Rehabilitated homophilia

If the history of French homosexualities has benefited from a renewed interest in recent years, it remains a relatively unprecedented area for French historians. Julian Jackson’s work opens with this observation of a typically French delay on a long subject that has remained illegitimate. After several years of research on meticulously gathered sources (issues of the review Arcadiacorrespondence, interviews), Julian Jackson undertakes here the story of Arcadie, “ First French homophile movement », With an objective displayed from the introduction: re -evaluating Arcadie. Born in 1954 and managed for almost thirty years by André Baudry, a character as emblematic as authoritarian, Arcadie was often presented as an obscure organization, trapped in an archaic conception of homosexuality tinged with conservatism. His disappearance in 1982 was often linked to his anachronistic character and “ old -fashioned “, His inability to grasp the social and ideological changes of the time. The radical homosexual movements of the 1970s have largely fueled this little glorious picture when they tried precisely to capture the political space of homosexualities in France. Julian Jackson’s work takes the opposite view of this critical and superficial vision of the Arcadia movement, its history and its actors. Professor at Queen Mary University (London) and specialist in France’s cultural history since the 1930s, Jackson offers a much finer and nuanced reading of a movement including activities, publications, speeches and actors Build a history of French homosexualities in the more complex post-war period.

There “ Life in catacombs »»

The first two parts of the book deal with birth and “ youth Arcadie in France in the 1950s and 60s. In the first part, the author recalls that the liberation inaugurates in France a period of generalized hostility towards homosexualities, characterized by a family and moralist climate. In this hostile context, the birth of Arcadia, in 1954, was the culmination of a European process of emergence of a “ Homophile international »Aiming to get homosexuals out of the« Pissotières civilization “To which they are then confined. But Arcadie is immediately confronted with a delicate situation vis-à-vis the judicial and political authorities. In 1956, the review was sentenced to a fine of 40,000 francs, copies were confiscated and put in the pestle. Arcadie constitutes for justice “ A danger to youth ». The journal Survit but the room for maneuver are therefore reduced, which explains, for Jackson, its ethical prudence and Baudry’s obsession to ensure the respectability of the club at the cost of a relatively elitist recruitment. This historical background makes it possible to understand the concerns and objectives of Arcadia in the 1950s and 60s. Using a detailed account of club and review activities, Jackson analyzes “ Arcadie’s vision “Which is based on a complex approach to homosexuality marked by dignity but in the service of a” permanent and diffuse revolution Mentalities: For Baudry, it is necessary to act with notables to change the company. The ethics defends by Arcadie is marked by an erasure of what can be sexual in being homosexual: there is also the meaning of the use of the term “ homophilic ». In reality, behind this watchword, the testimonies and the practices of the Arcadians show that the club serves concretely to break up a social isolation, to fill affects, to meet friends, even lovers. If most of the thinking heads of the journal bet on its scientific and literary virtues (knowing and making a homosexual culture), the concrete and practical functions of the club seem essential in its history. In fact, the Arcadian networks allow, in Paris and also in the provinces, in the late 1960s, to find places and social circles in which one can live its homosexuality, at least temporarily, sheltered from the gaze of others but also police threats and risks of aggression. Jackson recalls that the room in rue Béranger remains one of the only places in Paris where to dance between men is possible and tolerated, Baudry having established ambiguous but very useful relations with the local police authorities. Likewise, conferences organized at the club are often an opportunity to provide information and practical services in pragmatic language where sexuality has its place. In the early 1960s, behind a specific watchword and an authoritarian leader, Jackson describes practices and a “ Arcadian lived “Unknown so far: the exploration of this reduced life to” catacombs »Reveals a homophilic world uncovered in an unprecedented manner.

The Arcadian project

Arcadie’s action does not lead to legislative transformations or spectacular changes in social order: we have often seen the sign of the inaction of Arcadia and its lack of political ambitions. In fact, Jackson shows that the Arcadian project is more subtle than it seems. The condemnation of homosexual eccentricities and their display, hostility towards “ crazy “Or the agitated, the criticism of the first gay bars and the” homosexual ghetto For example, at the heart of an assimilation project, the principle of which is relatively clear: homosexuals are entitled to the same living conditions as other citizens, no more, no less. Consequently, all forms of manifestations of a homosexual specificity or all the too oriented political positions are reproved in favor of moderate reformism which mobilizes more underground channels than spectacular events or “ strokes »Media. This position is essentially that of Baudry. If it is not necessarily shared in the same way by the other renowned Arcadians (Michel Duchein, Daniel Guérin or Françoise d’Eaubonne), it deeply marked the movement in the 1950s and 60s. It gradually cracks according to the personalities of the main actors of the movement, especially in the 1970s when this discretion combined with criticism of a debauched sexuality bring the Arcadians to “ monks Outdated by revolutionary events and watchwords.

