Alors, Are We ‘Queer’ Yet?
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IN JUNE 1997, the Centre Pompidou hosted the first conference on queer theory in France. When the presentations were done and the discussion was opened to the floor, I was surprised by the hostile tone of many of the questions and reactions from the audience. The hostility manifested itself in different forms, from the ugliness of the word “queer” and its strange pronunciation in French, to the inappropriateness of these American ideas within the French social model.

This article examines the difficulties associated with a linguistic and cultural translation of the American term “queer” into the context of contemporary France.