Abstract
Un ruban noir conceptualizes nature in ways that are unusual for the French queer landscape of any generation. At its best, it offers a vision of Nature as a concrete and balanced system to which all living creatures belong, with an order that is preserved by coexistence rather than cultural practice. In this aspect it follows closely Lovelock’s concept of Gaia. The novel also shares much with the thought of the pioneer Marxist theorist Mario Mieli, who similarly conceived of the naturalness of homosexuality as a phenomenon like any other, observable in animals. Where Borel’s novel differs from Mieli particularly is in its lurking misogyny, which stems arguably not from its affinity with Nature, but rather from its fetishization of masculinity, as seen for example in its ambivalent response to the cyborg. We can look upon Un ruban noir as both an unusual expression of queer ecology, and an intriguing but failed experiment in queer science.
Original language | English |
---|---|
Pages (from-to) | 34-43 |
Number of pages | 10 |
Journal | Fixxion: Revue Critique de Fixxion Française Contemporaine |
Volume | 12 |
Publication status | Published - 2016 |