The Aesthetics of Scandal and the Poetics of Subversion in Journal du voleur by Jean Genet

Abstract

This article aims to analyze the subversive aesthetics at work in Jean Genet’s Journal du voleur, highlighting how the author subverts literary, moral, and social norms to elevate transgression into a creative principle. Through both textual and contextual analysis, this study reveals how Genet, by means of an autobiographical narrative infused with fiction, transforms marginality into a space where an alternative truth takes shape. This subversion also manifests in a bold linguistic approach, where language becomes a poetic tool of reinvention, challenging the standards of the traditional literary canon. Furthermore, this aesthetic question the political dimension of the work: although the author rejects any explicit moral claim, his writing exposes the blind spots concealed by dominant discourse. Journal du voleur thus emerges as a space of radical freedom, where art, freed from ethical constraints, becomes an instrument of resistance and invites a reconsideration of literature. Genet does not merely describe transgression; he fully enacts it in the very act of writing, opening up a new territory capable of embracing and sublimating the forbidden and the condemned.