Living in Arcadia: Homosexuality, Politics, and Morality in France from the Liberation to AIDS (review)

Julian Jackson's study of the development, impact, and ultimate demise of the French 'homophile' organization Arcadie offers a stimulating and considered contribution to the growing field of work that seeks to map out a gay history of France in the postwar years. The author draws on sources to which access had not previously been secured, including, for instance, a full collection of the 'lettres personnelles' and circulars distributed by Arcadie and its founder André Baudry; and Jackson combines these with, on the one hand, interviews conducted with former Arcadians and, on the other, a wealth of information regarding the social, legal, and cultural backdrop that takes us, as the title suggests, from the 1940s to the present day. What is unusual, and productive, in Jackson's approach is that he takes on board the desire of many Arcadians in their retelling of personal and collective history, namely a desire to 'liberate [themselves] from gay liberation' and to 'escape from a teleological reading of homosexual history' (p. 13). This desire, in itself, perhaps indicates why Arcadie is often overlooked, or under-analysed, in accounts of French gay history, but, as Jackson points out, '[it] ended as the largest homosexual organization that has ever existed in France' (p. 11). Jackson structures his analysis chronologically, and the work can be read at once as an account of the organization and what it reflects of changes in French society, and as an individual testimony through the figure of Baudry himself, who is depicted in all his complexity. The book is divided into three main sections: 'The Background', 'Et in Arcadia Ego, 1954-1968', and 'Arcadie Contested, 1968-1982'. Before beginning the sustained parallel account of Arcadie and Baudry, the first section offers an overview of the development of legislation and social attitudes towards homosexuality in France from the Revolution to the Vichy period, introducing many of the themes that will return in the ensuing chapters: sex and dis/order; shifting definitions of the public/private divide; and, crucially, a shift towards speaking about homosexuality, and the troubled evolution of terms in this discourse. The work done by a number of Arcadie's precursors in the shape of journals, newsletters, and other publications is mapped out, and we begin to understand how Baudry's organization developed not only as a response to a broad sociopolitical climate, but also within an evolving landscape of publications. It is in the second section that Jackson offers detailed and convincing analysis of the role played by Baudry and Arcadie, opting, in Chapter 3, not 'to judge Arcadie's ethical and political values', but 'to analyze Arcadie's vision of the world and to explicate the logic that underlay it' (p. 57). The result is a study that, rather than providing an account of gay history expressed primarily in its own terms, uses a perspective embedded in French gay history as a means of exploring a dialogue between individual and collective histories that can go some way to elucidating further the shifts and tensions of Fifth Republic France.