Faculty of Modern and Medieval Languages
University of Cambridge
A la recherche de Sodome: Homosexuality, hospitality and ‘at-one-ment’ in colonial Algeria
Candidate No.: 1918M
Year Abroad Project
Tripos Part II 2015
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Contents
Introduction .................................................................................................................................................................... 2
A la recherche de Sodome: From homosexual utopia to heterotopia of crisis ....................................... 5
The hospitable pederast .......................................................................................................................................... 10
At-one-ment ................................................................................................................................................................. 16
Bibliography/Filmography ................................................................................................................................... 23
Word Count: 7994
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Introduction L’ACADEMICIEN […] (L’œil soudain allumé.) Ah!, général, le musulman de quinze à dix-sept
ans !
Il a eu un claquement de langue gourmand.
Le SERGENT, regardant le Général dans les yeux : Méfiance. On commence par goûter au jeune
musulman de quinze ans. Trois mois après on le comprend. Ensuite, on épouse ses
revendications. Et en fin de compte, on est traitre à la race. (Un silence). C’est comme ça que
tout aura commencé.
Les paravents (1961), Jean Genet
The homosexual proclivities of certain legionnaires based in North Africa were a widely acknowledged
fact of French colonial life at the beginning of the 20th century, with the phrase ‘faire passer son brevet
colonial’ soon becoming synonymous with initiating a person into the act of sodomy.1 Whilst intellectuals
such as Dr Tranchant and Lt Desvignes promoted the expediency of homosexuality, explaining these
practices as a circumstantial inevitability of the military environment with few European women and a
general fear of miscegenation which destabilised colonial notions of inheritance, it is evident that not all
soldiers were heterosexual, engaging in homosexuality due to a lack of options and an insatiable
‘nécessité physique’.2
Marshal Louis Hubert Lyautey, Resident General of Morocco from 1912 to 1925, was often the subject of
rumours regarding a penchant for sub lieutenants and Moroccan boys despite being accompanied
throughout his deployment by his wife. Upon leaving her husband’s tent on one occasion, La Maréchale
commented to a group of officers, ‘Messieurs, j’ai le plaisir de vous informer que cette nuit je vous ai fait
tous cocus’,3 emphasising the rarity of intercourse with her spouse and her location of more husbandly
figures elsewhere. Whilst this alone does not infer homosexuality, Robert Aldrich highlights the Marshal’s
lauding of ephebic youths and referral to ‘une sève coloniale’4 - an energy and fervour he admired in his
officers. In conjunction with its seminal connotations and the conflation of homosexual desire and
colonial prowess, this expression exemplifies the designation of colonial North Africa as a distanced space
in which the sap deemed unnatural by society was allowed to overflow uninhibited. Indeed, Lyautey
1 Caradec, N’ayons pas peur des mots, p132. 2 Dr Tranchant and Lt Desvignes, Les Condamnés militaires du pénitencier de Bossuet, quoted in Gury, Lyautey – Charlus, p248. 3 Gury, Lyautey – Charlus, p102. 4 Aldrich, Colonialism and Homosexuality, pp65-69.
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himself remarked that North Africa engendered ‘une plus large, et plus tolérante conception des choses’.5
However, it would be naïve to believe that it was truly the liberal Sodom that it was perceived to be by the
contemporary Metropolitan population.
As Edward Said discusses in his seminal work, Orientalism, Western discourses regarding the colonies are
inevitably subject to the established ‘hegemony of European ideas about the Orient’,6 reiterating
stereotyped primitiveness in juxtaposition to the West’s cultivation. Literature ranging from low brow
fiction such as Le vice en Algérie by Marcel Desbiefs, to the canonical, A la recherche du temps perdu by
Marcel Proust, advanced the impression of North Africa as a utopian refuge where homosexuals could
explore their preferences without fear of legal repercussions; despite sodomy between two consenting
adults being legalised in 1791 to abolish the existence of a victimless crime, a concept incoherent with
the libertarianism of the revolution, judges still found ways to penalise homosexuals. This promotion of
lawlessness undoubtedly encouraged authors such as André Gide and Henry de Montherlant to travel to
Algeria as sexual tourists. Whilst, however, they may have been expecting to arrive, ejaculate their
repressed sexuality, and return to the heteronormative centre of France, the reality, as I hope to later
illustrate, was far more reciprocal.
As voiced by the Sergeant’s warning in Jean Genet’s Les paravents, the relations initiated between French
homosexuals and the young Algerians were not as gratuitous as the idealised and ‘literarified’ vision of
the academician and envisaged by many homosexuals. Instead, the Sergeant suggests that through the
sexual hospitality afforded to the visitors by the Algerians, French homosexuals began to empathise with
them, unhinging the established hierarchy and catalysing the road to revolution. To argue that
homosexuality was a primary cause of the Algerian War is, of course, a severe oversimplification. It is
evident, however, that intimate interactions between Algerian and French men subverted the colonial
mission of domination, and disintegrated social barriers in a true fraternisation with the enemy.
