The Shock of Men: Homosexual Hermeneutics in French Writing by Lawrence R. Schehr

Schehr, Lawrence R. The Shock of Men: Homosexual Hermeneutics in French Writing. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1995. Pp. 215.

If thought’s work is still perceived by some as rising up out of the literary text, it is because the writerly space may yet be the most exciting narrative environment in which to observe the communing of identity and differenc To prepare the expenditure of energy that reading unleashes, it is the writer task to arrange language—that is, to negotiate between figure and discourse— so that language will mediate the work of unleashing the power that th literary space harbors. What would occur, under such ideal circumstances between text and reader, if homosexuality were shown to be more (and more interesting) than a reference to the genital conformation of the persons a writer and an implied reader desire to have sex with? How, in other terms, might textuality begin to free itself from the fetters of critical servitude if the structures and dynamics of homosexual desire were discovered to be the hermeneutic model implicit in an exemplary sampling of modern texts? In The Shock of Men—one of two recent, elegant books in which he presents the results of his readings and reflections in queer discourse and theory—such are the questions that Lawrence Schehr handles with the maestra and dexterity of a critic committed to preserving the text’s poetics.