Queer Theory: The French Response par Bruno Perreau (review)

Reviews 241 author’s novel and unique approach makes his book stand out on several accounts. Most importantly perhaps, it is guided by the thought-provoking principle that both groups did not necessarily regard their relations as Jewish-Muslim interactions, but as relations between friends, neighbors, compatriots or individuals with a shared culture, lifestyle, gastronomy, and so on. The author actually attempts to fill a gap by mapping out the lived interactions of ordinary Jewish and Muslim people in France, which according to him “have been almost entirely overlooked in both collective memory and scholarship” (6). This is a valuable perspective, even if such connections and confluences can seem a bit anecdotal at times. This book neither focuses more heavily on one group than the other, nor does it emphasize conflict over confluence. Another noteworthy element is that the current international state of Jewish-Muslim relations does not inform this work. The author tells the little-known history of the presence of Muslims and Jews from North Africa in France before the 1960s. It starts with World War One and the interactions between the two groups in the trenches. This is followed by the wave of immigration fueled by the war to make up for France’s demographic shortfall, which saw Jews and Muslims interact on a wider scale in a series of new settings. The immigration of North African Muslims and Jews led to the creation of “hybrid spaces” and “shared sites” (71), which are a target of the author’s research, where members of both communities coexisted and fraternized. The sections on World War Two, the Vichy regime, and Nazi occupation are particularly fascinating. The author relates how a significant number of North African Jews evaded arrest, deportation and the Holocaust by camouflaging themselves as Muslims, often with the complicity of actual Muslims. Other interesting historical segments include the fight against colonialism in North Africa, the FLN’s divided approach toward Jews and vice versa, the cohabitation of both communities in France after the Algerian war, and the effects of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Interestingly, unlike most previous scholars, the author refuses to treat Algerian independence in 1962 as“a rupture point with a clear before and after” (202). A wise, recurring observation is that “hostility cannot be considered the norm in the long history of Jewish-Muslim encounters in France” (318), nor should their relations be seen as merely mimicking international conflicts. Southwestern University (TX) Francis Mathieu Perreau, Bruno. Queer Theory: The French Response. Stanford: Stanford UP, 2016. ISBN 978-1-5036-0044-7. Pp. 276. Perreau retrace le processus qui a mené les opposants au“mariage gay”à s’organiser en un mouvement social conservateur multigénérationnel à travers l’instrumentalisation d’une supposée Gender Theory à l’américaine. Dès l’introduction, la présence de racines intellectuelles françaises dans ces études dites Queer se manifeste. L’importance du French Critical Thinking met en avant puis questionne les processus de simplification qui les diabolisent pour ceux qui s’opposent à la loi Taubira, le mouvement d’opposition qui prend le nom de “manif pour tous”. Au premier chapitre, Perreau démontre que depuis 2012, un mouvement conservateur reproche à cette loi de créer un espace problématique entre la citoyenneté et l’identité française. Cet espace est présenté comme irréconciliable selon un certain modèle républicain qui se définit dans une partie conservatrice de la France. Il élabore également sur l’impossibilité de simplifier les interactions entre la France et les États-Unis à travers une analyse de l’histoire des idées intellectuelles transatlantiques depuis mai 1968. Les mots queer et gay sont enfin nuancés et dissociables pour le lecteur francophile anglophone, tandis que l’historique et l’évolution des termes dans le monde universitaire français sont minutieusement retracés. Au deuxième chapitre, Perreau commente l’apparition de mots comme Queer Theory dans les manuels scolaires et à la télévision en France. Une polarisation de l’opinion publique s’ensuit, car la “manif pour tous” voit une attaque contre ses valeurs dans cette incursion d’une “importation américaine” dans la vie sociale. La Queer Theory...