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Plastic Actions: Linguistic Strategies and Le Corps lesbien Author(s): Karin Cope Source: Hypatia, Vol. 6, No. 3, Feminism and the Body (Autumn, 1991), pp. 74-96 Published by: Blackwell Publishing on behalf of Hypatia, Inc. Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3809840 . Accessed: 24/09/2011 14:12
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PlasticActions:Linguistic Strategies lesbien1 andLeCorps

KARIN COPE

andfeminist In bothherfictionandheressayson writing theory, Monique Wittig traditional themes and genresas well as recenttheories takesup and redeploys of in order in andthrough andwriting thedominant toforcechange literature, language, Shehasannounced herproject as onewhich andlanguage. would ofthought categories the and sex" "doaway withthecategory of by way of reconfiguring grammatically I order. examine the heterosexual specific linguistic enforced compulsory conceptually thisabolition mechanisms of "sex"and thepolitical/ by whichWittigaccomplishes of language. consequences of her"lesbianization" Throughlinguistic philosophical/ what the I to aim out, of The Lesbian Body as a politicalimportance suggest is. and written corpus diversified

I. In YourOther Ear EAR This otherwiseneglected organbecamethe object of a great deal of attention in the age of glory,when it was given the role of lesbians.It wasentirelyby which it playsin the reproduction chance that at one of the ancient great assembliesone lover among those who call themselves red dyke-queens [gouines rouges]2 by puremodestytossedout the celebrated"bythe ear" responseto the question,"howdo lesbianpeoples reproduce?" Thus it is that little lesbiansare born todayby ear in the ear. (Wittigand Zeig 1976, 189;my translation)

vol. 6, no. 3 (Fall 1991) ? by KarinCope Hypatia

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'becominga woman is a con but not a con/struction it's a demolition' whisperedE. C. R. Saidthandone. (Fallon 1989, 175) Tonguesare strange, Signs say nothing. The falcon who spoke clear To Canacee cries gibberishto coarsenedears. Plath 1981, 100) (From"Incommunicado," There is a chance that this body will appearto be missingsome parts.If it is The LesbianBody, do you have ears to hear?And if you hear, what will happen?Certainly if lesbiansreproduceby ear and you listen, there is some risk of your de-formation.(Isn't that what they've alwaystold you?Look out or you'llturninto one of them, not a womanbut a victim of the lesbianplague, a monster,"coveredwith hairfromhead to foot... [with]scaleson her chest" [Wittig 1985b, 17-18/15].)3What are the consequencesof being or becoming a woman (or not a woman), if "becominga woman is a con"?What is the in the workof MoniqueWittig? and "lesbians" relationshipbetween "women" Is the body of Wittig'sThe Lesbian a woman's Body body or something else? What is at stake in this distinction which Wittig so often makes between "lesbian" and "woman"?4 Is it a distinction that can hold? This paper will follow Wittig's strategyof suspending the more or less ontological determinationof what a "lesbianbody"is in favor of a discovery of how a LesbianBodycan be written. By suspendingor pushing to one side of linguisticpractice, questionsof being or identity in favorof considerations how does Wittig make of her Lesbian a war machine, a critical force of Body What are the gravepolitical consequence? implicationsof such an insistence on the efficacyof linguisticchange ratherthan structures of social identification and interactionfor feminist theoryand feministpractice? In all of her writing,Wittig deployswhat we may call, borrowing fromthe a of an and situationists, strategy "detoumement,"5 appropriation redeployment as "lesbian"literatureof the old war horses of Westernculture.These range from accounts of the ancient Egyptiansand Greeks, Christological accounts,the worksof Ovid, Petrarch,Dante, Cervantes,and Sceve, to those of Baudelaire,Genet, Proust, Barthes,Benveniste, Bakhtin, Deleuze, LeviStrauss,Beauvoir,and others. In "One is Not Borna Woman,"Wittig (1981) and redeploysBeauvoir's assertionthat women "arenot bor, but appropriates ratherbecome." In Wittig's hands, Beauvoir's utterance becomes a weapon against compulsoryheterosexuality-certainly a possible usage, but not an work.What Wittig immediatelyobviousone within the context of Beauvoir's makes explicit is that if one is not bor a woman but becomes one in and through socio-culturalpractices,then every movement and moment of the

