Queer adolescence in <i>la France périphérique</i> : place, gender, and sexuality in Marin Fouqué’s 77

This article dissects Marin Fouqué’s 2019 novel 77 ’s articulation of queer adolescence in a specific kind of contemporary French periphery – a periphery that, despite exhibiting elements of both, is neither entirely rural nor banlieusard , but rather that of the dozens of decaying, deindustrialized villages that are geographically close but culturally distant from large urban centers. In contemporary French culture and media, this kind of periphery is associated with traditionalism and resentment; its villages are the agonizing remnants of an industrial Français de souche -dominated France that lost relevancy in the late twentieth century. By examining how life in such a place impacts the young male protagonist’s understanding of his gender identity and his sexual orientation, Fouqué’s novel suggests that, contrary to popular belief, this backwards periphery has much to offer to queer self-understanding and life. The periphery’s developmental ambiguity – neither urban nor rural and resisting social and material progress – mirrors the protagonist’s undefined, changing interpretations of his gender identity and sexuality. Moreover, the novel diversifies portrayals of queerness by resisting a narrative of escape to a more tolerant urban area, opting instead for zooming in on the possibility and on the messiness of queer life within this kind of periphery. This article was published open access under a CC BY licence: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ .