Body in French Queer Thought from Wittig to Preciado
The Body in French Queer Thought from Wittig to Preciado: Queer Permeability identifies a common concern in French queer works for the materiality of the body, arguing for a return to the body as fundamental to queer thought and politics, from HIV onwards.
The emergence of queer theory in France offers an opportunity to re-evaluate the state of queer thought more widely: what matters to queer theory today? The energy of queer thinking in France – grounded in activist groups and galvanised by recent hostility towards same-sex marriage and gay parenting – has reignited queer debates. Examining Paul B. Preciado’s experimentation with theory and pharmaceutical testosterone; Monique Wittig’s exploration of the body through radically innovative language; and, finally, the surgical performances of French artist ORLAN’s ‘Art Charnel’, this book asks how we are able to account for the material body in philosophy, literature, and visual image.
This is an important work for academics and students in French studies, in Anglophone queer studies, gender and sexuality studies and transgender studies, and will have significant interest for specialists of cultural translation and visual art and culture.
Elliot Evans is a Lecturer in Modern Languages, Gender and Sexuality at the University of Birmingham, UK, and co-organiser of the interdisciplinary seminar series Critical Sexology. Their research considers the meeting points of feminist, queer, and transgender theories explored through the lens of psychoanalysis, literature, and visual culture. They received their PhD from King’s College London in 2017, were nominated for the Malcolm Bowie essay prize in 2018, and were a recipient of the Crompton Scholarship in 2015. Recent publications include ‘"Wittig and Davis, Woolf and Solanas (. . .) simmer within me": Reading Feminist Archives in the Queer Writing of Paul B. Preciado’ for Paragraph (2018); a co-edited volume of essays Plaisirs de femmes: Women, Pleasure and Transgression in French Literature and Culture (2019); ‘Transforming Theory: Innovations in Critical Trans Studies’ for Paragraph (2019); and ‘your blood dazzles m/e: Reading Blood, Sex, and Intimacy in Monique Wittig and Patrick Califia’ in RAW: PrEP, Pedagogy, and the Politics of Barebacking (2019).