Abstract
Bruno Perreau’s Queer Theory: The French Response examines the political turmoil surrounding mass demonstrations in 2012 and 2013 against the proposal of the legalization of gay marriage in France. The controversy of the transatlantic importing of queer theory into wider French consciousness emerges as the undercurrent to this exploration. Perreau explores the impact of queer theory on French understandings of gender and sexuality as well as resistance to a perceived invasion of American theory as a threat to French identity.
Perreau begins his exploration by detailing how right-wing groups appropriated protest strategies from the radical left to demonize what was commonly understood as “gender theory.” Gender theory in this context refers to queer theory and, in particular, the translation of works by Judith Butler into French. The protest of gender theory forms the core of the strong resistance led by these protest groups (with support of the Vatican), as gender theory represents a threat to traditional French conceptions of family reliant on a strict male/female sex distinction. The questioning of this strict distinction signaled the threat of questioning the entire foundation of French identity.
Perreau recounts the actual presence of queerness as it manifests in the overlapping of political, academic, media, and activist circles. He reveals how the French protesters focused on fears of betrayal and contamination by “enemies within” and explains that the strong resistance to gay marriage had roots much older than either the introduction of American queer theory or the ultimately successful bill legalizing gay marriage throughout France. Perreau shows how queer theory interrogates the unspoken assumptions of France’s social contract and how an anticommunitarian rhetoric, characteristic of French politics, is central to the concept of a French national identity. Perreau’s argument culminates in explicating the ways in which the French response to queer theory is governed by a principle of authenticity of citizenship and how the crises triggered by the distinction between homosexual and heterosexual, as it has manifested in a French cultural grappling with queer theory, continue to structure the overall understanding of French citizenship.
Perreau presents an enriching and detailed account of the consequences of queer theory’s arrival in France. This book would be of interest to anyone wishing to understand how nuances of queer theory do and do not translate across the Atlantic, as well as anyone interested in a queer perspective on the resistance to marriage equality in France.