PARTISAN REVIEW
217
remarkably indulgent toward the violence the women perpetrate in
the terrorist stages of the uprising. One of the most impressive and
frightening scenes in the play is the depiction, one after another
through drawings on the screens, of the atrocities the guerrillas com–
mit.
As
screen after screen
fills
with blood and fire, Kadidja, the first
martyr and presiding figure of the insurrection pronounces her un–
relenting hatred and satisfaction at the bloody offerings. Genet's jus–
tification would doubtless be that oppression rightly seeks revenge, a
stupid argument however fashionable. Violence accomplishes nothing
that revolutions are created to accomplish: in fact, violence is prob–
ably the leading counterrevolutionary symptom, as Genet himself
demonstrated in
The Balcony.
And as a means to an end, violence is
self-defeating, replacing old oppression and injustice with new.
But Genet's contempt for military murder is quite a different
affair. In the lieutenant of the French legionnaires, he has created a
splendid caricature career officer, an idiotic martial narcissist ("Let
every man be a mirror to every other man"), a Maileresque case of
repressed homosexuality finding its only outlet in cruelly eroticized
violence, where love is hate, death is life and war is sex. Here is
the "brick and mortar," spit and polish maniac giving orders to his
troops:
I want the army to send your families wristwatches and medals
cake with blood and even with jissom.... Preston! ... my revolver.
(.. .) Warfare, screwing ...
I
want pictures of naked babies and
holy virgins sewn into your linings (... ) on your hair brilliantine,
ribbons in the hair on your ass (. . .) And your eyes like the bayonet.
And screwing. Get me: war's a rip-roaring orgy. Triumphal awak–
ening! My boots more brilliant Preston!
I
want war and screwing
in the sun! And guts oozing in the sun! Get it?
THE SERGEANT:
Got it.
The brothel is a sort of barometer of revolutionary and coun–
terrevolutionary progress. During the stupor of colonial despair, it
was the refuge of dreams and hope where Si Slimane, the first martyr–
agitator, was honored. When the insurrection actually occurs, the
whores lose their leper status, are united with the village women and
become one with the national cause. For a while they dispense free
service and even progress so far as to consider closing shop. But as
the revolt is coopted by efficient native patriarchal authority ("we
want to be the stronger," the new soldiers preach to the village) the
