JEAN GENET'S QUEER ORIGINS: A READING OF QUERELLE DE BREST

Abstract

This article engages with debates in queer theory by attempting to look beyond the dominant trend of constructionism and interrogating the possibility of queer origins in the work of Jean Genet. In a reading of his novel Querelle de Brest, I seek to demonstrate that queer is located less in the self-assumption of subjectivity and more in the act of queer sex bestowing its agents with a series of metonymically substitutable role positions. Utilizing resources from psychoanalysis, I argue that Genet's novel is not a homophobic fantasy but rather an empowering narrative whose focus on betrayal can be aligned with the psychoanalytic notion of perversion as disavowal, allowing both Genet to be recognized as a salutary queer writer, and psychoanalysis to be wrested from the hostility with which it is received in queer-theoretical circles.