Renaud Camus, mise en abyme of the queer political novel

<ns3:p> This paper examines Renaud Camus’s trilogy ( <ns3:italic>Roman roi</ns3:italic> , <ns3:italic>Roman furieux</ns3:italic> , <ns3:italic>Voyageur en automne</ns3:italic> ) as a multifaceted literary and theoretical intervention within the framework of a political and queer political novel. The analysis argues that Camus interrogates the intersections of aesthetics, politics and representation, particularly focusing on the notion and dynamics of presence and absence, thus challenging both contemporary queer discourse and dominant political paradigms. The study situates his trilogy within a broader critique of the increasing (de/re) politicisation of French Literature, as Camus’s refusal to adhere to progressive norms, which positions him as both an anachronistic and controversial figure. The trilogy offers an alternative approach to the traditional political novel by prioritising ambiguity and the interplay of presence and absence, rather than explicit engagement with overt activism or political movements. Through its narrative exploration of memory, exile and historical and fictional displacement, and by integrating layers of absence, memory gaps and metaphors, the trilogy suggests a novelistic form that critically interrogates the dynamics of political representation (even his own), the very fabric of identity and politics as iterative, metaphorical processes, rather than static linear narratives that draw on memory as a fraught and unstable mechanism for constructing meaning. </ns3:p>