De Universy Prs - Gay Liberatn after May '68

Contents:

• GAY LIBERATN AFTER MAY '68

GAY LIBERATN AFTER MAY '68

Signifint as one of the earlit products of the ternatnal gay liberatn movement, Hocquenghem's work was fluenced by the extraordary energi unleashed by the polil upheavals of both the Paris "May Days" of 1968 and the gay and lbian polil rebellns that occurred ci around the world the wake of New York's Stonewall rts of June 1969. Two s after s appearance, Homosexual Dire remas an exhilaratg analysis of palist societi' pervasive fascatn wh, and vlent fear of, same-sex sire and addrs issu that ntue to be highly charged and productive on for queer polics. Anti-Homosexual Paranoia "Unnatural acts": nature and the law A myth: the progrs of public morals The strengtheng of anti-homosexual paranoia Homosexualy and crime Homosexualy and disease "Latent" and "patent" homosexualy.

Capalism, the Fay and the An The phallic signifier and the sublimated an Homosexualy and the an Homosexualy and the loss of inty The petive society and the le of the phall Oedipal reproductn and homosexualy Homosexual groupg.

NEW INTRODUCTION Michael Moon I had never heard of Guy Hocquenghem or Homosexual Dire until I unexpectedly happened on a py of the English trans latn soon after s first publitn 1 978, on a shelf unproply marked "Sex and Marriage" a shoppg-mall bookstore Columbia, Maryland. I had been readg gay liberatn publitns (mostly Brish and Amerin perdi ls-Boston's Fag Rag, San Francis's Gay Sunshe, London's gay News and Gay Left) for some years at the time, and I had also started readg "theory" (mostly French), but I had not to that pot seen anyone be the two thgs the same work, so I was exced to fd my first mol of the gay appropriatn of poststcturalist theory. G., the first volume of Fouult's History of Sexualy had been translated to English the same year), but I spect that for many rears before me, an or anglophone, HomosexualDirewas our first workg example of theoretil disurse strongly flected by gay activism.

For me one of the most salient quali of Homosexual Dire remas s double character as both a substantial ntributn to the radil theory of the subject and an early and brilliant terventn the burst of activism and activist wrg that lnched the ternatnal gay and lbian movement the late 1960s and early 1970s New York, Paris, and elsewhere. 1 Homo sexual Dire and other early articulatns of the ternatnal project of gay liberatn were enabled by the ntemporaneo history of monstratns, strik, speech, protts, and leafletg through which the women's liberatn movement and the early lbian liberatn movement brought themselv to existence-an existence that powerfully announced self wrg rangg om Valerie Solanas's notor SCUM Mani fto (1968) to Shulamh Firtone's The Dialectic of Sex (1970).

Also ccial to nsirg the poli l and historil ntext om which emerged Homosexual Dire and other early gay-liberatn maniftos, as well as other mani ftos of women's and lbian liberatn movements, are the exampl of the stggl of peopl of lor agast racism and lonialism the 1960s- the UnedStat, the Caribbean, France, Ai, and elsewhere.

In the hope of makg some of this ntext available to the rear g to HomosexualDire for the first time, I shall be lookg not only at this early work of Hocquenghem's but beyond to s place the early history of gay-lbian liberatn France.