Pretexts for Texts: Sartre and Barthes Before Genet and Camus

Abstract

Pretexts for Texts: Sartre and Barthes Before Genet and Camus George H. Bauer T HE TRADITIONAL ARM OF DEFENSE of sexually explicit texts, whether heterosexual or homosexual, is the introductory preface. In the United States redeeming social or artistic merit are invoked in what is written to support the right of the few to paint, film, or publish what the many call pornography. A random example is the now necessary introductory preface of an illustrated volume called Bar­ racks Orgy published in 1971 by Roadhouse Classics. In “ The Meaning and Value of Homosexual Underground Literature,” the anonymous prefacer grapples with the definition of pornography, the harassment of its publishers, and the cultural background of pornography. He reminds us of the Greek origin of the word as the “ writings of prostitutes” before concluding with the weight of Voltaire’s authority: “ I disagree with what you say but I will defend to the death your right to say it.” The unsigned text clearly draws on Morse Peckham’s Art and Pornography: An Experiment in Explanation published two years before (New York/ London: Basic Books, 1969), motivated by Professor Peckham’s experi­ ence as a witness for the defense in the trial of Candy as contemporary pornographic Candide. The trial of Candy returns us to the trial of Madame Bovary and of Baudelaire’s Les Lesbiennes become Les Fleurs du Mal. The Tropics of Cancer and Capricorn and Molly Bloom in a courtroom are cousins to the Wilde climates and strange fauna of the Café Flore. The defense witnesses, if not advocates, are asked to justify after thefact the place of these texts in society. The role of the prefacer is different. He or she is a dual player coming both before and after the fact. To write a “ porno” preface is to precede and to guarantee a text that others would find “ utterly without redeeming social importance” or “ appeals to prurient interests.” At times it is to present the “ artistic” merit of the work. The key here is the “ big name” of the author of the preface who presents and defends the marginal or unknown author in a trial that will be conducted in newspapers and literary magazines and journals. Curiously in the case of Sartre and Barthes the attack is not only mounted against the works they defend—the Œuvres complètes of Jean Genet published by Gallimard and Tricks of Renaud Camus (Paris: Vol. XXVII, No. 3 89 L ’E sprit C réateur Mazarine, 1979)—and against their mode of production and the role of their producers as men and women in the hierarchical structures of the world of politics, art, and society, but against these writers of prefaces and their works. Sartre and Barthes are point men, the avant-garde and avant la lettre. Their pre-texts are doubly written and become in their own right scandalous texts to be defended. American prefacers are, in general, anonymous defenders who address themselves to the gentlemen (sic) of the jury and the press. For these judges, the case does not call for after-the-fact “ expert” witnesses before the panel of jurors. The defense itself is on trial. American novel­ ists and their publishers rarely have had recourse to philosophers and novelists to frame and protect the events and portraits drawn by the homosexual or heterosexual writer before the trial. I am perhaps mis­ taken, but the French tradition is different even though the practice of “ Pretexts” grows daily in this country as we contemplate the effects of the Meese Commission on Pornography and the success of the New Right in removing literature and texts as textbooks from our classrooms and libraries. Here I concentrate, not on Roth’s Portnoy’s Complaint and South­ ern’s Candy, but on two examples of homosexual “ porn” in the French context in order to show how in these two examples, as in the case of Gide, Prétextes are followed by Nouveaux Prétextes and Incidences, The case of Sartre and Genet is perhaps too well-known; over-examined evi­ dence and defense tracts, like those of the anti-semitic Dreyfus Affair and Zola’s “ J’Accuse,” have been poured over exhaustively. This...