Queer(y)ing Bodily Norms in Francophone Culture

Description

Queer(y)ing Bodily Norms in Francophone Culture questions how a wide selection of restrictive norms come to bear on the body, through a close analysis of a range of texts, media and genres originating from across the francophone world and spanning the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Each essay troubles hegemonic, monolithic perceptions and portrayals of racial, class, gender, sexual and/or national identity, rethinking bodily norms as portrayed in literature, film, theatre and digital media specifically from a queer and querying perspective. The volume thus takes queer(y)ing as its guiding methodology, an approach to culture and society which examines, questions and challenges normativity in all of its guises. The term queer(y)ing retains the celebratory tone of the term queer but avoids appropriating the identity of the LGBTQ+ community, a group which remains marginalized to this day. The publication reveals that evaluating the bodily norms depicted in francophone culture through a queer and querying lens allows us to fragment often oppressive and restrictive norms, and ultimately transform them. Cover Table of contents Acknowledgements Introduction (Polly Galis, Maria Tomlinson and Antonia Wimbush) Part I: Queering the Body 1. Hookups: Social Networking and Digital Bodies in Twenty-First-Century France (Brian Troth) 2. Lesbian Selves: The Figure of the (Body) Double in Marie Nimier’s Works (Adina Stroia) 3. Children Out of Line: Gender (Dis)Orientations and Paths of Queer Resistance in the Heterotopia (Ray Balstad) Part II: Rethinking Gendered Bodily Norms 4. Motherhood Reconceived: The Posthuman Future Is Female in ‘Mon mari le clone’ by Marie Darrieussecq (Kathleen Rizy) 5. The Female Body in the Plays of French Caribbean Women Writers (Vanessa Lee) 6. Male Bodily Poetics in André Téchiné Quand on a 17 ans (2016): Physical Violence and Teenage Passion (Seth Compaoré) Part III: Hybrid and Dysfunctional Bodies 7. Dysfunctional Bodies, Dysfunctional Gazes: Artistic Creation and Death in Manger l’autre by Ananda Devi and Le Génie d’Abou by Isabelle Boni-Claverie (Cristina Onesta) 8. 14 or the Missing Arm: Ontological Instability of the French Contemporary Novel in Jean Echenoz’s Work (Sara Bédard- Goulet) 9. The Cyborg’s Undecidable Body: A Game of ‘Who am I?’ in Gaston Leroux’s La Poupée sanglante (Kate Foster) Part IV: Bodies in Flux 10. Mediating Eve: Female Protagonists and the Contingent Body in Hervé Guibert’s Late Narratives (Loren K. Wolfe) 11. Exploring Encounters in Passages by Emile Ollivier: The Role of Testimonial Responsibility to Othered Bodies (Jennifer Boum Make) 12. Dance as Encounter in the Films of Claire Denis (Kathryn Chaffee) Conclusion (Polly Galis, Maria Tomlinson and Antonia Wimbush) Notes on Contributors Index