ABSTRACT
Insofar as literary works must depart from established models to be original and not merely copies, all such texts must deviate from existing works to a greater or a lesser extent. But it is surely going too far to say that the very act of literary creation is deviant and queer. Before dealing with 'genius', it is important to ask what 'queer' might mean. The eternal repetition of reproduction and the production of meaning that constitutes this straight imaginary are parodied in the spectre of the queer, infinite repetition of jouissance and the production of meaninglessness occasioned by sodomy. Language repeatedly attempts and fails to suture the gap in meaning occasioned by sodomy that cannot be articulated except through imperfect metaphors, and which, through metaphor, spreads, and threatens to cause the whole system of meaning to start unravelling. The translation into French also sees a switch in tone.
