Insult and the Making of the Gay Self

by Didier Eribon

  7. On the relationship of the city (notably Berlin) to gay movements, see Steakley, The Homosexual Emancipation Movement in Germany. For the United States, see D’Emilio, Sexual Politics, Sexual Communities.

  8. Chauncey, Gay New York, 132.

  9. Walter C. Reckless, ‘‘The Distribution of Commercialized Vice in the City: A Sociological Analysis,’’ in The Urban Community, ed. Ernst W. Burgess (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1926). Cited in Chauncey, 132.

  10. See Burleigh and Wippermann, The Racial State, especially the second part,

  ‘‘The ‘Purification’ of the Body of the Nation,’’ 75–197.

  11. Mirbeau, La 628-E-8 (Paris: Fasquelle, 1907), cited in Patrick Cardon’s ‘‘Pré-

  sentation’’ to Le Troisième Sexe, by Magnus Hirschfeld, viii.

  12. For example: ‘‘All these antennas one sees in the large cities are like hairs that stand up on a head. They are asking for demoniacal connections.’’ Or, ‘‘As soon as we enter into a room bathed in mechanical music it is as if we have entered into an opium den.’’ Ernst Jünger, Jardins et routes, pages de journal, 1939–1940 (Paris: Plon, 1951), 50–51, cited in Bourdieu, L’Ontologie politique de Martin Heidegger, 27.

  13. Heidegger, ‘‘Pourquoi nous restons en province,’’ 149–53.

  14. Mirbeau, La 628-E-8, viii.

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  7. To Tell or Not to Tell

  1. [Translator’s note: In French, the letters pd would be pronounced the same way as the word pédé, which is more or less equivalent to the American insult

  ‘‘faggot.’’]

  2. Régis Gallerand, Homo sociatus.

  3. Kissen, The Last Closet. ‘‘Outing’’ is the political gesture of publicly revealing the homosexuality of certain people who are still in the closet, notably when those people spend their time denouncing homosexuality. It has been practiced in England (and rightly so, in my view) against conservative elected o≈cials who were voting in favor of repressive laws directed at gays and lesbians and against religious figures who o≈cially denounced the abomination of homosexuality (which they then went home and practiced). On the other hand, it seems to me less justifiable in the case of actors or singers, on the pretext of encouraging a wider public acceptance of homosexuality. While that may be the end result, nonetheless, as long as the actors or singers in question are not publicly condemning homosexuality in order to better hide their own, I have a di≈cult time seeing by what right one can demand individuals, even famous ones, to declare what they are—even if one may well deplore their preference for saying nothing.

  4. Cf. Go√man, Stigma, 77–78.

  5. Gide, Oscar Wilde, 30–31.

  6. Go√man, Stigma, 86–87.

  7. See Adam, The Survival of Domination, 93.

  8. Despite all the criticisms it drew (and merited), the film In and Out had the advantage of showing how a gay man can be known as such by others or be subject to ostracism without himself knowing or admitting that he is gay.

  9. Bourdieu, Masculine Domination, 116–17.

  10. See Herdt and Boxer, Children of Horizons.

  11. For an analysis of this point see Sedgwick, Epistemology of the Closet, 65–90.

  12. See Sedgwick, ‘‘Proust and the Spectacle of the Closet,’’ in Epistemology of the Closet, 212–51.

  8. Heterosexual Interpellation

  1. Butler, Excitable Speech, 5–6, 2.

  2. Louis Althusser, ‘‘Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses,’’ 174.

  3. See Bourdieu, The Logic of Practice.

  4. Althusser, ‘‘Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses,’’ 182.

  5. For the history of these daily, permanent microstruggles see the works of John D’Emilio and George Chauncey.

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  6. See Bartlett, Who Was That Man? xxi-xxii.

  7. Nicole Brossard, ‘‘Ma continent,’’ in ‘‘Amantes’’ suivi de ‘‘Le Sens apparent’’ et ‘‘Sous la langue,’’ 116.

  8. Sartre, The Family Idiot, 1:3, translation modified. The ideas that the world and language exist prior to us and take hold of us and that human freedom consists in giving meaning to the world and to language are central themes in Sartre’s work.

  9. Riggs, Tongues Untied.

  10. See Franz Fanon’s comments in Black Skin, White Masks: ‘‘As long as the black man is among his own, he will have no occasion . . . to experience his being through others’’ (109).

