Meridian: Crossing Aesthetics Series

Fragments of the Artwork brings together Jean Genet's critical writings and open letters on art and aesthetic issues. This collection testifies to Genet's enormous influence on the modern theater, on the development of the novel, and on the representation of crime, sex, gender, and race. In lyrical essays and one candid interview, these works present an untutored, original, defiant Genet, displaying his provocative insights and acuities on a range of topics. Genet wrestles with the athletic genius of Rembrandt, adores the intricate criminal resurrections of Dostoevsky, challenges our easy readings of Brecht, and, in what is one of the most exalting art historical essays ever written, provides us with his detailed personal account of the work and presence of Alberto Giacometti. Altogether these essays comprise a series of engrossing meditations on the central motives of theatricality and art.

The Declared Enemy

by Jean Genet

Published 22 December 2003

This posthumous work brings together articles, interviews, statements, prefaces, manifestos, and speeches dating from 1964 to 1985 (just before Genet's death in 1986). These texts bear witness to the many political causes and groups with which Genet felt an affinity, including May ’68 and the treatment of immigrants in France, but especially the Black Panthers and the Palestinians. We follow him from the Chicago Democratic Convention (where he met William Burroughs and Alan Ginsberg) to Yale University, where he gave the famous May Day Speech in support of the Black Panthers, to Jordan and the Palestinian camps. Along the way, Genet finds allies (George Jackson, Angela Davis, Leyla Shahid, Tahar Ben Jelloun). And, of course, enemies.

Between passionate enmity and passionate affinity, Genet speaks for a politics of protest, with an uncompromising outrage that, today, might seem on the verge of being forgotten.

The texts are accompanied by detailed editorial notes.