J. Edgar
Bauer *
Mêmeté and the Critique of Sexual Difference
On Monique Wittig's Deconstruction
of the Symbolic Order and the Site of the Neuter
The essay was first published on CTheory,
Arthur and Marilouise Kroker, editors, December 8,
2005.
Re-published
here with permission of the editors.
"Männlich oder weiblich ist
die erste Unterscheidung, die Sie machen, wenn Sie mit einem anderen
menschlichen Wesen zusammentreffen, und Sie sind
gewöhnt, diese Unterscheidung mit unbedenklicher Sicherheit zu machen."
-- Sigmund Freud [1]
The "unquestionable
certainty" to which Sigmund Freud refers in the motto has seldom been
so consistently and radically challenged as in the
work of the lesbian author Monique Wittig (1935-2003).[2] A brilliant avant-garde writer and poet who was
awarded at age 28 the Prix Médicis in France for her first novel, L'Opoponax,
Wittig immigrated to the United States in 1976, where she
began expounding her "materialist lesbianism" in essays that have
attained canonical status within feminist studies and queer theory.
Both in her
fictional and theoretical writing, Wittig deploys critical strategies
aiming at the exposure and disruption of the male-centered, binary
scheme of sex
and gender that she considers a most efficacious subterfuge of the
"straight mind" designed to subjugate women and disempower sexual
minorities. Key
to her deconstruction of the male/female divide is the dismantling of
the symbolic order ensuing from phallic hegemony by means of her frank,
literal
"reading" of the lesbian body. In Wittig's overall démarche, the
libertarian lesbian distils a "science of oppression" from the
quandaries she
has endured, and eventually becomes a "runaway slave" fleeing from her
subjection to heterosexual dominance and searching for a lost (or as
yet not
existing) humanness whose "neuter" character makes it capable of
embracing an open-ended number of liberated sexualities. On these
assumptions, the
present study focuses on how Wittig's understanding of lesbian
existence leads to the recuperation of a non-alienatory universality of
the human,
which she designates by a term rarely used in French: mêmeté.
In light of this universal dimension, Wittig's "oblique" critique
of sexual difference -- far from intending a general lesbianization of
the world -- envisages an endless proliferation of sexualities within
the
commonality of their uniqueness.
1. The Opoponax (1964), Monique Wittig's first novel, opens with the sentences: "The little boy whose name is Robert Payen comes into
the classroom last, crying, Who wants to see my weewee-er? Who wants to see my weewee-er? He is buttoning his pants."[3]
With this puerile scene of attempted genital exposure, Wittig
anticipates emblematically the prevalent exhibitionism of phallic
hegemony she intends to deconstruct. Although little Robert is
afflicted and will die soon after his brief appearance at the novel's
overture, he does
not fail to reveal to Catherine Legrand -- Wittig's alter ego -- the
clue to his delusive self-perception by declaring that he has a
"weewee-er"
because he is "a big boy."[4]
Robert's stress on his own phallic advantage illustrates Wittig's basic
claim concerning the way sexual difference is constructed: "Men have
made what differentiates them from [women] the sign of domination and
possession."[5]
Contrasting with the phallus as the illusory, but effective mark of
male self-empowerment,
the female genitals are inscribed at the very center of Wittig's
theoretical and literary work as tokens of a literalness of meaning
aiming to debunk
the symbolic constellations of male pre-eminence. From this
perspective, vaginal depth is not merely the abstract opposite of
phallic apotheosis, but
the sign of a deconstructive principle devised to reduce the phallus to
the prosaic reality of a penis. Since Wittig's basic credo runs: "[...]
I
distrust symbols, I believe in the literal [...],"[6]
her critical project is not intended to lead up to a
post-phallic sacralisation of female genitals, but to explore
femininity as an as yet not articulated dimension of the human. The
critical scope of
Wittig's sexual de-mythologisation is clearly conveyed when, at the end
of her parable Paris-la-politique, she resumes the principle of her
newly won insights: "ni dieux ni déesses, ni maîtres ni maîtresses"[7] -- "neither gods nor
goddesses, neither masters nor mistresses."[8]
2. Against the patriarchal contenders of an immutable order grounded in nature or divine will,[9] Wittig emphasizes the necessity of introducing "the diachronicity of history into the fixed discourse of eternal essences."[10] On the assumption that the beginning of history is identical with the inception of the human, Wittig
contends that there is, strictly speaking, "no nature in society,"[11] and, more importantly, that there
is for mankind no "reality before it has been given shape by words rules regulations."[12]
According to
Wittig's radical historicism, all cultural achievements and their
institutional formations bear the imprint of human contingency, and
therefore
neither the beginning of history nor any of its salient epochs can lay
claim to the status of an unquestionable paradigm. It is thus not
surprising
that Wittig rejects the presumption of naturalness or divine conformity
attributed mostly to the historically victorious patriarchy, and at
times even
to its complementary heterosexual alternative: matriarchy. Both are
dismissed on the same grounds, since, as Wittig is careful to
underline,
"[m]atriarchy is no less heterosexual than patriarchy: it is only the
sex of the oppressor that changes."[13] As a lesbian, Wittig refuses to idealize the normativity of matriarchy by underscoring that homosexuality is not merely the
desire for one's own sex, but "the desire for something else that is not connoted," namely "resistance to the norm."[14]
On account of the prevalent heterosexual framework in which cultural
memory has been transmitted and transformed, it is no
wonder that lesbian history has been deeply marked by its lacunary
character. Being well aware that historical science can offer no
adequate basis for
grounding the emancipatory claims of her lesbianism, Wittig's aim is
not to reconstruct the lesbian past. Rather, she attempts to fill up
the
intervals and gaps left over by official heterosexual historiography
with the lesbian topics of her jocular inventiveness. Significantly, Lesbian
Peoples,
the book Wittig wrote along with Sande Zeig, begins with a motto that
seems to parody the Johannine and Goethean speculative contentions
of an original Logos[15] or Act[16]. The quotation runs:
"In the beginning, if there ever was such a time."[17]
3. The "materials for a dictionary" collected in Lesbian Peoples
repeatedly refer to the presumptive origins of lesbianism at the
dawn of history. Since the presented strains of vague recollection
could serve at the most to sketch out a speculative narrative, they lay
no claim to
historical factuality. Nevertheless, the hypothetical depiction of the
deeds of the immemorial Amazons sheds light on Wittig's decision to
inscribe
present-day lesbian reflection in the framework of an age-old
libertarian thrust toward the concrete realization of universal
humanness. Tellingly,
the entry on "conflict" in the French version of Lesbian Peoples begins with the quote: "There are traces of dark conflicts in the fables of
the bearers of fables."[18]
Hinting at the unreliability of the sources, the sentence, which is
attributed to the probably imaginary "Julienne Borge," is designed to
introduce the extant data of a fable of origins, according to which an
archetypical clash between "mothers" and "Amazons" not only marked the
past indelibly, but also keeps repeating itself throughout history. The
reason
for this ur-dissension was the "breach" that the amazons tried to find
in the mothers' "dream of absolute and totalitarian engendering."[19]
The inevitable secession ultimately led to contradictory worldviews and
practices manifested first
and foremost at their gatherings. While the amazons came together on
the hills "for festivals, assemblies, [and] sojourns in the woods," the
mothers
began building on the hills "places of worship" dedicated to the
goddesses and surrounded by woods that became "sacred."[20] The introduction of the fundamental distinction between the sacred and the profane by the mothers, that is, by "those who
reign and who engender,"[21]
signals a turning point of humanity on which Wittig and Zeig elaborate
in
the entry on "history." Although some narrative details of the conflict
between mothers and amazons in this entry are at variance with other
depictions of the same incident, mothers are still portrayed as playing
a pre-eminent religious role, for they "began fabricating
representations of
themselves in dried mud, sculptured stone, or on flat surfaces with
colours."[22] As "reigning
goddesses who demanded sacrifices,"[23] the mothers will eventually modify "the original tongue by
introducing the sacred into the 'meaning,' confusing the basic literal sense with their symbols."[24]
While in the first account amazons manifested their opposition to the
instauration of maternal sacrality by just occupying alternative spaces
for
their gatherings, according to the second account, they will resist the
far more consequential induction of the sacred through symbolism by
keeping
"the 'old language of letters and numbers.'"[25]
Thus, the amazons' struggle functions as a proleptic
cipher of Wittig's own lesbian literature in the arena of
re-appropriation of a literalness concealed by the alienating systems
of symbolic
representation that structure the history and historiography of
heterosexual power.
