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Disturbing Attachments: Genet, Modern Pederasty, and Queer History
Jean Genet (1910–1986) resonates, perhaps more than any other canonical queer figure from the pre-Stonewall past, with contemporary queer sensibilities attuned to a defiant non-normativity. Not only sexually queer, Genet was also a criminal and a social pariah, a bitter opponent of the police state, and an ally of revolutionary anticolonial movements. In Disturbing Attachments , Kadji Amin challenges the idealization of Genet as a paradigmatic figure within queer studies to illuminate the methodological dilemmas at the heart of queer theory. Pederasty, which was central to Genet's sexuality and to his passionate cross-racial and transnational political activism late in life, is among a series of problematic and outmoded queer attachments that Amin uses to deidealize and historicize queer theory. He brings the genealogy of Genet's imaginaries of attachment to bear on pressing issues within contemporary queer politics and scholarship, including prison abolition, homonationalism, and pinkwashing. Disturbing Attachments productively and provocatively unsettles queer studies by excavating the history of its affective tendencies to reveal and ultimately expand the contexts that inform the use and connotations of the term queer .
272 pages, Hardcover
Published September 22, 2017
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
February 26, 2018
Amin uses the work of outlaw/author Jean Genet and his investment in pederasty as a way to problematize contemporary queer theory. Looking at Genet's writings on prison, his work with underground organizations like the Black Panthers and the PLO, and how terrorism is defined Amin uses pederasty as category for analysis. It is a fascinating book that is written in a clear and concise manner and raises a lot of interesting ideas.
"Performing outsider hood was Genet's way into the exclusive world of French letters." 2
"Genet's failures lay bare a methodological dilemma within queer scholarship as well as politicized criticism as a whole: how to counter the pathologization of denigrated groups without reacting by idealizing them. In Western modernity, sexual and racialized deviance has been apathologized, violently policed, and subjected to normalizing discipline in prisons, hospitals, and schools. As a result, the cultures, knowledges, and life-worlds of denigrated groups have been stigmatized and rendered monstrously unintelligible. A powerful tendency within scholarship has been to respond to this damaging legacy of shame and stigma by loudly idealizing the alternatives that emerge from deviance." 6
"The experience of unease, Disturbing Attachments proposes, can serve as a generative heuristic for politicized scholarship." 10
"In his reading of the interview, David Halperin relates Foucault's discussion of age differences to differences of class and race that may also produce imbalances of power. He goes on, importantly, to connect the issue of inegalitarian erotic relations to Foucault's better-known interest in S/M as a means of using power to produce pleasure. Subsequent queer critics, however, have "forgotten" the centrality of cross-generational sexual relations to Foucault's thinking in this interview." 22
"Daddy" is one of the few rubrics under which older men might be eroticized within a gay male culture that valorizes youth and beauty. Integenerational sex and relationships continue to be practiced within North American gay male cultures, but under the linguistic rubric of "Daddy/Boy" (or "twink") rather than "pederasty," that is, if they name age differences at all. Moreover, many of these relations resemble less the self-conscious contract and stylized theatrics of BDSM than the more literal eroticization of actually existing asymmetric of the "forgotten" form of pederasty. Is it any coincidence, then, that Daddy/Boy emerges into cultural and theoretical prominence during the 1980s, the very moment when, in both the United States and France, man-boy love and pederasty cease to be recognizable as either erotic orientations or politically resonant sexual practices?" 27-28
"Irreconcilable with the kinds of claims it is possible to make according to liberal rights-based strategies, pederasty was precipitously made retrograde between the 1970s and 1990s, its potential horizons blotted out as incompatible with the shape of the future to be ushered in by gay liberalism." 35
"European modernity is built on mass, same-sex institutions-armies, prisons, schools-that solicit and implant affective attachments to masculine hierarchies. These attachments would, with some regularity, be eroticized and even sexualized. European modernity is therefore pederastic-that is, structured by the masculinist in egalitarianism of normalized hierarchies between men, men and boys, and between boys, hierarchies that are never far from overt sexualization." 56
"Hocquenghem theorizes the cruising and public sex culture of men who have sex with men as exemplifying the ontology of desire as an impersonal, uninterrupted flux. The flux of desire continually produces mechanic sexual assemblages whose sole characteristic is to function, that is, to be erotically efficacious, destroying, in the process, gendered desiring subjects and objects. For Hocquenghem, the tendency of sex toward mechanic, anti humanist connections undoes social identities and disintegrates subject/object, self/other, active/passive, male/female, and oppressor/oppressed binaries." 94
"The pathos of exile from kinship generates a powerful longing for return, a longing that has proven difficult to defuse with radical injunctions to oppose the family. It incites idealization-if not of the family, then of some form of belonging that would make good on the family's failings." 112-113
"Chosen family, then, is a form of queer kinship historically bound to a neoliberal, post-gay liberation time and place. As such, it resonates with queer attachments to the values of egalitarianism, individual autonomy, and elective affinities.
