Ted Emery - Queer Casanova: Subversive Sexuality in Histoire de ma vie

Casanova’s Histoire de ma vie has often been seen as sexually transgressive, rarely as socially subversive. His popular image is that of a super-potent ladies’ man, a phallic hero whose desire is excessive but “normal,” implicitly supporting a system of compulsory heterosexuality in which same-sex desire is othered and abjected. However, an analysis of Casanova’s narration of male-male relations--of both homosocial and homosexual acts--suggests that the autobiographer actually aims not to support but to queer heteronormative binarisms, and to subvert the social structures that derive from them.