TY - JOUR AU - Stănică, Mihaela Gabriela PY - 2012/03/26 Y2 - 2024/03/29 TI - Comment représenter la transgression de genre - L'Hermaphrodite dans l'oeuvre de J. K. Huysmans - JF - Nordlit JA - Nordlit VL - 0 IS - 28 SE - Articles DO - 10.7557/13.2055 UR - https://septentrio.uit.no/index.php/nordlit/article/view/2055 SP - 197-210 AB - <p>By the end of the 19th century one may observe the birth of a particular form of knowledge which would further be known as <em>scientia sexualis</em> as well as the rationalization of the hermaphroditic body. Ernest Martin&rsquo;s attempt to realize a taxonomy of the different forms of monstrosity (<em>Histoire des monstres depuis l&rsquo;Antiquit&eacute; jusqu&rsquo;&agrave; nos jours</em> -1880) from a juridical and clinical perspective is representative for what Jean-Jacques Courtine will call &ldquo;le d&eacute;senchantement de l&rsquo;&eacute;trange&rdquo;.</p><p>Since the physicians from that period refuse to acknowledge the existence of real hermaphrodites among humans, the pseudo-hermaphrodite will lose his ontological independence and will turn into a simple pathological deviation which will be placed among the other pathological figures which constitute the inventory of degenerations<br />haunting the imaginary of the <em>fin de si&egrave;cle</em>. Since the hermaphroditic body, this <em>gender trouble</em> that threatens the dual taxonomy of the society, is denied the ontological independence, this body enters the sphere of invisibility. Given that the transgressive body becomes a simple deviation, the hermaphrodite can only be a secondary representation.</p><p>How are these mechanisms of the secondary representation applied to the literary productions of that period? The answer to this question could be found in Huysmans&rsquo; texts where the ambiguity of the hermaphroditic figure is captured into somatic and psychical representations that seem to confirm the epistemic paradigms of that fin de si&egrave;cle.</p> ER -