Elliot Evans - The Body in French Queer Thought from Wittig to Preciado

Tracking the rise of French queer activism in all its specificity, Elliot Evans challenges the Cartesian dualism that has compromised so much of our earlier, influential queer theorising. In Queer Permeability, human bodies sticky, porous, febrile, ravaged, ecstatic, abject, and singular emerge less as objects of queer thought than as its indefatigable agents. A brilliant, necessary book, one that queer and trans thinkers on both sides of the Atlantic will want to read.

Tim Dean, James M. Benson Professor, Department of English, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

The Body in French Queer Thought from Wittig to Preciado: Queer Permeability is a timely and lucid exploration of what the French context can teach us about the body. Working across very different media and genres, Elliot Evans proves an excellent guide to the French resonances, and some of the unexamined genealogical roots, of queer thought.

J.D. Prosser, Reader in Humanities, School of English, University of Leeds

This book makes a major contribution to queer and transgender studies by drawing on radical French queer thought and practice of the last three decades to develop a new understanding of the entangled interimplication of the material body and language in terms of queer permeability, a porosity which poststructuralist theory has tended to ignore. The book makes a compelling argument for theorys transitivity in its material effects on bodies. Elliot Evans persuasively counters Judith Butlers discursivist misapprehension of Monique Wittigs textual materialism and presents by far the most substantial critical engagement to date with two pioneering works by Paul B. Preciado, Countersexual Manifesto and Testo Junkie, as well as a considered reappraisal of the political and aesthetic significance of ORLANs body art.

Oliver Davis, Reader in French Studies, Warwick University

The conventional wisdom regarding queer theory is that it derived from the reception of French post-structuralist thought in the United States, had conceptual difficulties dealing with the materiality of the body, and was a poor fit for many of the non-Anglophone contexts to which it was subsequently exported. Elliot Evans turns that received wisdom on its head to offer a persuasive, compelling alternative genealogy for contemporary French queer theory, one rooted not merely in the conversation with its American cousin, but in continental traditions of materialist feminism and the legacies of post-revolutionary universalism.

Susan Stryker, Professor of Gender and Womens Studies, University of Arizona

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. Preciados experimentation with theory and pharmaceutical testosterone; Monique Wittigs exploration of the body through radically innovative language; and, finally, the surgical performances of French artist ORLANs 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 Kings 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).

Research in Sexualities

Elliot Evans

First published 2020

by Routledge

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and by Routledge

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2020 Elliot Evans

The right of Elliot Evans to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by them in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.

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A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

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ISBN: 978-0-367-14236-0 (hbk)

ISBN: 978-0-429-03084-0 (ebk)

Typeset in Bembo

by Newgen Publishing UK

First and foremost, I thank the staff of the French Department at Kings College London for creating the intellectual community I was lucky enough to partake in for the best part of a decade. I can truly say that I would not be the same person without the influence of this remarkable collection of people. In particular, I am immensely grateful to the inimitable and inspirational duo of Hector Kollias and Johanna Malt. I am immensely fortunate to have received their guidance and support and to have benefited from many inspiring conversations their combined intellect appears to know no bounds. I also thank Siobhan McIlvanney, Patrick ffrench, Michael Meere, and Simon Gaunt who have all offered generous feedback on my work; and Anna Kemp, whose encouragement led me to pursue postgraduate studies. I thank Oliver Davis and Hector Kollias for their work in organising workshops for the AHRC project Queer Theory in France, from which I benefitted greatly; as well as everyone involved with the Queer@Kings research centre, whose seminars and sense of community inspired my enthusiasm for academia as an undergraduate: Simon Gaunt, John Howard, Mark Turner, Robert Mills, Hector Kollias, Michael Meere, Ben Nichols, Fiona Anderson, and Skyler Hijazi. I was extremely lucky to have received funding from the Arts and Humanities Research Council to complete my thesis, upon which this book is based. I also gratefully acknowledge support received from the Crompton Fellowship, the Thomas & Elizabeth Williams Scholarship, the Erasmus Programme and finally the ENS de Lyon, which hosted me while writing up. I also want to thank Oliver Davis and Jay Prosser, for their insightful and careful comments while examining my thesis.