Sexuality, Iconography, and Fiction in French: Queering the Martyr by Jason James Hartford (review)

The aim of this suggestive and original book is 'to examine the interaction between religious motifs and concepts on the one hand, and queer sexuality on the other, in overtly secular literature' (p. 56). For Jason James Hartford, the nexus of this interaction is to be found in the figure of the queer martyr, where queerness may, or may not, be synonymous with homosexuality. Although Hartford acknowledges that many of the martyr figures he examines would generally be seen as gay, their precise sexual identity is less important than their ability to subvert the oppressiveness of Christianity (essentially, given the context, Catholicism) as a system and as a discourse of power. This subversion is all the more potent when wielded by protagonists who, as 'martyrs', are defined in terms of the religion they also contest. Indeed, Hartford seems to have a preference for those martyrs who are not gay since he claims, perhaps controversially, that there is 'a stubborn tradition of gay martyrdom [which is] highly resistant to modern notions of destabilized identity' (p. 182). After an introductory chapter setting out this problematic — and acknowledging the telling absence of female martyrs from his corpus — Hartford moves on to consider representations of St Sebastian, whose 'queer subtext has by now grown familiar enough to be effective in marketing' (p. 55). The author then examines a series of writers who, in various ways and degrees, foreground martyrdom as actual or potential subversion: Flaubert, Eekhoud, Artaud, Genet, Tournier, and Hocquenghem. In each case, the writer is assessed in terms of complicity with the martyr figure: is it the author who is enhancing his own status through the creation of the martyr myth (as with Genet) or is he using the martyr to queer, or at least query, vectors of conformity and oppression (Flaubert's 'La Légende de saint Julien'; Artaud's Héliogabale)? Or is the author himself so confused about the function of his martyrs (Tournier's Abel Tiffauges as child rescuer/abductor in Le Roi des Aulnes and, in Les Météores, Alexandre as sexual playboy/predator) that their potential for subversion is severely limited? However, even such apparent failures can be instructive, with, for example, the incoherence of Hocquenghem's La Colère de l'agneau shown to be an acknowledgement of its culture's 'own, possibly futile martyrdom' (p. 212). Although Hartford's corpus remains small (no mention, for example, of other sexual dissenters who can thematize the martyr, such as Duvert, Guyotat, Jourdan, and Riboulet), it follows that his attempt to uncouple martyrdom and gayness in favour of a queer martyrdom enables him to pose some searching questions about the relationship between religion, sexuality, and literature.