Queer Writing: Homoeroticism in Jean Genet's Fiction

Publisher： Rodopi

ISSN： 0271-6607

Source： French Literature Series, Vol.34, Iss.1, 2007-08, pp. : 129-144

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Abstract

While previous criticism of Jean Genet's fiction, particularly that undertaken within the context of GLBTQ studies, has concentrated predominantly 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 subject. 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.