From the Other Side of the Gun to the Other Side of the Camera : Adapting Despentes' Baise-moi for Cinema

"C'est moins spectacle qu'au cinéma" (72) says Manu in Baise-moi (1993), after her first murder. While this comparison between reality and cinema underlines the lack of effect reality has, compared to the power of images, such a desire for cinematographic effects also represents the protagonists' will to not merely be the agents of their lives but the directors of their cinematography. However, despite the attempt to achieve afilmic aesthetic, the unusual violent and sexual acts performed lack the desired spectacularity. In this article, I argue that the characters' will to direct images and the frustration deriving from the lack of cinematography runs parallel with Virginie Despentes'decision to adapt her novel into a film. Despentes' style, albeit aggressive, does not match the violence of the actions committed by her characters. In mobilizing Robert Stam's concept of adaptation, I show how, in focusing on the performance of the violent and pornographic reality imagined by the protagonists, the adaptation represents the cinematic actualization of the protagonists' actions in the novel. Theirposition on the right side of the gun to shoot at all opponents corresponds to Despentes and Trinh Thi's decision to place themselves on the right side of the camera to challenge a bourgeois voyeuristic audience

Queer Displacements: Minorities, Mobilities, and Mobilizations in French and Francophone Literature

Focusing on the work of Virginie Despentes, Jean Genet, Guy Hocquenghem, and Abdellah Taïa, this dissertation challenges the antisocial turn taken in queer theory, by means of a parallel study of the authors’ geographical and intellectual itineraries. While critics like Leo Bersani and Lee Edelman have suggested that the revolutionary potential in queer identity lies in its opposition to romanticized forms of community, I argue, along with José Esteban Muñoz, that their praising of singularity and negativity is similarly extreme. Alternatively, my study shows how the geographical displacements both experienced and imagined by my primary authors can illuminate the passage from antisociality to political engagements. I consider sexual non-normativity as a catalyzer for mobility, which provides subjects with new tools to collaborate with other minority groups across cultures, races, and borders: Genet with the Black Panthers and the Palestine Liberation Organization, Hocquenghem with feminists and immigrant workers, Despentes’ with anti-austerity movements, and Taïa with the Arab Spring. Throughout my analysis, I reveal how sexual non-normativity does not constitute the central issue of these authors’ political struggle, but rather the position through which they participate in the elaboration of political alliances redefining social belonging. At once sexually marginalized and cultural producers, the authors exemplify what Pierre Bourdieu calls “the dominated agent among the dominant,” an ambivalent position that I question throughout this dissertation. However, the aim of my work is not whether such ambivalences can be overcome for subjects to engage fully with collective movements, but rather, if by providing a model for others to connect from and beyond their singularities they can construct a transnational collective sense of belonging

Queering Gay Tourism as Activism: Guy Hocquenghem’s Political Journey in the United States

Consistent with Guy Hocquenghem’s reluctance in Le désir homosexuel (1972) to identify fully as a homosexual while being one, his travel guide entitled Le gay voyage (1980) uses the trend of gay tourism while denouncing its contributions to capitalism and normativity. Focusing on the entries dedicated to New York, San Francisco, and Los Angeles, this article shows how the guide politicizes the ways in which homosexuals in the United States have been inventing new ways of life, which, in the words of Jack Halberstam, elaborate queer understandings of time and space that can inspire the aftermath of the sexual revolution while resisting homonormativity

From the Other Side of the Gun to the Other Side of the Camera : Adapting Despentes' Baise-moi for Cinema

"C'est moins spectacle qu'au cinéma" (72) says Manu in Baise-moi (1993), after her first murder. While this comparison between reality and cinema underlines the lack of effect reality has, compared to the power of images, such a desire for cinematographic effects also represents the protagonists' will to not merely be the agents of their lives but the directors of their cinematography. However, despite the attempt to achieve afilmic aesthetic, the unusual violent and sexual acts performed lack the desired spectacularity. In this article, I argue that the characters' will to direct images and the frustration deriving from the lack of cinematography runs parallel with Virginie Despentes'decision to adapt her novel into a film. Despentes' style, albeit aggressive, does not match the violence of the actions committed by her characters. In mobilizing Robert Stam's concept of adaptation, I show how, in focusing on the performance of the violent and pornographic reality imagined by the protagonists, the adaptation represents the cinematic actualization of the protagonists' actions in the novel. Theirposition on the right side of the gun to shoot at all opponents corresponds to Despentes and Trinh Thi's decision to place themselves on the right side of the camera to challenge a bourgeois voyeuristic audience

Simultaneous generation of anionic and neutral palladium(II) complexes from eta(3)-allylpalladium chloride dimer and fluorinated beta-enaminones

Reactions between eta(3)-allylpalladium chloride dimer, 1,8-di-azabicyclo[5.4.0]undec-7-ene (DBU) and 1-amino-2-fluoro-1-perfluoroethyl-3 -phenylprop-1-en-3-one or 1,12-diamino-2,11-difluoro-1,12-bis(perfluorobutyl)dodeca-1,11-diene- 3,10-dione simultaneously provided two types of Pd-II complexes. One is an anionic eta(3)-allylpalladium complex with protonated DBU as counterion while the other is a neutral eta(3)-allyl(beta-ketoiminato)palladium complex. A mechanism involving the amidine function of DBU in the formation of the two complexes is proposed. ((C) Wiley-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, 69451 Weinheim, Germany, 2003

Ruthenium porphyrin-catalyzed aerobic oxidation of terminal aryl alkenes to aldehydes by a tandem epoxidation-isomerization pathway

(Figure Presented) Catalytic oxidation of 1-alkenes to aldehydes by an epoxidation-isomerization pathway with air or dioxygen as terminal oxidant has been realized for bulky ruthenium(VI) porphyrin catalysts. For the new, recyclable catalyst [RuVI(tmttp)O2], product yields of up to 99% and total turnover numbers of up to 1144 were obtained. © 2008 Wiley-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA.link_to_subscribed_fulltex