BEAU TRAVAIL (1998) AND JUDITH BUTLER

Abstract

This article provides a critical response to the film Beau Travail (director C. Denis 1998) through close engagement with strands of thought in the queer theory of Judith Butler, in particular the military and masculinity, sadomasochism (SM) subcultures, and ‘heterosexual melancholia’. From this parallel reading of the film-text alongside Butler, I propose that while the film more obviously engages with ‘the regulatory production of homoerotic sociality’ (Butler) and with the normative institutionalization of gender's melancholia, it also provides a radical reminder of the possibilities of what we call ‘queer knowledge’ as a counter to recent queer domestication and familial accommodation. This potential inheres in the strange sublime beauty and stylized cruelty which exceed the limits of existing sexual knowledge while also showing how the political promise of Butler's performativity can be seen to reside in the extent to which the abjecting strategies of homophobic dominance can lose control, unleashing ritualistic pleasures and seemingly illegible rages that speak beyond the confines of institutionalized SM. Ultimately, Denis' film suggests a resistance to unreachable gender ideals through a queer system of kinship.