Homographèse : identité corporelle et différence sexuelle

Abstract

Coining the term “homographesis” to name the conflation of the homosexual body both with the difference of graphic inscription and with the illegibility that arises from its status as potentially “the same,” this essay explores the contradictions that follow when the body enters visibility as a text of sexual identity—contradictions that themselves become visible when the logic of textuality challenges identitarian claims. The essay situates the homosexual body at the center of a struggle over corporeal legibility in which both disciplinary and contestatory forces have a stake in being able to “read” that body as an index of a “sexual identity.” From that perspective, the essay examines the connection between the emergence of a socially articulable homosexual identity and its figural connection to a culturally suspect ideology of writing.

Keywords

• sexual identity
• homograph
• gender
• metaphor/metonymy