  11. All this is portrayed magnificently in the 1955 novel by Green, The Transgressor.

  9. The Subjected ‘‘Soul’’

  1. I do not mean to suggest that everyone who becomes homosexual only later on in life is a person who was unable to recognize earlier what he or she was. Such is the case in a great many instances, but people also change their sexuality (in both directions) at this or that moment in life, or move from one sexuality to another, not to mention those who live out several sexualities at the same time. Sexual identities are plural and any statement that purports to be some kind of ‘‘general’’ reflection must include an implicit qualification that it cannot in itself truly encompass all experiences. On the other hand, I also do not believe that there are as many identities as there are individuals, to the extent that it would become impossible to designate classes of experience—even if each person who can be included in this or that class will also obviously have distinguishing characteristics.

  2. Bourdieu, ‘‘Remarques provisoires sur la perception sociale du corps,’’ 53n10.

  3. Perhaps we should here make a distinction between men and women, for if the insult ‘‘faggot’’ is widespread, the insult ‘‘dyke’’ is less so. To make fun of the e√eminacy of a boy is to make an absolute and violent condemnation, whereas to point out that a girl is a ‘‘tomboy’’ is not always pejorative. Further distinctions need to be made, however, for the other forms of violence that can be exercised against an e√eminate boy (in his family, at work, at school) can in a similar way be exercised against a masculine girl or woman. Moreover, the repertory of insults that can be directed at women who are perceived not to be respecting sexual norms is much larger than for men (‘‘bitch’’ or ‘‘slut,’’ and so on, in English, or ‘‘ pute’’ and ‘‘ salope,’’

  and so on, in French), and so ‘‘dyke’’ ( gouine) is much less necessary than ‘‘faggot’’

  ( pédé), given the large number of other words available to express a call to order.

  4. See Herdt and Boxer, Children of Horizon, 111, 120–21, 200, 207–209, 245.

  5. For the distinction between ‘‘discredited’’ and ‘‘discreditable,’’ see Go√man, Stigma, 4, 41–42.

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  6. ‘‘The soul is the e√ect and instrument of a political anatomy; the soul is the prison of the body’’ (Foucault, Discipline and Punish, 30).

  7. Isherwood, Christopher and His Kind, 162.

  8. Lewin, Resolving Social Problems.

  9. Kardiner and Ovesey, The Mark of Oppression.

  10. Caricature and Collective Insult

  1. Numerous examples of antihomosexual caricatures can be found in the volume published by the Cahiers Gai-Kitsch-Camp that brings together the work of John Grand-Carteret, Derrière ‘‘Lui,’’ first published in 1908, and the work of the American historian James Steakley, ‘‘Iconography of a Scandal.’’ These two texts, along with the historical documents associated with them, deal with the caricatures published in the German press during the Eulenburg a√air. (Eulenburg was a German aristocrat close to the Emperor who, when accused by a journalist of being homosexual, sued him for defamation.) The series of ensuing trials produced a proliferation of articles and books throughout Europe. For images in film, see Russo, The Celluloid Closet, of which a film has also been made. />
  2. Freud, Five Lectures on Psycho-Analysis, 30–31.

  3. See Kris and Gombrich, Caricature. See also Gombrich and Eribon, Ce que l’image nous dit, 44.

  4. In one of the columns he published in L’Autre Journal, Michel Cressole discussed in these terms the witticisms of television comics who, day after day, allow themselves to make incredibly rude jokes about gay people: ‘‘For them, the position of being outspoken on television amounts to speaking about gays in ways Jacques Mé-

  decin would never dare use in speaking of Jews.’’ Cressole concludes with a concise, brutal, and probably quite justifiable statement: ‘‘It is as if one were hearing Le Pen talking at the dinner table’’ (Cressole, Une Folle à sa fenêtre, 9). The discursive register of television jokes is very close, if not identical, to that of cabaret singers, of whom many songs find their inspiration in the crudest forms of homophobia. (Examples can be found on the disk put out by the Gais Musettes organization, Chansons interlopes [Illicit songs], which collects songs written between 1908 and 1936.) 5. See the drawings reproduced in Grand-Carteret, Derrière ‘‘Lui,’’ 105.

