25 - French and Francophone Literature

Summary

This chapter focuses on the intricate relations among canonical French literature and postcolonial writings to articulate some of the lingering effects of orientalism in contemporary French and Francophone cultures. It provides a short discussion of AIDS narratives, which serves to underline the tensions between body as scientific object and body as literary object, while evaluating issues of aesthetics, and their limits, associated with AIDS-related representations. The chapter outlines the contours of post-queer expressions of same-sex erotic desires, romantic relationships, and inventive forms of affective investments. Representations from a homoerotic perspective of social and sexual interrelations in the context of ethnic differences have sometimes summoned the Orientalist ghosts of cinematically objectified racial bodies. Finally, the chapter describes the context of French queer theory, the specificities of postcolonial and national identity issues as they relate to sexual practices, as well as radical or progressive politics.