Monique Wittig

Monique Wittig (1935 - 2003) was a novelist and feminist theorician and French Lesbienne , whose work marked much the feminist movement and the theories of going beyond of the kind.

Biography

Born in 1935 with Dannemarie in the Haut-Rhin (France), Monique Wittig was one of the founders of the Liberation movement of the women. August 26th 1970, in company of some women, it deposited with the Triumphal arch a sheaf with the woman of the unknown soldier - event considered as the gesture founder of the feminist movement in France.

In 1971, one found it with the red Gouines, first lesbian group made up with Paris. It also took part in the Féministes Revolutionists.

Supported by Marguerite Duras, its first book, Opoponax receives the Price médicis. Its following literary works do not pass unperceived: the body lesbian , the guerillères …

In 1976, it leaves Paris for the the United States, where it taught in many universities, in particular at the University of Tucson where it gave its latest quotations inter alia, at the department of the Studies on the Women, before dying on January 3rd 2003 with Tucson (Arizona, the United States).

Theories

Monique Wittig autoproclame “radical Lesbian”, formula which indicates a sexual preference as much as a choice Politique. This choice is found in its books, and Monique Wittig will put nothing any more in scene but women. To avoid any confusion, it specifies: “There is no female literature for me, that does not exist. In literature, I do not separate the women from the men. One is writer, or not. One is in a mental space where the sex is not determining. It is necessary well that a space of freedom is had. The language allows it. It is a question of building an idea of the neutral which would escape sexual”.

Theorician of the Feminism materialist, it denounces the myth of “the woman”, blames the Hétérosexualité like political regime, bases of a social contract to which the lesbians refuse to subject themselves: “The woman has direction only in the systems of thought and the economic systems heterosexuals. The lesbians are not women” in 1978.

That must be included/understood in the direction where, for it, the category “woman” was created by and for the hétérosexuelle-male domination and which consequently, a woman who does not answer the criteria of " féminité" dictated by the heteronormativity and which is not subjected to the " homme" is not a woman but a lesbian. Wittig invites all the women thus to become " lesbiennes" , the word given that from a political point of view, for a stamping from the class woman, and either from the point of view of the sexual orientation.

Monique Wittig develops a critic of the Marxisme (which blocks the feminist fight), but also a critic of the feminism (which does not call into question the dogma heterosexual), to lead to a critic of the dogma heterosexual, carried by the “thought straight ”.

Through these criticisms, Wittig preaches a strong position universalist. The advent of the individual subject and the release of the desire require the abolition of the categories of sex.

Works

See too

Random links:Iaroslav the Wise one | Petit-Croix | Cancé | Wängi | Manuscript of Leyde | Dionysios_Solomos