Description: This interdisciplinary book responds to the explosion of gay and lesbian creativity on modern-day France. Rather than attempting to formalize a specifically 'gay' or 'lesbian' style or identity, the authors seek to open up new 'homotextualities, ' understood here as ongoing constructions and deconstructions of both homosexuality and its environments. They investigate the work of (among others) Violette Leduc, Tony Duvert, Renaud Camus, and Guy Hocquenghem; the cinema of Josiane Balasko and Cyril Collard; the theoretical writings of Leo Bersani, Luce Irigaray, and Monique Wittig. Employing a range of methods, authors re-evaluate and contest both the literary and theoretical canon and establish new convergences between French and Gay Studies - in particular, queer theory. This book provides the first proper assessment of the usefulness of this approach when dealing with a literary and cultural tradition notoriously discreet about the very concept of a gay writer.
Brief description: Owen Heathcote is a member of the Deptartment of Modern Languages, University of Bradford.
Review Quotes:
"Original, cogently argued, and well researched." --MLR
"A very welcome collection." --FS "A consistently challenging, accessible, and amply documented set of essays which avoid the naivetes of earlier criticism." --Forum for Modern Language Studies "The individual chapters offer thoughtful, well-argued insights into gay literature in contemporary France." --The Lesbian Review of Books "...all the contributors...write sharply, deploying contemporary theory with a command that makes their work pleasurable as well as intellectually rigorous reading." --Film and Theory Review