Monique Wittig > Quotes

“There was a time when you were not a slave, remember that. You walked alone, full of laughter, you bathed bare-bellied. You say you have lost all recollection of it, remember . . . You say there are no words to describe this time, you say it does not exist. But remember. Make an effort to remember. Or, failing that, invent.”
― Monique Wittig, Les Guérillères

“... I am with fire between my teeth and still nothing but my blank page.”
― Monique Wittig

“It is quite possible for a work of literature to operate as a war machine upon its epoch.”
― Monique Wittig

“There was a time when you were not a slave, remember that. You walked alone, full of laughter, you bathed bare-bellied. You say you have lost all recollection of it, remember. The wild roses flower in the woods. Your hand is torn on the bushes gathering the mulberries and strawberries you refresh yourself with. You run to catch the young hares you flay with stones from the rocks to cut them up and eat all hot and bleeding. You know how to avoid meeting a bear on the track. You know the winter fear when you hear the wolves gathering. But you can remain seated for hours in the treetops to await morning. You say there are no words to describe this time, you say it does not exist. But remember. Make an effort to remember. Or, failing that, invent.”
― Monique Wittig, Les Guérillères

“Despite all the evils they wished to crush me with/
I remain as steady as the three-legged cauldron.”
― Monique Wittig, Les Guérillères

“The women say that they could not eat hare veal or fowl, they say that they could not eat animals, but man, yes, they may. He says to them throwing his head back with pride, poor wretches of women, if you eat him who will go to work in the fields, who will produce food consumer goods, who will make the aeroplanes, who will pilot them, who will provide the spermatozoa, who will write the books, who in fact will govern? Then the women laugh, baring their teeth to the fullest extent.”
― Monique Wittig, Les Guérillères

“A text by a minority writer is effective only if it succeeds in making the minority point of view universal. ('The Universal and the Particular')" ... In claiming the lesbian point of view as universal, she overturns the concepts to which we are accustomed. For up to this point, minority writers had to add "the universal" to their points of view if they wished to attain the unquestioned universality of the dominant class. Gay men, for example, have always defined themselves as a minority and never questioned, despite their transgression, the dominant choice. This is why gay culture has always had a fairly wide audience.
[From the Foreword "Changing the Point of View" by Louise Turcotte]”
― Monique Wittig, The Straight Mind: And Other Essays

“The ‘I’ [Je] who writes is alien to her own writing at every word because this ‘I’ uses a language that is alien to her; this ‘I’ [Je] experiences what is alien to her since this ‘I’ [Je] cannot be un ecrivain. J/e poses the ideological and historical question of feminine subjects.”
― Monique Wittig, The Lesbian Body

“Lesbian is the only concept I know of which is beyond the categories of sex (woman and man), because the designated subject (lesbian) is not a woman, either economically, or politically, or ideologically. For what makes a woman is a specific relationship to a man, a relationship which we have previously called servitude, a relation which lesbians escape by refusing to become or stay heterosexual.”
― Monique Wittig, One Is Not Born a Woman

“One only has to read interviews with outstanding women to hear them apologizing”
― Monique Wittig, The Straight Mind: And Other Essays

“For there is no sex. There is but sex that is oppressed and sex that oppresses. It is oppression that creates sex and not the contrary.”
― Monique Wittig, The Straight Mind: And Other Essays

“There was a time you when you were not a slave, remember that. You walked alone, full of laughter, you bathed bare-bellied. You say you have lost all recollection of it, remember... You say there are no words to describe this time, you say it does not exist. But remember. Make an effort to remember. Or, failing that, invent.”
― Monique Wittig

“The refusal to become (or to remain) heterosexual always meant to refuse to become a man or a woman, consciously or not.”
― Monique Wittig, The Straight Mind: And Other Essays

“C'est l'oppression qui crée le sexe et non l'inverse.”
― Monique Wittig, The Straight Mind: And Other Essays

“Elles disent, malheureuse, ils t'ont chassée du monde des signes, et cependant ils t'ont donné des noms, ils t'ont appelée esclave, toi malheureuse esclave. Comme des maîtres ils ont exercé leur droit de maître. Ils écrivent de ce droit de donner des noms qu'il va si loin que l'on peut considérer l'origine du langage comme un acte d'autorité émanant de ceux qui dominent. Ainsi ils disent qu'ils ont dit, ceci est telle ou telle chose, ils ont attaché à un objet et à un fait tel vocable et par là ils se le sont pour ainsi dire appropriés. Elles disent, ce faisant ils ont gueulé hurlé de toutes leurs forces pour te réduire au silence. Elles disent, le langage que tu parles t'empoisonne la glotte la langue le palais les lèvres. Elles disent le langage que tu parles est fait de mots qui te tuent. Elles disent, le langage que tu parles est fait de signes qui à proprement parler désignent ce qu'ils se sont appropriés. Ce sur quoi ils n'ont pas mis la main, ce sur quoi ils n'ont pas fondu comme des rapaces aux yeux multiples, cela n'apparaît pas dans le langage que tu parles. Cela se manifeste juste dans l'intervalle que les maîtres n'ont pas pu combler avec leurs mots de propriétaires et de possesseurs, cela peut se chercher dans la lacune, dans tout ce qui n'est pas la continuité de leurs discours, dans le zéro, le O, le cercle parfait que tu inventes pour les emprisonner et pour les vaincre.”
― Monique Wittig, Les Guérillères

