The Declared Enemy

Texts and Interviews

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by Jean Genet,

Edited by Albert Dichy,

Translated by Jeff Fort

Stanford University Press

Due/Published March 2004, 392 pages, paper

ISBN 0804729468

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.

Series: Meridian: Crossing Aesthetics

Review

The Declared Enemy includes Genet’s articles, interviews, statements, prefaces, manifestos, and speeches dating from 1964 to 1985. The collection includes his writings and speeches on behalf of the Black Panther movement including his famous speech delivered at Yale. Genet was also drawn to the struggle for Palestinian independence and in some of the collection’s best pieces, he describes the conditions of Palestinian refugee camps and the movement for liberation. The Declared Enemy also includes Genet’s writings on the exploitation of immigrant workers in France and his famous article describing the protests during the 1968 Democratic Convention in Chicago. Throughout the essay, Genet eroticizes policemen’s bodies while at the same time critiquing the police as tools of oppression. In addition to political writings, The Declared Enemy includes Genet’s reflections on literature, the nature of violence, and his own image as a scandalous writer. This collection, which Genet was assembling before his death, is a fascinating reflection on Genet’s politics and his observations of society. While his writings might betray the excesses of ’60s and ’70s political rhetoric, his sense of commitment and insights into the plight of the oppressed remain powerful and fascinating.