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shaping or manufactureof any "woman" (or "man," for that matter) is accomplished by somekind of ruseandcanonlybecountered byanother, different ruse. While the first (patriarchal)ruse operates in a deceptive fashion, the second (feminist) counter-ruse playsupon an olderetymologicalsense-from the French ruser,to force out of place, to drive back or down, itself derived to refuse.Wittig'ssecond ruse is thus more primary, from the Latin recusare, andoperatesas a resistanceto beingovertakenby another,derivativeandmore deceptiveruse.This combativerusewhich Wittig reintroduces by wayof strict a practiceof the detoumement attentionto languageI will call "lesbianization,"6 andlanguageof heterosexuality' of the presumptions usedas a strategicweapon in the battle for the liberationof "women" fromthe oppressions and omissions horse"wasa bombof sorts,an implosion of dyadiclogic.Justas the first"Trojan of Greekswithin the city of Troy,so Wittig'spracticeof lesbianization-the mechanismsof which this paperwill examine-aims to decimatewhat we may call patriarchalreasoning internally,to turn over and make "lesbian"the universalizing capacitiesof thoughtand language.If, as an authorWittig often has been the "specificnatureof the oppression cites suggests,"appropriation" of women"(Guillaumin1981, 5), then reappropriation and deflection,detournementof the designativeand appropriative powersof thought and language arewhat Wittig calls the materialist meansof bringingto light and combating that is "male" the (mis)appropriativeness privilege. As far as Wittig is concerned, then, the "con" of the "construction" of women is not merely an easy Latinate copulative (as in con-junction"women" with "men")but the perfectlocus for a demolition.This demolition is not of women (or men) per se but of a philosophical,economic, political, and social apparatusthat unites women and men by dividing them. For, accordingto the materialistfeminist view, not only does the productionof women make them conjunct with men, but it makes them into cons, cunts, unlike men, figuresof intransigent"pure" and "natural" reproductive biology. Thus, when a woman is spoken of, you must also hear her annexation, her conjunction with a man, wo-man, by way of the partitive-not man.7To change this orderin which one may shift only between "with-"and "not-"a man is no mere wordplaybut rather,Wittig suggests,a question of the very possibilityof historical, political-which is to say linguistic or discursivechange.8It is to call for and to enact such change that Wittig has made the activity of lesbianizationinto a literarywarmachine. In her article "The TrojanHorse,"Wittig explainshow this lesbianization worksas a political and linguisticact: Any importantworkis like the TrojanHorseat the time it is produced. Any workwith a new formoperatesas a warmachine, becauseits design and its goal is to pulverizethe old formsand formalconventions. It is alwaysproducedin hostile territory.

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And the stranger it appears, the unassimilable, nonconforming, it will take for the TrojanHorseto be accepted.Eventulonger ally it is adopted,and even if slowly,it will eventuallyworklike a mine. It will sap and blast out the ground where it was planted.... One of the best examplesof a war machine with a delayed effect is Proust's work.At firsteverybodythought it was only a romana clef and a minute descriptionof Parisianhigh society.... Then in a second stage they had to change aroundthe women'sandmen'snames,since mostof the womenin the book were in realitymen. They thereforehad to take in the fact that a good manyof the characters werehomosexual... [andif the characters normal were]which of them ... in their apparently world ... was one, how many of them were, [were]they all[?] du temps it'sdone. Prousthas By the end of A la recherche perdu, succeededin turningthe "real" worldinto a homo-sexual-only world. (Wittig 1984, 45, 49) Whether or not we agreewith Wittig'scharacterization of the reception of A larecherche, certainlyshe has identifiedand alignedher own workwith Proust's Indeed,we may read Wittig's impressiveact of literary"homosexualization." figure of the Trojanhorse as an elaboratelycondensed allegoricaljoke, an internalized,silent, and hidden "mine."Greek(as in "Greeklove" or homosexuality) is everywhereand will be victorious,even if it is not called by its own but by the Latin (paternal,colonizing) name, "Trojan." The Greek war machine will, in the end, (re)appropriate even the names that were used againstit.9 Wittig'suse of the figureof the Trojanhorseis thusan act of and an argument for a combative strategy that exploits the phagocytic aspect of dominant culture-the way in which it swallows or takes in most "foreignobjects," and ignoring them. The including direct oppositions,diffusing,suppressing, figureof the Trojanhorse disguisesan opposition to dominant languageand culture, wraps it in a more or less familiarobject, so that by the time the apparentlyrecognizablehorse is swallowed,the "whole horse"-including a Greekarmy-has been swallowed. We maysaythat the "takingin"of the horse is the fatal gestureby which dominantcultureis itself taken in; once the horse is admitted to the city, what seemed to be safely "outside"-a containable particularor "minor"point of view-is instead unavoidable, everywhere, insideandoutside,universalized. By meansof suchclassicalfigurative vehicles, the culturaland political horizon Wittig aims "to change the textual reality," within which her texts are inscribed(Wittig 1983, 65). Thus, following the universalizing practicesof such authorsas DjunaBarnesand MarcelProust,for whom homosexuality is not just a theme or an aberrantdiversion for a

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characteror two, Wittig sets out to makethe speakinglesbiansubjectnot only central to her workbut ineluctableas well. All other subjectivityis swept up in its wake, so that in the novels of MoniqueWittig, if there is a subject it is necessarilya lesbiansubject. We mustbe carefulhow we think aboutthis subject,however,for as we will see, Wittig'slesbiansubject,while universal,is not a seamlesswhole, the One of patriarchalmale "major" subjectivity.Rather, as a subject, and the only of possiblesubject Wittig'sdiscourse,the lesbian "I"is a "minor" subjectivity, and fractured. This is, of course,the differencethat the universalfragmentary ization of a "minoritysubject"makes:unlike the One subject of dominant discourse,it does not have to postureas fullyunivocal and intentional in order to claim political power or efficacy. Or, as Wittig writes, "[T]he minority subject is not self-centeredas is the straightsubject.... This [involves] a constantshiftingwhich, when the text is read,producesan out-of-the-comer(Wittig 1983, 65). of-the-eye perception;the text worksthroughfracturing" The power of minority subjectivitycomes from multiplying sites of difference-so that even a "major" subject is revealed to be differentfrom itself, and as in the so-called death of the subfractured, minoritized, fragmentary opinion, "the death of the subject"does ject.10 Contraryto an all-too-popular of subjectivityaltogetherbut the abandonment not mean the disappearance of the myth of the supreme,fully present, fully conscious, fully intentional, universalsubject as the only figureof subjectivity.When thesubject is dead, remain to write and be writsubjects,however fragmentedand fragmentary, ten.11 Or, as Wittig describesthis scenario: "Man"has lost ground to such an extent that he is barely asthe subjectof discourse. acknowledged Todaythey areasking: what is thesubject?In the generaldebacle which has followed the calling of meaninginto question,there is roomforso-called minoritywritersto enter the privileged(battle) field of literature,whereattemptsat the constitutionof the subjectconfront each other. (Wittig 1983, 64) To conduct her battle, Wittig counts on the contentious possibilitiesof literary intertextuality, on the opening to minoritarian discourses and and reappropriation of that may come throughthe reworking "subjectivities" dominantthemes, figures,lexicons, grammars, genres,myths. Forwhen one becomes a locutor,when one saysI and, in so language as a whole, proceeding from doing, reappropriates oneself alone, with the tremendouspower to use all language, it is then and there, accordingto linguists and philosophers, that there occursthe supremeact of subjectivity,the advent of

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subjectivityinto consciousness.It is when startingto speakthat one becomes I. (Wittig 1985a, 6) and a system But,Wittig goes on to argue,gender,"asan element of language" of differentialmarksseparating"women"from the universalsubject "man," works"to annul"the powerof languagefor women or any other speakerwho or erasehim- or herself:in must, in orderto speak,particularize, marginalize, effect, in dominantdiscoursea minorityspeakercan only say,"Isay I, but I am not (one who may say) I." Such a bind, a result of the assimilationof all subjectivityto the One "man,"makesthe full exercise of language,and thus or minorityspeaker:he subjectivity,an impossibleactivity for the "marked" or she is constitutedas "an impossiblebeing ... a being that does not exist... an ontological joke" (Wittig 1985a, 6).12As a hierarchicalsystemthat reinforces the particularand thus non-universaldifference of "women"in language, "gendermust be destroyed"(Wittig 1985a, 6). This cannot be done, of one genderover the accordingto Wittig, by merelyreversingthe supremacy in and the same old other,therebyleaving place systems mythsof domination.13 one must the and abstractcapabilities Rather, (re)appropriate universalizing of languagefor particularuses and points of view. One must take on all of languagein orderto minoritizeit completely,to fracturethe possibilitythat any one claim to majority (say, "heterosexistpatriarchy")may totalize the functions of language.Thus, while genderis given in language, universalizing "the possibilityof its destructionis [also]given throughthe very exercise of the worldthroughmypoint of view language.Foreach time I sayI, I reorganize I and through abstraction lay claim to universality.This fact holds true for every locutor"(Wittig 1985a, 6). For "even abstractphilosophicalcategories act upon the real as social. Languagecasts sheaves of reality upon the social has a plastic action body,stampingit and violently shapingit.... [L]anguage upon the real"(Wittig 1985a,4, also Wittig 1989, 10). But how are we to understandthis productive"plasticaction"of language upon the real if lesbianizationas a social project seems, as yet, fully utopic? to a complaint that, as for the Wittig gives Socrates'answerin The Republic perfect city, "there is no spot on earth where it exists":"Whether it exists anywhere, or ever will exist, is no matter."Wittig continues paraphrasing Socrates,"Ifultimatelywe aredenied a new social order,which will therefore exist only in words,I will find it in myself"(Wittig 1989, 5, 11). Lesbianization is thusnot a questionof "achievingdomination"in the world,of remakingthe old "universal" subject into a new, improveduniversallesbian subject, One that could brook no oppositions. Rather, lesbianizationis a process of the and differentiation of subjectivity, of multiplekinds and occasionsof dispersal revolt againstthe statusquo. As such, it occursin and throughlanguage.It is a formof warfare, but contraryto patriarchal state regimes,lesbianization does not, for the purposesof warfare,constitute an imaginary"extra-discursive"

