ‘male’ or ‘female’ change over time and according to cultural or geographical context? Why is Butler’s claim controversial, as she notes
    • -Reflecting on your own experiences, what are some examples of the ‘gender performativity’ that Butler discusses? Can you think of specific examples within the French and Francophone cultural context? 

    Sedgwick

    • How does Sedgwick challenge identity categories?
    • What does she mean by 'outness'
    • How could we define a discursive epistemology?
    • What relation between queer thought and public health discourse that will underpin AIDS crisis?
    • What connections between Foucault, Butler, and Sedgwick in collapsing monolithic notions of identity?


  • WEEK 4: AIDS CRISIS AND QUEER TIME (HERVÉ GUIBERT 2)

    This class explores the question of queer time in Guibert's writing and explore the areas of confluence and collision between contemporary representations of AIDS.

    

    Required Readings/Viewing

    1. Hervé Guibert, "chapters 1 – 12" in To the friend who did not save my life (California: Semiotexte, 2020), pp 15-49. Two copies are available in ULIP library.

    2. Crimp, Douglas, ‘Painful pictures’ in Melancholia and Moralism: Essays on AIDS and Queer Politics (London: MIT Press, 2002), pp.274–280. 

    3. Hervé Guibert's photographs (a selection).

    Further Recommended Reading/Viewing

    Tom Roach, 'Friendship as a way of life' in Foucault, AIDS, and the politics of shared estrangement (New York: SUNY Press, 2012)

    Benjamin Shepard, “ACT UP ‘AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power”, in The International Encyclopedia of Revolution and Protest, 20 April 2009

    Jean-Pierre Boule, “The fictitious, the fake or the delirious”, in Hervé Guibert: Voices of the Self (Liverpool: LUP, 1999), trans. J. Fletcher, pp.235 – 260.

    Michael Lucey, “Multivariable social acrobatics and misfit counterpublics”, in Someone, The pragmatics of misfit sexualities ( Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2019), pp.170 – 200.


    Seminar questions:

    Chapters 1-5​

    • How does Guibert portray his illness? ​
    • What representation of (sexual / individual) identity?​
    • His illness is personified in places – where/why?​
    • While disease is a medical phenomenon, illness is a broader socio-cultural issue. Where do we see this in the opening pages?​
    • How medicalised is the narrative? Agar argues that this is a chronicle of the narrator’s attempt not to succumb to the defining taxonomies of medical discourse. Do you agree?​
    • Do we see a return of Sontag’s military metaphors in the opening chapters? Is the body a site of invasion?​

    Chapter 6-12

    • We are first introduced to Muzil. Who is he? ​
    • How does the public intellectual yield to the private? ​
    • How can we connect these chapters with Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick's theory in Epistemology of the closet ? Examine the importance of secret and silence. ​
    • What representation of the individual, the disease, sexuality, and the body?


  • WEEK 5: SOUKAZ, AIDS, AND ACT-UP

    This class will begin with a talk from an alumni, Ry Montgomery, who is currently doing a PhD at Cambridge on visual representations of AIDS via the work of Lionel Soukaz. Ry will talk about fragmentation as (de)generative and offer a comparison with contemporaries including Hervé Guibert/Collard before opening out towards new forms of kinship + community. They will discuss queer temporalities and modalities of transmission in Soukaz's Journal annales.


    Required Readings/Viewing

    1. Hervé Guibert, "chapters 13 – 26" in To the friend who did not save my life (California: Semiotexte, 2020). Two copies are available in ULIP library.

    2. Bersani, Leo, ‘Is the rectum a grave?’, in Reclaiming Sodom, ed. Jonathan Goldberg (London: Routledge, 1994), pp.249–263; 

    Further Recommended Reading/Viewing

    Nick Rees-Roberts, "Witnessing AIDS" in French Queer Cinema, Edinburgh, Edinburgh University Press, 2008, pp 117-127

    Nick Rees-Roberts, French Queer Cinema, Edinburgh, Edinburgh University Press, 2008

    Ginette Vincendeau, "A Time to Love and  Time to Die",  Sight & Sound, 17(11), November 2007, pp 46-82

    Robin Campilo's 120 Battements par minute (2017): Screening AIDS, Activism, and Queer Identity in Contemporary France. Special Issue of Modern and Contemporary France, Vol. 30 (2022): https://www.tandfonline.com/toc/cmcf20/30/2

    Lionel Soukaz, « Le nouveau mouvement », in Spécial man, n°1, Paris, Univers Presses, 1979. Lionel Soukaz, « Anti-stress et brownie sans crème », in Jean-François Garsi, Cinémas homosexuels, CinémAction n°15, Paris, Papyrus, 1981. 

    Worth, Fabienne André. “‘Le Sacré et Le SIDA’ (AIDS): Sexuality and Its Contradictions in France, 1971-1996.” Discourse, vol. 19, no. 3, 1997, pp. 92–121. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/41389459. Accessed 4 Feb. 2024.

  • WEEK 6: QUEER STYLE (JEAN GENET)

    Primary reading:

    Genet, Jean, ‘Interview with Madeleine Gobeil’, in The Declared Enemy, ed. Albert Dichy (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2004), pp.2–8; 

    Excerpts from Our Lady of the Flowers, trans. Bernard Frechtman (New York: Grove Press, 1963), pp.47–60.

    Secondary reading:

    Hector Kollias, ‘Jean Genet's Queer Origins: A Reading Of Querelle De Brest’, in French Studies, Vol. 60,4 (OCTOBER 2006), pp.479–488.

