Sexualité et espace public: visibilité lesbienne dans le cinéma récent

In this paper, it is shown that the circulation and the growing consumption of lesbian images in public space is part of a complex phenomenon of a culture of the visible. While underlining the inevitable compromises that result from such a negotiation of the visible, the cultural potential that such a commercialization of "difference" represents for lesbians is traced. Lesbian identity and desire are thus analysed here as representational products to be consumed by heterosexuals as well as by lesbians. By means of an analysis of the various strategies of negotiation of lesbian desire taken from two popular films by both heterosexual and gay publics (Gazon Maudit and When Night is Falling), the author confronts the materiality of lesbian identity in the cinema with the value of Sapphic images on the identity market.