4. The
protagonists of Wittig's narratives echo with profusion her principled
rejection of the symbolic and the sacral world it articulates.
The "women" in Les Guérillères, for example, declare that "they have no need of myths or symbols,"[26] and that religious ideologies are "no longer valid."[27]
In spite of such
contentions, however, Wittig does not refrain from making ample use of
religious imagery and symbolism at all levels and in all contexts of
her
fictional work. From a biographical point of view this is hardly
surprising, for, as The Opoponax
suggests, biblical religiosity, literary
mythology, and Catholic ceremonial, had a strong impact on the nascent
worldview of the future writer. However, in Wittig's work the echoes
and
reminiscences of these influences undergo a radical bending or
alteration of meaning [28] in
correspondence to Wittig's overall design to "foster disorder in all its forms." [29]
In the most
literal sense of the word, Wittig attempts to "pervert" the sacred by
linguistic and literary strategies as diverse as the varieties of its
manifestations. In The Lesbian Body, for instance, a
characteristically "deviant" transference of meaning is apparent in the
doxology of "the
glorious supremely divine Astarte" when Wittig alludes, in a reverse
temporal perspective, to the futurity implied in the Name of the
biblical God by
addressing the female divinity as: "she who cannot have been that which
she will not be."[30]
In
another indicative passage, Wittig homosexualizes the imagery of the
Christian passion, and apostrophizes her Beloved One as "m/y veil of
Lesbos your
face all flat painted on the linen of Veronica like the anguished
features of Christa the much-crucified."[31]
Eventually, even the mention of Mary's Annunciation in Catholic ritual
prayer undergoes a lesbian transmutation when it
reads: "I say blessed are thou among women [...] may you conceive
yourself as I at last see you over the greatest possible space [...]."[32]
In such sites of discursive "per-version," knots of sacral meaning are
disentangled and their
constituents are re-contextualized within the dimensions of corporeal
desire, from which they were once alienated by means of symbolic
representation.
In the last analysis, Wittig is not offering feminist-heathen
variations on the Creator, Jesus or Mary, but debunking their symbolic
function for the
sake of re-appropriating the Body at the locus where the compulsory
ideology of heterosexuality sealed its double-bind with the sacred.
5.
Wittig's lesbian resistance is directed primarily against the sexual
implications of the disjunctive logic that perpetuates the pattern
of mutual exclusion initiated by the sacred/profane binomial. Her
strategy is that of the "Trojan horse," that is, of a "war machine"
functioning in
the "hostile territory" of the heterosexual language with the aim of
turning it against itself. While the immediate goal of Wittig's warfare
is "to
pulverize the old forms and formal conventions,"[33] the final aim of her belligerency is to recreate
not a vision of things, but of "la première vision des mots, dans sa puissance" -- "the primary vision of words, in its force."[34]
This mention of a powerful vision of words -- and not of "things," as
the American translation has it
-- remits to the actual kernel of Wittig's reflection on a utopian new
language that attempts to regain a non-symbolic access to reality by
means of
the literalness Wittig attributed to the amazons' language of "letters
and numbers." Indicatively, the entry on "Language" in Lesbian Peoples
insists that "the mothers lived in permanent representation,"[35]
and surmises that in the ancient
language of the amazons "[t]he significations and the phonemes had
[...] a different relation between them." Going into more detail, the
entry points
out that "[o]ne cannot imagine that this language was composed of
'sentences' with a construction and a syntax as rigid, rigorous,
repressive as those
we know."[36] Read against this precision, Wittig's over-arching conviction that -- with respect to
language -- "everything has to be remade starting from basic principles,"[37]
attains an unexpected
scope, since it implies accomplishments far beyond the reach of what
Wittig herself or any individual author could possibly achieve in a
lifetime.
What Wittig actually envisages is a "language without consonants,"
which resembles the song of the "white whale" and therefore is not
composed of
sentences, but of modulations.[38] Not by chance, these determinations are mentioned in the article on
"vowel"/"voyelle," which is the closing entry of the French version of Lesbian Peoples.
In this prominent locus, Wittig depicts a utopian
language, which, free from consonantal obstructions, consists only of
acoustical continuities that would seem to resonate with the ululation
of
Minerva's owl,[39] or, more significantly, with what in Les Guérillères is termed
"the music of the spheres."[40] Such a language follows out the realization that "Being as being is not
divided,"[41] and is therefore capable of opening up a horizon where the principle of "either...or" is
no more valid.[42]
By taking the literalness of continuous Being to its last consequences,
this
language supersedes the mark of the sacred and its opposite, and is
liable to reflect the potentially infinite complexities of the sexual
beyond the
categorial disjunction of the male and the female.
