Monique Wittig Essay ⋆ Political Science Essay Examples ⋆ EssayEmpire

Monique Wittig (1935–2003), a French novelist, philosopher, poet, and activist, made important contributions to feminist and gay and lesbian theory by developing an original approach that she labeled materialist feminism. Under this heading, she sought to expose sexual difference as a political division that masquerades as natural and serves to legitimate the subordination of women. Her work called for doing away with categories of sex and engaged in linguistic experimentation designed to undermine the masculinist structure of language itself. Wittig is perhaps most famous for her depiction of lesbianism as a revolutionary project that aims to overcome sexual difference altogether. In one of her most widely read essays, “One Is Not Born a Woman” (1992), she writes, “Lesbianism provides for the moment the only social form in which we can live freely. Lesbian is the only concept I know of which is beyond the categories of sex (man and woman), because the designated subject (lesbian) is not a woman, either economically, politically, or ideologically. For what makes a woman is a specific social relation to a man, a relation we have previously called servitude. . .” (1993, 20).

Born in Alsace, France, in 1935,Wittig moved to Paris in her teens, later studied at the Sorbonne, and eventually received a doctorate from the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Social in 1986. Her first novel, L’opoponax (1964), on the experience of childhood, was a critical success and won the prestigious Prix Médicis. Her subsequent fiction, Les guérillères (1969), a feminist epic, and Le Corps Lesbien (1973), which reimagines the female body from a lesbian perspective, are notable in part for Wittig’s efforts to expose and challenge the gendered character of language itself. In Les guérillères, for example, Wittig deploys elles, a traditionally feminine plural pronoun, as a universal, collective pronoun signifying simply “they.”

While living and writing in Paris, Wittig helped to create the Mouvement de Libération des Femmes (MLF). She organized and participated in the August 1970 demonstration that is often cited as the inaugural event for the second wave feminist movement in France. In 1976 she immigrated to the United States where she held a number of university teaching positions. She continued to work in various genres, but focused primarily on producing theoretical essays, written in English, many of which were published first in the journal Feminist Issues. A collection of Wittig’s most important essays is collected in the volume The Straight Mind, published in 1992. She was a professor of Italian, French, and women’s studies at the University of Arizona, where she taught for many years until her death in 2003. She was survived by her partner and collaborator, Sande Zeig.

The materialist feminist position Wittig developed in her theoretical writings has been influential in contemporary feminist and queer theory internationally. Reworking Marxism, Wittig argued for the recognition of women as a distinct, oppressed class and called for the abolition of the categories of sex (men and women) as a political project. She believed such a task entailed confronting the social contract—heterosexuality itself—which founds the current order and sanctifies the division of men and women. While there can be no complete escape, there is nonetheless, Wittig suggests, the possibility that we can “renegotiate daily, and term by term, the social contract” (1993, xiii).

Bibliography:

Ostrovsky, Erika. A Constant Journey: The Fiction of Monique Wittig. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1991.
Shaktini, Namascar, ed. On Monique Wittig: Theoretical, Political, and Literary Essays. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2005.
Wittig, Monique. The Opoponax. Translated by Helen Weaver. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1966.
Les Guérillères. Translated by David Le Vay. London: Peter Owen, 1971. Reprint, Boston: Beacon, 1985.
The Lesbian Body. Translated by David Le Vay. London: Peter Owen, 1975. Reprint, Boston: Beacon, 1986.
Across the Acheron. Translated by David Le Vay and Margaret Crosland. London: Peter Owen, 1987.
The Straight Mind. Boston: Beacon, 1992.
The Straight Mind and Other Essays. Boston: Beacon, 1993.
Wittig, Monique, and Sande Zeig. Lesbian Peoples: Material for a Dictionary. New York: Avon, 1979.

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