De l'androgyne au misogyne : l'infernale dialectique des décadents

To any reader, as learned as he or she could be, the « fin de siècle » period, in France and Britain, is a very surprising period. Indeed, when art and literature are fascinated by androgyny, it could be considered as a strange paradox that they put forth at the same time a virulent misogyny. This paradox has been noticed and described but has never been explained away. Yet, if the androgynous ideal and the misogynistic discourse belong to different fields - the former to the field of pictural representation and the latter to the field of literature - one should ask how and why a figure who can be interpreted as a figure of reconciliation of the opposites can match with a discourse which exasperates them even more.Monneyron Frédéric. De l'androgyne au misogyne : l'infernale dialectique des décadents. In: Les Cahiers du GRIF, n°47, 1993. Misogynies. pp. 75-86