La gaie panique

Once hunted by the French state, gays are now being asked to subscribe to a security-based management of homophobia: incorporating republican values, a culture of fear and police solutions. What are we to make of this staging of a sexual war whose aim is to produce a sovereign hegemonic masculinity by distinguishing between those who are eliminated, those who are sacrificed, those who are controlled and those who are fantasized about? To resist this war, and to understand why anti-gay brutality continues, we need to go back in time. Drawing on political discourses, scientific disputes, news stories and media footage, this essay explores the theoretical underpinnings of the endless repression of homosexual desire.

Mickaël Tempête was born in Bordeaux in 1986. He is a member of the sexual dissidence magazine Trou Noir, to which he regularly contributes articles on homophobia, revolutionary thought, cinema and poetry. With a group of friends, he also co-founded Éditions la Tempête, which focuses on heterodox currents of Marxism.