The Declared Enemy: Texts and Interviews

by Jean Genet, Albert Dichy (Editor), Jeff Fort (Translator)

Overview

This posthumous work brings together articles, interviews, statements, prefaces, manifestos, and speeches dating from 1964 to 1985 (just before Genet's death in 1986). These texts bear witness to the many political causes and groups with which Genet felt an affinity, including May ’68 and the treatment of immigrants in France, but especially the Black Panthers and the Palestinians. We follow him from the Chicago Democratic Convention (where he met William Burroughs and Alan Ginsberg) to Yale University, where he gave the famous May Day Speech in support of the Black Panthers, to Jordan and the Palestinian camps. Along the way, Genet finds allies (George Jackson, Angela Davis, Leyla Shahid, Tahar Ben Jelloun). And, of course, enemies.

Between passionate enmity and passionate affinity, Genet speaks for a politics of protest, with an uncompromising outrage that, today, might seem on the verge of being forgotten.

The texts are accompanied by detailed editorial notes.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780804729468
Publisher:	Stanford University Press
Publication date:	01/07/2004
Series:	Meridian: Crossing Aesthetics Series
Edition description:	1
Pages:	408
Sales rank:	754,334
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.90(d)

About the Author

Jean Genet (1910-1986), poet, novelist, playwright, and political essayist, was one of the most significant French writers of the twentieth century. His work, much of it considered scandalous when it first appeared, is now placed among the classics of modern literature and has been translated and performed throughout the world.

Table of Contents

	Preface	xi
	"J.G. Seeks ..."	1
1	Interview with Madeleine Gobeil	2
2	Lenin's Mistresses	18
3	The Shepherds of Disorder	21
4	Yet Another Effort, Frenchman!	25
5	"It Seems Indecent for Me to Speak of Myself ..."	28
6	Letter to American Intellectuals	30
7	May Day Speech	34
8	Interview with Michele Manceaux	42
9	Introduction to Soledad Brother	49
10	Angela and Her Brothers	56
11	Angela Davis Is in Your Clutches	65
12	For George Jackson	66
13	The Palestinians	71
14	The Red and the Black	81
15	After the Assassination	85
16	America Is Afraid	89
17	Preface to L'Assassinat de George Jackson	91
18	Meeting the Guarani	98
19	On Two or Three Books No One Has Ever Talked About	100
20	When "the Worst Is Always Certain"	104
21	Dying Under Giscard d'Estaing	107
22	And Why Not a Fool in Suspenders?	112
23	The Women of Jebel Hussein	116
24	Interview with Hubert Fichte	118
25	Near Ajloun	152
26	The Tenacity of American Blacks	159
27	Chartres Cathedral	164
28	Violence and Brutality	171
29	Interview with Tahar Ben Jelloun	178
30	The Brothers Karamazov	182
31	Interview with Antoine Bourseiller	186
32	Interview with Bertrand Poirot-Delpech	194
33	Four Hours in Shatila	208
34	Registration No. 1155	229
35	Interview with Rudiger Wischenbart and Layla Shahid Barrada	232
36	Interview with Nigel Williams	257
Appendix 1	The Members of the Assembly	267
Appendix 2	A Salute to a Hundred Thousand Stars	276
	Chronology	283
	Notes	287