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region of the right over death or life. Lesbianizationis a form of discursive insurgency;it sues for legitimacy of a sort but not at the expense of other discursivemodalities. Lesbianizationdoes not aim to establish a new total poweror a "lesbian" hegemony;it is not in the businessof quellingoppositions, of controlling or subtractingfrom discoursethe numbersand sorts of things that maybe said. (This meansthat, ultimately,it is not the leastbit "politically correct.")Rather,lesbianizationmakesuse of and thematizesa multiplicative function of language: Since the time that languagehas been perceivedas material, it has been workedwordby wordby writers.This workon the level of words and of the letter reactivates words in their and in turn conferson meaningits full meaning: arrangement, in practicethis workbringsout in most cases-rather than one meaning-polysemy. (Wittig 1983, 68) is to authorize If the taskof lesbianization "lesbian" discourseas one possible discourse, then it works to make "lesbian"audible in a polysemic text. totalizing, Consequently,lesbianizationdeclareswar againstthe compulsory, character of heterosexuality and apparently extra-linguistic by meansof attention to language,by linguisticreappropriation, displacement,and redirection of dominantculturalthemes, concepts,practices,and literarytexts. The only "lesbian" insurgentto get weaponsis to captureand wayfor an "illegitimate" As is all too clear under the present redirectthe weaponsused against"her." insidious,inescapable.In order regime,both warand weaponsareparticularly to take on a regime which counts upon its own unavoidableeffects, Wittig seeks to make her practice of "lesbianization" insidious,like an odor;you've is alreadytaken it in by the time you realizeit surrounds you. Lesbianization thus not merely a battle; it is a seduction, an erotic gamble, a forceful It misappropriates againstmisappropriation, usingthe tools of love persuasion. in war and the tools of war in love. It is no accident that many feministsare when they readWittig-are they being seducedor destroyed? uncomfortable How and when would one know?Firstone has to readWittig, but by then it maybe too late. Isone everseducedwithoutbeingenlisted,or enlistedwithout What wouldit meanfora feministto use this powerratherthan beingseduced? to avoid it? They say, let those who call for a new languagefirst leam violence. They say,let those who want to change the worldfirst seize all the rifles. (Wittig 1969, 120-121/85) The rest of this paper examines how Wittig takes up and deploys her weapons, how she lesbianizesliterature,producing a lesbian textual body. Along the waywe mustask,what happensto a readerof lesbianizedliterature?

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Will (s)he be lesbianizedas well?Will you?Can you avoid it? It'snot as if you haven't been warned. II. Opening Closed I's In her introductionto Englishtranslationof TheLesbian Body,Wittig says, "I"[Je] as a genericfemininesubjectcan onlyenterby forceinto a languagewhich is foreignto it, for all that is human (masculine) is foreignto it, the humannot being feminine grammatically speakingbut he [il]or they [ils]."I"Ue]conceals the sexual of the verbalpersonswhile specifyingthem in verbal differences exchange.... [T]he "I" Ue] who writes is alien to her own writingat every wordbecausethis "I"Ue]uses a languagealien to her; this "I"Ue]experienceswhat is alien to her since this "I"Ue]cannot be "unecrivain."(Wittig 1973, 10E) What Wittig lays out in this introductionand treatsmore expansivelyin Les and The Lesbian Guerilleres Bodyis a dense complex of problemsthat emerge time language,generallyunderstoodto be ungendered,or neutral, is every inflectedor marked These areproblems gender,"thefeminine."14 by an "other" a a that to noun that, given language (which then must assigns gender every be declined by genderas well as number),appear much morereadilyin French than in English. Consequently,most of the following examples will be in French,becausein that languagethe so-calledneutralis muchmorefrequently and explicitly markedby the masculinethan it is in English.In French,then, "a writer"is not markedby a neutral indefinite pronoun but by one that is necessarilyalwaysgendered,that is, "unecrivain"is alwaysmasculine.As far as Wittig is concerned, this situation would not be improvedif we merely invented a "proper" "female" forsuch a transformation writer,"uneecrivaine," in succeeds in the feminine as the markedform only remarking gender, taking (+ e), and the masculine as the zero-degreeterm, the stem upon which all changesare built. A lesbianwriter-and by this I mean not someone who is a lesbianand writesbut someone like Wittig who writeslesbian, or lesbianizeswouldthen still be facedwith the problemof choosingbetween writingin one of two genders,therebyreinforcing the binarydistinction and naturalizing the and "feminine."'5 oppositionbetween "masculine" A writerwho lesbianizes however,explodesthe mythof masculine language, the "he-man" in "them"(ils). Wittig does this in Les (il) neutrality,exposing Guerilleres the marked termelles,a feminineplural by insistently"neutralizing" pronounthat has no equivalentin English.Ellesbecomesnot, as it is translated in English, "the women"-such a translationmisses the point entirely by stubbornlyrefeminizingelles-but an abstractand universal"them."If some "he"(il) would be one of "them"in LesGuerilleres (and there are a few), then

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"he" must be disappropriated to a certain extent, become marked,one of elles-as elle alwaysis when she becomes one of "them,"those ils. As Wittig her strategyin LesGurill/res, not only is the text abouta "totalwar," describes it also effects a waron language: The goal of [my]approach[was]not to feminizethe world,but to make the categoriesof sex obsolete in language.I, therefore, set up ellesin the text as the absolutesubjectof the world.To succeed textually,I needed to adoptsome very draconianmeasures,such as to eliminate,at least in the firsttwo parts,any he, any they-he,which always has a tendency to lurk everywhere.... [EJlles by its uniquepresence[in the text] constitutes an assault.(Wittig 1985a, 9) This assault,it seems, must be carriedout on every pronoun, for one who saysor writesa nonmasculine"I"in Frenchmay appearto be using a neutral personalpronoun, but inevitably "her"discoursewill be inflected by "her" gender. In time, "she" will give herself away, not in the pronoun but in adjectives that describe who or how "she"is. For example, if "she"says or (I am happy),she is immediatelymarked"feminine" writes,"Jesuisheureuse" -e. The uninflecteddegree-zero by the declension of the adjective,the "extra" or masculinephrasewould be "Jesuisheureux" (I am happy). (Youaremarked [Youareverybeautiful], likewise,as she, if someonesaysto you, "Tues tresbelle" whereas the "unmarked" form is "Tu es tres beau,"a difference we could exacerbateby a "sexed"translation:"Youare very handsome.") TheLesbian warfare Bodywageslinguisticguerrilla by exposing the fracture Je, the way in which its (masculine) already at work in the "unmarked" neutrality is bought at the price of feminine specificity,a differentiationor deviation from"the norm."Je or j/e-as Wittig writesit-is already(p)articulated,brokenup so that its neutralitycan only emergeas a partipris-this j/e cannot even be taken to be seamlesslyself-identical."J/esuis heureuse," as an utteranceof TheLesbian this meansthat Body,is not feminizedbut lesbianized; it enacts the maximaldisplacementand inflection on the words.Thus Wittig's divided j/e does not name one gender or the other or even some kind of androgyny-that would still be to operate accordingto a paradigmof sex or genderdifferentiationthat insists on a choice between (or a mixing of what be seen to be) "masculine" and "feminine."(As Wittig jokes can still "clearly" "I in The Lesbian hear them [elles] Body, singing aboutsomeone who confuses essence and appearance" [quiconfond] [Wittig 1973, 180/158].) Rather, the dividedj/e makesuse of and points to a capacityof differentiationwithin the J/e is of or belongsto no one sex or gender, universal,its persistentimpropriety. it is only ever appropriated, marked,gendered,a la lettre,in, to, and with the letter.What has been known heretoforeas the masculineis not more neutral oruniversalor less marked than the so-calledmarked or feminine. In language,

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there are only marksand remarks,inflections and deflections, versions and The propositionthat any one of a myriadof formsis theneutralis perversions. just that, a proposition, a myth, the perpetuationof the dominance of one particularversion of languageas the right, true, general, proper,universal, objective construction. The verb "to lesbianize,"then, describesa writing practicethat shiftsdiscourseawayfromsex as what determineswhat one is; it operates to fracture apparently naturalized generic distinctions (such as male/female)so that one may writeother than accordingto their ontological constraints. Wittig chooses to write on pronounsbecause they are the part of speech most available to appropriation. As the linguist Benveniste describesthem, they are "empty"words-they do not referto any nonlinguistic "thing."A pronoun is a placeholderof sorts, a substitutionin a particularsentence for some other noun or collection of nouns. As GertrudeStein describesthem in her meditations on grammar: "[T]heyof course are not really the name of anything. They representsome one but they are not its or his name. In not being his or its or her name they alreadyhave a greaterpossibilityof being something than if they were as a noun" (Stein 1967, 128). If a pronounwere a noun, the name of something, then it could only function as that thing. However,because a pronoun is not the name of some thing, but a word that operatesas a relay station or delegate for other words,it remainssomewhat ambiguous, capricious,andunfixable.Everyinstanceof the usageof a pronoun is slightlydifferent: pronounsmaybe deployedin a moreor lessregular fashion, but the words that are transportedthrough them are, in each instance, different.To the guerrillawriter,one who would "deal a blow with words" (Wittig 1984, 48) againstthe currentregime,pronounsoffera site of contact with many other words,as well as a linguisticallyrejuvenating"avoidanceof the fixation of meaning"-the way Wittig and Zeig describethe use of the wordmot (word) in their Material for a Lesbian People's Dictionary (Wittig and Zeig 1976, 174). Wittig describesThe Lesbian Bodyas "areverieabout the beautifulanalysis of the pronouns je and tu by the linguistEmileBenveniste"(Wittig 1985a, 10). According to Benveniste, what is of the greatestinterest about the first- and second-personpronouns is the way in which they function as permanently nonreferentialinvocations of the "presentinstance of discourse": What then is the realityto which I or you refers? It is solely a and this is a very strangething. I cannot "realityof discourse," be definedexcept in termsof "locution," not in termsof objects as a nominal sign is.... I can only be identifiedby the instance of discoursethat contains it and by that alone .... There is thus a combined double instance in this process:... I is "the individual who uttersthe presentinstance of discoursecontaining

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the linguistic instance I".... [T]hesepronomialformsdo not referto "reality" or to "objective" positionsin spaceor time but to the utterance, unique each time, that contains them, and thus they reflect theirproperuse ... Language has solved [the] the of discourse] and of instance [of problem speaking speaking an are ensemble that nonreferenby creating of"empty"signs tial with respectto "reality." (Benveniste 1971, 218-19) As Wittig is all too aware, the "presentinstance of discourse"is always it takes and deploysany "I"to its own ends. Thus "I"or "you," appropriative; ordigression, asan emptysign, is a site of perpetual parabasis16-atransgression and mis-addresssince it can have no a constant and continuing trespass Body,Wittig counts on the ways in permanentaddress.To write The Lesbian As we've come to which pronounsare unfixed and infinitely reappropriable. does not refer to Benveniste but his merely expect, Wittig (re)appropriates analysisand detours it, building an exemplarynovel of 110 segments, 110 between "I"and "you,"lesbian lovers. As a "presentinstances of discourse" series of "presentinstances of discourse,"a pronomialexercise, The Lesbian Bodyis at once utopic and dystopic-no-place and not-in-place. This is due to the grammatical structureand function of the pronoun"I." I that is When anyone says "I," always multiplied and thereby fractured, both as place-holder(a site-ation) and citation. When functioning temporary I say "I,"I am citing or borrowing"I."When I say "I,"it standsfor me, but if you say it, then it will stand for you. And if either of us readssomeone else's "I," (say, Wittig's), then we read that "I" in three coincident ways: as the or narrator's "voice,"as a citation that he or she makesof the "empty speaker's "I" in order to narrate, and as a possible point of identification or sign" for reappropriation you or me, the readers.When I cite Wittig's"I,"I discuss it as a linguisticobject and a narrator's voice; I alsoborrowit and writethrough it-I speakWittig's"I"(which was alreadyborrowed)as mine. The Soviet literarytheorist Bakhtin discussesthis processof the constant and reappropriation of bits of languagein termsof an extraordiappropriation In narily complex intertextuality. effect, he generalizes the substitutions effected in and throughBenveniste's"instanceof discourse" to all discourse, that the of the its mechanism of arguing "materiality" language, "plasticaction in the is its relational its illimitable real," aspect, upon substitutabilityand The of of use language cannot be reappropriability. sovereignty anyone's guaranteed. As a living socio-ideologicalconcrete thing, as heteroglot opinion, language,for the individualconsciousness,lies on the borderline betweenoneselfandthe other.The wordin language is half someone else's. It becomes "one'sown' only when the speakerpopulatesit with his [sic]own intention, his [sic]own

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the word,adaptingit to his accent, when he [sic]appropriates own semantic and [sic] expressive intention. Prior to this the worddoes not exist in a neutral moment of appropriation, and impersonallanguage(it is not, afterall, out of a dictionary that the speaker words!),butratherit exists in other getshis [sic] in other people's mouths, people's contexts, serving other intentions: it is from therethat one musttake the word people's and make it one's own. (Bakhtin 1981, 293-94) Indeed, we may question whether any word can truly become "private for what are one's own intentions and inflections but more rather property," than less "successful" citations that have somehow become naturalizedand thus apparentlyprivatized.Linguisticassimilationis always a simulation of certain"proper" What Wittigexposesin her lesbianized orslashed proportions. I is not merely a split subject,one of a doubledor duplicitousnature, or the markof a certainsexuality. She alsolaysbarethe privitivenessof appropriation, the waysin which "I"can only ever be an insufficientshelter,a lean-to, which subjectivityborrowsto call its (which is usuallyto say "his")mansion. When Wittig lesbianizes the theoriesof both Benvenisteand Bakhtin,when she cites, with her "I,"the profuseness of the "emptysign,"reappropriating, in termsof lesbian love stories,ancient myths and tales, she does no more than to take the linguistsat their word.No doubt (as we may see by the instances of a "universalhe" in Bakhtin) The Lesbian Bodywas not what they had in mind when discussing the multivocity of language. Nevertheless Wittig remainsa very faithfulreaderof the texts she detourns.For lesbianizationis not only a practice of writing but also a practice of reading, a form of cultural-linguistic exegesis. In her writing,Wittig not only borrowsfrombut the faultyuniversalistfounshows, by means of her selective appropriations, dations of a varietyof critical, scientific, and mythologicaldiscourses. As she and calling for and reads, so she writes, performingtextual transformations making transformativereaders. In other words, lesbianized texts produce lesbianizedreaders.(Don't say I didn't warn you!) Such transformations are what Wittig has in mind when she writesthat "language has a plastic action upon the real."Making"little lesbians... by ear in the ear"is a way of taking a "strictlymaterialistapproachto language." So much of culture touches on the ear, as it were, that linguistic relationshipsare concrete and privileged vehicles of sociopoliticalchange.

