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Jean Genet and Subaltern Socialities by Kadji Amin Department Of Agencies of Abjection: Jean Genet and Subaltern Socialities by Kadji Amin Department of Romance Studies Duke University Date:_______________________ Approved: ___________________________ Marc Schachter, Co-Supervisor ___________________________ Michèle Longino, Co-Supervisor ___________________________ Robyn Wiegman ___________________________ Francisco-J. Hernández Adrián Dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Department of Romance Studies in the Graduate School of Duke University 2009 ABSTRACT Agencies of Abjection: Jean Genet and Subaltern Socialities by Kadji Amin Department of Romance Studies Duke University Date:_______________________ Approved: ___________________________ Marc Schachter, Co-Supervisor ___________________________ Michèle Longino, Co-Supervisor ___________________________ Robyn Wiegman ___________________________ Francisco-J. Hernández Adrián An abstract of a dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Department of Romance Studies in the Graduate School of Duke University 2009 Copyright by Kadji Amin 2009 Abstract This dissertation explores the concept of agential abjection through Jean Genet’s involvement with and writings about the struggles of disenfranchised and pathologized peoples. Following Julia Kristeva, Judith Butler has argued that modern subjectivity requires the production of a domain of abjected beings denied subjecthood and forced to live "unlivable" lives. "Agencies of Abjection" brings these feminist theories of abjection to bear on multiple coordinates of social difference by exploring forms of abjection linked to sexuality, criminality, colonialism, and racialization. Situating Genet within an archive that includes the writings of former inmates of penal colonies, Francophone intellectuals, and Black Panther Party members, I analyze both the historical forces that produce abjection and the collective forms of agency that emerge from subaltern social forms. I find that the abjected are often able to elaborate impure, perverse, and contingent forms of agency from within the very institutions and discourses that would deny them subjecthood. "Agencies of Abjection" carefully situates Genet's writing within the discursive fields in which it intervenes, including that of the memoirs and testimonies of former inmates of the boys' penal colonies, of Francophone decolonizing poets and intellectuals, and of Black Panther prison writings. This method illuminates subaltern genealogies of thought on the problems of abjection, subjection, and subaltern agency so central to Genet's writing. By charting the twists and turns between Genet's writing and that of other subaltern writers of abjection, "Agencies of Abjection" reads Genet as a thinker continually involved in a process of exchange, intervention, borrowing, and revision iv concerning the specific histories and experiences of social abjection. v Contents Abstract ......................................................................................................................................... iv Introduction. .................................................................................................................................. 1 1. Jeux de vérité, Jeux de virilité .................................................................................................... 32 1.1 The Queer Effects of Normalization ............................................................................ 35 1.2 “Truth Games” ................................................................................................................ 45 1.3 Children of Cain ................................................................................................................ 48 1.4 Danan’s Press Campaign ............................................................................................... 55 1.5 Historians and the Ideally “Ordinary” Witness ......................................................... 61 1.5.1 Henri Gaillac and the "Testimony of Pupil 6.199" ................................................ 63 1.5.2 Raoul Léger's Memoirs of an Inmate ......................................................................... 67 1.6 The Memoir ..................................................................................................................... 76 1.6.1 The High Walls ............................................................................................................ 78 1.6.2 Saint-Florent-Life ......................................................................................................... 89 1.7 Conclusion ..................................................................................................................... 100 2. Agencies of Abjection ........................................................................................................... 102 2.1 Spectral Mourning and Carceral Masculinities ........................................................ 109 2.1.1 Pederastic Education ............................................................................................... 111 2.1.2 Melancholia’s Genders ........................................................................................... 127 2.1.3 Spectral Mourning ................................................................................................... 131 2.2 The Ascesis of the Abject ............................................................................................. 138 2.2.1 Gay Pride or Queer Ascesis? .................................................................................. 141 2.2.2 Asceses of Abjection ................................................................................................ 147 2.2.3 Conclusion ................................................................................................................ 166 vi 3. Acting Out Racial Melancholia ........................................................................................... 171 3.1 Racial Melancholia ....................................................................................................... 177 3.2 Towards an Anti-Colonial Genealogy of Melancholia ............................................ 182 3.3 Towards an Alternative Historiography of Négritude ........................................... 186 3.4 The Melancholic Object of Whiteness ........................................................................ 196 3.5 Négritude; or Assuming Black Melancholy ............................................................. 216 3.6 The Futures of Melancholia ......................................................................................... 231 3.7 Performance Notes ....................................................................................................... 240 3.8 The Harlem Classical Theater ..................................................................................... 250 3.9 Conclusion ..................................................................................................................... 257 4. Dazzling Images, Buried Histories ..................................................................................... 259 4.1 Dazzling Images ........................................................................................................... 271 4.1.1 The Career of a Stereotype ..................................................................................... 271 4.1.2 A Cultural Politics of the Gendered Image .......................................................... 280 4.1.3 Image and Ground I ................................................................................................ 284 4.1.4 Image and Ground II .............................................................................................. 288 4.1.5 Image and Ground III ............................................................................................. 294 4.1.6 Conclusion ................................................................................................................ 298 4.2 Buried Histories ............................................................................................................ 300 4.2.1 Politicizing Lumpen Culture ................................................................................... 303 4.2.2 Prison Ascesis and Carceral Liberty ..................................................................... 308 4.2.3 “A penal institution and a colonized situation” ................................................. 316 4.2.4 “The Carceral Archipelago of Empire” ................................................................ 321 4.2.5 “The Language of the Wall” .................................................................................. 326 vii 4.2.6 Conclusion ................................................................................................................ 334 References .................................................................................................................................. 337 Biography ................................................................................................................................... 348 viii Introduction. Nigel Williams – Imagine that we were to meet the writer Jean Genet himself. Would we be meeting the real Genet? Jean Genet – Is there a fake going around? Is there a fake Genet out there? Am I the real one? You're asking if I'm
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