Monique Wittig Quotes & Sayings

The bearers of fables are very welcome. — Monique Wittig

The class struggle is precisely that which resolves the contradictions between two opposed classes by abolishing them at the same time that it constitutes and reveals them as classes. — Monique Wittig

I refuse to pronounce the names of possession and nonpossession. — Monique Wittig

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

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

Language casts sheaves of reality upon the social body, stamping it and violently shaping it. — Monique Wittig

The dictionary is, however, only a rough draft. — Monique Wittig

Despite all the evils they wished to crush me with/
I remain as steady as the three-legged cauldron. — Monique Wittig

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

They say that oppression engenders hate. They are heard on all sides crying hate hate. — Monique Wittig

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

They say that there is no reality before it has been given shape by words rules regulations. They say that in what concerns them everything has to be remade starting from basic principles. They say that in the first place the vocabulary of every language is to be examined, modified, turned upside down, that every word must be screened. — Monique Wittig

Men are not born with a faculty for the universal and ... women are not reduced at birth to the particular. The universal has been, and is continually, at every moment, appropriated by men. It does not happen by magic, it must be done. It is an act, a criminal act, perpetrated by one class against another. It is an act carried out at the level of concepts, philosophy, politics. — Monique Wittig

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

There is no 'feminine writing' ... and one makes a mistake is using and giving currency to this expression. — Monique Wittig

A materialist feminist approach to women's oppression destroys the idea that women are a 'natural group' ... What the analysis accomplishes on the level of ideas, practice makes actual at the level of facts: by its very existence, lesbian society destroys the artificial (social) fact constituting women as a 'natural group.' A lesbian society pragmatically reveals that the division from men of which women have been the object is a political one ... — Monique Wittig

Today, together, let us repeat as our slogan that all trace of violence must disappear from this earth, then the sun will be honey-colored and music good to hear. — Monique Wittig

Not only do we naturalize history, but also consequently we naturalize the social phenomena which express our oppression, making change impossible — Monique Wittig

Frankly, [the definition of woman] is a problem that the lesbians do not have because of a change of perspective. 'Woman' has meaning only in heterosexual systems of thought and heterosexual, economic systems. Lesbians are not women. — Monique Wittig

One is a writer, or one is not. — Monique Wittig

It is oppression that creates sex and not the contrary. The contrary would be to say that sex creates oppression, or to say that the cause (origin) of oppression is to be found in sex itself, in a natural division of the sexes preexisting (or outside of) society. — Monique Wittig

I am with fire between my teeth and still nothing but my blank page. — 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 ... 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 basic agreement between human beings, indeed what makes them human and makes them social, is language. — Monique Wittig

The category of sex is the political category that founds society as heterosexual. — Monique Wittig

I feel a near passion for intelligence at grips with itself and not letting go. — Monique Wittig