In this dissertation, I shall examine how the French homosexual writer’s becoming ‘at one’ with both their
own sexuality and their Algerian sexual partners began to ‘atone’ for and destabilise the colonial
institution. Due to its prominence as one of the oldest major French colonies – and the importance of the
national movement towards independence for the Metropolitan population – Algeria will be the focus of
5 Lyautey, Paroles d’action, p79. 6 Said, Orientalism, p7.
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this study. In addition to analysing the Orientalising of North Africa and its construction as a Foucauldian
heterotopia of crisis in canonical texts such as Proust’s Sodome et Gomorrhe, and more popular literature
such as Desbiefs’ short story, Inséparables, I shall examine the ensuing pederastic relationships within the
frame of Jacques Derrida’s theory of hospitality, demonstrating how this construct’s inherent reciprocity
provoked the French homosexual writer to view the Algerians as subjects rather than objects. This will
focus upon Gide’s semi-autobiographical L’immoraliste and Montherlant’s Poèmes d’inspiration africaine,
two writers who are documented as physically setting off in search of an Algerian Sodom. Finally, I shall
consider Jean Genet’s film Un chant d’amour and how the abjection of homosexuality onto the Algerians,
in accordance with Julia Kristeva’s theory of the process, created an at-one-ment which fortified the
liminal boundaries of Metropolitan France’s identity, whilst eliciting an inherent dependency upon the
colonies. By considering these intimate works which span the first half of the 20th century within the
frame of the aforementioned theories, focusing on the interaction between an individual’s self-perception
and a societal Other, I will chart how the French homosexual writer’s relations with Algerians
progressively restructured colonial binaries, contributing towards and potentially facilitating the official
outbreak of the Algerian War in 1954. Jean-Edern Hallier once commented that ‘des homosexuels purs,
héroïques et combattants […] furent le fer de lance de ce rêve enfantin qu'a été la colonisation française’7,
however in this dissertation I will consider whether in addition to being the spearhead, homosexuality
was also the bandage.
7 Quoted in Gury, Lyautey – Charlus, p14.
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I
A la recherche de Sodome: From homosexual utopia to heterotopia of crisis
At the beginning of exploration under Colbert in the 17th century, French colonies were discursively
subject to the reductive Western binary of civilised/primitive and the impression that indigenous people
in these foreign lands were closer to nature - a perception no less perpetuated at the beginning of the 20th
century. Ethnographic journals such as L’art d’aimer aux colonies by Dr Jacobus X participated in racial
stereotyping regarding the genital endowment of Africans, inferring an animalistic and lustful
insatiability, whilst Dr Rebierre noted how the Arabic youths of Tunis uninhibitedly prostituted
themselves to foreigners, emphasising the overtness of sexual proclivities within this environment.8 The
combination of libertarianism and an erotically charged milieu not only attracted French homosexuals to
North Africa with the promised ease of procuring a young Arab, but also positioned homosexuality as a
product of nature, rather than an unnatural perversion. Whilst in this respect the colonies became the
ideal refuge for the French homosexual, Proust recognises in Sodome et Gomorrhe how the Western
homosexual male was unable to relinquish himself fully to this conceptualised space, still engrained with
the colonial mentality to suppress the Other, and patriarchal notions of wealth, illustrated further in
Desbiefs’ Inséparables, within his wider collection of short stories, Le vice en Algérie. Shaftesbury
acknowledges that true happiness is achieved when an animal attends in appropriate measure to both its
own good and the good of its species,9 and indeed both texts illustrate this persistent conflict between the
individual’s enjoyment of North Africa as a homosexual utopia, and their social and political duties as a
Western colonial male.
In Part I of Sodome et Gomorrhe, the conflation of botanical and colonial imagery with regards to
homosexuality frames the colonies as a homosexual utopia where the mendacious costume of
heterosexuality could be shed. Under the heat of the afternoon sun, the artificiality of Charlus’ virility is
stripped to reveal ‘comme au naturel quelque chose de si affectueux, de si désarmé’, to the extent that the
narrator believes he is a woman.10 However, it is not solely this ulterior side of Charlus, revealed by the
warm climate, which alludes to the revelation of one’s homosexuality being facilitated by foreign lands. In
8 Dr Rebierre, Joyeux et demi-fous, pp48-9.
9 Lord Shaftesbury, Characteristics of Men, Manners, Opinions, Times.
10 Proust, Sodome et Gomorrhe, p66.
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this introduction, the narrator considers the imminent arrival of an insect to fertilise an expectant shrub,
a scene quickly translated into colonial vocabulary by the alignment of a bumblebee with a foreign
ambassador. The flower in this scenario consequently symbolises the colonies and the narrator highlights
the comparable passivity between both male stamen which curve to an insect to offer their pollen, and
female styles which arch to enable penetration. This botanically passive hermaphroditism not only
suggests the receptiveness with which homosexuality was welcomed within the colonies, but aligns
homosexuality and ‘natural’ heterosexuality within this extricated space. Whilst the providential
coincidence of an encounter between an insect and a flower, highlighted by the narrator, zoomorphically
represents the chance of Charlus and Jupien’s meeting as something only nature itself could have
configured, a preoccupation with how the homosexual functions under the constraints of Western
patriarchal society gradually pervades; the narrator loses sight of the natural framing of the act, just as he
misses the awaited conjunction between the bee and the flower at the end of this scene. Consequently, a
sense of illusiveness and temporality is imposed upon the North African utopia as homosexuality is
removed from its natural frame and viewed in conjunction with a network which seeks its suppression.
Foucault’s article Des espaces autres states that utopias are ‘espaces qui sont fondamentalement
essentiellement irréels’ compared to heterotopias which are real places in which the ‘emplacements réels
que l’on peut trouver à l’intérieur de la culture sont à la fois représentés, contestés et inversés.’11 In
Marcel Desbiefs’ Le vice en Algérie, we see a congregation of acts in the small town of Hamam-Ville
considered at odds with Metropolitan morality. From adulterous wives, to a police officer with a
predilection for underage girls, this colonial town is a heterotopia of deviation - a place such as a prison -
which secludes those considered to endanger societal norms. This may be a perfectly acceptable
designation when referring to the heterosexual deviants aforementioned; their behaviour is not only
codified as criminal, but is explained as a genetic trait or goes unpunished, inferring a perpetuity to the
act and their exclusion within this foreign space. However, the same cannot be said for male
homosexuality where we see the characters modify their behaviour and leave the village, a decision
explained by the consideration of North Africa as a Foucauldian mirror.
