The Pink and the Black: Homosexuals in France since 1968 by Frdric Martel

Review by: Carolyn Dean

The American Historical Review, Vol. 105, No. 4 (Oct., 2000), pp. 1405-1406
Published by: Oxford University Press on behalf of the American Historical Association
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Europe: Early Modern and Modern

1405

which the emblem had become women's massive em- profession, and complicated mechanisms of denial
ployment and the reconfiguration (however mislead- which the organization Aides began to combat in 1984.
ing) of sexual relations. There are many traces of Formed by Michel Foucault's companion Daniel Deanti-Bolshevik propaganda in the evidence Pollard fert after the philosopher's death of AIDS-related
cites, but she does not make much of it, focusing complications, Aides sought to educate the gay cominstead and more fully on the internal French context. munity by melding a universalist discourse of disease
Within this internal context, her evidence takes her prevention (focusing on the disease rather than those
through a range of subjects, from marriage and divorce who were its victims) and a communitarian model of
to homosexuality, Mother's Day, film and iconography, solidarity that mobilized those infected by the disease.
physical education, anti-Semitism, welfare, prostitu- By 1989, ACT-UP, essentially imported from the
tion, and food shortages. What readers will miss here United States, represented a new face of gay activism.
is a chronology and any discussion of development or Where Aides did not emphasize homosexuality and
change over time. Sequence seems important to this worked with establishment professionals, ACT-UP fodiscussion, but the thematic organization of the book cused on gay identity and developed blistering cridoes not allow it to emerge as vividly as would be tiques of the government's glacial response to helping
desirable. Despite such reservations, however, the the afflicted. In contrast to its American cousin, howbook definitely advances our understanding of what ever, ACT-UP France did not engage in self-criticism,
French neo-conservative men hoped to achieve during nor did it criticize gay bar owners who refused to
the Vichy years.
participate in prevention efforts. Nevertheless, by the
KAREN OFFEN
end of the 1980s, AIDS had given gay men unpreceInstitutefor Research on Womenand Gender; dented if tragic visibility and laid the ground for a
Stanford University
resurgence of "identity politics" in France that is now
being consolidated (but whose future is not certain).
FREDERICMARTEL.The Pink and the Black. HomosexThe history of the gay movement in France thus
uals in France since 1968. Translated by FREDERICK began with declarations of identity and was punctuated
MARTEL.Stanford: Stanford University Press. 1999. by AIDS, which exposed the shortcomings of a movePp. xx, 442. Cloth $60.00, paper $19.95.
ment based on identity. In Martel's view, it is identity
politics-the demand to be "different"-which acFr6d6ricMartel's valuable book is not the first to offer
counts for the gay community's astonishing denial in
an account of the gay rights movement in France, but
the face of an epidemic. Gays responded to the
it is the first to offer a systematic overview of the
epidemic from a perspective of "difference" that the
struggle for gay equality that extends through the fight
disease threatened and stigmatized instead of a peragainst AIDS to the present. Martel provides a deof "indifference" from which they would be
tailed chronology and description of this struggle, from spective
like
citizens
everyone else. Martel is sensitive to gay
the discretion of those who found refuge in Arcadie
after 1954, to Guy Hocquenghem's open proclamation men's fears but still insists persuasively that fear alone
of his homosexuality in 1972, to the debates of the cannot explain the initially weak response by the
Front Homosexuel d'Action R6volutionnaire in the community.
This polemic against American-style identity politics
1970s. The narrative traces a mosaic of "movements"
informs
this whole book and marks its significance and
of
that
out
of
the
tumult
1968,
or groups
emerged
including the women's liberation movement, in which its limitations, as does the absence of any analysis of
many lesbians defined themselves as such for the first gender. Martel is aware of some of the problems of
time. The first stage of gay liberation in France was French universalism-a model that integrates citizens
thus aligned with the radical left and focused on as individuals rather than groups and is thus often
aggressively declaring a gay identity, on political mo- excessively individualistic.But he underestimates some
bilization, and on fostering a "communityof desire" in of its more pernicious effects: for the full integration
bars and backrooms. These movements coalesced of gays into the universal community of the state
around Frangois Mitterand's presidential candidacy in remains a distant goal as long as the state is invested in
1981, after whose election homosexuality was finally norrnative gender roles and the heterosexual family
(the new civil unions are specifically not "marriages").
decriminalized.
Just after this victory, which stopped police raids on And "difference" is not only internally generated by
gay bars, the first cases of AIDS began showing up in groups but externally imposed on them, as Martel
France. According to Martel's useful account, medical knows but seems at times to neglect: "Almost nothing
evidence that the disease targeted gay men was ig- remains of homophobia but a few backward-looking
nored and even repudiated by the gay community, individuals"(p. 258). Although Martel tries to address
lesbians, it is obvious that the categories he uses to
whose leaders refused to help disseminate information
and whose businesses tossed out those trying to dis- define gay men's identities do not work for women.
tribute condoms in bars and backrooms. Martel links The point is not to give lesbians more of a role than
this repudiation of the "facts"to a combination of fear they played-in the struggle against AIDS, for examof stigmatization, mistrust of the state and the medical ple-but to ask where in fact they were, and why they