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III.Su cuerpo es una bocacalle17 With his venom Irresistible and bittersweet that loosener of limbs,Love reptile-like strikesme down Sappho (1958, 53) As we have seen, the lesbianized"I"is a bountiful"cite"of transgression, a playfor a subjectivitythat is not the fictionallysovereignOne. In TheLesbian characterof Body,Wittig indicates the borrowed,fractious,and fragmentary In French, this is accomplishedby a simple stroke the "I" typographically. j frome:j/e (or m frome, in the case of the dative or accusativem/e, separating m/a in the case of the genitive). English,however,presentsa problemin the reinnominative case, for the single capital letter of the "I"typographically forces the (false) sense of sovereigntyof the "I"and makes it impossibleto the "feminizing" -e (in show the subject"I,"riven and markedby its "other," English, sometimes a -y or -ess). Wittig thus marksthe English "I" of The Lesbian Bodyby emphasizingit, renderingit foreign, differentfrom the text over which it presides,an italicizedI. familiar Like Wittig'sother texts, The Lesbian Bodyworksto defamiliarize wordsand stories-I no longer looks like itself-to force a differentkind of Bodyunsettlesidentifireading.Ratherthan consolidatingthem, TheLesbian cations. Like I, "lesbian"is not something that we readily know how to Bodyit does not designate interpret.We may think we do, but in The Lesbian any one particularthing. Rather, "lesbian"becomes the mark of Wittig's practice of appropriating,opening up, and redeploying language. In The is or does changes at every turn.At best, we may Lesbian Bodywhat "lesbian" see only howit does, not what it is. In TheLesbian Body,I have a pact with you not to utter yourname, not to designateyou so that others may summonyou as well. I thus call you manynamesand enumerateall yourparts."Your" body, of The Lesbian Bodyis coincident with, specified,and "m/y"body,the "body" estrangedby the text. For the passionof The Lesbian Body,love is no cure but merely an exaceror cleavageof any"I"(or "you").In the course bationof the self-differentiation is cut up, eviscerated,and scatteredin manypieces. of passion,Le corpslesbien The book is composed of 110 fragmentsor poems, interspersed with eleven

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pagesthat enumeratein block capitalswhich fill up the page the diverseparts of "the lesbianbody."Forexample: THE JUICE THE SPITTLETHE SALIVA THE SNOT ... THE BRACHIALS THE CIRCUMFLEXES .. . THE THE DIAPHRAGMTHE PLASMA ... THE COMPLEXES VAGINA THE ANUS THESOFTPALATE THE CONNECTIVE TISSUE ... THE OESOPHAGUS THE BRAIN ... THE LAUGHS ... THE TONGUE THE OCCIPUT THE SPINE THE FLANKSTHE NAVELTHE PUBIS THE LESBIAN BODY."(Wittig 1973, 22, 64, 65, 112-13, 144, 145, 175/28, 62, 101,128, 153) Just as the I is not univocal, whole, or one, so too in The Lesbian Bodyno one bodymaybe seen. Not only the bodybutalsoanypiece of the bodyoperates as an "emptysign."Eachbit of text is resignifiedand constantlyresignifiable. This makes for a certain difficulty in reading-the words seem to hover, refusingto settle down as stable, determinatesignifiers.As a textual strategy practiced by The LesbianBody, lesbianizationis thus a differentiationand enumerationto infinity,a resistanceto the intelligibilityof a consolidationor unification.How then, if we readit, arewe to keep ourreadingfromstabilizing or reducingthe text; how are we to follow or to be faithfulto both meaning and resistancein such a projectof textual dispersal? Through the facets of m/y eyes I have no unitaryvision of your body, you are diversified,you are different, I suddenly touta coupdesindices] fromyourarms embodysignals[j//englobe of yourbelly partof a shoulderone of yourlabia,I see fragments you everywhereat once, and intoxication gripsm/e, I apprehend you in innumerablemorsels,I lose m/yselfin your geography,m/y trunk [trompe] palpatesyou searchingly, clinging to you thus by m/y six feet I begin m/y delectableone to flap m/y wings againstyourback. (Wittig 1973, 172-73/152) Not only the I'sbut also the eyes of this fragment of the Corpsarediversified. As we see from no singularocularvantagepoint, the violent rememberment of The Lesbian an archaeologicaldig that can Bodyis also a dismemberment, to the scattered of only "bring light" parts multiple burial sites by burying elsewhere:"I suddenlyswallowsignalsfromyourarmsfragments of yourbelly part of a shoulderone of yourlabia. .. ." I find you by dismembering you, by takingyou in bit by bit, makingyou a partof me and myselfother than me. Given the fragmentary textual structureof The Lesbian Body, the storyof the death, dismemberment, and reconstruction of Osirisas Wittig retells it is emblematic of both the efficacy and the failure of a desire to possess and rememberthe beloved. Wittig beginsher account by figuring"you"as Osiris,