11 Foucault, Des espaces autres, pp46-49.
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Foucault states that the mirror is ‘une sorte d’expérience mixte’ between utopias and heterotopias, a
convergence which has a unique effect on an individual’s self-conception.12 Firstly, the mirror can be
considered a utopia as it is a placeless place, allowing the individual to see themselves in a place where
they are not – an illusion conveyed in Desbiefs’ Inséparables through the interracially homoerotic
relationship between Hector Cavaillon and Achille Saint-Girons.13 In addition to the narrator’s multitude
of names for the protagonists, including Oreste and Pylade, literally mythologising their relationship, ‘la
clarté pâle des bougies roses’ furthers the idealised and utopian impression of their ‘captivantes
digressions sur les théories d’Oscar Wilde’.14 However, whilst the metaphorical visualising of this utopian
realm beyond the glass allows Hector to discover his absence from the place he actually occupies,
providing an escape from reality, Foucault suggests that the individual’s gradual alignment with their
reflection causes them to redirect the mind’s gaze back towards their real self ‘en liaison avec tout
l’espace qui l’entoure’.15 This actualises the space and transforms the perception of the utopian mirror’s
glass into a heterotopia. For Hector, this discerning of position and realisation of duty in seeing himself
connected with his surrounding colonial society is superficially conveyed through his increasing
commercial activity which eventually incites his departure from Hamam-Ville ‘sans idée de retour’.16
However, his metamorphosis also seeps into the narrative voice where a religious moralising affirms a
reestablishment within the colonial and Christian mind-set.
Following Hector’s departure, Achille is compared to ‘les asphaltes de la Mer Morte, produits tirés du
sombre lac dans lequel Sodome et Gomorrhe furent engloutis par la colère d’un Dieu qui nous a ordonné
de croitre et de multiplier’.17 Here, not only is Hector’s decision to grow the capital of his family at the
expense of his homosexual relationship endorsed by God himself, Achilles’ assimilation to the residual tar
- following the consumption of Sodom by fire and brimstone - resonates with the colonial mission to raze
and rebuild the colonies in the Christian image. Similarly in Sodome et Gommorhe, Proust collectivises
homosexuals into the racial unity of Sodomites, but warns, however, against the creation of a Sodomist
movement to rebuild the city as ‘à peine arrivés, les sodomistes quitteraient la ville pour ne pas avoir l'air
12
Ibid. 13
Although their nationalities are not explicitly stated, Hector is described as ‘un grand blond’ avec ‘la chair ferme et blanche’, inferring a person of European descent, whilst Achille is ‘plus virile’, adorned with stereotypically Oriental features such as ‘sourcils satanesquement arqués’ – attributes suggestive of Algerian origins. pp151-152. 14
Desbiefs, Le vice en Algérie, p155. 15
Foucault, Des espaces autres, pp46-49. 16
Desbiefs, Le vice en Algérie, p157. 17
Ibid.
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d'en être’.18 Whilst a comparison with the Zionist movement aims to reinterpret Sodom as the Promised
Land for these persecuted people, this signifier cannot be completely separated from its biblical history,
and the reader is inescapably reminded of the sin of homosexuality. Consequently, although we see a
movement towards, and even a will to legitimise homosexuality within the colonies by these authors, they
remain tethered to a colonial mind-set, a mentality which sees either subconsciously on a semantic level,
or consciously for the sake of vraisemblance, characters returning to the fold of the heterosexually
normative and Christian centre following their temporary transgression.
The colonies, in this case, become heterotopias of crisis, reserved spaces where individuals perceived to
be in a state of crisis by their society can live until their turmoil has subsided. As sodomy was not illegal in
France, the French homosexual had the mobility to travel between the two spaces, with the colonies
becoming not a place of exile, but a place of purification. In Sodome et Gommorhe, the narrator covertly
traverses the courtyard in a manner indicative of a colonial expedition to witness the violent sounds of
Jupien and Charlus’ sexual intercourse which he interprets as if ‘une personne en égorgeait une autre’.19
Although this aligns the sins of murder and sodomy, the narrator comments that afterwards ‘le meurtrier
et sa victime ressuscitée prenaient un bain pour effacer les traces du crime’ suggesting that the pair,
having transgressed in an extricated place out of sight, can be absolved without injury or harm.20 This
containment and contention between the encouragement of homosexuality in the colonies, yet the
propagation of its transgressive nature and the need for purification is also reflected in Desbiefs’ choice to
name his fictional town Hamam.
Signifying the public baths prevalent across North Africa, the hamam was a secluded space that enabled
personal hygiene, but also a spiritual cleansing, used by Muslims to perform ablutions before prayer.
However, as the theologian Al-Ghazali underlines, the prevalence of nudity within the hamam incited
indecent thoughts,21 sexualising the space and contradicting its intended purpose. If we consider letters
addressed to Louis Bouilhet from Gustave Flaubert during a trip to Egypt in 1850, it was apparently
common knowledge that ‘C’est aux bains que [la sodomie] se pratique’,22with Flaubert laughing at having
consummated the ‘oeuvre des bains’ on a pockmarked boy wearing a large, white turban, the humour
18
Proust, Sodome et Gomorrhe, p98. 19
Proust, Sodome et Gomorrhe, p72. 20
Ibid. 21
Referenced in Bouhdiba, Sexuality in Islam, p62. 22
Quoted in Hayes, Queer Nations, p30.
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seemingly deriving from the fact that the boy adhered by and large to his idealised Oriental image.
Consequently, the hamam provides a microcosmic model of the colonies where we are presented with the
coexistence of a suggested homosexual utopia, through an Orientalising of the space, which was also
subject to a religious moralising – a conjunction allowing the French homosexual to explore his
homosexuality and return home, without risking his heterosexual privilege.
