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The Voided Role: On Genet

Genet criticism seems increasingly concerned with identifying the transgressive potential of Jean Genet's life and works. We now hear regularly that Genet critiqued authenticity and coherent identities; that he emphasized the volatile proximity between dramatic characters and figures of speech, and did untold damage to Western conceptions of role and ontology.' Occasionally, we also hear Genet denounced as a traitor, fascist, and pervert who flirted so egregiously with hostile and oppressive forces that he palpably undermined our political freedom.2 All of these assessments would likely have pleased him, but that is not our immediate concern.3 Although some of these claims are warranted, Genet criticism has become so invested in the idea of transgression that critics often ignore the precise elements contributing to-and impeding-this phenomenon in his work.4 To put this contentiously, studies of Genet frequently reproduce a form of psychic idealism that magnifies the most "acceptable" dimension of his work (its irreverence, parody, and performativity) by downplaying Genet's accompanying-and relatedinterest in psychic negativity: abjection, disgust, negation, and death. Following my contention, I want briefly to rethink a statement in which Genet presented his representational aims; critics often invoke this statement to endorse claims about his theater's radicalism. In an