Insult and the Making of the Gay Self

Didier Eribon is a philosopher, historian, and journalist in France, where he writes frequently for the weekly news magazine Le Nouvel Observateur. In addition to his biography Michel Foucault, he is the author of books including Une morale du minoritaire: Variations sur un thÈme de Jean Genet and HÉrÉsies: Essais sur la thÉorie de la sexualitÉ.Michael Lucey is Professor of French and Comparative Literature at the University of California, Berkeley. He is the author of The Misfit of the Family: Balzac and the Social Forms of Sexuality (published by Duke University Press) and Gide’s Bent: Sexuality, Politics, Writing.

• Preface xi Acknowledgments xxiii Abbreviations xv Introduction: The Language of the Tribe 1Part 1 A World of Insult 13 1 The Shock of Insult 15 2 The Flight to the City 18 3 Friendship as a Way of Life 24 4 Sexuality and Professions 295 Family and “Melancholy” 356 The City and Conservative Discourse 417 To Tell or Not to Tell 468 Heterosexual Interpellation 569 The Subjected “Soul” 6410 Caricature and Collective Insult 7011 Inversions 7912 On Sodomy 8813 Subjectivity and Private Life 9714 Existence Precedes Essence 10715 Unrealized Identity 11316 Perturbations 12417 The Individual and the Group 130Part 2 Specters of Wilde 1411 How “Arrogant Pederasts” Come Into Being 1432 An Unspeakable Vice 1533 A Nation of Artist 1604 Philosopher and Lover 168 5 Moral Contamination 1766 The Truth of Masks 1827 The Greeks against the Psychiatrist 1908 The Democracy of Comrades 1979 Margot-a-la-boulangere and the Baronne-aux-epingles 20610 From Momentary Pleasures to Social Reform 21311 The Will to Disturb 22312 The “Preoccupation With Homosexuality” 231Part 3 Michel Foucault’s Heterotopias 2451 Much More Beauty 2472 From Night to the Light of Day 2503 The Impulse to Escape 2564 Homosexuality and Unreason 2645 The Birth of Perversion 2746 The Third Sex 2817 Producing Subjects 2898 Philosophy in the Closet 2969 When Two Guys Hold Hands 30310 Resistance and Counterdiscourse 31011 Becoming Gay 31912 Among Men 32613 Making Differences 334Addendum: Hannah Arendt and “Defamed Groups” 339Notes 351Works Cited 419Index 439

“Best known in the United States for his biography of Michel Foucault, Didier Eribon is well known in France as an eloquent and influential gay critic and advocate. This stunning analysis of the continuing power of antihomosexual insult to shape gay lives shows us why. A tour de force of cultural criticism, erudition, and social engagement, Eribon’s work demonstrates the intellectual breadth and radical potential of queer critique.”-George Chauncey, author of Gay New York: Gender, Urban Culture, and the Making of the Gay Male World, 1890–1940 “Didier Eribon’s new book is a brilliant study of the ways in which gay subjectivity is at once constituted by homophobic discourse and, from within that discourse, finds the terms with which to forge a queer resistance and a queer freedom. Not only does it add an invaluable dimension to queer theory in the United States; it will be read by an even wider audience for its incisive and original analysis of the relation between culture and subjectivity.”-Leo Bersani, author of Homos, The Culture of Redemption, and Caravaggio's Secrets (with Ulysse Dutoit) “With lucid and exemplary patience, Didier Eribon dissolves more than a century of transatlantic thought-blockages. The result is a deeply clarifying book.”-Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, author of Touching Feeling: Affect, Pedagogy, Performativity