The Body in French Queer Thought from Wittig to Preciado: Queer Permeability identifies a common concern in French queer works for the materiality of the body, arguing for a return to the body as fundamental to queer thought and politics, from HIV onwards. The emergence of queer theory in France offers an opportunity to re-evaluate the state of queer thought more widely: what matters to queer theory today? The energy of queer thinking in France - grounded in activist groups and galvanised by recent hostility towards same-sex marriage and gay parenting - has reignited queer debates. Examining Paul B. Preciado's experimentation with theory and pharmaceutical testosterone; Monique Wittig's exploration of the body through radically innovative language; and, finally, the surgical performances of French artist ORLAN's 'Art Charnel', this book asks how we are able to account for the material body in philosophy, literature, and visual image. This is an important work for academics and students in French studies, in Anglophone queer studies, gender and sexuality studies and transgender studies, and will have significant interest for specialists of cultural translation and visual art and culture.

The Body in French Queer Thought from Wittig to Preciado: Queer Permeability identifies a common concern in French queer works for the materiality of the body, arguing for a return to the body as fundamental to queer thought and politics, from HIV onwards. The emergence of queer theory in France offers an opportunity to re-evaluate the state of queer thought more widely: what matters to queer theory today? The energy of queer thinking in France - grounded in activist groups and galvanised by recent hostility towards same-sex marriage and gay parenting - has reignited queer debates. Examining Paul B. Preciado's experimentation with theory and pharmaceutical testosterone; Monique Wittig's exploration of the body through radically innovative language; and, finally, the surgical performances of French artist ORLAN's 'Art Charnel', this book asks how we are able to account for the material body in philosophy, literature, and visual image. This is an important work for academics and students in French studies, in Anglophone queer studies, gender and sexuality studies and transgender studies, and will have significant interest for specialists of cultural translation and visual art and culture.

Feminist approaches to questions of women, pleasure and transgression have generally been premised on the assumption that women's pleasures are typically constrained - if not ignored, marginalized or forbidden - in patriarchal cultures. The naming, foregrounding and pursuit of women's pleasures can therefore be deemed potentially transgressive and linked to women's emancipation in other realms. The essays in this volume draw on a range of materials, from travel writing and the novel to film and stand-up comedy, addressing the specificity of French and Francophone approaches to women, pleasure and transgression across a range of historical contexts. The volume is divided into three sections: intellectual and creative pleasures; normative pleasures, that is, pleasures conforming to women's conventionally expected roles and status as well as to accepted views regarding race, national identity and sexuality; and perverse pleasures, that is, pleasures transgressive in their tendency to reject authority and norms, and often controversial in their "excessive" appetite for violence, sex, alcohol or food. In each case, questions are raised about how we approach such pleasures as feminist researchers, motivated in part by a desire to counter the notion of feminism and feminist research as something "dour" or joyless.