Sex and Sexuality: 2006 Conference Programme Session 10b

Session 10b: Same-Sex Love Before Our Eyes
Chair: Jonathan Black

Taste, Sexuality, and Performance: Staging Same-Sex Desire in 18th Century France
Daniel Smith
Interdisciplinary Studies in Theatre and Drama, Northwestern University, Chicago, USA

The eighteenth century in France was an era of vibrant theatrical activity. While the pomp of neoclassical tragedy remained the staple of the Comédie Française, other venues provided opportunities for more risqué entertainments. This paper examines representations of same-sex desire among men in three obscene plays that were not destined for public theatres. Two of these plays were ostensibly composed for théâtres de société, private theatres in aristocratic homes; the other circulated in manuscript form and was probably not performed. I argue that all three plays depict same-sex desire as a matter of taste, thus suggesting a form of sexual preference that predates the invention of the homosexual in medical discourse of the late nineteenth century.
In La Comtesse d’Olonne (1738), attributed to Grandval père, a young nobleman is cured of his taste for active sodomy through the persistence of a very attractive woman. Discussions of his sexual identity are based on practices, and the question of taste is figured crudely in genital terms. The second play, L’Ombre de Deschauffours (1739) circulated in pamphlet form. This closet drama maintains a similar distinction in sexual identity: “Conistes” (partisans of the vagina) are opposed to “Bougres” (“buggers”). Finally, Les Plaisirs du cloître (1773) depicts a Jesuit who sodomizes his friend Clitandre. The Jesuit begs pardon for his “Italian taste.” Clitandre forgives him, claiming that “antiphysical taste” is linked to his identity as a Jesuit.
These plays’ use of the category of taste to explicate recurring desire for the same sex parallels similar usage in libertine novels of the period (i.e. Belamour’s description of how he developed a taste for passive sodomy in Andréa de Nerciat’s Le Diable au corps). To what extent does this deployment of taste constitute the formation of a sexual identity? Is taste performative?

Molecular and the Molar: Brokeback Mountain and the Burial of Sexuality
Marek Wojtaszek
American Studies & Mass Media, University of Lodz, Lodz, Poland

The paper is a critical investigation of the sexual as it is created and developed in the narrative of Ang Lee’s recent oeuvre BrokebackMountain. Employing Deleuze’s highly idiosyncratic approach to the study of the cinematic work – one no longer conceiving art as the copy of nature; rather, as a creation of desire – I will propose a novel and radical glance at this broadly debated cinematic production. More specifically, I shall focus on the notion of the sexual and attempt to unearth its materially fundamental, if forgotten, status and force. The article drawing on Deleuzean and Guattarian conceptions of affectivity and desire engages itself in the rigorous critique of the Oedipal, transcendentally legitimized and socially practiced construal of men’s and women’s sexuality. Following Deleuze’s appeal for even more abstract models of thinking sexuality (connectivity, relationality), which by no means stands for the flight from the body, I contend that it is our self-understanding and figuration of our bodies that incarcerate the sexual and preclude its authentic realization and appreciation. Sexuality realizes itself through the body (bodies), therefore, the paper looks at the (male) bodies as the film portrays and looks for alternative manners of thinking the corporeal and the sexual. Distancing from the dominant (Freudian) theory of sexuality, its metaphysical underpinnings, and materialist ramifications, the paper through the analysis of Brokeback Mountain demonstrates that, as Deleuze put it, life is intrinsically desiring and sexual. The film then offers but a gloomy and somewhat formidable perspective on human life, advocating all-too-well known repression, mourning and melancholia.

Alberta paints the Small Town Pink: Rural Sexualities in the Wake of Brokeback Mountain
Adam Kaasa
London School of Economics, United Kingdom

The recent success of Ang Lee’s Brokeback Mountain, filmed in Alberta, Canada will hold long-term effects for the strategies of the destination-marketing organisation (DMO) Travel Alberta and for the sexual geography of the province. Travel Alberta is using the gay-themed film Brokeback Mountain as a marketing tool; and yet Travel Alberta does not market itself as a gay and lesbian travel destination to avoid dissonance with its largest tourist market, Albertans. This paper investigates the tactics that Travel Alberta employs to salvage the marketing potential of Brokeback Mountain in the face of a sexualized geography. An analysis of the Travel Alberta website shows that these tactics privilege Alberta’s brand image of ‘nature’ and prevent the province from being associated with homosexuality. Content analysis of three daily newspapers, The Edmonton Journal, The Calgary Herald and The Globe and Mail, complements the goals of Travel Alberta by creating a contrast between words found under the topic of ‘Nature’ and words found under the topic ‘Gay’. This further associates Brokeback Mountain with the ‘natural’ brand image of Alberta while simultaneously distancing the province from links to homosexuality. Travel Alberta’s marketing strategy is then placed in a wider context of film induced gay and lesbian tourism and currents trends in sexual geography allowing a counterfactual hypothesis to emerge that introduces a distinct and counterintuitive narrative of queer political possibility in Alberta. Future studies would require more detailed longitudinal analysis of print media, of government documents and of the lived experience of queer persons to thoroughly identify local strategies and tactics enabling the reconciliation of global economic opportunities on the one hand and local moral or political expediency on the other within a queer framework.