6. While
the mothers' heterosexual regime can only be projected "poetically"
into an actually irrecoverable past, the binary structures of
thought that pervade patriarchal heterosexuality have an assignable
beginning in the history of Western philosophy. According to Wittig, it
was
Aristotle who, after having contended that the Pythagorean school
introduced duality in thought, went on to interpret metaphysically the
Pythagorean
conceptual series of opposites designed originally to serve only as
tools for measurement and classification. Thus, in the first table of
oppositions
as recorded by Aristotle in the first book of Metaphysics (I,
5, 6) the series including the concepts of male, right, light and good
functions
as the antithetical complement of the series including the concepts of
female, left, dark and bad. Since, in this dialectical scheme, Being
and the
One mark the essence of godlike maleness, while non-Being and the Many
constitute the ontological determinants of unrestful femaleness,[43]
the ideological distinction between male and female became an
insurmountable axiological difference
sanctioned by ontology. Despite the age-old allegations to the
contrary, there is, according to Wittig, no "natural" or "eternal"
necessity that would
warrant this dichotomy and its asymmetry, but just the contingencies of
political interests that have recast the ideological division between
men and
women as if it were a natural one. Basically, the ideology of sexual
difference functions as a censorship that masks "on the ground of
nature, the
social opposition between men and women."[44]
In this thoroughly constructed system of heterosexual
distribution, females become not only the possession of men (as
indicated in the etymology of "wo-men": "those who belong to another"[45]),
but also carry the burden of compulsory reproduction. With this plight
in view, Wittig pleads for
"the destruction of heterosexuality as a social system which is based
on the oppression of women by men and which produces the doctrine of
the
difference between the sexes to justify this oppression."[46]
Far from implying the negation or
rejection of sexual diversity as such, this critical line of argument
assumes that the acknowledgement of the diversities of the sexual is sensu
stricto
only possible once the naturalizing ideology of sexual binarism has
been overcome. Thus in the self-interpretive introduction to her
parable Les Tchiches et les Tchouches, Wittig maintains that
there is no "différence anatomique" that would justify the construction
of
two mutually exclusive groups which, in fact, correlate with "women"
and "men." On account of the oppression of one group by the other, the
"aspects
physiques" of the Tchiches and Tchouches are indeed divergent, but this
ascertainable fact does not contradict Wittig's fundamental contention
that
"on a affaire à la même race."[47]
In reverting the parable to its sexual literalness, it
becomes apparent that Wittig aims at depicting a commonality of the
human liable of encompassing the undeniable diversities of the sexual,
while at
the same time suggesting that the traits of these diversities do not
warrant the formation of two asymmetrical groups connected through the
bond of
male supremacy. For Wittig, the mark of diversity is, by itself, not a
token of dominion.
7.
Although the variability of sexed bodies does not warrant the
assumption of an essential difference between two mutually exclusive
sexes
engaging in a unique combination of unilateral dependency,[48] heterosexuality attempts to justify its
system of female subordination and homosexual phobias by referring to an allegedly "'already there' of the sexes."[49] It is essential to the dominant heterosexual thought to "refuse[] to turn inward on itself to apprehend that which questions
it,"[50]
since only thus can it exempt itself from reflecting critically on the
sexual constraints
imposed by historical factuality. Like the Tchouches of the parable,
the contenders of heterosexuality have no inclination to justify their
construction of sexual difference, since "[l]a domination suffit. La
domination est la preuve."[51]
Well
aware that the force of arguments alone cannot shatter an ideology,
Wittig developed a confrontation strategy based on the idea that an
adequate
perception of sexual oppression can only be obtained by "step[ping]
out" of the foreseen tracks of politics and culture. Indicatively, the
outlook of
the lesbian, who refuses to assume the role of a woman and has no
desire of becoming a man, is depicted in Wittig's work as the vantage
point of an
"escapee" or "fugitive slave." As a "not-woman" and as a "not-man,"[52]
the lesbian lays claim to a site
beyond the categories of binomial sex difference resulting from the
supersedure of the heterosexual ideology in the name of what Wittig
terms the
"science of oppression."[53]
Having had a first-hand experience and knowledge of the consequences of
heterosexual non-reflectivity, Wittig carefully avoids grounding her
emancipatory objectives in a dogmatic understanding of what nature is
or is not.
Since nature can only be conceived as the result of historical and
cultural mediations, the escapee's insight into the workings of the
heterosexual
regime eventually compels the acknowledgement that only an unprejudiced
perception of the given sexual variability is capable of sustaining a
configuration of society without reference to the exclusionary logic of
dichotomic sexual difference. As The Lesbian Body would put it, what is
at stake is the capacity to lose "the sense [...] of the stupid duality with all that flows therefrom."[54] While this dull dualism is the characteristic scheme of thought of the "straight mind," the "oblique point of view" of the
lesbian "standing at the outposts of humankind"[55] enables the envisioning of a non-exclusionary
"beyond," where -- in the words of Terence -- "humani nihil a me alienum puto."[56]
8. The
figure of the Maroon or runaway slave, to which Wittig compares the
rebellious lesbian throughout her writing, dwells in a
no-man's-land between the male "pouvoir qui se sait" and the female
"esclavage qui s'ignore."[57]
For
having exposed the alleged natural difference of sexes as a merely
ideological construction, the runaway earns the enmity not only of the
masters, but
also of the slaves zealous of preserving the meagre advantages of their
delusional stability. This is no wonder, since the process of
libertarian
empowerment as explicated in Wittig's materialist feminism leads from
the unacknowledged immersion in the servitude of womanhood to the
consciousness
of women being objects of class oppression, who will eventually strive
to become individual subjects forging their own destinies. In the
emancipatory
process, the presumptive factuality of womanhood is unmasked as an
"'imaginary formation,' which reinterprets physical features (in
themselves as
neutral as any others but marked by the social system) through the
network of relationships in which they are perceived."[58]
Although the category "woman" is merely a mythical or imaginary
construct, those designated as such by their oppressors
constitute a socially regulated class. In order to achieve liberation
from this unreal, but nonetheless effective entanglement, the oppressed
women
must attain class-consciousness and be determined "to kill the myth of
'woman' including its most seductive aspects."[59] Even if it is a sine qua non
for exposing the arbitrariness of the woman construct, the
self-understanding as a class
that is being oppressed is not identical with the subjectivity of the
individuals in question. Since no individual is reducible to the
conditions of
her or his oppression, subjectivity as a dynamic force beyond class
solidarity has to be acknowledged, according to Wittig, as the actual
formative
agent of history. For sure, both the class of subjected "women" and the
class of subjecting "men" are vowed to disappear, since "there are no
slaves
without masters."[60]
But once this occurs, subjectivities will have to cope with the
deranging literal
truth that there are neither men nor women. As Wittig had stressed
before, lesbianism "opens onto another dimension of the human"[61] namely, one in which the sexual complexity of subjectivities is defined without reference to the myth
of sexual difference.
9. Wittig's
materialist feminism is the result of one of the most creative
receptions of Marxian thought in the second half of the 20th
century. Despite her acknowledgement of Marxism as "the last avatar of
materialism, the science which has politically formed us,"[62]
Wittig raises against its traditional contenders two basic objections
deriving from her own
libertarian philosophy of oppressed and abject subjectivities. First
and foremost, Wittig criticizes that Marxist class-consciousness
purports to
share a common awareness of exploitation and the struggle against it,
but fails to convey the need to constitute individual subjects forging
their own
personal history. Fearing "bourgeois" divisiveness and hoping that
conflictive issues (such as those incumbent on sexual difference) will
disappear in
the coming classless society, Marxism "has prevented all categories of
oppressed peoples from constituting themselves historically as subjects
[...]
of their struggle [...]."[63]
Since Marxism left unexamined the supposedly "natural" relation between
men and women, and hid the class conflict between them behind an
allegedly natural division of labor, acknowledging the sexual
exploitation of women
by men even in the foreseeable Marxian utopia is one of the most
far-reaching consequences of Wittig's "science of oppression."