The spatial conflict between the utopian and the authentic – the immoral and the Christian – is a central
preoccupation of both Sodome et Gommorhe and Inséparables. Even through the form of Desbiefs’ writing,
the reader is invited to indulge in the homosexual utopia offered by individual vignettes such as
Inséparables, whilst simultaneously associating homosexuality with sinful acts in other stories due to the
anthological nature of Le vice en Algérie, creating a heterotopic piece of literature. Although I have
chronologised the movement of the French homosexual’s self-positioning in a singular direction from
homosexual utopia to heterotopia of crisis for the clarity of explanation, the reality was far more
synchronous, and the movement between the two spaces continuously bidirectional to the extent that
some homosexual authors such as Proust never set foot in North Africa. Whilst this may ironically offer a
more authentic impression of the Orientalisation which contributed towards writers such as Henry de
Montherlant and André Gide physically setting off in search of Sodom, the real dynamics between these
French homosexual writers and the indigenous men of North Africa who became the focus of their desire
– and, moreover, the effects of their relationships on the imposed colonial power hierarchy – are yet to be
addressed. As depicted in Inséparables, those under French colonial rule were deemed almost a
disposable commodity: the French sex tourist expected a Sodom where he could play without
repercussion. However, whilst these relationships may have appeared solely for the gratuitous pleasure
of the visitor, I shall now explore how these interactions challenged the master-slave dialectic on a much
deeper level.
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II
The hospitable pederast
‘Hospitality implies letting the other in to oneself, to one’s own space – it is invasive of the integrity of the
self, or the domain of the self.’23 Whilst the French presence in Algeria was subversive to the very identity
of the country, ending an Ottoman rule of 305 years, the invasion of Algiers by General de Bourmont in
1830 exemplifies inhospitality as the occupation was neither preceded by an invitation nor succeeded by
a welcome. This violent imposition of the French self upon Algeria forced the indigenous people into the
position of slaves, with the failure to abide by the laws of hospitality, ultimately that of permission and
temporality, figuring the Algerians as objects rather than subjects with rights. Indeed, this
commodification of the Algerians undoubtedly appealed to the French homosexual when he was aware,
as we discussed in Part One, of his relation to his surrounding Christian and colonial framework.
However, as his search for the utopia of Sodom was essentially an escape from the constraints which
propagated the sin of his sexuality, he adopts a different position to his heterosexual military
counterparts when indulging in homosexual desire within this conceptualised space - he becomes a
refugee. Whilst it is arguable that the asylum given to the French homosexual by the Algerian boys was
due solely to their recognition of his despotic privilege as a white colonial male, their position as host to
his homeless desire, subjectifies them and brings them under an unspoken hospitality contract. In Henry
de Montherlant’s, Poemes d’inspiration africaine and André Gide’s semi auto-biographical L’immoraliste
we witness how the refuge afforded to the French homosexual’s pederastic desire by the Algerian boys’
bodies, upon which their transgressive desire was deposited both physically and metaphorically,
humanised the latter from the former’s perspective. These exchanges unhinged the master slave dialectic
and saw the Algerian boys eventually realise the debt of hospitality owed to them as hosts by the French
homosexual.
In the classical terms of Greek pederasty, Naomi Ségal highlights how erastes and eromenos are often
translated as ‘lover’ and ‘beloved’,24 reiterating a subject/object distinction between the older and
23 Still, Derrida and Hospitality, p13. 24
Segal, Pederasty and Pedagogy, p13.
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younger male which married well with the colonial attitude towards the Algerians. In Chant des lamels,25
Montherlant voices pederastic sentiment as a bestial hunt for young prey. The alternate repetition of the
phrases ‘L’amour des proies fraîches’ and ‘Frappons le sol de nos queues’ not only converge man and
animal through a predatory vocabulary - the ambiguity of the word queue signifying both tail and penis -
but rhythmically drive the poem forward, aurally evocative of a beating African drum. This textually
demonstrates how the voice’s activity is propelled by a desire deemed animalistic and how the incivility
of homosexuality found a place of expression in the perceivably more native environment of North Africa.
However, whilst this framing stems from a mentality of objectification and Orientalism, the voice’s
succumbing to this lust ‘[lui rend] fou’ and alters his colonial mind-set.
Whilst for the majority of the poem it is ‘l’amour des proies fraîches’ which causes the voice’s délire, the
prey themselves momentarily achieve the status of subject when he penetrates them with his claws, ‘elles
se confient à [lui]’. On a physiological level, endorphins, released during sex as well as moments of
trauma, have been scientifically related to ‘the dissociative phenomena of numbing, confusion, and
cognitive impairment’.26 From the perspective of the prey, they are dissociated through the trauma of the
act from the objects of their bodies and the reality of the situation, enabling them to succumb to the voice
and continue to hope for survival and subjectivity, ‘Elles, elles veulent vivre encore’. However, for the
voice, the viewing of the prey as beings with consciousness is a result of his sexual excitement which
causes him to become detached from his mentality of colonial objectification. Consequently, the prey are
interpreted as actively deciding to offer their bodies to satisfy his sexual hunger, providing a refuge for his
animalistic desire, even if their actions are truly governed by a feeling of complete powerlessness. Whilst
the temporality of the Algerian boys’ subjectivity and position as host, achieved through carnal embrace,
is reflected in the way the prey are once more relegated to indirect reference by the end of the poem,
André Gide’s L’immoraliste illustrates how the French pederast’s extraction into the unknown
environment of Algeria itself also necessitated hospitality from the Algerian boys - a more permanent
physical dislocation which allowed a more permanent mental dislocation.
Distanced from Metropolitan France and the comradery of a military battalion, the French homosexual in
North Africa lacked an understanding of societal practices, and thus in L’immoraliste, we see an inversion
25
Montherlant, Encore un instant de bonheur, p65-69. (All italicisations are my own) 26
Scaer, The Body Bears the Burden, p80.
