‘The moment is poorly chosen’: Proust, Same-Sex Sexuality and Nationalism

Abstract

This article attempts to think historically about the relationship between nationalism and same-sex sexuality in Proust's novel and in readers’ responses to the novel from the time of its publication to the present. The article uses a column written on the first part of Sodome et Gomorrhe by nationalist literary critic and author Binet-Valmer in 1921 in order to illuminate some of the sexual and political contexts of Proust's representation of same-sex sexuality. It then turns to two twenty-first-century uses of Proust by right-wing thinkers to theorize a particularly French, anti-communitarian, anti-politically correct form of homosexuality. Ultimately, these examples demonstrate that there is no one relationship between same-sex sexuality and nationalism or the national community; rather, same-sex sexuality often serves as a convenient tool for defining the national community and its outsiders, in a wide variety of ways that move beyond a simple equivalency between outlaw and gay.