Secondly, Wittig
castigates all Marxist-inspired revolutions to the present for being
incapable of dealing with the issue of Otherness. Since straight
societies are
based at every level on the necessity of referring to the different or
other in order to exclude it all the more effectively, Wittig stresses
that the
categories of Difference invoked by many contemporary theoreticians
were, for Marx, categories of social conflict, "which throughout the
class
struggle were supposed to destroy each other."[64]
From a Marxian perspective, the process by which the
position of the bourgeois One is taken over by the proletarian Other
culminates with the self-abolition of this Other in order to render
possible a
true dialectical reconciliation. However, as Wittig underscores, the
foreseen final stadium has never been attained by Marxist revolutions
to date.
Instead, the Other "has substituted itself for the One, keeping under
it huge groups of oppressed peoples that would in turn become the Other
of the
ex-others, become by then the One."[65]
Such an abrupt arrest of Marxian dialectics proved to be an
additional and decisive factor retarding the insurgency of female
subjects. Having ascertained that despite the revolutionary becoming
One of some
Others, women did not change their status as objects of oppression, but
just the holders of their subjection, Wittig directed her critical
questioning
to the issue of a future "humanness once all categories of others will
be transferred onto the side of the One, of Being, of the Subject."[66]
10. Since the "dialectical thought (or thought of difference)"[67] that originated in
Classical Greece evinces itself as an exclusionary logic of Otherness, Wittig's attempt to "dialecticize dialectics"[68] for the sake of empowering oppressed subjectivities implies a radical rebuttal of contemporary exaltations of alterity in all
its forms: "Jewish, Black, Red, Yellow, Female, Homosexual, Crazy."[69] The imposition of the label of
difference on someone cannot be transformed into an emancipatory "right" or "pride to be different,"[70]
for, according to Wittig, such a transformation would still continue to
operate with the oppressive scheme of the One and the Other. Against a
philosophy and politics aiming to re-appropriate alterity, Wittig
contends: "the Other cannot essentially be different from the One, it
is the Same, along the lines of what Voltaire called the Sameness[,] la Mêmeté."[71] With the seldom used Voltairean neologism Wittig is referring to the locus of the fundamental commonality of the human,
which, as she explains by quoting Terence a second time, entails that "'nothing human is alien' to the One or to the Other."[72] Wittig's inscription of the Voltairean concept of Mêmeté in her own discursivity evokes a
comprehensiveness comparable to that of the Heraclitean λóγος as the
κοινóν (i.e. the universal), which enciphers the all-encompassing reconciliation of opposites.
Thus, against the backdrop of the universal Mêmeté
of humanness, Wittig structures a libertarian move going from the
self-identification with the class struggle of women to the affirmation
of individual subjectivities that have escaped their entrapment in the
alterity of womanhood. Even though the lesbian/guérillère appears
throughout Wittig's work to introduce the decisive struggle to
transform mere thought differences into political oppositions, there is
no silencing of the fact that the raison d'être
of her
libertarian program lies beyond the mere reassessment of lesbian
identity. Not surprisingly, Wittig carefully underlines that "for the
moment"[73] lesbianism provides the only social form for a free existence beyond the categories of "man" and
"woman," and envisions pari passu
a futurity that has left behind even the memory of the secular strife
that lesbians had fostered. This
privileged Time marks the inception of Subjectivities that have
overcome not only the quandaries of sexual difference, but also even
the struggle for
its abolition. Significantly, the most precise depiction of sexual
Subjectivities beyond alienation is offered by Wittig not in a literary
piece, but
in Paradigm, a philosophical essay in which she declares: "For
us there are, it seems, not one or two sexes, but many (cf.
Guattari/Deleuze),
as many sexes as there are individuals."[74]
Wittig's lesbian utopia can only be one if it is for all,
and this can only be warranted when subsumptions under categories of
sexual difference finally yield to the incontrovertible evidence that
the
corporeality of each Subjectivity bears the mark of a radically
individualized and therefore unclassifiable sexuality. On this account,
Mêmeté, being the abbreviation for the irreducible Subjectivity of the
individual, evinces itself as the reconciliatory commonality that
enables the deployment of radical sexual diversification within the
framework of the human. Even if the theoretical and literary prolepses
of this
final supersedure are indispensable for giving direction to the
emancipatory struggle, they should never be mistaken for the future
concrete
realization of the aims pursued by the lesbian "science of oppression."
It is not by chance that "Wittig," the protagonist of Across the
Acheron,
will eventually realize in her peregrination through hell that
"Paradise is in the shadows of swords and peace at the end of a lance."[75]
11. Since
gender constitutes "the linguistic index of the political opposition
between the sexes and of the domination of women,"[76] Wittig envisages its deconstruction parallel to the philosophical and political abolition of sex.
Essentially, gender is an "enforcement of sex in language"[77]
that obviates the "literal" uniqueness of
sexual bodies in order to transform them into entities that are capable
of "symbolizing" only inadequately the clear-cut categories of sexual
difference. Well aware that "personal pronouns engineer gender through
language,"[78] Wittig will
promote personal pronouns to the rank of subject matter in three of her major narratives. While L'Opoponax revolves around the issue of "l'on"
(one) and Les Guérillères focuses on "elles" (the untranslatable feminine form of "they"), Le Corps lesbian
can be read as
a meditation on the "j/e" (the French for "I" written with a slash in
between). Despite the obvious differences of the grammatical
perspectives they
imply, the three pronouns are, in an important respect, functional
equivalents, for they all aim at debunking the presumptive universality
of the
masculine by making obsolete the prevalent categories of gender.
Wittig's perhaps most far-reaching elaborations on this issue relate to
the French
indefinite pronoun "on" whose neuter and neutral nature she
underscores: "One, on, lends itself to the unique experience of all locutors who,
when saying I, can re-appropriate the whole language and reorganize the world from their point of view."[79]
Clearly, the aspiration to universality conveyed by the indeterminacy
of the "on" contrasts with the unwarranted
universalisation of homo/homme/man made apparent in a sentence like:
"Un homme sur deux est une femme" -- "One man in two is a woman."[80] The very fact that the sentence could not retain its meaning after interchanging the nouns testifies
to the fundamental asymmetry of the man/woman divide resulting in the degradation of the "female sex" to a modus deficiens
of mankind. Against
this backdrop, the gender neutrality of Wittig's "on" certainly does
not imply forcing a semantic uniformity of sexuality, but, on the
contrary,
offers a linguistic framework in which sexuality can be potentiated as
to include a diversity of sexes co-extensive with the number of sexed
individuals. If femaleness is the gender mark of "ec-centric"
subjectivities imposed by the delusive ideology of male centeredness,
the neutrality of
"on" undoes the mark of gender difference by exposing the arbitrariness
of any categorial subsumptions under sexual categories of the given
sexual
diversity and reassessing the commonality of sexual uniqueness.
