‘La force du tact’: Representing the Taboo Body in Jacques Duval's Traité des hermaphrodits (1612)

Abstract The representation of sexual material in any period is potentially a contentious issue and this article discusses how sexual taboos can influence representation even in medical writings. Written at a liminal period before the advent of both ‘modern’ scientific attitudes and the fabled prudery of the ‘Grand Siècle’, Duval's treatise reveals a stance towards language and representation that is both playful and problematic. In a legal trial, Duval saved a young woman named Marie le Marcis who had been sentenced to death for ‘sodomy’ with another woman. By manually stimulating her, Duval was able to prove that she actually possessed an internal penis, and could thus not be accused of ‘unnatural’ acts. Although Duval feels compelled to justify both this action and his general interest in sexual matter against anticipated reproaches of indecency, he also acknowledges the reader's libidinal interest in reading about sex. By comparing the treatise with legal, pornographic and theoretical attitudes towards representing sexual matter, I explore how Duval's text is caught between portraying his own text as ‘transparent’ and acknowledging that, if such a language is possible, then ethical strictures and taboos placed on the empirical body must also condition the representation of this body within discourse.