The Sourde-Muette and the Good Mother in Pauliska, ou la perversité moderne (1797-1798) / ‘Being an “ethical” queer subject: Édouard Louis in Greece’
Caitlin Sturrock (Bristol): The Sourde-Muette and the Good Mother in Pauliska, ou la perversité moderne (1797-1798)

Deafness in eighteenth-century France was a growing fascination; the 1770s marked a period of shifting societal perceptions of the sourd-muet. The Abbé de l’Épée published his treatises on the education of the sourds-muets, institutionalising his methods from the school he opened the decade before, and Pierre Desloges published his influential Observations d’un Sourd et Muet, sur un cours élémentaire d’éducation des sourds et muets in 1779, which marked one of the first interventions of a sourd-muet into these debates. Under the Revolution, the sourd-muet became a figure to imitate during the growing paranoia that spoken language caused the violent excesses of the Terror. This is what underpins the case study of this paper.

Published over two volumes in An VI (1797-1798), Jacques-Antoine de Révéroni Saint-Cyr’s Pauliska, ou la perversité moderne follows the virtuous comtesse as she moves across borders – from Poland to Italy – in search of safety for herself, her lover – Ernest – and her son – Edvinski. Facing the Baron d’Olnitz, the counterfeiters under the Danube, and Salviati’s group of mesmerists, Pauliska oscillates between imprisonment and freedom to finally end reunited with Ernest and Edvinski. In examining deafness and irrational hearing, this paper will argue that the eponymous Pauliska is virtuous and rational precisely because she is a sourde-muette. When this disability is also central to ideals of femininity – modesty and virtue – this novel further evokes Revolutionary ideas on motherhood. Here, the ideal of women’s enlightenment and the remedy to the irrationality of the Revolution lie in the sourde-muette.

Elliot Koubis (St John’s): ‘Being an “ethical” queer subject: Édouard Louis in Greece’

This paper explores what is means to be an ‘ethical’ queer subject in a time where queer movements have largely receded from view or have won mainstream acceptance in certain contexts. It will also explore whether the imagined LGBTQ+ ‘community’ in this climate imposes norms on queer bodies and expression. Louis’s Changer: Méthode (2021) will be read alongside a recent poetry collection in Greek by Spyros Chairetis, Ο Γοργόνος και άλλα πλάσματα (The Merman and Other Creatures, 2023) to examine whether there exists an anxiety for queer subjects across borders to be radical political actors.

The paper will draw upon approaches to homonormativity to show how norms shape attitudes toward the queer body and political solidarity towards marginalized groups, as well as expressions of queer shame and regret. By reading Louis’s work through the lens of Chairetis’s poems, the paper will highlight how both authors use apologetic forms of writing to establish a more ethical relationship with queer subjects and collectives. This comparison will highlight how recent queer writing has impacted our understanding of queer sexuality as a political, anti-normative demand and underline the existence of an anti-normative ‘politics of respectability’ in queer cultures. What is more, this paper will stress the need to place literature from the ‘European South’ on the same level as that from the ‘European North’ and it will demonstrate how such comparisons can yield fruitful results.
Date: 19 November 2024, 17:00
Venue: All Souls College, High Street OX1 4AL
Venue Details: Hovenden Room
Speakers: Caitlin Sturrock (University of Bristol), Elliot Koubis (St John's)
Organiser: Catriona Seth (All Souls College, Oxford)
Organiser contact email address: events@all-souls.ox.ac.uk
Part of: French Graduate Seminars
Booking required?: Not required
Audience: Members of the University only
Editor: Helena Wynn