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Monique Wittig
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“I refuse to pronounce the names of possession and nonpossession.”
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“I feel a near passion for intelligence at grips with itself and not letting go.”
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“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.”
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“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.”
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“The basic agreement between human beings, indeed what makes them human and makes them social, is language.”
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“... there is no 'feminine writing' ... and one makes a mistake is using and giving currency to this expression.”
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“... 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.”
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“Language casts sheaves of reality upon the social body, stamping it and violently shaping it.”
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“The dictionary is, however, only a rough draft.”
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“They say that oppression engenders hate. They are heard on all sides crying hate hate.”
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“Despite all the evils they wished to crush me with / I remain as steady as the three-legged cauldron.”
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“The bearers of fables are very welcome.”
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“Today, together, let us repeat as our slogan that all trace of violence must disappear from this earth, then the sun will be honey-coloured and music good to hear.”
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“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.”
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“They say that they foster disorder in all its forms. Confusion troubles violent debates disarray upsets disturbances incoherences irregularities divergences complications disagreements discords clashes polemics discussions contentions brawls disputes conflicts routs débâcles cataclysms disturbances quarrels agitation turbulence conflagrations chaos anarchy.”
Monique Wittig, French writer, social theorist
(1944 - 2003)