AMERICAN

HISTORICAL

REVIEW

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OCTOBER

2000

1406

Reviews of Books

are so very marginal. We might begin by exploring the

problems intrinsic in French universalism.

of nationalism against recent immigrants,people from

a different culture and/or religion, or from any outside
CAROLYN DEAN
power set on imposing its foreign values on a nation is
Brown University
at the heart of the FN's program. It follows, therefore,
that the FN must defend Iraq's invasion of Kuwait,
PETER DAVIES. The National Front in France: Ideology, because it sees the latter as a recent and artificially
Discourse and Power. New York: Routledge. 1999. Pp. constructed nation, and that it must defend Qu6bec's
right to nationhood against the homogenizing tendenviii, 278.
cies of English Canada. The FN also defends France
In January 1999, the French National Front (FN) against the "mondialists" of Europe, the bureaucrats
suffered a major blow when Bruno M6gret, the party's who want to take away from France the last vestiges of
second in command, quit the FN to form his own rival its independence in the name of the "new world
party, the Mouvement R6publicain National (MNR). order." In its place, the FN advocates a "Europe of
The result has been electoral disaster: whereas the FN nations," a loose confederation that would leave unwas expected to win ten percent of the vote in the June touched and undamaged the unique attributes of
1999 European elections, after the split the FN won language, culture, and history that make up the indi5.69 percent and the MNR a derisory 3.28 percent. vidual countries.
Above all, the FN levels an unremitting attack on
Although Peter Davies's book appeared before the
split, its focus on the party's ideology and discourse non-European immigrantswho, in the FN's discourse,
reminds us that a party's success, especially an ideo- symbolize the most deadly threat to the French nation.
logical party like the FN, should not be measured Perhaps the most ingenious aspect of the FN's policy
solely in terms of the ballot box.
on immigration is that it is couched in terms of
Davies approaches the FN with a critical but non- "differentialism."Ostensibly, the FN rejects the notion
polemical eye. He warns: "We should not fall into the that races can be ranked on a scale from inferior to
trap of dismissing the FN as 'fascists' and worse as superior, and it argues that all nations deserve equal
'fascists with no ideas"' (p. 2). This is very wise: trying respect because each has a unique culture, language,
to fit the FN, or any of the more successful European and history worth preserving and defending-as long
extreme right parties such as Jorg Haider's Freedom as their citizens stay home. But when Muslims try to
Party, into an ideological straitjacketmay distort one's build mosques in France or to get French schools to
perspective and lead to a misunderstanding of the teach Arabic to their children, then, according to the
party's beliefs and the nature of its appeal.
FN, by "threatening French traditions" they are enDavies's argument is that nationalism is the "core" gaging in "anti-French racism." In other words, when
theme of the FN's ideology and that the FN's policy non-Europeans threaten to "swamp"France, then the
positions on issues such as immigration, the economy, nation must defend itself by taking measures against
Europe, and even birth control reflect its particular immigrants.
understanding of the nation and of nationalism. He
Davies's chapter on local politics is particularly
notes that the FN's policies on ostensibly "left-wing interesting because it shows how the FN's hard-line
issues" such as environmentalism, ecology, and a ma- policies have played out in local politics and how the
ternal income, when examined closely, turn out to party has "used the conquered towns as laboratories in
serve the FN's highly exclusionist brand of national- which to experiment" (p. 218). Davies's book is a
ism. In the FN, ecology is defined in terms of concern well-written, well-documented, intelligent analysis
for French national identity and French roots and is that, by analyzing the FN's ideas and discourse on
contrasted with "internationalism"(p. 111). The Lyon nationalism, focuses on those areas where the FN has
branch of the FN advocates a "municipalallocation for been the most influential, and the most dangerous.
parents," which looks progressive but is intended for
HARVEY G. SIMMONS
"French families" and would exclude immigrants. In
York University
the end, as Davies points out, the FN's proposals on
the family come from an anti-individualistic, organic, PAUL BRUSSE. Overleven door Ondememen: De
corporatist philosophy that sees the family as the agrarischegeschiedenisvan de Over-Betuwe1650-1850.
primary unit of society and women as the bearers of (A. A. G. Bijdragen, number 38.) Wageningen, The
children.
Netherlands: Landbouwuniversiteit. 1999. Pp. 566.
Davies's explanation of the FN's contrarian stance
on the Gulf War and Qu6bec is particularly interest- The Over-Betuwe is an area in the east of the northern
ing. Not only does it stem from the FN's fierce Netherlands between the rivers Rhine and Waal. The
anti-Americanismbut, more important, it is consistent region between the great rivers has been relatively
with a certain kind of extremist nationalism. For a long neglected by agrarian historians but, on the evidence
time, the French far right, like the German far right, of this study, the make-up of the soil and intractable
has defined nationalism, and nationality, in terms of drainage problems created particular difficulties for
tradition, culture, language, and a mystical bond with agriculture. As a consequence, the nature of farming
the soil, that is, "blood and soil." Defending this kind and the rhythm of economic development in this

AMERICAN

HISTORICAL

REVIEW

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OCTOBER

2000