Guy Hocquenghem’s Ève: Global and Personal Chaos During the AIDS Crisis
Guy Hocquenghem. A name that certainly isn’t as familiar as Michel Foucault’s or Judith Butler’s, but that ought to be. Once a prominent activist and writer on the frontlines of queer liberation during and after the 1968 student uprisings in France, today he is a far more obscure figure. There are, of course, a few reasons for this. His disillusion and subsequent quarrels with French leftist figures and organizations meant that he remained a somewhat ostracized French intellectual. Nonetheless, his output is still remarkable. His most famous and most translated work by far is The Homosexual Desire (published 1972), an essay that analyzes gay oppression along materialist lines, psychoanalysis, and even discusses identity politics. Other notable works include La Beauté du métis (1979), an essay that explores French anti-Arab racism, L’Amour en relief (1982), a novel from the point of view of a Tunisian blind boy finds ways in which pleasure defies racism and state oppression, and Ève (1987), a novel published shortly before his death with autobiographical echoes talking, among other things, about his declining health after being diagnosed as HIV positive.
Ève has received far less attention in the Anglophone world than possibly all his other works. The 1987 novel is yet to be translated into English, in spite of the popularity of other French AIDS novels of the era, such as the works of novelist and photographer Hervé Guibert. Perhaps this is because, after all, there is plenty of literature about the subject in English. Nonetheless, the novel captures a specific timeline and mentality rather well and therefore deserves a deeper look.
Ève is the story of Adam Kadmon, a bohemian writer of Argentine background in his early 40s living in Paris for whom life is rather depressing until meeting Ève, allegedly his sister’s daughter born from an affair with a med school student during the 1968 protests. Ève is an exceedingly atypical character: she was raised in a lesbian commune in the rural French region of Berry and had limited interactions with men until — allegedly — falling in love with an Afghan doctor who takes her to Kabul. (Hocquenghem later retracts this part of the plot, alleging Ève ended up in Afghanistan because she was involved in the drug industry). Ève also resembles Adam to the point that people assume he is her father or brother instead of his uncle. The Genesis reference adds a touch of mysticism to the novel’s atmosphere.
One would not expect Adam, who until then thought he was gay, to fall in love with his niece. But that’s precisely what happens, and as Adam’s health deteriorates upon being diagnosed as HIV positive, the two escape to the Caribbean to blissfully live Adam’s last days together. Nonetheless, Ève’s involvement with drug traffickers complicates their Caribbean vacation, and they leave to South America, where they meet a young man named Seth who accompanies them to Senegal — and as if that was a lengthy trip already, they repair an old boat and sail back to France when they see Adam urgently requires medical attention and realize Ève is pregnant.
At this point, the novel becomes more similar to other AIDS writings of the era by describing the pain of the disease as lived by Adam in a number of Parisian hospitals. Furthermore, an important discovery is made — Ève is not Adam’s niece, but rather his twin sister who, like him, had been artificially engineered by fertility doctors. Hocquenghem devotes quite a few pages to this genetic anomaly, and surprisingly even addresses how logical it is to freeze an embryo in a few pages after the epilogue. This strikes me as rather odd since the narrative claimed three people managed to sail from Africa to France without supplies on an old boat, so Hocquenghem certainly could not have cared about realism that much — except, it seems, for genetics and innovative fertility procedures.
Plenty can be said about Hocquenghem’s novel. First, the amount of time he dedicates to each section speaks volumes about the writing process of a person battling a chronic illness. The beginning is slower, more carefully crafted, while the middle and the ending feel much more crammed together. The trip scenes feel like a flash. There is, furthermore, an effort to incorporate a character named Bob who is the owner of the hotel Adam and Ève stay in during their Caribbean adventure, but whose contribution adds details that just render the plot murkier and harder to follow. Knowing Hocquenghem was writing this as he battled AIDS sheds a light on the pace of the narration.
Secondly, the novel evokes its own sociopolitical context as seen from the perspective of a highly educated Parisian man like Hocquenghem. The radical feminists who manage a commune in Berry and raise their daughters to be fierce feminists evokes the days of second-wave feminism as lived in Western Europe. The global background and networks of the characters speak of the already unstoppable globalization of the late 20th century. Adam and his sister, Anne, were raised in the Buenos Aires area but were sent to study to France and chose to remain there. In Argentina, they were allegedly already of diverse origins — indigenous, Jewish, Egyptian, Japanese, and others. In reality, Adam had been the result of a German fertility experiment, so his appearance was customized by his mother. Hocquenghem is quite interested in showing just how unstable the idea of the nation in a globalized world. His sudden trip to the US Virgin Islands, Argentina, Uruguay, and Senegal show how increasingly simple global travel became for well-off people like himself. It also shows the need for foreign locales to escape the pressure of the medical industrial complex as one faces a chronic illness. Ève’s ability to mold the trip to fit her secret drug trafficking activities also shows how even clandestine activities operate on a vast, complex global scale.
Most importantly, however, is the discussion of the trauma associated with AIDS. Hocquenghem writes of hospitals as cruel places which use cruel methods to contain disease and preserve life at all costs, even when patients clearly are suffering too much. Even though doctors and nurses are described rather sympathetically, this is certainly because Hocquenghem understands that individuals cannot be judged for the flaws of imperfect systems. To go through a pandemic that disproportionately affects queer and poor people while being fully aware of the mechanisms that allow this is just as painful as the medical procedures themselves.
So, why read Ève particularly when plenty of other literary works about the AIDS crisis do just as great of a job at illustrating this moment in time? I’d argue that, thanks to Hocquenghem’s past as an activist, it is certainly more grounded on material concerns than other works. I’d also argue that its chaos is a major selling point. It is not only an insight into the author’s own mind as he battled the disease, but also reflects the increasing complexity of the contemporary world.
