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Zazie’s enduring legacy: a philosophical reflection

ABSTRACT This article explores how Sartean existentialism can be used to explain the sexual orientation of the main character Gabriel in Raymond Queneau’s Zazie dans le métro. The article draws firstly on the novel’s rich and broader philosophical roots in Kantianism and Thomism. Describing Gabriel as a Kantian Thomist at the start of the novel, Queneau sets in train a philosophical dialogue that shapes the novel’s response to reality and Gabriel’s place as a homosexual in it. When ‘Kantian Thomism’ fails (when a marriage between reason and empiricism is deemed unworkable), this does not spell the end for philosophy in Zazie. Despite the chaos and confusion of Queneau’s fictional world, the novel shows that a search for meaning remains first and foremost a philosophical pursuit—one in which a philosophical method represented by existentialism offers hope. The article extends Roland Barthes’s discussion of Zazie as the embodiment of ‘langage-objet’ by invoking existentialism as a way of highlighting Gabriel’s attempts to conquer himself, champion a morality of action and commitment over secular morality, and give meaning to his sexuality through concepts of failure, transcendent humanism, authenticity and artistic creation.