Projects & Outputs

Abstract

This essay examines the work of Renaud Camus, once celebrated as a pioneer of gay liberation for a disinhibited series of accounts of casual gay sex in the late 1970s, prefaced by Roland Barthes, but now known more for his staggeringly effective reinvention of the ‘great replacement theory’, an anti-immigration doctrine, which often also qualifies as a conspiracy theory, and which has been taken up widely by the radical right in Europe and North America and is increasingly gaining ground within the electoral mainstream. Why gay men are particularly sensitized to fears of being replaced is one of the preoccupations of the essay, as is the failure of academic queer studies and the lgbtq+ movement, in their bureaucratised and institutional articulations, to address those concerns. The essay argues vigorously for robust critical reading by reviewing counterproductive attempts to ‘cancel’ Camus over the three decades.