3rd Global Conference Wednesday 29th November - Saturday 2nd December 2006 Pugetow Palace, Cracow, Poland Conference Programme, Abstracts and Papers
Session 10b: Same-Sex Love Before Our Eyes Chair: Jonathan Black Taste, Sexuality, and Performance: Staging Same-Sex Desire in 18th Century France Daniel Smith Interdisciplinary Studies in Theatre and Drama, Northwestern University, Chicago, USA The eighteenth century in France was an era of vibrant theatrical activity. While the pomp of neoclassical tragedy remained the staple of the Comédie Française, other venues provided opportunities for more risqué entertainments. This paper examines representations of same-sex desire among men in three obscene plays that were not destined for public theatres. Two of these plays were ostensibly composed for théâtres de société, private theatres in aristocratic homes; the other circulated in manuscript form and was probably not performed. I argue that all three plays depict same-sex desire as a matter of taste, thus suggesting a form of sexual preference that predates the invention of the homosexual in medical discourse of the late nineteenth century. In La Comtesse d’Olonne (1738), attributed to Grandval père, a young nobleman is cured of his taste for active sodomy through the persistence of a very attractive woman. Discussions of his sexual identity are based on practices, and the question of taste is figured crudely in genital terms. The second play, L’Ombre de Deschauffours (1739) circulated in pamphlet form. This closet drama maintains a similar distinction in sexual identity: “Conistes” (partisans of the vagina) are opposed to “Bougres” (“buggers”). Finally, Les Plaisirs du cloître (1773) depicts a Jesuit who sodomizes his friend Clitandre. The Jesuit begs pardon for his “Italian taste.” Clitandre forgives him, claiming that “antiphysical taste” is linked to his identity as a Jesuit. These plays’ use of the category of taste to explicate recurring desire for the same sex parallels similar usage in libertine novels of the period (i.e. Belamour’s description of how he developed a taste for passive sodomy in Andréa de Nerciat’s Le Diable au corps). To what extent does this deployment of taste constitute the formation of a sexual identity? Is taste performative? Molecular and the Molar: Brokeback Mountain and the Burial of Sexuality Marek Wojtaszek American Studies & Mass Media, University of Lodz, Lodz, Poland The paper is a critical investigation of the sexual as it is created and developed in the narrative of Ang Lee’s recent oeuvre BrokebackMountain. Employing Deleuze’s highly idiosyncratic approach to the study of the cinematic work – one no longer conceiving art as the copy of nature; rather, as a creation of desire – I will propose a novel and radical glance at this broadly debated cinematic production. More specifically, I shall focus on the notion of the sexual and attempt to unearth its materially fundamental, if forgotten, status and force. The article drawing on Deleuzean and Guattarian conceptions of affectivity and desire engages itself in the rigorous critique of the Oedipal, transcendentally legitimized and socially practiced construal of men’s and women’s sexuality. Following Deleuze’s appeal for even more abstract models of thinking sexuality (connectivity, relationality), which by no means stands for the flight from the body, I contend that it is our self-understanding and figuration of our bodies that incarcerate the sexual and preclude its authentic realization and appreciation. Sexuality realizes itself through the body (bodies), therefore, the paper looks at the (male) bodies as the film portrays and looks for alternative manners of thinking the corporeal and the sexual. Distancing from the dominant (Freudian) theory of sexuality, its metaphysical underpinnings, and materialist ramifications, the paper through the analysis of Brokeback Mountain demonstrates that, as Deleuze put it, life is intrinsically desiring and sexual. The film then offers but a gloomy and somewhat formidable perspective on human life, advocating all-too-well known repression, mourning and melancholia. Alberta paints the Small Town Pink: Rural Sexualities in the Wake of Brokeback Mountain Adam Kaasa London School of Economics, United Kingdom The recent success of Ang Lee’s Brokeback Mountain, filmed in Alberta, Canada will hold long-term effects for the strategies of the destination-marketing organisation (DMO) Travel Alberta and for the sexual geography of the province. Travel Alberta is using the gay-themed film Brokeback Mountain as a marketing tool; and yet Travel Alberta does not market itself as a gay and lesbian travel destination to avoid dissonance with its largest tourist market, Albertans. This paper investigates the tactics that Travel Alberta employs to salvage the marketing potential of Brokeback Mountain in the face of a sexualized geography. An analysis of the Travel Alberta website shows that these tactics privilege Alberta’s brand image of ‘nature’ and prevent the province from being associated with homosexuality. Content analysis of three daily newspapers, The Edmonton Journal, The Calgary Herald and The Globe and Mail, complements the goals of Travel Alberta by creating a contrast between words found under the topic of ‘Nature’ and words found under the topic ‘Gay’. This further associates Brokeback Mountain with the ‘natural’ brand image of Alberta while simultaneously distancing the province from links to homosexuality. Travel Alberta’s marketing strategy is then placed in a wider context of film induced gay and lesbian tourism and currents trends in sexual geography allowing a counterfactual hypothesis to emerge that introduces a distinct and counterintuitive narrative of queer political possibility in Alberta. Future studies would require more detailed longitudinal analysis of print media, of government documents and of the lived experience of queer persons to thoroughly identify local strategies and tactics enabling the reconciliation of global economic opportunities on the one hand and local moral or political expediency on the other within a queer framework.
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