Civil Solidarity or Fragmented Identities? The Politics of Sexuality and Citizenship in France
| DOI | 10.1177/a018601 |
| Author | Carl F Stychin |
| Published date | 01 September 2001 |
| Date | 01 September 2001 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
CIVIL SOLIDARITY OR
FRAGMENTED IDENTITIES? THE
POLITICS OF SEXUALITY AND
CITIZENSHIP IN FRANCE
CARL F. S TYCHIN
University of Reading, UK
ABSTRACT
This article examines the development of the Pacte Civil de Solidarité (PACS) in
France, a legal construct which provides recognition in law to a range of relationship
forms, including same-sex couples. The PACS is used as a means of interrogating the
continuing importance of republicanism in contemporary French political discourse.
The PACS provides a microcosm of wider issues concerning citizenship, marriage,
communitarianism, multiculturalism and the meaning of French national identity in
the context of globalization and transnationalism. Finally, the article considers the role
of republicanism in shaping the constitution of a gay identity in contemporary France,
and the impact of the PACS on that identity.
INTRODUCTION
IN RECENT years, it has become common for lesbian and gay legal rights
advocates to survey developments on a global basis: from decriminaliza-
tion, to antidiscrimination legislation, to the legal recognition of relation-
ships, to the opening of the institution of marriage. These cross-cultural
comparisons are said to tell a straightforward tale of legal progress, in which
repressive regimes are explained away as antimodern resistance to the global-
ization of human rights around sexual identities. Variations thereby become
reduced to matters of local interest. They are secondary to the similarity in
the stories of progressive legal and social change unfolding worldwide, ben-
efiting lesbians and gay men (see for example Herdt, 1997; and for critique
see Bell and Binnie, 2000) .
SOCIAL &LEGAL STUDIES 0964 6639 (200109) 10:3 Copyright © 2001
SAGE Publications, London, Thousand Oaks, CA and New Delhi,
Vol. 10(3), 347–375; 018601
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This article is an attempt to resist this approach to the study of lesbian and
gay rights discourse, and it does so through an analysis of a recent legal
development in France, which is explicitly framed, not as a ‘gay rights’
victory, but as a means to legally recognize (and benefit) relationships that
exist outside of the institution of marriage: the Pacte Civil de Solidarité (or
PACS, as it is commonly known). Through a genealogical study of the PACS,
focusing on parliamentary debates, media commentary and analyses by intel-
lectuals and activists, I seek to demonstrate that a more complex relationship
exists between discourses of the ‘global’ and the ‘local’ when faced with legal
struggles around sexuality. This dynamic is best understood by focusing on
the way in which arguments raised in the debate – both by proponents and
opponents – were consistently grounded within the dominant discourse of
French national identity: republicanism. In so doing, the manipulability of
the tropes of republicanism are readily exposed, as well as their centrality in
framing political issues. Moreover, the focus on the compatibility (or not) of
the PACS with republicanism was reinforced by the ways in which all actors
in the debate articulated the relationship of the PACS to wider issues of
globalization and transnationalism. In this way, the national specificity of the
PACS – which emerged in a nation state which is a central player in the Euro-
pean integration project – should raise skepticism about simple tales of the
globalization of legal struggles around sexuality.
The article begins with a short history and legal analysis of the PACS, fol-
lowed by a consideration of the centrality of republican discourse, both to
French political identity and in the PACS debate. This analysis will be con-
nected to the way in which marriage is understood within republicanism, as
well as to how French national identity is constituted through an opposi-
tional relationship to an ‘Anglo-Saxon’ politics, and also to wider European
Union legal developments. I then show how legal discourse proves central to
the construction of national identity and how this manifests itself in the
PACS debate. I conclude with an exploration of what the PACS suggests
about the relationship between universalizing and particularist currents in the
construction of sexual identities within France today.
BACKGROUND TO THE LEGISLATION
The enactment of the PACS is the culmination of many years of mobilization
and struggle, which emanated from certain segments of the gay community
in France. It was triggered in large measure by the severity of the AIDS crisis,
and the material consequences that flowed for partners left without any legal
protection. There were a number of attempts by various organizations to
promote legislation during the 1980s, most of them having links to the Social-
ist Party. The PACS model emanated from the leadership of what had been
a gay activist group, the Comité d’Urgence Anti-Répression Homosexuelle
(CUARH), an organization which dissolved in the mid-1980s (Bach-Ignasse
and Roussel, 2000: 126; Martel, 1999: 337). By the early 1990s, the need for
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