  6. My attention was drawn to these caricatures of Cambacérès thanks to a lecture by Darcy Grimaldo Grigsby at the University of California, Berkeley, on April 18, 1998: ‘‘ ‘The E√ects of Hunger’: Cannibalism and Other Intimacies of Empire.’’

  Reproductions of some of these caricatures can be found in Clerc, La Caricature contre Napoléon.

  7. Foucault, ‘‘Des caresses d’hommes considérées comme un art,’’ in Dits et écrits, 1954–1988, 4:315–317. Hereafter cited as Dits.

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  8. Here, I speak only of male homosexuality. Love between women doubtless needs an entirely di√erent analysis. In The Use of Pleasure, we should add, Foucault does clearly emphasize this form of transhistorical permanence. He speaks of a

  ‘‘typical portrait’’ to be found in nineteenth-century texts of the homosexual or the invert as invariably e√eminate, and he calls attention to the fact that this ‘‘stereotype’’ was already ‘‘clearly delineated in the Greco-Roman literature of the imperial age.’’ He adds that ‘‘the long history of this image still needs to be written’’ (Foucault, The Use of Pleasure, 18–19, translation modified).

  9. See Adam, The Survival of Domination, 31.

  10. One can find some thoughts on collective stigmatization of Jews (one which links each member of a group to a set of derogatory characteristics) in the ninth chapter of book IV of Dickens’s Our Mutual Friend.

  11. Here is how the character in the Dickens novel concludes that it is impossible to escape from stigmatizations: ‘‘I reflected—clearly reflected for the first time, that in bending my neck to the yoke I was willing to wear, I bent the unwilling neck of the whole Jewish people’’ (Dickens, Our Mutual Friend, 726).

  12. Sartre, s t g : ‘‘Shame isolates. As does pride, which is the obverse of shame’’

  (41n). It should be noted that the individual (and individualist) pride ( orgueil) mentioned here by Sartre, which consists in feeling superior to other gay people and in scorning them, is precisely the opposite of the notion of pride ( fierté), developed since the 1970s, which is consistently thought of as necessarily collective, as having the goal of founding this ‘‘reciprocity’’ between gay men (and lesbians, whom Sartre forgets to mention), this ‘‘solidarity’’ which in 1952 Sartre thought to be impossible.

  13. See Bourdieu, ‘‘Le Paradoxe du sociologue,’’ 86–94. See also Masculine Domination: ‘‘The dominated apply categories constructed from the point of view of the dominant to the relations of domination, thus making them appear as natural’’

  (35).

  14. The organizing of gay men and lesbians still provides, as it has always provided, an occasion for a proliferation of homophobic discourses, from all parts of the political spectrum. These discourses would naturalize, would claim as on-tological, the current social order. They know what it should be (because it has

  ‘‘always’’ been that way) and they know what it cannot be (because that would

  ‘‘destroy the very foundations of civilization’’ or of the ‘‘symbolic order’’ by way of which one enters into human culture). For examples of, and a devastating critique of, these discourses, see Fassin, ‘‘Ouvrir le mariage aux homosexuels, 22; Fassin,

  ‘‘L’Illusion anthropologique’’; and Iacub, ‘‘Le Couple homosexuel, le droit et l’ordre symbolique,’’ 111–24.

  15. Gide, Corydon, 28–29.

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  11. Inversions

  1. Butler, Excitable Speech, 51–52.

  2. See Bourdieu, Masculine Domination. The extension of the schemas that apply to male-female relations to heterosexual-homosexual relations (at least for men) is suggested by Bourdieu himself in his ‘‘Quelques questions sur la question gay et lesbienne,’’ 45–50. Bourdieu took up and reworked these remarks as an appendix to Masculine Domination.

  3. See the analyses and the texts cited by Rosario in The Erotic Imagination, 88.

  4. Tamassia, ‘‘Sull’inversione dell’istinto sessuale’’ (1878), cited in Rosario, The Erotic Imagination, 86. On relations between women and the di√erent ways in which they can be perceived as contravening the natural law of the ‘‘di√erence between the sexes,’’ see Faderman, Odd Girls and Twilight Lovers, 38–61.

  5. Freud, Three Contributions to the Theory of Sex, 11.

  6. See also 928: ‘‘More often than not having to content themselves with the roughest approximation. . . .’’ See also Cities of the Plain, rtp, 2:638.