12
of the wise elder/naïve youth construct intrinsic to traditional pederastic relationships. As well as
learning their games, the country’s geography, and meeting their families, Michel is invited by one
Algerian boy, Lachmi, to taste a sap used to make a sweet Arabic wine. Whilst the consumption of this
overtly seminal ‘âpre et sirupeux’27 liquid metaphorically figures Michel as the eromenos to the juvenile
Algerian erastes on a sexual level, it also symbolises the ingestion of knowledge in accordance with the
traditional representation of learning as a pouring of liquid from a master into the empty vesicle of a
student.28 The introjection of this previously unexperienced experience fills the empty French
homosexual eromenos and intrinsically changes Michel’s constitution, nourishing his mental growth. This
causes him directly after this scene to view his surroundings from a less Orientalised and generalising
perspective, ‘Ainsi que Marceline l’avait dit, ces jardins étaient tous pareils; et pourtant chacun différait.’29
Consequently, we see an assimilation with the Algerian mind-set through this dependency and Michel’s
realisation of their position as host, illustrated in his adherence to the laws of hospitality, ‘Sur l’invite du
Lachmi j’y goutai’.30 This altered perspective leads to Michel reciprocating their hospitality by inviting the
Algerian boys into the colonial environment of his home where he has the signification to be able to host.
However, the dissociative effect of his homosexual desire, as we saw in Montherlant’s poetry, prevents
him from maintaining mastery of the situation, offering what Derrida terms the impossibility of unlimited
hospitality and allowing Moktir to discover his subjective power.
Derrida employs the term hostipitality to refer to the host’s inherent hostility when inviting another
person into their home; feel at home, but remember it is my home.31 This stems from the host’s inherent
fear that if he gives everything to his guest, he will lose that which enables him to be hospitable in the first
place. Having invited Moktir into his home, however, Michel does not react when he steals the scissors, an
inaction which is explained through the homoeroticism of the act. Moktir’s theft of the scissors could be
interpreted as a scene of oedipal anxiety, a removal of the fear of castration and feminisation presented
by the environment of Michel’s bedroom and the threat of penetration. It is following this assertion of
virility that Michel’s ‘cœur battit avec force un instant’,32 demonstrating a physiological excitement which
27
Gide, L’immoraliste, p52. 28
See Plato, The Symposium, p38. 29
Gide, L’immoraliste, p52. 30
Ibid. 31
Caputo, Deconstruction In A Nutshell, p111. 32
Gide, L’immoraliste, p55.
13
dissociates him from his colonial framework of ownership, allowing Moktir ‘[lui] bien voler’.33 In this
moment, Moktir is the host of Michel’s desire and thus Michel becomes the homeless refugee to whom
nothing belongs as he searches for Sodom. Consequently, he is able to give everything to Moktir, even
himself, enacting unlimited hospitality in its highest form, even if paradoxically he has nothing to give.
Derrida considers whether perhaps only ‘celui qui endure de la privation de la maison peut-il offrir
l’hospitalité’,34 and indeed it is the fugitive nature of Michel which allows him to be unlimitedly
hospitable. However, despite seemingly being the perfect host, he is also the worst, as he gives all of his
hosting power away. As Moktir is aware he is being watched and expects, but never receives, a castigatory
reaction from Michel as a white colonial male, he becomes aware of his subjectivity as guest and the
subversive power that accompanies this role. Anne Dufourmantelle highlights that semantically, the
host’s signification is intrinsically dependent upon the existence of a guest, and thus as soon as the guest
is invited into a home, the host becomes a host-age – the guest becomes the host of the host. This leads to
Ménalque later informing Michel, ‘Vous pensiez le tenir et c’est lui qui vous tenait.’35 Whilst Moktir may be
unaware that it is homosexual desire which affords him unlimited hospitality and the ability to transgress
basic rules of propriety central to the colonial world, Michel’s inaction divulges that even within a colonial
setting, Moktir is in control as guest. Furthermore, Moktir’s understanding of the hospitality construct
enables him to realise that within ‘his’ space of outdoors Algeria, he is host, or perhaps even, that he is not
a host considering the fact that Michel is not truly a guest.
Although the French homosexual may be seeking asylum in his search for Sodom, this is not visibly
apparent or codified by law thus whilst they may see themselves as a refugee, to the Algerian who realises
their subjectivity as host, they are nothing more than a parasite as they have not received an invitation.
Whilst this may be the case, the colonial privilege afforded to the French homosexual, due to his
inescapably white skin, means they must be entertained. In this scenario at least, the Algerians, by acting
as host, can benefit from the reciprocity of hospitality and the subsequent power as guest, especially
considering that the extrication and dependency of the French homosexual on the Algerian boys prevents
them from enacting any subversive violence as a guest anyway.
33
Ibid. 34
Derrida and Dufourmantelle, De l’hospitalité, p56. 35
Gide, L’immoraliste, p111.
14
As we have already discussed, although Michel is able to describe his surroundings narratively, he is
intrinsically dependent upon the boys to explain how his immediate environs correlate to a more
panoptic network of signification in Algeria - in addition to Ashour explaining to Michel the river’s origins
and its journey towards the oasis, Bachir acts as his translator, introducing him to his sister Rhadra. This
construct prevents Michel from enacting a colonial violence over the Algerians or the space, as he is
required first and foremost to relate to the mastery of his host who acts as an interpreter and mediator
for his actions. Anne Dufourmantelle describes this role within hospitality as comparable to that of the
chair in a psychoanalyst’s consultation room; the doctor and patient only interact when within the cadre
created by the chair thus preventing the psychoanalyst having any lasting sense of control over the
vulnerable patient - the chair as host dictates the dynamics of the space.36 This dynamic is most evident at
the end of the novel when Moktir observes Michel having sex with his own mistress - Moktir is in control
of the penetrative violence as both parties have been brought together through their relationships to him,
a position recognised by his returning to Michel of the scissors. This construct gives the Algerian
reciprocal access to the subversive position of guest within a colonial environment. However, as the
French homosexual is essentially a parasite, who has arrived without invite and to whom the Algerian
owes nothing, we see the Algerian also acting outside of hospitality , ‘Bientôt d’autres vinrent d’eux-
mêmes, même plus invités par nous’37 - they impose themselves, just as they have been imposed upon.
