target="_blank" rel="nofollow" href="#ulink_310f01ad-b407-5418-8dd0-942abfa3a677">3Significantly, the reciprocity of the power relation at the heart of the homage ceremony is indirectly underscored by Foucault in an interview with the Parisian Lacanians entitled, “Confessions of the Flesh,” from 1977 (Gordon 1980, 201). In his remarks Foucault directly anticipates the connection I later make between his model of productive power and the queer character of his homage.
4Because this proposition may strike one as “far-fetched,” it is perhaps worth quoting from Marc Bloch’s description of the homage ritual at some length.
Imagine two men face to face; one wishing to serve, the other willing or anxious to be served. The former puts his hands together and places them, thus joined, between the hands of the other man–a plain symbol of submission, the significance of which was sometimes further emphasized by a kneeling posture. At the same time, the person proffering his hands utters a few words–a very short declaration–by which he acknowledges himself to be the “man” of the person facing him. Then chief and subordinate kiss each other on the mouth, symbolizing accord and friendship. (Bloch 1961, 145–46)
The difference between being a man and being one’s man is not sufficient, to my mind, to warrant a dismissal of the proposition that homage bears on the social construction of masculinity. But in addition, what Bloch’s description makes clear—and this regardless of whether one has read Foucault on male friendship—is that this particular ritual construction of masculinity is laced with what the contemporary reader would regard as homoerotic themes. My point here is not to contradict the scholarship that has rightly problematized the transferability of categories such as “homosexuality.” Instead, I want merely to stress that Foucault’s performance takes place in a world where he can rely on a recognition that may or may not have been available to the members of what Bloch terms “feudal society.”
5In Beckett and Babel, Brian Fitch has made a compelling case for the uniquely bilingual character of Beckett’s modernism. In particular, he notes not merely the complexity of Beckett’s texts (nearly all of which exist in two distinct versions—French and English—versions that only in rare cases can be characterized as “translations”) but also the resulting complexity of the national character of his texts. Predictably, French scholars making a case for Beckett’s relation to modernism in France tend only to read the French texts, and vice versa for English or American scholars. These problems are duly reflected in the then definitive French bibliography of Beckett’s work that appeared in 1972 (see J. J. Bryer et al. Samuel Beckett 1 (2) Calepins de Bibliographie 2, Paris: Lettres Modernes, 1972), indicating that Beckett’s status in France was undergoing revision during the very period when Foucault was actively invoking him as, if not a borderline case, then certainly as, a case wherein the problem of the border figured prominently. Would it be going too far to emphasize that this border was explicitly articulated as a relation between tongues?
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