12. Although Wittig's use of the pronoun nous/we generally refers to the oppressed class of lesbians, there are passages in
which the "nous" is designed to include "lesbians, women, and homosexual men."[81]
Contrasting
with the self-centeredness of the straight subject, these "minority
subjects" are depicted as being like "Pascal's circle, whose center is
everywhere
and whose circumference is nowhere."[82] Given that for Wittig "Lesbians are not women"[83] and that she seldom deals with the specific condition of homosexual men, her inclusive use of
nous is indicative of a solidarity not based on sexual
self-understanding or sexual orientation, but on the obliqueness of a
minority
perspective that guards from the "straight" delusion of an heterosexual
appropriation of universal humanness. Challenging the history of
millennia,
the oblique mind testifies to the necessary fragmentation of the human
in the irreducible sexual diversity of its individual manifestations.[84]
In correspondence with this contention, Wittig's passionate
self-assertion as a lesbian does not
pretend to achieve a general lesbianization of the world, but rather
intends to show how the full assumption of an "ec-centric" sexual
existence can
be the source of empowerment for minority Subjectivities deprived of
the social validation of their uniqueness. Significantly, the women in Les
Guérillères -- undoubtedly Wittig's most pugnacious book -- tell the young men who have joined them in their struggle, "We have been
fighting as much for you as for ourselves."[85]
Thereafter, one of the Guérillères begins
to sing, "Like unto ourselves / men who open their mouths to speak / a
thousand thanks to those who have understood our language / and not
having
found it excessive / have joined with us to transform the world."[86] In a later scene reminiscent of
Antonin Artaud's rebellious army of men coming down from their crosses, where the blood-sucking morpion-dieu had nailed them since time
immemorial,[87] the Guérillères solemnly declare: "The vessels are upright, the vessels
have acquired legs. The sacred vessels are on the move. [...] henceforward the vessels empty of seed have shrunken loins."[88] Having liberated themselves from the constrictions of reproduction, these women are on their way to an assault that, while
closing the book, actually constitutes the chronological beginning of the narrative.[89] Like Artaud's
desecrating rebels, Wittig's Guérillères are out to perform "a sacrilege, a violation of all the rules"[90] that emanate from the thought of Difference. Since in the world of Les Guérillères dichotomic
categorizations are overcome, divinities appear at the most as "paper goddesses"[91]
with a decorative
function, and women themselves achieve a validation of their
Subjectivity without reference to heterosexuality and motherhood. If
Catherine Legrand in
The Opoponax could have assumed the perspective of Les Guérillères,
she would have been in a position to counter Robert
Payen's self-flattering conjectures by making it clear that she is not
defined by the absence of a "wee-wee-er," but by the presence of a
clitoris,
"the only organ in the body to have pleasure as its function."[92]
The lesbian affirmation of this
"presence" contravenes the silencing or denigration of female genitals
throughout cultural history and necessitates a radical re-negotiation
of the
relationship between the sexes, which are not two, but as diverse as
the number of sexed individuals. Once the constraints of the sexual
binomial and
its resulting hetero- and homosexual combinatories are left behind, the
commonality granted by the homology between the penis and the clitoris
liberates the "lesbian body" from the predicament of being marked by
the vagina as the site of an absence that has been conceptualized at
times as a
"negative phallus."[93] Even though toward the end of her life Wittig stressed that she had never
denied having a vagina, the sentence "Je n'ai pas de vagin"[94] attributed to her among others by Leo
Bersani,[95]
can be read as a radical refusal of the imagery of the "non-penis," and
thus as an
abbreviation for Wittig's revolt against the thought of Difference that
reduced women to an ontology of absence. By debunking the ideology of
feminine
non-Being, Wittig gained access to the clitoral "kleís": the key
capable of opening up the way to Mêmeté as the common human
uniqueness beyond the arbitrariness of categorial divides.
Notes
---------------
[1] Sigmund Freud. "Neue Folge der Vorlesungen zur Einführung in die Psychoanalyse" (1933 [1932]).
In: Sigmund Freud. Studienausgabe. Band I: Vorlesungen zur Einführung in die Psychoanalyse und Neue Folge.
Herausgegeben von Alexander
Mitscherlich et al. Frankfurt am Main: S. Fischer Verlag, 1980, p. 345.
"Male and female is the first distinction that you make when you meet
another
human being, and you are accustomed to making this distinction with
unquestioned certainty." (Translation by the author)
[2] For a brief introduction to her life and work, cf.: Julia Creek. "Monique Wittig." In: glbtq.
An encyclopedia of gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender & queer culture. General Editor: Claude J. Summers. www.glbtq.com/literature/wittig_m.html, 2002. The following essay collections focus on
different aspects of Wittig's work: Marie-Hélène Bourcier and Suzette Robichon (eds.). Parce que les lesbiennes ne sont pas des
femmes. Autour de l'oeuvre politique, théorique et littéraire de Monique Wittig. Actes du colloque des 16-17 juin 2001, Columbia
University, Paris. Paris: Éditions Gaies et Lesbiennes, 2002; Namascar Shaktini (ed.). On Monique Wittig. Theoretical, Political and
Literary Essays. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2005. For book length treatments of Wittig' s literary work, cf.: Erika Ostrovsky.
A Constant Journey. The Fiction of Monique Wittig. Carbondale and Edwardsville: Southern Illinois University Press, 1991; Catherine
Écarnot. L' écriture de Monique Wittig. À la couleur de Sappho. Paris: L'Harmattan, 2002.
[3] Monique Wittig. The Opoponax.
Translated by Helen Weaver. Plainfield, Vermont: Daughters,
Inc., 1976, p. 5. [The French original runs: "Le petit garçon qui
s'appelle Robert Payen entre dans la classe le dernier en criant qui
c'est
qui veut voir ma quéquette, qui c'est qui veut voir ma quéquette. Il
est en train de reboutonner sa culotte." (Monique Wittig.
L'Opoponax. Paris: Union Générale d'Éditions, 1971, p. 7.)]
[4] Cf. Monique Wittig. The Opoponax, op. cit., p. 16.
[5] Monique Wittig. Les Guérillères.
Translated from the French by David Le Vay.
Boston: Beacon Press, 1985, p. 106. [The French original runs: "Ils ont
fait de ce qui les différencie de toi le signe de la domination et de
la possession." (Monique Wittig. Les Guérillères. Paris: Les Éditions de Minuit, 1969, p. 153.)]
[6] Monique Wittig. Across the Acheron.
Translated from the French by David Le Vay in
collaboration with Margaret Crosland. London: The Women's Press, 1989,
p. 87. [The French original runs: "[...] je méfie des symboles je crois
à la lettre [...]." (Monique Wittig. Virgile, non. Paris: Les Éditions de Minuit, 1985, p. 102.)]
[7] Monique Wittig. "Paris-la-politique." In: Monique Wittig. Paris-la-politique et autres
histoires. Paris: P.O.L., 1999, p. 51.
[8] The line of argument concerning Wittig's critique of feminist religious approaches is corroborated
by the tongue-in-cheek ejaculation toward the end of the protagonist's infernal peregrination in Across the Acheron: "Ah, if only you existed,
Divinity, that I might shower you with gratitude!" (Monique Wittig. Across the Acheron, op. cit., p. 88.) [The French original runs: "Ah que
n'existes-tu, divinité, afin que je fasse éclater ma gratitude!" (Monique Wittig. Virgile, non, op. cit., p. 103.)]