This line of conduct has often been summarized by the formula “ To live happy, let’s live hidden ! This secrecy injunction is however reductive. First, the articles published in the journal show that the purpose pursued by the contributors and the members of the first circle is quite different: it is a question of being assumed as a homosexual and of promoting the idea of A society in which each homophile can say and live what it is. The Arcadian discourse is both more complex and more ambitious than we have said since “ While wishing to integrate them into the heterosexual world, Arcadie offers homosexuals a distinct sociability space (P. 158). The author shows that this moderation, linked to a particular historical context, does not prevent Arcadia from approaching themes and fundamentally modern questions. If the first issues of the review abound with classic references somewhat nostalgic for a homophilic imagination as chaste as outdated (ancient Greece, college friendships, love of holiday colonies), we remain struck by the avant-garde character of many themes addressed In the journal and during conferences organized at the club. From the end of the 1950s, Arcadians already wondered about the legislation and forms of homosexual conjugality (“ Should the homophilic couple sing the normal couple ? », P. 151), on the rejection of homosexualities at work, but also on the prevention of sexual risks in terms of health. Jackson finally shows that Baudry and his collaborators often show pragmatism and audacity. For example, when Baudry offers a debate “ Sado-masochism and homosexuality “,” René Larose comes to make her leather dressed in March 1972 (P. 186). Finally, behind an apparent bourgeois elitism steeped in Catholicism, the recruitment of the Arcadia movement appears more heterogeneous. If the leaders and the authors of the articles belong largely to easy categories, few are fervent Catholics and above all, the frequentation of the club and the audience of the journal exceed the only group of elites, whether bourgeois or intellectual. In the 1960s, we found young people, workers and modest immigrants in dancing evenings organized on rue Béranger, then rue du Château d’Eau. The window of the first Circle of Arcadian leaders certainly highlights the respectability, culture and notability of individuals, but Arcadie is crossed by other types of populations, younger, more mixed socially, more eager for meetings and pleasures , and more homosexual than homophiles.

The last part of the book is devoted to the 1970s, singing of the swan for Arcadie. The years following May 68 radically transform the conditions of existence of the review and the club by multiplying competitors whether it is the explosion of sexual publications and gay places or the appearance of more radical homosexual movements , like the Fhar or the GLH. If radical political competition is hostile to Arcadian discourse, it quickly encounters its own difficulties. At the end of the 1970s, Arcadie was at the top of her audience and, for Jackson, the movement then seems to be able to concretize politically and with a face discovered its moderate reformism, benefiting from unprecedented institutional recognition and an electoral push from the left in France. It seems difficult to explain why, in this favorable climate, Arcadia “ magnifying glass And gets bogged down in absolute neutrality until its dissolution in 1982. The author seems to evoke the “ End of an era And the passage to other referents with which Baudry and, more generally, Arcadie fail to compose. However, the book delivers a conclusion in the form of a suggestion to the reader: if Arcadie is often far from the signs of a homosexual modernity, this distance is not necessarily the sign of a delay, but rather that of a criticism in anticipation. This is the manifest meaning of the more recent testimonies of ancient Arcadians gathered at the end of the work and it is also the more original meaning given then to the notion of rehabilitation. Not only was Arcadie was able to build the springs of a legislative revolution such as the PACS, but even more, Jackson also suggests the visionary character of the Arcadian critical discourse with regard to certain perverse effects of the “ gay release »From the 1980s and 90s, especially in its ultimately conformist aspects. Beyond this original hypothesis, remains an exciting book and a remarkable historian’s work. The great merit of the book is to explore an unknown period in the history of homosexuality by maintaining the balance between the rigor of the administration of proof and limpidity of writing, admirably rendered by the translation of Arlette Sancery . A traditional question in this kind of research remains unanswered: that of lesbians, the omnipresence of men leaving the situation of women in the shadows. This was obviously the case within Arcadie, which undoubtedly explains the weak presence of lesbians in the work. Julian Jackson’s book remains a fine example of what the historian can bring both to the knowledge of homosexualities and to many current public and political debates on the place of homosexualities in French society.