Saint Genet Decanonized: The Ludic Body in Querelle

2002 will mark the 50th anniversary of the publication of Saint Genet. Ever since that date, Jean Genet’s work has largely been read and interpreted through Sartre’s analysis of the author. In this study, I seek to liberate Genet’s fiction from the philosopher’s stranglehold and reopen the work to new venues of interpretation. After challenging the accuracy and pertinence of Sartre’s project and describing the problematic influence it has had, I begin my own investigation of Genet by examining the notion of precarious identity which informs the Genetian text. Through a dense weft of textual maneuvers arises an aesthetically playful approach to sexual identity. From the beginnings of work in the field of sexology, homosexual desire has defied certain types of rigid schematization such as Freud’s Oedipus complex. Indeed, it can be better viewed through the alternative interpretive lenses of Deleuze and Guattari who challenge patriarchal order in the study of sexuality. Such an approach eventually leads to a discovery of the body’s centrality in Genet’s fiction, especially in his last novel Querelle. It is precisely this ludic body that has escaped Sartre’s critical eye and many subsequent studies of Genet’s literature.