In Chant des lamels and L’immoraliste, we see that the dissociative effect of the French homosexual’s
search for Sodom both mentally and physically enabled him to escape his colonial framework and view
the Algerian boys as hosts, bringing them under the laws of hospitality. This construct’s inherent
reciprocity, evident in the dual signification of the term hôte, inescapably led to the idea of an exchange
and thus the Algerians’ sense of entitlement to be hosted after being hosts is unsurprising. As we see in
Gide’s relationship with an Algerian named Athman, whom he met in Biskra in 1894 and on whom the
character Moktir is largely thought to be based, the hosting role played by the latter both as a tour guide
and as the receiver of Gide’s affection elicited not only an invitation to Paris in 1900, but an introduction
to literature and people such as the poet, Francis Jammes, and Oscar Wilde.38 However, whilst Athman
enjoyed the inherent benefits of being a guest, such as being painted by Jacques Emile Blanche at
36
Dufourmantelle, The Philosophy of Hospitality. 37
Gide, L’immoraliste, p53. 38
Aldrich, Colonialism and Homosexuality, pp339-342.
15
L’exposition universelle, Athman’s independent decision to travel to France in 1902, and abating written
correspondence as his reputation as a poet grew, demonstrates a waning reliance on Gide, establishing
himself as an individual rather than a slave. In this relationship, we see how the evocation of the
hospitality construct on this intimate level helped the Algerian assimilate into French society, crossing
borders and claiming the hospitality they believed was rightfully owed to them. However, whilst it would
be fallacious to claim these intimate relationships alone subverted colonial control in Algeria, we shall
now see in Jean Genet’s Un chant d’amour how the at-one-ment formed between these sexual and racial
outcasts aided in the latter’s struggle for independence.
16
III
At-one-ment
Atonement derives its signification from the Latin verb adunare meaning to unite, traditionally referring
to the expiation of sin through becoming at-one with God. Indeed, the colonies’ figuring as heterotopias of
crisis provided a place of atonement for the French homosexual by offering an environment for them to
expel their transgressive desire and reconnect with a Christian and colonial morality. However, through
inescapably subscribing to the laws of hospitality, inciting a reciprocity that culminated in the Algerian’s
recognition of their subjectivity, there was also an at-one-ment with the indigenous population which
began to atone for the damages incurred under the colonial system. In his only cinematic endeavour, Un
chant d’amour, Jean Genet reiterates the French homosexual’s inherent inability to refuse hospitality to
the Algerian who had sexually hosted him, as well as the latter’s recognition that his subjectivity was not
intrinsically dependent upon this exchange. However, as the political assertion of Algerian independence
was inevitably met with disdain by the French, Genet also considers how the Algerian’s literary and
discursive at-one-ment with abject homosexual desire, cast off into this liminal space of the colonies,
assuaged this violence and atoned for colonial objectification more profoundly.
During a dream sequence, we see an Algerian prisoner remembering a utopian homosexual relationship
with his neighbouring French inmate.39 Within the natural environment of the forest, the Algerian hosts
the Frenchman by performing fellatio on him, physically receiving his penis within his mouth. However,
once the Algerian tries to benefit from the hospitality owed to him within the heterotopia of deviance that
is the prison, the French homosexual appears too firmly re-established within the heterosexual matrix for
reciprocation to be a possibility. In addition to swaying in ¾ time, indicative of a waltz and demonstrating
an adherence to social convention, the French prisoner fondles what appears to be a Betty Boop tattoo on
his bicep. Consequently, it is unsurprising that he initially ignores the smoke blown into his cell,
symbolising ejaculation, as the Algerian attempts to be hosted sexually and settle the debt of hospitality
he believes is owed to him. However, as the homosexual overtone in the narcissistic caressing of muscles
39
Although uncredited, it is less than presumptuous to consider the older prisoner as Algerian considering his identification as ‘a North African pimp who also worked as a barber in Montmartre’, and the prominence of Algeria in the contemporary mentality. The younger, European prisoner has also been identified as Lucien Sénémaud, Genet’s French lover at the time. - Giles, The Cinema of Jean Genet, p20.
17
is undeniable, this behaviour and the subsequent rejection of the Algerian are figured as an act - a
superficial skin which explains his later regression and consumption of the metaphorical ejaculate. Whilst
this may appear to complete the reciprocity of hospitality on a sexual level, Genet shows us how this
repayment is surplus to requirement with the Algerian no longer being dependent on French hospitality
for his sense of subjectivity. Although following the initial rejection, the Algerian’s penis is pictured
helplessly throbbing against the cell wall, illustrating his desire to be hosted due to the inherent power of
the guest, his subsequent masturbation divulges a self-realised subjectivity – a response to repudiation
which is reflected in contemporary Algerian politics.
