Revolutionary Beauty: Jean Genet on Palestine and the Panthers

Jean Genet was an existentialist philosopher, orphan foundling, child prisoner, thief, sex worker, and one of the first openly gay writers of his era. This article reinterprets two of his posthumous works, The Declared Enemy: Texts and Interviews, and A Loving Prisoner. Both books center Genet’s time living with two nonwhite revolutionary communities, the Black Panthers and the Palestinian Fedayeen. From this fertile Palestinian ground, I unearth his concept of revolutionary beauty, which I articulate as follows: the charisma of self-overcoming internalized shame from colonial violence via the cheerful counterforce of decolonizing revolution.