Both the discourse of chosen family and utopian aspirations of the discourse of queer kinship are rooted in a prior sacralization of the family." 120
"At foundling's kernel is the proposition that a rupture from belonging is also a rupture from time....The relationship between kinship and time has been much explored, of late, within queer theoretical scholarship." 122
"Jeffrey Ogbar has argued that by marching in military formation and wearing uniforms inspired by those of Third World revolutionaries, the Panthers made visually apparent their understanding of black people in the United States as a colonized population in anti colonial resistance rather than American citizens petitioning for equal rights." 143
"Terrorism" is illegitimate violence...It is not the nature of an act of violence that determines whether or not is may be considered terrorism; rather, the international standing of the organization responsible for that act determines its acceptability. If the organization is a sovereign liberal state, such as Israel, the act will not be considered terrorist regardless of its method or the number of civilian lives it claims; if it is either an organizations without sovereign territory, such as the PLO or Hamas, or an illiberal state, its violent methods are exponentially more likely to be considered terrorist." 167
"Performing outsider hood was Genet's way into the exclusive world of French letters." 2
"Genet's failures lay bare a methodological dilemma within queer scholarship as well as politicized criticism as a whole: how to counter the pathologization of denigrated groups without reacting by idealizing them. In Western modernity, sexual and racialized deviance has been apathologized, violently policed, and subjected to normalizing discipline in prisons, hospitals, and schools. As a result, the cultures, knowledges, and life-worlds of denigrated groups have been stigmatized and rendered monstrously unintelligible. A powerful tendency within scholarship has been to respond to this damaging legacy of shame and stigma by loudly idealizing the alternatives that emerge from deviance." 6
"The experience of unease, Disturbing Attachments proposes, can serve as a generative heuristic for politicized scholarship." 10
"In his reading of the interview, David Halperin relates Foucault's discussion of age differences to differences of class and race that may also produce imbalances of power. He goes on, importantly, to connect the issue of inegalitarian erotic relations to Foucault's better-known interest in S/M as a means of using power to produce pleasure. Subsequent queer critics, however, have "forgotten" the centrality of cross-generational sexual relations to Foucault's thinking in this interview." 22
"Daddy" is one of the few rubrics under which older men might be eroticized within a gay male culture that valorizes youth and beauty. Integenerational sex and relationships continue to be practiced within North American gay male cultures, but under the linguistic rubric of "Daddy/Boy" (or "twink") rather than "pederasty," that is, if they name age differences at all. Moreover, many of these relations resemble less the self-conscious contract and stylized theatrics of BDSM than the more literal eroticization of actually existing asymmetric of the "forgotten" form of pederasty. Is it any coincidence, then, that Daddy/Boy emerges into cultural and theoretical prominence during the 1980s, the very moment when, in both the United States and France, man-boy love and pederasty cease to be recognizable as either erotic orientations or politically resonant sexual practices?" 27-28
"Irreconcilable with the kinds of claims it is possible to make according to liberal rights-based strategies, pederasty was precipitously made retrograde between the 1970s and 1990s, its potential horizons blotted out as incompatible with the shape of the future to be ushered in by gay liberalism." 35
"European modernity is built on mass, same-sex institutions-armies, prisons, schools-that solicit and implant affective attachments to masculine hierarchies. These attachments would, with some regularity, be eroticized and even sexualized. European modernity is therefore pederastic-that is, structured by the masculinist in egalitarianism of normalized hierarchies between men, men and boys, and between boys, hierarchies that are never far from overt sexualization." 56
"Hocquenghem theorizes the cruising and public sex culture of men who have sex with men as exemplifying the ontology of desire as an impersonal, uninterrupted flux. The flux of desire continually produces mechanic sexual assemblages whose sole characteristic is to function, that is, to be erotically efficacious, destroying, in the process, gendered desiring subjects and objects. For Hocquenghem, the tendency of sex toward mechanic, anti humanist connections undoes social identities and disintegrates subject/object, self/other, active/passive, male/female, and oppressor/oppressed binaries." 94
"The pathos of exile from kinship generates a powerful longing for return, a longing that has proven difficult to defuse with radical injunctions to oppose the family. It incites idealization-if not of the family, then of some form of belonging that would make good on the family's failings." 112-113
"Chosen family, then, is a form of queer kinship historically bound to a neoliberal, post-gay liberation time and place. As such, it resonates with queer attachments to the values of egalitarianism, individual autonomy, and elective affinities.