The film was directed by Genet in 1950 at the same time France saw the Algerians taking a more active
stance in asserting their independence. Although Ferhat Abbas, a leading Algerian politician, had
supported the Blum-Viollette Proposal in 1936 which offered certain members of the Muslim elite
citizenship and political equality, the lack of hospitality afforded this integration by the Pieds-Noirs, and
its subsequent failure to achieve support in Paris, demonstrated the idealism of French-Algerian
assimilation. Consequently, Abbas’ political stance shifted and resulted in the creation of Les Amis du
Manifeste et de la Liberté which advocated in favour of an autonomous Algeria, a self-determination
reflected in the way in which the Algerian prisoner’s own hand provides a host to his penis. However, as
illustrated by the Sétif massacre in1945, for which the AML were blamed, demonstrations of
independence elicited a violent response from the French and indeed we see this colonial reassertion of
power microcosmically depicted in Un chant d’amour.40
With actors named Java and Coco Le Martiniquais, and a non-diegetic soundtrack of a snake charmer and
tribal drums, the inmates in the prison are explicit symbols of the countries conquered and governed by
France, which is subsequently embodied by the patrolling guard. As the prisoners in this construct are
figured as the guard’s possessions – an objectification reiterated by the voyeuristic close-ups of Java’s
body – the subjectivity that the Algerian demonstrates in his masturbation and attempt to seduce his
neighbouring inmate becomes a transgression of his boundaries as an object and an infringement of the
guard’s sense of ownership as a white colonial male. Consequently, the guard forces his pistol into the
Algerian’s mouth in an attempt to permanently objectify him in death. However, although the crescendo
in music anticipates a gunshot, the subsequent silence and images of the Algerian still attempting to draw
40
Federal Research Division Library of Congress, France in Algeria 1830-1962.
18
his lover’s attention, show that this murder was not carried out – an unexpected anti-climax which can be
explained if we frame the film within Julia Kristeva’s theory on abjection.
According to Kristeva, the abject ‘est un rejeté dont on ne se sépare pas’,41 it is a part of self we cast into a
liminal space within our psyche when constructing our identity. Subsequently, if we encounter an object
which symbolises this abject, allowing it to emerge from its repressed state, we experience abjection
whereby this threat to established order psychologically draws us to the very borders of our condition,
eliciting a convulsive reaction of horror. In his identification as white, the Frenchman abjects blackness,
explaining why the attempt of the Algerians to assimilate politically with French society was abhorrent to
colonialism. In Un chant d’amour, we see this psychical fabric enacted between the guard and the Algerian
prisoner who subsequently symbolise the super ego and the abject respectively. Upon seeing the Algerian
attempting to unify sexually with the French inmate, the guard experiences the horror that Kristeva
associates with encountering the abject that has transgressed beyond its marginalised space, and
attempts to reject him once more through beating him with his belt. However, as we do not see the effect
of these strikes and the Algerian is pictured laughing in response, the futility of this reaction is revealed –
just as a prison guard cannot be without a prisoner, the existence of the super ego is intrinsically
dependent upon the borders delineated by the abject, and thus the latter can never be completely
banished.
Whilst this interconnectivity is inherently true, it is does not explain the guard’s failure to fire, as even as
a corpse, the Algerian’s skin would still evoke an oppositional blackness to his white. As the Algerian
prisoner is also homosexual, however, we see that this abject blackness is tied up with the providence of a
sexual Otherness that provides an immoral to the moral heterosexuality of France – a behavioural abject
which could not be provided by a dead body. Consequently, we see France disabled, unable to destroy the
subjectivity of the Algerian whose very aliveness simultaneously threatened and provided its colonial
identity. However, whilst the impregnation of abject blackness with homosexuality may theoretically
have prevented the Algerian’s physical eradication, allowing them to migrate into the Metropolitan part of
the larger France they already occupied anyway, this physical displacement and challenging of borders
also began to atone for the oppressive heteronormativity of France from a space far closer to home.
41
Kristeva, Pouvoirs de l’horreur, p12.
19
By 1956, there were approximately 300,000 Algerians living in France.42 Of course, this physical crossing
of borders and encroachment of the visibly black abject upon white identity elicited abjection and faced
racial violence in certain areas. However, by confounding the Algerian with homosexuality, Genet
continues an association that saw these migrant Algerians become vehicles that simultaneously
challenged France’s heteronormativity. As Kristeva describes, the disturbance of the self/other binary
that the abject elicits, draws an individual towards a primitive realm void of prejudice, an undefined
space into which the prison guard in Un chant d’amour is psychically pulled after coming face to face with
the Algerian. In this scene, we see the guard embracing the French inmate against a black backdrop.
However, through assimilating with his abject homosexuality, extracting it from the liminal heterotopia of
deviance of the prison into this non-discriminatory space, we see he momentarily regains control over the
prisoner who represents French territory. Of course it was Genet’s sense of at-one-ment with the Algerian
through abjectivity which made him such a vociferous advocate of the cause, speculating in a 1975
interview that he had always been ‘un Noir’.43 Consequently, if homosexuality was not abjected into the
colonies, there would be no unity with the Algerians, and the visual abject of blackness would be far
easier to exclude. Of course, this is idealistic, and the heterosexual concept of France by which Genet felt
‘écrasé’ did not disappear overnight.44 However, viewed in this way, Un chant d’amour not only purports
the importance of the French homosexual’s role within the Algerian struggle for independence, but that
this support derived from what was in fact a fight for the acceptance of alterity more generally.
Whilst the abjection of homosexuality onto the Algerian, elicited by the practices and writings of
contemporary authors, may seem to enforce a French sense of superiority due to an exacerbation of
Otherness, it simultaneously protected the Algerian seeking independence by attributing them with a
non-physical opposition upon which France’s heterosexual identity depended, not least because it
provided an outlet for dissident homosexual seminal waste, maintaining order at home. Whilst the film’s
pornographic explicitness saw it released only privately to gay porn collectors and thus did not further
the association whose effects it explores, Genet’s empathy with the Algerian people due to their at-one-
ment in abjectivity, led to a strong advocacy of the latter’s homologous search for signification in a more
42
House, The colonial and post-colonial dimensions of Algerian migration to France. 43
Interview with Hubert Fichte in Die Zeit, December 1975, quoted in Hughes, E., Writing Marginality in Modern French Literature, p136. 44
Interview with Rüdiger Wischenbart and Layla Shahid Barrada for Austrian radio and Die Zeit, December
1983,quoted in Hughes, E., Writing Marginality in Modern French Literature, p136.
20
concrete fashion. Not only did he hide Francis Jeanson after having published the anti-colonialist
Manifeste des 121,45 his active participation in the 1955 protests for Algerian autonomy led to him being
labelled in the press as a ‘professional pederast.’46 Of course, it is paradoxical that Genet’s support for the
cause worked towards removing the Algerians’ Otherness that enabled this assimilation in the first place,
perhaps explaining why he disowned the film in the 1970s once the Algerians had achieved
independence. However, through this breaking with the space of abjection of the colonies, and the
physical reduction of France’s liminal border, it could be argued that the abject French homosexual writer
was forced to find a new space for the expression of his desire far closer to home, and was able to begin to
challenge the heteronormativity of France from the inside.
45
Bradby and Finburgh, Jean Genet, p22. 46 Merrick and Sibalis, Homosexuality in French History and Culture, p212.
21
*
The discursive fluctuation conveyed in the narratives of Sodome et Gommorhe and Inséparables, between
viewing the colonies as a homosexual utopia and a heterotopia of deviation, seemingly preserved the
borders of Metropolitan heterosexual identity, enticing the French homosexual to abject his dissident
desire into this extricated space whilst ensuring his return to assume the responsibilities incumbent upon
him as a Frenchman. Of course, the colonial expectation was an exploitation and disposal of the Algerians
in an inhospitable rape. However, due to the inherently fugitive nature of the French homosexual writer
in his search for a utopic Sodom, accompanied by the physiological dissociation caused during sexual
arousal, we see in L’immoraliste and Chant des lamels a movement from viewing the services rendered by
the Algerians as the duties of an objectified slave, to the beneficent and subjective hospitality of a host.
In L’immoraliste, Michel’s physical seclusion from his colonial peers in Algeria necessitated hospitality
from the Algerian boys as guides, reflecting Gide’s labelling of Athman as his ‘open sesame’ to North
Africa, and giving them reciprocal access to the powerful position of guest.47 Indeed, this exchange could
apply to any outcast seeking refuge in Algeria, regardless of their sexuality. However, as René Schérer
highlights, the inherent reversibility of homosexuality reflects the reversibility of the hôte,48 destabilising
the active/passive, insertive/receptive dynamics through the ever present potential for reverse
penetration, and creating an expectation in the Algerian to be hosted despite the lack of a vocalised
invitation. Consequently, it is unsurprising that we see the Algerian in Genet’s Un chant d’amour realising
his subjective rights and imposing himself upon his French lover after having sexually hosted him. Indeed,
the French homosexual’s psychical movement back towards viewing his sexuality as deviant elicited a
contention which may temporarily have prevented him from reciprocating. However, the way in which
the Algerian came to symbolise his abject desire meant that upon encountering him, even when viewing
himself within the colonial matrix, the French homosexual writer’s identity was inescapably perturbed
and hospitality inevitable. This drew him once more into a homologous search for recognition from
French society which enabled an empathy that saw many homosexual intellectual’s advocate against
colonialism.
47
Quoted in Aldrich, Colonialism and Homosexuality, p341. 48
Schérer, Zeus hospitalier.
22
In Voyage au Congo by Gide, La rose de sable by Montherlant, and Les paravents by Genet, we see a stark
anti-colonialism which is tied up with and arguably incited by homosexual relationships. Not only is
Gide’s criticism of French commercial activity in the Congo, accompanied by a pederastic relationship that
evokes a mental and physical assimilation within an African boy, ‘Je continue mes leçons a Adoum […] et
je m’attache à lui chaque jour un peu plus,’49 it is Ram in Montherlant’s La rose de sable, whom Larguié’s
biographical reading of the novel interprets as the transposition of an adolescent male, who unblinkers
Auligny’s colonial mindset.50 Consequently, we see in both of these examples, albeit not directly related to
Algeria, a reflection of the General’s warning in Les paravents of how homosexual relations caused an
espousal of the Arab’s grievances, leading French homosexual writer’s to become vocal proponents of
their cause. Indeed, La rose de sable was a retrospective criticism highlighting Montherlant’s inability to
fully break his allegiance with France. However, whilst decolonisation may largely have occurred by its
publication in 1968, it was by no means complete and thus the protectorship offered by these relations
was certainly not obsolete.
Whilst it is difficult to make extensive psychoanalytical comment upon the Algerians’ recognition of their
power as guest due to the French lens and their relative illiteracy, it is evident that the French
homosexual writer recognised their hospitality, countering the one directional penetration of colonialism
by inviting them into his space in gratitude. In using Foucault, Derrida and Kristeva to read power
dynamics in these literary texts, the discursive production of power in self/other relations is illuminated,
and its implications regarding both the individual’s and the wider community’s psychical reinterpretation
clarified. As my analysis suggests, the literary and physical abjection of homosexuality onto the Algerians
endowed them with an irrevocable power that enabled them to challenge authority persistently,
simultaneously providing and disturbing Metropolitan France’s identity. Of course, to claim that these
assimilating relations were the sole source of the Algerian revolution is preposterous. However, this
paradox illustrates that whilst the French homosexual writer initially acted to uphold the moral Self/
immoral Other binaries of colonialism, the migratory practices contributed to by homosexuality through
the evocation of notions of hospitable exchange, blurred these boundaries and destabilised France’s sense
of superiority, transforming the French homosexual writer from a traitor to his own race, into the
partisan of alterity.
49
Gide, Voyage au Congo, p124. 50
Referenced in Raimond, Les romans de Montherlant, pp121-2.
23
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