[9] Cf. Monique Wittig. "Paradigm." In: George Stambolian and Elaine Marks. Homosexualities and
French Literature. Cultural Contexts / Critical Texts. Preface by Richard Howard. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1979, p. 115. There
is a revised version in French of this essay: Monique Wittig. "Paradigmes." In: Monique Wittig. La pensée straight. Paris:
Éditions Balland, 2001, p. 102. The piece was not included in the antecedent English edition of the book: The Straight Mind and Other
Essays. Boston: Beacon Press, 1992.
[10] Monique Wittig. The Straight Mind and Other Essays. Boston: Beacon Press, 1992, p. 32.
[The French original runs: "[...] la diachronie de l'histoire dans le discours figé des essences éternelles." (Monique Wittig. La
pensée straight, op. cit., p. 75.)]
[11] Monique Wittig. The Straight Mind and Other Essays, op. cit., p. 13. [The French original
runs: "[...] il n'y a pas de 'nature' en société." (Monique Wittig. La pensée straight, op. cit., p. 56.)]
[12] Monique Wittig. Les Guérillères, op. cit., 134. [The French original runs:
"[...] il n'y a pas de réalité avant que les mots les règles les règlements lui aient donné forme." (Monique
Wittig. Les Guérillères, op. cit., p. 192.)]
[13] Monique Wittig. The Straight Mind and Other Essays, op. cit., p. 10. [The French original
runs: "Le matriarcat n'est pas moins hétérosexuel que le patriarcat: seul le sexe de l'oppresseur change." (Monique Wittig. La
pensée straight, op. cit., p. 53)]
[14] Monique Wittig. "Paradigm." In: George Stambolian and Elaine Marks. Homosexualities and
French Literature, op. cit., p. 114. ["L'homosexualité est le désir pour une personne de son propre sexe. Mais c'est aussi le
désir pour quelque chose d'autre qui n'est pas connoté. Le désir est résistance à la norme." (Monique Wittig.
"Paradigmes." In: Monique Wittig. La pensée straight, op. cit., p. 102.)]
[15] Cf. John 1,1.
[16] Cf. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. "Faust. Eine Tragödie." In: Goethes Werke. Hamburger
Ausgabe in 14 Bänden. Hrsg. von Erich Trunz. München: Verlag C.H. Beck, 1976, p. 44. Interestingly, Goethe mentions, besides "Tat"
(deed/act), "Sinn" (meaning) and "Kraft" (force) as alternative "interpretations" of John's "Wort" (word).
[17] Monique Wittig and Sande Zeig. Lesbian Peoples. Materials for a Dictionary. London:
Virago, 1980, p. [v]. [The French original runs: "Au commencement, s'il y a eu un commencement." (Monique Wittig et Sande Zeig. Brouillon pour un
dictionnaire des amantes. Paris: Bernard Grasset, 1975, p. [1].)]
[18] Monique Wittig et Sande Zeig. Brouillon pour un dictionnaire des amantes.
Paris: Bernard
Grasset, 1975, p. 64: "'Il y a des traces de conflits obscurs dans les
fables des porteuses de fables.'" Translation by the author. There is
no
equivalent to this passage in the English version of the book.
[19] Monique Wittig and Sande Zeig. Lesbian Peoples. Materials for a Dictionary, op. cit., p.
36. [The French original runs: "un rêve d'engendrement absolu et totalitaire." (Monique Wittig et Sande Zeig. Brouillon pour un dictionnaire
des amantes, op. cit., p. 64.)]
[20] Monique Wittig and Sande Zeig. Lesbian Peoples. Materials for a Dictionary, op. cit., p.
73. There is no corresponding entry in the French version.
[21] Monique Wittig and Sande Zeig. Lesbian Peoples. Materials for a Dictionary, op. cit., p.
73.
[22] Monique Wittig and Sande Zeig. Lesbian Peoples. Materials for a Dictionary, op. cit., p.
75.
[23] Monique Wittig and Sande Zeig. Lesbian Peoples. Materials for a Dictionary, op. cit., p.
76.
[24] Monique Wittig and Sande Zeig. Lesbian Peoples. Materials for a Dictionary, op. cit., p.
78. [The French original runs: "Les mères ont modifié la langue originelle en introduisant dans le 'sens', le sacré, en
brouillant les sens premiers, littéraux avec leurs symboles, elles ont créé tout un tas de mots adaptés à leurs
fantasmes." (Monique Wittig et Sande Zeig. Brouillon pour un dictionnaire des amantes, op. cit., p. 128.)]
[25] Monique Wittig and Sande Zeig. Lesbian Peoples. Materials for a Dictionary, op. cit., p.
78. [The French original runs: "la vieille 'langue des lettres et des chiffres.'" (Monique Wittig et Sande Zeig. Brouillon pour un dictionnaire des
amantes, op. cit., p. 128.)]
[26] Monique Wittig. Les Guérillères, op. cit., p. 30. [The French original
runs: "elles n'ont pas besoin des symboles ou des mythes" (Monique Wittig. Les Guérillères, op. cit., 38.)]. They also assert
that "it is not for them to exhaust their strength in symbols."
[27] Monique Wittig. Les Guérillères, op. cit., p. 80. [The French original
runs: "elles [les idéologies religeuses] n'ont plus cours." (Monique Wittig. Les Guérillères, op. cit., p. 112.)]
[28] Cf. Monique Wittig. "Le Jardin." In: Monique Wittig. Paris-la-politique et autres
histoires,
op. cit., p. 115, where the female "corps" have "detourné le sens" of a
fairytale told by the male "êtres." A comparable
reorganization of meaning takes place in the chapter "L'altération du
sens" of the first piece of the book, where a Jobian "fumier" is
transformed "en roses comme dans le Miracle de Genet." (Monique Wittig.
"Paris-la-politique." In: Monique Wittig. Paris-la-politique et autres
histoires, op. cit., p. 48.)
[29] Monique Wittig. Les Guérillères, op. cit., p. 93. [The French original
runs: "cultive[r] le désordre sous toutes ses formes." (Monique Wittig. Les Guérillères, op. cit., p. 133.) ]
[30] Monique Wittig. The Lesbian Body,
Translated from the French by David Le Vay. Boston:
Beacon Press, 1986, p. 93. [The French original runs: "[...] la
glorieuse la divine par excellence Astarté [...] celle qui ne peut pas
avoir
été celle qui ne sera pas." (Monique Wittig. Le Corps Lesbien. Paris: Les Éditions de Minuit, 1973, pp. 102-103.)]
[31] Monique Wittig. The Lesbian Body, op. cit., p. 35. [The French original runs: "[...] m/on
voile de Lesbos ton visage tout plat peint sur le linge de Véronique tels les traits douloureux de Christa la très crucifiée. "
(Monique Wittig. Le Corps Lesbien, op. cit., 30.)]
[32] Monique Wittig. The Lesbian Body,
op. cit., p. 145. [The French original runs: "[...] j/e
te dis sois bénie entre toutes les femmes [...] que tu t'étendes telle
que j/e te vois enfin sur le plus grand espace possible [...]."
(Monique Wittig. Le Corps Lesbien, op. cit., 165.)]
[33] Monique Wittig. The Straight Mind and Other Essays, op. cit., p. 69. [The French original
runs: "[...] car son intention et son but sont de démolir les vieilles formes et les règles conventionnelles." (Monique Wittig. La
pensée straight, op. cit., p. 120.)]
[34] Monique Wittig. La pensée straight, op. cit., p. 123. The complete French sentence
runs: "Ce que l'écrivain recrée c'est bien en effet une vision, mais il ne s'agit pas de celle des choses mais plutôt de la
première vision des mots, dans
sa puissance." The English rendering of this sentence in the Beacon
Press translation is inadequate:
"[...] the task of a writer is to re-create the first powerful vision
of things -- as opposed to their daily recognition." (Monique Wittig. The
Straight Mind and Other Essays, op. cit., p. 72.)
[35] Monique Wittig and Sande Zeig. Lesbian Peoples. Materials for a Dictionary, op. cit., p.
94. [The French original runs: "C'étaient des langues tout à fait adaptées aux mères qui vivaient en représentation
permanente." (Monique Wittig et Sande Zeig. Brouillon pour un dictionnaire des amantes, op. cit., p. 150.)]
[36] Monique Wittig and Sande Zeig. Lesbian Peoples. Materials for a Dictionary,
op. cit., p.
94. [The French original runs: "Les significations et les phonèmes
avaient sans doute un rapport différent entre eux. On ne peut pas
imaginer que cette langue était composée de 'phrases' avec une
construction et une syntaxe aussi rigides, rigoureuses,
répressives que celles que nous connaissons." (Monique Wittig et Sande
Zeig. Brouillon pour un dictionnaire des amantes, op. cit., p.
151.)]
[37] Monique Wittig. Les Guérillères, op. cit., p. 134. [The French original
runs: "[...] tout est à faire à partir d'éléments embryonnaires." (Monique Wittig. Les Guérillères,
op. cit., p. 192)]
[38] Cf. Monique Wittig and Sande Zeig. Lesbian Peoples. Materials for a Dictionary, op. cit.,
p. 162.
[39] Cf. Monique Wittig and Sande Zeig. Lesbian Peoples. Materials for a Dictionary, op. cit.,
p. 157.
[40] Cf. Monique Wittig. Les Guérillères, op. cit., p. 136.
[41] Monique Wittig. The Straight Mind and Other Essays, op. cit., p. 81.
[42] Cf. Monique Wittig. Across the Acheron, op. cit., p. 74.
[43] Cf. Monique Wittig. The Straight Mind and Other Essays, op. cit., pp. 49-51.
[44] Monique Wittig. The Straight Mind and Other Essays, op. cit., p. 2.
[45] Monique Wittig and Sande Zeig. Lesbian Peoples. Materials for a Dictionary,
op. cit., p.
165. Since this is a reference to the English etymology of the word,
there is no corresponding passage in the entry on "Femme" in Brouillon pour
un dictionnaire des amantes.
[46] Monique Wittig. The Straight Mind and Other Essays, op. cit., p. 20.
[47] Monique Wittig. "Les Tchiches et les Tchouches." In: Monique Wittig. Paris-la-politique et
autres histoires, op. cit., p.122.
[48] Cf. Monique Wittig. Les Guérillères, op. cit., p. 102.
[49] Monique Wittig. The Straight Mind and Other Essays, op. cit., p. 4.
[50] Monique Wittig. The Straight Mind and Other Essays, op. cit., p. 3.
[51] Monique Wittig. "Les Tchiches et les Tchouches." In: Monique Wittig. Paris-la-politique et
autres histoires, op. cit., p. 141.
[52] Monique Wittig. The Straight Mind and Other Essays, op. cit., p. 13.
[53] Cf. Monique Wittig. The Straight Mind and Other Essays, op. cit., pp. 18, 31.
[54] Monique Wittig. The Lesbian Body, op. cit., p. 145. [The French original runs: "[...] le
sens [...] de la stupide dualité avec tout ce qui s'ensuit [...]." (Monique Wittig. Le Corps Lesbien, op. cit., p. 165.)]
[55] Cf. Monique Wittig. The Straight Mind and Other Essays, op. cit., p. 46.
[56] The quote from Terence (Heauton Timoroumenos, 25) is part of the motto in Wittig's essay Homo
Sum in the English version of her theoretical essays. (Cf. Monique Wittig. The Straight Mind and Other Essays, op. cit., p. 46.) The French
edition quotes Terence in French translation.
[57] Monique Wittig. "Les Tchiches et les Tchouches." In: Monique Wittig. Paris-la-politique et
autres histoires, op. cit., p. 129.
[58] Monique Wittig. The Straight Mind and Other Essays, op. cit., p. 12.
[59] Monique Wittig. The Straight Mind and Other Essays, op. cit., p. 16.
[60] Monique Wittig. The Straight Mind and Other Essays, op. cit., p. 15.
[61] Monique Wittig. "Paradigm." In: George Stambolian and Elaine Marks. Homosexualities and
French Literature,
op. cit., p. 117. [The French original runs: "Le lesbianisme ouvre sur
une autre dimension de l'humain [...]." (Monique Wittig.
La pensée straight, op. cit., p. 105.)]
[62] Monique Wittig. The Straight Mind and Other Essays, op. cit., p. 16.
[63] Monique Wittig. The Straight Mind and Other Essays, op. cit., p. 17.
[64] Monique Wittig. The Straight Mind and Other Essays, op. cit., p. 52.
[65] Monique Wittig. The Straight Mind and Other Essays, op. cit., p. 53.
[66] Monique Wittig. The Straight Mind and Other Essays, op. cit., p. 53.
[67] Monique Wittig. The Straight Mind and Other Essays, op. cit., p. 43.
[68] Monique Wittig. The Straight Mind and Other Essays, op. cit., p. 53.
[69] Monique Wittig. The Straight Mind and Other Essays, op. cit., p. 56.
[70] Monique Wittig. The Straight Mind and Other Essays, op. cit., p. 55.
[71] Monique Wittig. The Straight Mind and Other Essays, op. cit., p. 56.
[72] Monique Wittig. The Straight Mind and Other Essays, op. cit., p. 56.
[73] Monique Wittig. The Straight Mind and Other Essays, op. cit., p. 20.
[74] Monique Wittig. "Paradigm." In: George Stambolian and Elaine Marks. Homosexualities and
French Literature, op. cit., p. 119. [The French original runs: "Pour nous, il existe semble-t-il non pas un ou deux sexes mais autant de sexes
(cf. Guattari/Deleuze) qu'il y a d'individus." (Monique Wittig. La pensée straight, op. cit., pp. 107-108.)]
[75] Monique Wittig. Across the Acheron, op. cit., p. 22. ["[...] le paradis est à
l'ombre des épées et la paix au bout de la lance." (Monique Wittig. Virgile, non, op. cit., p. 26.)]
[76] Monique Wittig. The Straight Mind and Other Essays, op. cit., p. 77.
[77] Monique Wittig. The Straight Mind and Other Essays, op. cit., p. 79.
[78] Monique Wittig. The Straight Mind and Other Essays, op. cit., p. 82.
[79] Monique Wittig. The Straight Mind and Other Essays, op. cit., p. 84.
[80] Cf. Monique Wittig. The Straight Mind and Other Essays, op. cit., p. 105.
[81] Monique Wittig. The Straight Mind and Other Essays, op. cit., p. 24.
[82] Cf. Monique Wittig. The Straight Mind and Other Essays, op. cit., p. 62.
[83] Monique Wittig. The Straight Mind and Other Essays, op. cit., p. 32.
[84]
Magnus Hirschfeld (1868-1935) held similar views. For an analysis of
his treatment of the issue
of sexual individuality in the context of his "Zwischenstufenlehre"
cf.: J. Edgar Bauer. "Der Tod Adams. Geschichtsphilosophische Thesen
zur
Sexualemanzipation im Werk Magnus Hirschfelds." In: Andreas Seeck
(Hg.): Durch Wissenschaft zur Gerechtigkeit? Textsammlung zur kritischen
Rezeption des Schaffens von Magnus Hirschfeld. Münster / Hamburg / London: Lit Verlag, 2003, pp. 133-155. Reprint of: "Der Tod Adams.
Geschichtsphilosophische Thesen zur Sexualemanzipation im Werk Magnus Hirschfelds." In: 100 Jahre Schwulenbewegung.
Dokumentation einer
Vortragsreihe in der Akademie der Künste. Ausgewählt und herausgegeben
von Manfred Herzer. Berlin: Verlag rosa Winkel, 1998, pp. 15-45; and
J. Edgar Bauer. "'43 046 721 Sexualtypen.' Anmerkungen zu Magnus
Hirschfelds Zwischenstufenlehre und der Unendlichkeit der
Geschlechter." In:
Capri. Herausgegeben vom Schwulen Museum. Redaktion: Manfred Herzer. Berlin: No. 33, Dezember 2002, pp. 23-30.
[85] Monique Wittig. Les Guérillères, op. cit., p. 127.
[86]Monique Wittig. Les Guérillères, op. cit., p. 128.
[87] Cf. Antonin Artaud. POUR EN FINIR AVEC LE JUGEMENT DE DIEU. In: Antonin Artaud.
Oeuvres complètes, Tome XIII. Paris: Gallimard, 1974, p. 86:
"[...] une armée d'hommes / descendue d'une croix, / où dieu croyait
l'avoir depuis longtemps clouée, / s'est révoltée, / et, bardée de fer,
/ de sang, / de feu, et d'ossements, / avance,
invectivant l'Invisible / afin d'y finir le JUGEMENT DE DIEU." For an
analysis of the complexities of this issue cf.: J. Edgar Bauer.
"Antonin Artaud:
Nature, the Apocalypse, and van Gogh's Art." A paper presented at The
1997 CESNUR International Conference, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam,
Netherlands.
In: Torino: Website of CESNUR , The Center for Studies on New Religions: www.cesnur.org/2003/bauer_artaud.htm, 2003.
[88] Monique Wittig. Les Guérillères, op. cit., p. 142.
[89] Cf. Monique Wittig. "Quelques remarques sur Les Guérillères." In: Monique
Wittig. La Pensée straight, op. cit., p. 145: "Pour en revenir au texte matriciel, à cette section des
Guérillères écrite en premier, elle devient la dernière partie du texte, la fin textuelle du livre. Mais
chronologiquement elle constitue le commencement de l'action et le début du récit parce que le livre est écrit à l'envers.
Il faut donc aussi le lire à l'envers, d'où l'importance du cercle comme modus operandi (il tourne sur lui-même pour rejoindre le
début du texte)."
[90] Monique Wittig. Les Guérillères, op. cit., p. 142.
[91] Monique Wittig. "Quelques remarques sur Les Guérillères." In: Monique
Wittig. La Pensée straight, op. cit., p. 147: "déesses de papier." Translation by the author.
[92] Monique Wittig and Sande Zeig. Lesbian Peoples. Materials for a Dictionary, op. cit., p.
33. [No corresponding entry for "Clitoris" in the French version.]. A similar formulation can also be found in: Anne Koedt. The Myth of the Vaginal
Orgasm [originally published in 1970] (Chapter on: "Anatomical Evidence."). In: The CWLU Herstory Website. Archive. www.cwluherstory.com/CWLUArchive/vaginalmyth.html. [Read on July 26, 2004.] Koedt's sentence
runs: "The clitoris has no other function than that of sexual pleasure."
[93] Thomas Laqueur. Making Sex. Body and Gender from the Greeks to Freud.
Cambridge,
Massachusetts / London, England: Harvard University Press, 1992, p.
152. Laqueur specifies: "In the one sex model, dominant in anatomical
thinking for
two thousand years, woman was understood as man inverted: the uterus
was the female scrotum, the ovaries were testicles, the vulva was a
foreskin, and
the vagina was a penis." (p. 236) This model of isomorphic
equivalents of male and female sexual organs goes back to Galen, who
contended that
"women were essentially men in whom a lack of vital heat -- of
perfection -- had resulted in the retention, inside, of structures that
in the male are
visible without." (p. 4) In this connection cf. Sándor Ferenczi's brief
account of "Ein analer 'Hohlpenis' bei der Frau" included in his
article: "Erfahrungen und Beispiele aus der analytischen Praxis." In:
S[ándor] Ferenczi. Bausteine zur Psychoanalyse. Band III: Arbeiten aus
den Jahren 1908-1933. Zweite, unveränderte Auflage. Bern und Stuttgart: Verlag Hans Huber, 1964, p. 56.
[94] Cf. Beatriz Preciado. "Gare à la gouine garou! ou Comment se faire un corps queer
à partir de la pensée straight." In: Marie-Hélène Bourcier et Suzette Robichon. Parce que les lesbiennes ne sont
pas des femmes... Autour de l'oeuvre politique, théorique et littéraire de Monique Wittig. Actes du colloque des 16-17 juin 2001,
Columbia University, Paris. Paris: Éditions Gaies et Lesbiennes, 2002, pp. 181, 205.
[95] Cf. Leo Bersani. Homos. Cambridge, Massachusetts / London, England: Harvard University
Press, 1995, p. 45.
--------------------
*)
J. Edgar Bauer, Ph.D. University appointments in Berlin, Edinburgh,
Heidelberg, Jerusalem, Kiel, Lima, Paris, Stuttgart, Tübingen and Ulm.
Writer. Publications in the areas of philosophy, gender studies,
contemporary religious thought and the history of psychoanalysis. Most
recent
publication: "On the Nameless Love and Infinite Sexualities: John Henry
Mackay, Magnus Hirshfeld and the Origins of the Sexual Emancipation
Movement."
In: Journal of Homosexuality. John P. De Cecco, editor. The Haworth Press, Binghamton, New York, 2005, pp. 1-26.
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