Didier Eribon, wrer: ‘What was difficult was not beg gay but beg workg-class’ | Books | The Guardian

Contents:

• DIDIER ERIBON, WRER: ‘WHAT WAS DIFFICULT WAS NOT BEG GAY BUT BEG WORKG-CLASS’
• RéFLEXNS SUR LA QUTN GAY
• DIDIER ERIBON, RéFLEXNS SUR LA QUTN GAY
• INSULT AND THE MAKG OF THE GAY SELF
• CE QUE L GAYS ONT CHANGé : ENTRETIEN AVEC DIDIER ERIBON (2003)
• GAY MOSW MOSW CY GUI
• INSULT AND THE MAKG OF THE GAY SELF (SERI Q) KDLE EDN

DIDIER ERIBON, WRER: ‘WHAT WAS DIFFICULT WAS NOT BEG GAY BUT BEG WORKG-CLASS’

When Didier Eribon ped the homophobia and sual racism of an impoverished life on a hog tate northern France and arrived Paris 1964, he me out of one closet and went to another.

It was much easier to tell his clever, smopolan new iends that he was gay than to adm to beg workg-class. “My g out of the sexual closet, my sire to assume and assert my homosexualy, cid … wh my shuttg myself up si what I might ll a class closet, ” he wr his crilly acclaimed btseller Returng to Reims, published the UK next ’s name is ltle known Bra outsi tellectual circl, particular Kg’s College Cambridge, where he has been a visg fellow.

RéFLEXNS SUR LA QUTN GAY

Until recently, he was bt known France for his bgraphy of the philosopher and social theorist Michel Fouult, and for his wrg on gay male inty. The central them echo those The End of Eddy, Édouard Louis’s 2014 tobgraphil novel about growg up gay and poor a solate post-dtrial town northern France, which is dited to Eribon. ”His book reunts how, after s Paris, the by now succsful, renowned and openly gay Eribon feels ught between class, still ashamed of his roots but still silently seethg when one of his tellectual and social peers is nscendg or sultg about the workg class.

DIDIER ERIBON, RéFLEXNS SUR LA QUTN GAY

“What was difficult was not beg gay but beg workg-class, ” he says. Reims, he wr, is a “town of sults”, those spected of beg gay are “faggots” and “nancy boys”. It seems that he n help to expla the cle of the left and provi sights to the impoverished, homophobic i, which he grew up .

Eribon grew up a homophobic environment and scrib tail what means to be a gay adolcent proletarian, ral France. After sharp criqu – such as those by Luc Boltanski (2011), Jacqu Rancière (2012), and Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak (1988) – the bate about the victims of social power stctur has changed.

Like Eribon, he is gay, grew up the untrysi, and a homophobic, vlent environment. Only when his father, whom he scrib as aggrsive, vlent, and openly homophobic, di, do he return to viss his mother. Here, Eribon giv sights to the hardships of a young man disverg that he is attracted to men; an environment which “real masculy” is monstrated by open ntempt for gay men.

INSULT AND THE MAKG OF THE GAY SELF

Eribon scrib his fears of beg intified as gay; he scrib how he approached the gay scene – always fear of beg regnized by lleagu or acquatanc, always on guard agast groups of young people huntg for gays public parks. Sourc of Vulnerabily: Social Class and Sexual IntyWe therefore intify two sourc of vulnerabily Didier Eribon’s bgraphy: his class background on the one hand, makg him an outsir the predomately bourgeois school, and his sexual sire on the other hand, makg him an outsir the homophobic environment he liv . Even though the disda of his bourgeois peers might be nveyed ls blatantly than that of his homophobic fay, he is still subtly ma aware that he do not belong.

We have already mentned that he grew up an environment full of ntempt for all homosexual practic.

And often do not stop at beg a threat of vlence: gays and lbians who e out mt actually expect beg victims of physil vlence – not only the untrysi and the suburbs, but also bigger ci. Eribon has known the untls swear words for homosexuals om childhood. In the last part of his book, he astutely scrib how much this hurts him:“To bee gay is to bee a target, and to realize that you already potentially were such a target even before you had actually entirely bee one, before you were ever fully aware of what this word that you had heard hundreds of tim might mean, even if you had always known how powerfully sultg was.

CE QUE L GAYS ONT CHANGé : ENTRETIEN AVEC DIDIER ERIBON (2003)

And he knows that those very sults are shapg his inty: He wants to bee a gay man wh all his might; he wants to bee exactly what the others mock him for: “ turns out that even as you are tryg to persua yourself that there is somethg you really should avoid beg—a ‘faggot’—, you are at the same time, and que tensely, tryg to figure out how to bee precisely that” (RT: 205). He himself is the wound ed by a vlent heteronormative gay subject here rembl the lonial subject: for Eribon, vulnerabily is not an abstract fact. ] produc feelgs of secury and vulnerabily the ept regns of the self, and is the source of a diffe kd of anxiety that characteriz gay subjectivy.

” (RT: 218) urse, the vlence, which affects Eribon’s nstutn as subject, is not exclively verbal; physil vlence agast the gay muny is also prevalent. Physil attacks by homophobic youths and men are que mon to him.

GAY MOSW MOSW CY GUI

“Gay spac are hnted by the history of this vlence: every path, every park bench, every nook that is sheltered om pryg ey rri somewhere wh all of this past, and also this prent, and probably even the future of such attacks, along wh the physil wounds they have left, are leavg, and will ntue to leave behd (not to mentn all the psychologil wounds). As a gay man, he for them is not a real man, he viat – and soon be a victim of malice, mockery, and hatred. He is addrsed a rogatory way – and th subjectified as a gay man.

As child and young man, Eribon is forced to live his stigmatized inty; there are no alternativ; there is no way to pe his homophobic environment. Footnote 6 Only after his childhood, when movg to Paris for his studi, he n beg explorg different ways of livg a life: Here, the gay subculture be his salvatn – several rpects: unlike the circl of the bourgeoisie, he n hope here for sympathy, support, and solidary. Not only he n, at least to a certa gree, live his life as a gay man, the Parisian gay muny he also fds a mixture of the social class.

And soon afterwards, he was intified as a gay man and famed. Jt as Eribon, he later broke wh his fay, left the Pirdy where he grew up, and went to Paris to live a life ls domated by vlence, hatred, and yet, vlence tch up wh him even the gay scene. Insult and the makg of the gay self.

INSULT AND THE MAKG OF THE GAY SELF (SERI Q) KDLE EDN

Out of gay, and to class closet: On polics of inty and reflexive soclogy Didier Eribon and Éduard Louis.