Both the discourse of chosen family and utopian aspirations of the discourse of queer kinship are rooted in a prior sacralization of the family." 120
"At foundling's kernel is the proposition that a rupture from belonging is also a rupture from time....The relationship between kinship and time has been much explored, of late, within queer theoretical scholarship." 122
"Jeffrey Ogbar has argued that by marching in military formation and wearing uniforms inspired by those of Third World revolutionaries, the Panthers made visually apparent their understanding of black people in the United States as a colonized population in anti colonial resistance rather than American citizens petitioning for equal rights." 143
"Terrorism" is illegitimate violence...It is not the nature of an act of violence that determines whether or not is may be considered terrorism; rather, the international standing of the organization responsible for that act determines its acceptability. If the organization is a sovereign liberal state, such as Israel, the act will not be considered terrorist regardless of its method or the number of civilian lives it claims; if it is either an organizations without sovereign territory, such as the PLO or Hamas, or an illiberal state, its violent methods are exponentially more likely to be considered terrorist." 167
October 16, 2025
SO SO GOOD. intro, chapter 1, 3, 5, epilogue
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December 11, 2023Jean Genet is my favorite author. This is no secret to loved ones of mine. I tend to gravitate towards criticism of him and I enjoy the way his works manage to frame so many arguments.
This is the first time I kind of wish that a book about him had a different subject. Not because I disagreed with Kadji Amin's takes on Genet--I didn't--but because I found his ideas more compelling when they left Genet behind. Sometimes Genet was a perfect centerpiece (the chapter on carceral sexualities in particular is one of my favorite works of literary criticism I've ever read). At other times, the stretch to connect all things to his centerpieces (modern pederasty & Genet) made his points on race, politics, and futurity sink.
I think this work comes strongly out of a dissertation wherein Amin had focused solely on close-reading Genet's work and analyzing the attachments of queer theory as a whole and its genealogical relation to certain affectations, sensibilities, and ways of being. His afterword is highly-telling in its relation to history, as it described the origins of queer theory to be a US 1990s conception. Why then, are we making the queer poster child and the face of what we must de-idealize Jean Genet?
This is the first time I kind of wish that a book about him had a different subject. Not because I disagreed with Kadji Amin's takes on Genet--I didn't--but because I found his ideas more compelling when they left Genet behind. Sometimes Genet was a perfect centerpiece (the chapter on carceral sexualities in particular is one of my favorite works of literary criticism I've ever read). At other times, the stretch to connect all things to his centerpieces (modern pederasty & Genet) made his points on race, politics, and futurity sink.
I think this work comes strongly out of a dissertation wherein Amin had focused solely on close-reading Genet's work and analyzing the attachments of queer theory as a whole and its genealogical relation to certain affectations, sensibilities, and ways of being. His afterword is highly-telling in its relation to history, as it described the origins of queer theory to be a US 1990s conception. Why then, are we making the queer poster child and the face of what we must de-idealize Jean Genet?
September 15, 2019
I cannot recommend a book more highly. Agree or disagree with the arguments, it will certainly crack open your comfortable thought processes and take you on the most exciting and unexpected rollercoaster for a theory book. You might find yourself on a few hairpin changes of opinion before the book is through, and you'll probably be better for it.
November 7, 2019
This was not an easy book to read as Amin has a thing in overcomplicating his thoughts. The prologue was admirable but also very confusing. It leaves you with your thoughts racing at the moment you are done with the book. Some days after though, you can't recall what exactly overwhelmed you in the way it did.
#deidealization , #queer , #JeanGenet are the appropriate hashtags.
He also introduced the concept of "disturbing attachments" which is heavy but good to know about when it comes to analyzing the mentioned hashtags.
#deidealization , #queer , #JeanGenet are the appropriate hashtags.
He also introduced the concept of "disturbing attachments" which is heavy but good to know about when it comes to analyzing the mentioned hashtags.
October 31, 2023
learned a lot ty
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February 8, 2019841 G328Xa 2017
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews