An Existentialist Epistemology of the Closet: Sexuality and Art in Raymond Queneau's Zazie dans le métro

Abstract

This article explores how Sartean existentialism can be used to explain the sexual orientation of the main character Gabriel in Raymond Queneau's Zazie dans le métro. Drawing firstly on the novel's rich and broader philosophical roots, the article proceeds to engage with the philosophy of existentialism as a way of highlighting Gabriel's attempts to conquer himself, champion a morality of action and commitment over secular morality, and give meaning to his sexuality through concepts of choice, situation, authenticity and artistic creation. Gabriel's monologues take him out of the conversational currency of the récit's structure and into a philosophical mode of thinking. In these instances, Queneau's sub-codes and intertextual references to Sartrean existentialism gesture towards an existentialist breakthrough where Gabriel's existence is seen to coalesce with a discrete ‘coming out’ narrative that predates the politics of power, gender and identity construction of the 1970s and beyond. The situatedness and literariness of Gabriel's homosexuality is textual; this textuality is played out existentially in the way his homosexuality as verbal utterance/reality is continually deferred and connected critically to signifiers of Sartrean humanism, intersubjectivity and transcendence.