Sexagon: Muslims, France, and the Sexualization of National Culture by Mehammed Amadeus Mack (review)

likely have reached a diverse readership, according to Kay. Bestiary readers could have included lay brothers or schoolboys learning Latin, as well as university students, and highly literate readers. Whereas Kay states that there is “no direct evidence” that bestiaries were read by women (15), she notes the likelihood of medieval aristocratic women having access to the vernacular bestiaries and therefore refers in her work to the readers of Latin bestiaries as “he” and to the readers of vernacular bestiaries as “she.” Exceedingly well researched and organized, and richly illustrated with twentyeight color plates and numerous black-and-white reproductions from illuminated bestiary manuscripts, Kay’s close readings of bestiary texts, images, and parchment will be of tremendous interest to students and scholars from a wide range of disciplines, including medieval studies, manuscript studies, animal studies, and skin studies. Northern Arizona University Erika E. Hess Mack, Mehammed Amadeus. Sexagon: Muslims, France, and the Sexualization of National Culture. NewYork: Fordham UP, 2017. ISBN 978-0-8232-7461-1. Pp. 318. The title suggests that the boundaries of Frenchness are increasingly defined by attitudes to LGBT issues and feminism. Mack contends that French Muslims, who can no longer be excluded on the grounds of linguistic non-assimilation, are now subjected to a “sexual” citizenship test. Immigrants and their descendants are only considered French if they adhere to “long-standing French values” on gender and sexuality. A central contention of this book is that, while French Muslim banlieusards are chastised for their regressive views on gender and sexuality, and while queer French Muslim banlieusards are criticized by activists for not “coming out,” the banlieue can be a site of dissident queer culture. This hypothesized“local”queer culture, according to Mack, is ignored by an “imperialistic” Parisian gay center that adheres to a hetero-homo binary and privileges a linear coming-out narrative. For Mack, the homonationalism and sexual nationalism of the gay center ignores banlieue queer cultures and, especially, queer banlieusards’ “nongendered virility” and “chosen homosexual clandestinity” (23). Both terms, however, lack conceptual clarity. In particular, Mack’s notion of “chosen homosexual clandestinity” suggests that gay Muslim men in the banlieue choose to be“discreet”and actively reject the Parisian gay center’s imperative to come out. Mack considers that these gay men remain in the closet, not out of fear of discrimination, harassment, or reprisals, but out of choice. Clandestinity, then, would be a free choice that is willingly adopted by banlieue gay Muslims. Mack appears to have implicitly taken Joseph Massad’s main argument in Desiring Arabs and transposed it onto the French context. The Gay International here is replaced by a vague Parisian gay center and the Arab World by the French banlieue. Many of the same critiques that one could make of Desiring Arabs can also be made of Mack’s book. Both criticize 226 FRENCH REVIEW 91.3 Reviews 227 a “Western” entity for categorizing Arabs and French banlieue Muslims who partake in same-sex relations as homosexual, thereby imposing a Western homo-hetero binary that transforms sexual practices into identities on a group of people who presumably do share the same perspective. Both authors, however, ignore that many Arabs and banlieue Muslims who engage in same-sex relations do adopt a corresponding sexual identity. Mack goes so far as to excuse violence committed against gay banlieusards and places the blame on both the French equivalent of the Gay International and gay Muslims who adopt the homo-hetero binary.Yet, Mack’s thesis is unsubstantiated; he has not done any fieldwork among gay Muslims in the banlieue. Perhaps the author ought to have asked the “clandestine” why they remain “clandestine,” rather than uncritically adopting Massad’s central claims about the Gay International and the Arab World. In a book largely about gay Muslims, Mack does not bring up cases of actual,“ordinary”gay Muslims.The only gay Muslim association in France,Homosexuels musulmans de France (HM2F), receives only a fleeting mention in Mack’s book. Therefore , despite the timeliness of the topic, Sexagon is ultimately a conceptually and methodologically flawed study on gay Muslims in the banlieue. University of Manchester Adi S. Bharat Murray-Miller, Gavin. The Cult...