  7. On this point, see Tadié, Proust, 86–92, and Lindon, ‘‘Être Proust,’’ in Je t’aime, 75.

  8. Proust, ‘‘Esquisse XI,’’ in Recherche, 3:1022: ‘‘I had seen the Marquis de Gurcy

  [Charlus’s name in the drafts of the novel] talking arm in arm with a soldier. . . .

  The soldier had more the air of a painted pierrot covered in powder and make-up than that of a real soldier. . . . I had noticed Gurcy’s face with great curiosity, but without recognizing him. I was thinking with admiration of how the combination of necessity and the hope for pleasure can cause even the most startlingly di√erent bit of reality to come to resemble our ideal—so that M. de Gurcy, hungry for virility, sickened by e√eminate men, could have come to believe himself meeting a real young man in that small tante disguised as a soldier.’’

  9. When Proust speaks of his ‘‘girlish air enshrined in his masculine beauty [air de fille au milieu de sa mâle beauté]’’ (rtp, 2:1040), he is referring more to the fact that he is interested in the baron’s money than to any e√eminacy. The word fille here carries the meaning of ‘‘prostitute.’’

  10. It is in one of the variant readings provided in the Pléiade edition of the novel that Proust wrote: ‘‘The homosexual . . . believes himself to be identical to what he desires, just as a snob believes himself to be noble’’ ( Recherche, 3:1279).

  11. See rtp, 2:653.

  12. Of course Proust, or his narrator, does say, at the beginning of Cities of the Plain, that his ‘‘theory’’ is going to evolve. Just before presenting the idea of the man-woman who will only be able to satisfy his desire with other inverts, he o√ers the following hesitation: ‘‘according at least to the first theory which I sketched in outline at the time, which we shall see subjected to some modification in the sequel’’ (rtp, 2:638).

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  13. Letter from Marcel Proust to Paul Souday (1920), cited in the reference matter by Antoine Compagnon to Recherche, 3:1254.

  14. On the relation between Proust’s theory and Ulrichs’s (which Proust undoubtedly knew of thanks to the texts of Hirschfeld and Kra√t-Ebing), see Rivers, Proust and the Art of Love, 185–87.

  15. See Kennedy, Ulrichs, 170. />
  16. Cited in Kennedy, Ulrichs, 50.

  17. See ibid., 73–75.

  18. Proust uses the phrase ‘‘third sex,’’ citing Balzac as his source. See ‘‘Esquisse IV’’ in Recherche, 3:955.

  19. ‘‘To describe men, even if the results were to make them resemble monsters,’’ is the account he gives of his project on the final page of his novel (rtp, 3:1107).

  20. Gide, The Journals of André Gide, 2:267. [Translator’s note: The phrase ‘‘shades of young women’’ (à l’ombre des jeunes filles) recalls the title of the second volume of Proust’s novel, A l’ombre des jeunes filles en fleurs, which has in some editions been given the English title Within a Budding Grove. Sodom refers to the volume of the novel called Sodome et Gomorrhe, which has in some editions been given the English title Cities of the Plain. ]

  21. On the reception of Proust, see Ahlstedt, La Pudeur en crise.

  12. On Sodomy

  1. See Bard, ‘‘Lectures de La Garçonne,’’ 78–95. See in particular 88–92.

  2. Mosse, The Image of Man, 190.

  3. Pollak, Les Homosexuels et le sida, 45–47. One can detect a real phobia regarding fairies, queens, and e√eminacy in the discourse of many gay men, notably in the rag bag of popular books on gays that have appeared recently, whose authors, not bound by any kind of scholarly rigor, allow themselves to reveal their personal prejudices in a much cruder and naive form than does Michael Pollak.

  4. On playing with femininity, see the classic book by Newton, Mother Camp.

  5. [Translator’s note: the insult being referred to is enculé, for which there is no easy English equivalent. It means, literally, someone who has ‘‘taken it up the ass.’’

  English has a parallel insult that is roughly the equivalent of the French enculé, though it refers to a di√erent sexual act: ‘‘cocksucker.’’] If enculé is an extremely common insult, the same is also the case for ‘‘ se faire enculer’’ (to take it up the ass), which means to have been tricked or duped, just as the expression ‘‘ baisser son pantalon’’ (to drop one’s trousers) means to lack courage or fortitude.

  6. [Translator’s note: in French, when one speaks of oneself as a ‘‘top,’’ the word one uses is actif. When one speaks of oneself as a bottom, passif. ] On the various