Republican Citizenship and Heterosocial Desire: Concepts of Masculinity in Revolutionary France

This chapter in the 2004 edited volume Masculinities in Politics and War: Gendering Modern History explores the intersections between male desire, citizenship, and nationalism during the time of the French Revolution. The political erotic of the nation-state is its focus, but it questions whether fraternal love alone can explain these attachments. Drawing upon visual evidence, the article calls attention to the fact that during the same years when revolutionary artists were fascinated by masculine beauty, the political canvas continued to be populated with allegorical images of beautiful female bodies – occasionally nude, more often in a state of partial undress. Thus, it aims to understand how the female iconography of the French nation (as Liberty or Republic) worked to anchor heterosexual desire, and in turn, to construct the male citizen in both his family and citizen roles as the possessor of a female body.