Book Reading & Discussion by Antoine Idier, PhD – Director of Studies and Research at the Paris-Cergy National Graduate School of Arts (ENSAPC)

Monday April 16, 6:30 pm-8:30 pm, The Graduate Center Room 9206-9207.

Antoine Idier’s  2017 book The Lives of Guy Hocquenhem: Politics, Sexuality, Culture resurrects an important and complex twentieth-century thinker. Idier argues that Hocquenghem had several entwined identities—militant, journalist, philosopher, and novelist.  A dynamic presence on the French political and intellectual scene, he was an early, maverick theorist of what would later be known as Queer Theory, the author of the influential 1972 theoretical work Homosexual Desire, a member of the Homosexual Front of Revolutionary Action (FHAR), and a wide-ranging polemical writer. In addition to offering the first full-scale biography of Hocqhenghem, Idier’s book rethinks the history and legacy of May ’68 in France and the implications of Hocquenhem’s radical ideas for contemporary discussions of politics, sexuality, race, and the family. Drawing on original source materials and numerous interviews, The Lives of Guy Hocquenhem explores a fascinating figure and his diverse body of works through a lively, interdisciplinary approach that draws on sociological, philosophical, and literary perspectives.

Antoine Idier wrote his doctoral thesis on Guy Hocquenghem under the direction of Didier Eribon at the University of Picardie-Jules Verne in 2015. The thesis formed the basis of his biographical study, The Lives of Guy Hocquenghem: Politics, Sexuality, Culture. (Fayard). He is the Director of Studies and Research at the Ecole Nationale Supérieure d’Arts in Paris-Cergy. He has published Les Alinéas in the Closet: The Repeal of the Crime of Homosexuality, 1977-1982 (Cartouche, 2013).  He wrote the preface to Guy Hocquenghem’s book, A Dream Journal (Vertical, 2017).