Enabling Violations: Social Class and Sexual Identity in Didier Eribon’s “Returning to Reims”

Abstract

In this paper we explore what we can learn from Didier Eribon’s “Returning to Reims” regarding childhood vulnerability. We argue that the book offers a stimulating perspective on discrimination, humiliation, and injury. Although Eribon is twofold vulnerable due to his class and his sexual identity, his pain and shame does not make him defenceless. It makes him the subject he is: the wound caused by a violent heteronormative order. Therefore, becoming object of violations should not necessarily be conceptualised as the opposite to gaining agency but under certain circumstances can provoke resistance and rebellion. These interpretations are framed by theories of vulnerability mainly drawing on Judith Butler and Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak as well as some thoughts about the new genre of “autosociobiographies” to which “Returning to Reims” belongs.