Editing Jean Genet (section)

==Biography==

===Early life===
Genet's mother was a prostitute who raised him for the first seven months of his life before placing him for [[adoption]]. Thereafter Genet was raised in the provincial town of [[Alligny-en-Morvan]], in the [[Nièvre]] department of central France. His foster family was headed by a carpenter and, according to [[Edmund White]]'s biography, was loving and attentive. While he received excellent grades in school, his childhood involved a series of attempts at running away and incidents of petty theft.

===Detention and military service===
For this and other misdemeanors, including repeated acts of vagrancy, he was sent at the age of 15 to [[Mettray Penal Colony]] where he was detained between 2 September 1926 and 1 March 1929. In ''[[Miracle of the Rose]]'' (1946), he gives an account of this period of detention, which ended at the age of 18 when he joined the [[French Foreign Legion|Foreign Legion]]. He was eventually given a [[dishonorable discharge]] on grounds of indecency (having been caught engaged in a [[Homosexuality|homosexual]] act) and spent a period as a vagabond, petty thief and [[Male prostitute|prostitute]] across Europe—experiences he recounts in ''[[The Thief's Journal]]'' (1949).

===Criminal career, prison, and prison writings===
After returning to [[Paris]] in 1937, Genet was in and out of prison through a series of arrests for theft, use of false papers, [[Vagrancy (people)|vagabondage]], lewd acts, and other offences. In prison Genet wrote his first poem, "Le condamné à mort", which he had printed at his own cost, and the novel ''[[Our Lady of the Flowers]]'' (1944).

In Paris, Genet sought out and introduced himself to [[Jean Cocteau]], who was impressed by his writing. Cocteau used his contacts to get Genet's novel published, and in 1949, when Genet was threatened with a [[life in prison|life sentence]] after ten convictions, Cocteau and other prominent figures, including [[Jean-Paul Sartre]] and [[Pablo Picasso]], successfully petitioned the French President to have the sentence set aside. Genet would never return to prison.

===Writing and activism===
By 1949, Genet had completed five novels, three plays, and numerous poems, many controversial for their explicit and often deliberately provocative portrayal of homosexuality and criminality. Sartre wrote a long analysis of Genet's [[existentialism|existential]] development (from vagrant to writer), entitled ''[[Saint Genet]]'' (1952), which was anonymously published as the first volume of Genet's complete works. Genet was strongly affected by Sartre's analysis and did not write for the next five years.

Between 1955 and 1961, Genet wrote three more plays as well as an essay called "What Remains of a [[Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn|Rembrandt]] Torn into Four Equal Pieces and Flushed Down the Toilet", on which hinged [[Jacques Derrida]]'s analysis of Genet in his seminal work ''[[Glas (book)|Glas]]''. During this time, Genet became emotionally attached to Abdallah Bentaga, a tightrope walker. However, following a number of accidents and Bentaga's [[suicide]] in 1964, Genet entered a period of [[Depression (mood)|depression]], and even attempted suicide himself.<ref>Brian Gordon Kennelly, ''Unfinished Business: Tracing Incompletion in Jean Genet's Posthumously Published Plays'' (Rodopi, 1997) p22</ref>

From the late 1960s, starting with an homage to [[Daniel Cohn-Bendit]] after the events of [[May 1968 events in France|May 1968]], Genet became politically active. He participated in demonstrations drawing attention to the living conditions of immigrants in France. Genet was censored in the United States in 1968 and later expelled when he was refused a visa. In an interview with Edward de Grazia, professor of law and First Amendment lawyer, Genet discusses the time he went through Canada for the Chicago congress. He entered without a visa and left with no issues.<ref>{{Cite journal|last=de Grazia|first=Edward|last2=Genet|first2=Jean|date=1993|title=An Interview with Jean Genet|jstor=743530|journal=Cardozo Studies in Law and Literature|volume=5|issue=2|pages=307–324|doi=10.2307/743530}}</ref>

In 1970, the [[Black Panthers]] invited him to the United States, where he stayed for three months giving lectures, attended the trial of their leader, [[Huey Newton]], and published articles in their journals. Later the same year he spent six months in [[Palestinian people|Palestinian]] [[Palestinian refugees|refugee camps]], secretly meeting [[Yasser Arafat]] near [[Amman]]. Profoundly moved by his experiences in the United States and [[Jordan]], Genet wrote a final lengthy memoir about his experiences, ''[[Prisoner of Love (book)|Prisoner of Love]]'', which would be published posthumously.

Genet also supported [[Angela Davis]] and [[George Jackson (Black Panther)|George Jackson]], as well as [[Michel Foucault]] and [[Daniel Defert]]'s Prison Information Group. He worked with Foucault and Sartre to protest [[police brutality]] against [[Algerian people|Algerians]] in Paris, a problem persisting since the [[Algerian War of Independence]], when beaten bodies were to be found floating in the [[Seine]].{{Citation needed|date=April 2023}} Genet expresses his solidarity with the [[Red Army Faction]] (RAF) of [[Andreas Baader]] and [[Ulrike Meinhof]], in the article "Violence et brutalité", published in ''[[Le Monde]]'', 1977.

In September 1982, Genet was in [[Beirut]] when the massacres took place in the Palestinian camps of [[Sabra and Shatila Massacre|Sabra and Shatila]]. In response, Genet published "Quatre heures à Chatila" ("Four Hours in Shatila"), an account of his visit to Shatila after the event. In one of his rare public appearances during the later period of his life, at the invitation of Austrian philosopher [[Hans Köchler]], he read from his work during the inauguration of an exhibition on the massacre of Sabra and Shatila organized by the [[International Progress Organization]] in Vienna, Austria, on 19 December 1983.<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://i-p-o.org/genet.htm|title=Jean Genet with Hans Köchler -- Hotel Imperial, Vienna, 6 December 1983|website=i-p-o.org}}</ref>

In the early summer of 1985, the year before his death, Genet was interviewed by the BBC. He told the interviewer controversial but not surprising details of his life such as he disliked France so much that he supported the Nazis when they invaded Paris. He compared the BBC interview to a police interrogation.{{Citation needed|date=April 2025}}

===Death===
Genet developed [[throat cancer]] and was found dead at Jack's Hotel in Paris on 15 April 1986 where his photograph and books remain. Genet may have fallen on the floor and fatally hit his head. He is buried in the Larache Christian Cemetery in [[Larache]], Morocco.