    Pascale Gaitet, ‘The politics of camp in Jean Genet’s Our Lady of the Flowers’, in Jean Genet: Littérature et Politique(Literature and Politics), ed. by Patrice Bougon, special edn of Esprit Créateur, 35.1 (Spring 1995), pp.40 – 49; Queens and Revolutionaries: new Readings of Jean Genet (Newark: Universiy of Delaware Press, 2003)


  • WEEK 7 - READING WEEK

  • WEEK 8: QUEER MAGHREBI FRENCH (ABDELLAH TAÏA 1)

    Abdellah Taïa, Preface to “Jean Genet: Un Saint marocain”, in Nejma (Tangiers: Librarie des Colonnes, 2011), pp.6 - 11. (My translation)

    Abdellah Taïa, Excerpts from Salvation Army (film)

     Abdellah Taïa, Salvation Army: A Novel, trans. Frank Stock (New York: Semiotext(e), 2009)

    Secondary reading:

    Denis Provencher, Queer French (London: Ashgate Publishing, 2007) and Queer Maghrebi French (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2017)

    Edwige Talbayev, The Transcontinental Maghreb: Francophone Literature across the Mediterranean (Fordham University Press, 2017)


  • WEEK 9: QUEER POSTCOLONIAL FRENCH (ABDELLAH TAÏA 2)

    SEXUAL AMBIGUITY IN MOROCCO

    Abdellah Taïa, Another Morocco, trans. Rachel Small, (New York: Semiotexte, 2017), chapters 1, 2, 3, 12, 20, 27. 

    Watch (Film) Abdellah Taïa, L’Armée du salut (2013)

    Secondary reading:

    Mehammed Amadeus Mack, Sexagon: Muslims, France, and the Sexualization of National Culture (New York: Fordham University Press, 2017)

    Todd Shephard, Sex, France and The Arab World 1962 – 1979 (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2017)


  • Week 10: GENDERLESS? INDETERMINACY AND ANTI-IDENTITARIANISM (ANNE GARRÉTA)

    Anne Garréta, Sphinx (London: Deep Vellum, 2015), pp. 1 – 5; pp.31 – 46; pp.52 – 57; concluding scenes. 

    Emma Ramadan, “Translating Anne Garréta’s Sphinx, Emma Ramadan on the complications of a genderless love story”, Five Dials, No. 33, part 11, PP.36 – 38. 

    Annabel L. Kim, “The Riddle of Racial Difference in Anne Garréta's Sphinx”,  Diacritics, Vol. 45, 1, 2017, pp. 4-22.

    Secondary Reading: 

    Annabel Kim, Unbecoming language: Anti-identitarian French feminist fictions (Ohio: Ohio State University Press, 2018)

    Rosi Braidotti, “By way of nomadism”, in Nomadic subjectivities, (New York: Columbia University Press, 1994), pp. 21 – 35. 

  • WEEK 11: DISIDENTIFICATIONS (CÉLINE SCIAMMA)

    DISIDENTIFICATIONS

    Celine Sciamma, Tomboy (2011): key scenes (introduction, conclusion, football scene) 

    Emma Wilson, Girlhoods, (Edinburgh: EUP, 2020)

     

    Secondary reading: 

    José Maria Munoz, Disidentifications: Queers of Color and the Performance of Politics

    Laurent Berlant and Elizabeth Freeman “Queer nationality”, in Fear of a Queer Planet: Queer Politics and Social Theory, eds. Michael Warner (Minneapolis, University of Minnesota Press, 1993), pp. 193 – 230. 


  • WEEK 12: DS2 PRESENTATIONS

    Week 12, 8th April 2024

    Theme 

    Groups of 3 students

    AIDS narratives (Guibert and/or Soukaz)

    Isabelle Brett, Zara Lees, Zoe Cox

    Abdellah Taia’s ‘Salvation Army’: disidentifications and cruel optimism

    Grace Caddy, Matilda Huscroft, Naomi Eden

    Abdellah Taia’s ‘Salvation Army’: postcolonial queerness

    Elenor Wilson, Anna Lofts, Charlotte Beatwell?

    Jean Genet and queer marginality: refusing normativity and identity politics

    		Charlotte Beatwell?

    Anne Garréta’s ‘Sphinx’: genderlessness and anti-identitarianism

    Amy Johnson, Poppy Arkell-Russell, Hannah Salmeron Gough

    Garréta’s ‘Sphinx’: the constraints of racial difference

    Kenza Rashid, Kitty Llody

    Céline Sciamma’s ‘Tomboy’: non-binarity and gender non-conformity

    Molly Donnelly, Anna Broadbridge, Nancy Hamer-Nickells

     

    Guidelines:

    • The presentation should last for 15 minutes (With 2/3 minutes for questions).
    • Choose ONE thinker, writer, or film-maker that we have studied and present on a theme that has interested you in relation to queer theory 
    • Produce 6 – 8 PowerPoint slides, underpinned by key textual quotations and at least one theorist (you can draw on your own reading for this, as well as the suggested quotations from the powerpoints / QM+ pages)
    • Produce a hand-out with your key quotations, references, and theoretical examples where relevant.
    • Contribute a glossary of technical terms, which you have used and defined in your own words.
    • Provide a bibliography of 3 / 4 texts at the end of the presentation 

  • Generated by Assessment Information block

  • ASSESSMENT CONTENT