by Francois Cusset, translated by David Homel, $17.95; Arsenal Pulp Press; 142 pages
"We need to experience the poem the way we would a quickie, a short story like a one-night stand, a novel like a serious affair…." Such is, according to Francois Cusset in The Inverted Gaze, the American queer critic position vis à vis reading literature. QCs demand, Cusset says, the "… complete sexualization of the act of reading."
Who are the QCs? Practitioners of queer theory, which began in the early 1990s and consists both of literary criticism and a philosophical inquiry of the very nature of "queerness."
Cusset explores the sex and gender debates expressed by American QCs as they see sexual references reflected in French literature (with a brief nod to British and American literature) from medieval times on up to Genet.
The book provides something for every reader—well, maybe not those with little patience for long, complicated sentences using academic vocabulary—but certainly for those with either a lustful drive, a love of the French classics, curiosity about queer critics, or some combination of the above.
As an example of texts examined from the QC perspective, Cusset discusses how QCs spend much time picking apart Diderot's The Nun, the 18th-century work where, to the conservative reader, the book's theme is that human rights and freedoms are taken away from those involved with the church. QCs, however, look further. What does knowing, or not knowing, mean in sexual matters? (The Nun opens on a scene where the mother superior lifts her skirts and demands attention from Suzanne, the naïve new recruit.)
A modern example, illustrating the extent to which the unspeakable has been stretched: Cusset looks at a passage from Genet's Our Lady of the Flowers, in which Genet "queer[s] even his own flatulence."
Other subjects covered include (but are not limited to) onanism, deferred or unfinished orgasm, and deficient organs.
As you see, not a book for the weak-willed. The Inverted Gaze is, if nothing else, a guide to the more sexually daring exploration of the human condition as it unfolds in French literature through the ages. For my taste, it suffered from a lack of more passages from the French canon to illustrate what he was talking about. Aside from the pleasures that might bring, more excerpts would also make his points easier to understand academically phrased as they are.
As for the title of this tome, it could be said variously to refer to Cusset's examination of the French classics so loved by American queer critics—and to his critique of the QCs themselves, to the eye of the characters in some of these works, or to the eye of the QC. Take your pick.
The footnotes in The Inverted Gaze reference queer critic articles about the subtexts of these works, helpful to those readers so inclined to pursue the topics raised.
Cusset is professor of American Studies at the University of Paris and a noted intellectual historian and frequent lecturer on North American campuses. He also authored the critically acclaimed French Theory, an account of the past four decades of intellectual and political life in the U.S. The Inverted Gaze is a translation from his Queer Critics.
