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Originally published in 1972 in France, Guy Hocquenghem's Homosexual Desire has become a classic in gay theory. Translated into English for the first time in 1978 and out of print since the early 1980s, this new edition, with an introduction by Michael Moon, will make available this vital and still relevant work to contemporary audiences. Integrating psychoanalytic and Marxist theory, this book describes the social and psychic dynamics of what has come to be called homophobia and on how the "homosexual" as social being has come to be constituted in capitalist society.
Significant as one of the earliest products of the international gay liberation movement, Hocquenghem's work was influenced by the extraordinary energies unleashed by the political upheavals of both the Paris "May Days" of 1968 and the gay and lesbian political rebellions that occurred in cities around the world in the wake of New York's Stonewall riots of June 1969.
Drawing on the theoretical work of Gilles Deleuze and FÉlix Guattari and on the shattering effects of innumerable gay "comings-out," Hocquenghem critiqued the influential models of the psyche and sexual desire derived from Lacan and Freud. The author also addressed the relation of capitalism to sexualities, the dynamics of anal desire, and the political effects of gay group-identities.
Homosexual Desire remains an exhilarating analysis of capitalist societies' pervasive fascination with, and violent fear of, same-sex desire and addresses issues that continue to be highly charged and productive ones for queer politics.
Table des matières
New Introduction / Michael Moon 9
Preface to the 1978 Edition / Jeffrey Weeks 23
1. Introduction 49
2. Anti-Homosexual Paranoia 55
"Unnatural acts": nature and the law 61
A myth: the progress of public morals 62
The strengthening of anti-homosexual paranoia 66
Homosexuality and crime 67
Homosexuality and disease 69
"Latent" and "patent" homosexuality 72
3. "Disgusting perverts" 73
The polymorphously perverse, bisexuality, and non-human sex 74
Hatred of woman 77
The Oedipalisation of homosexuality 79
Castration and narcissism 79
Oedipus or the chromosomes? 82
The homosexual judge 83
Cure: the infernal cycle 86
Homosexuality and shame 88
4. Capitalism, the Family, and the Anus 93
The phallic signifier and the sublimated anus 95
Homosexuality and the anus 97
Homosexuality and the loss of identity 100
The competitive society and the rule of the phallus 103
Oedipal reproduction and homosexuality 106
Homosexual grouping 110
5. Homosexual "object-choice" and Homosexual "Behaviour" 113
The "object-choice" 114
The "third sex" and "masculine-feminine" 121
Masochism and homosexuality 127
The pick-up machine 130
6. The Homosexual Struggle 133
The revolution of desire 133
Why homosexuality? 138
The perverse trap 142
Against the pyramid 145
7. Conclusion 148
Notes 151
Index 155
A propos de l'auteur
Guy Hocquenghem (1944-1988) taught philosophy at the University of Vincennes, Paris. He was the author of numerous novels, works of theory, and was a staff writer for the French publication LibÉration. He was a founding member of le Front Homosexuel d'Action RÉvolutionnaire (F.H.A.R.). Hocquenghem died of an AIDS-related illness in 1988.
Résumé
Integrating psychoanalytic and Marxist theory, this book describes the social and psychic dynamics of what has come to be called homophobia and on how the 'homosexual' as social being has come to be constituted in capitalist society.