“Dans la mesure où la femme devient réalité pour un individu uniquement en relation avec un individu de la classe opposée - les hommes - et en particulier dans le mariage, les lesbiennes, parce qu'elles n'entrent pas dans cette catégorie, ne sont pas des "femmes".”
― Monique Wittig, The Straight Mind: And Other Essays

“One is a writer, or one is not.”
― Monique Wittig

“They say, hell, let the earth become a vast hell destroying killing and setting fire to the buildings of men, to theatres, national assemblies, to museums, libraries, prisons, psychiatric hospitals, old and new, from which they free the slaves.”
― Monique Wittig, Les Guérillères

“La conscience de l'oppression n'est pas seulement une réaction (une lutte) contre l'oppression. C'est une totale réévaluation conceptuelle du monde social.”
― Monique Wittig, The Straight Mind: And Other Essays

“What does "feminist" mean? Feminist is formed with the word "femme," "woman," and means: someone who fights for women. For many of us it means someone who fights for women as a class and for the disappearance of this class. For many others it means someone who fight for woman and her defense – for the myth, then, and its reenforcement.”
― Monique Wittig, The Straight Mind: And Other Essays

“L'hétérosexualité allait tellement de soi qu'elle n'avait pas de nom [par le passé]. C'est la norme sociale. C'est le contrat social. C'est un régime politique.”
― Monique Wittig, The Straight Mind: And Other Essays

“The women say that they perceive their bodies in their entirety. They say that they do not favour any of its parts on the grounds that it was formerly a forbidden object. They say that they do not want to become prisoners of their own ideology. They say that they did not garner and develop the symbols that were necessary to them at an earlier period to demonstrate their strength.”
― Monique Wittig, Les Guérillères

“The women say that it may be that the feminaries have fulfilled their function. They say they have no means of knowing. They say that thoroughly indoctrinated as they are with ancient texts no longer to hand, these seem to them outdated. All they can do to avoid being encumbered with useless knowledge is to heap them up in the squares and set fire to them. That would be an excuse for celebrations.”
― Monique Wittig, Les Guérillères

“This is impossible and one feature of lesbian oppression consists precisely of making women out of reach for us since women belong to men.”
― Monique Wittig, One Is Not Born a Woman

“There is no possible fight for someone deprived of an identity, no internal motivation for fighting, since, although I can fight only with others, first I fight for myself.”
― Monique Wittig, The Straight Mind: And Other Essays

“On peut seulement noter que l'hétérosexualité n'est pas "naturelle", pas plus qu'elle n'est la seule sexualité, la sexualité universelle. L'hétérosexualité est une construction culturelle qui justifie le système entier de la domination sociale fondé sur la fonction de la reproduction obligatoire pour les femmes et sur l'appropriation de cette reproduction.”
― Monique Wittig

“They shake their hair like the bacchantes who love to agitate their thyrsi.”
― Monique Wittig, Les Guérillères

“Elles disent, n'est-ce pas magnifique en vérité? Les vases sont debout, les potiches ont attrapé des jambes. Les vases sacrés sont en marche. Elles disent, la pente des collines ne va-t-elle pas repousser leur assaut? Elles disent, les vases désormais vides de semence resserrent leurs flancs. Ils se déplacent lentement d'abord puis de plus en plus vite. Elles disent, c'est le sacrilège, la violation de tous les règlements. Les vases enterrés jusqu'au col et réceptacles des objets les plus divers, spermatozoïdes humains pièces de monnaie fleurs terre messages, elles disent qu'ils se déplacent, lentement d'abord puis de plus en plus vite. A qui demande, pourquoi ces excès? Ne doivent-ils pas avoir la violence en dégoût? Leur constitution n'est-elle pas fragile et dès le premier assaut ne se briseront-ils pas s'ils ne sont pas déjà en miettes pour s'être entrechoqués? Elles disent, écoutez, écoutez, elles crient évohé, évohé, en sautant comme des jeunes chevaux sur les bords de l'Eurotas. En frappant la terre, elles accélèrent leurs mouvements.”
― Monique Wittig, Les Guérillères

“Et vivre en société c'est vivre en hétérosexualité.”
― Monique Wittig

“Elles disent, si je m'approprie le monde, que ce soit pour m'en déposséder aussitôt, que ce soit pour créer des rapports nouveaux entre moi et le monde.”
― Monique Wittig, Les Guérillères