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"the trueof speech"(Frazer 1960, 426). In accordwith traditionalaccountsof remaina dismembered Osiris,"you" corpse"whomone maynot name"(Frazer 1960,437). Ratherthan a belovedkingkilledandchoppedinto fourteenpieces Body"you"are lesbianized,and by a jealous brother,however,in The Lesbian lead m/e to yourscatteredfragments" (Wittig 1973, 86/79). I, Isis, "they [elles] "the many-named" (Frazer 1960, 443), yoursisterand lover, announcethat you arehere alive althoughcut to pieces,I search in the mud,m/y nails scrabbleat the hastily for yourfragments small stones and pebbles,I find yournose a part of yourvulva yourlabiayourclitoris,I find yourearsone tibia then the other, I assembleyou part by part, I reconstructyou, I put your eyes back in place, I appose [rapproche] the separatedskin edge to producetearsvaginaljuice saliva in the requiedge, I hurriedly site amount,I smearyou with them at all yourlacerations,I put m/y breath in your mouth, I warmyour ears your hands your breasts,I introduce all m/y air into your lungs. (Wittig 1973, 86-87/80) I write "you,"scatteredas you are, into flesh; I recite you with m/y desire. What I assembleis the first lesbian body in print that can call any name if it so desires.Froma fragmentary past I excavate it, piecing togetherits scattered parts.This lesbiantextual body is only partial,however.(Sapphois, of course, its other majoremblem, a text tor apartand lost by Savonarolaand other church fathersengaged in purging"pagan" or "deviant"classical texts from theirreclamationof the classicalcanon.) In the commemoration and enumerthese lesbianbodiesappear ation of Lecorpslesbien, underthe sign of the desire with a name (Lesbian)-the only one-but no (one) sex.18Rather than a unified One, the lesbian body is only ever dispersedand vigilant, a body or bodies that you, or I, or they may not fix in any one particularshape. (And what then is in a name?Certainlynot the identical, the self-same.) would be a logical homology Although you might think that "castration" between the other Osiris,the "one"-but in no way of singularaccount-of Egyptian mythology, and the "lesbian"Osiris, this "lesbian"Osiris is not castrated.Certainly,the mythologicalOsirisis one who, in the end, is found missingonly "his"sex-"the" missingphallus'9that Isisreplaceswith a dildo fashionedof mud and grain.However,the eleven sections of Le Corpslesbien (as opposedto the fourteenmorselsof Osiris,thirteen of which arefound) are neither all but complete nor missingany part.They function as a provisional anatomy,supplyingthe body through subtractionsand eviscerations;as an enumeration,then, the body of The Lesbian Bodycan only ever be partial.If you areOsiris,these pieces might be "your" body,but they are m/y names,m/y "thousand," names,when I, Isis, call you "many," "myriad"

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Osiris m/y most cherishedm/y most enfeebled I say that as in the past we shall succeedtogetherin makingthe little girlswho will come afterus,20 then you m/y Osirism/y most beautifulyou smile at m/e undone exhausted[epuisee]. (Wittig 1973, 87/80) To declare you alive, you, Osiris, who appearto be dead, mummified,I disembalmyou, readyou out, unwrapyoursecrets,yourcorps: I discoverthat yourskin can be lifted layerby layer,I pull, it lifts off, it coils above yourknees, I pull startingat the labia, it slides the length of the belly, fine to extreme transparency, I skin at the the uncovers the round muscles loins, pull starting and trapeziiof the back, it peels off up to the nape of the neck, I arriveunderyourhair ... I touch yourskull,I graspit with all m/y fingers,I pressit, I gather the skin over the whole of the cranial vault, I tear off the skin brutallybeneath the hair . . . (Wittig 1973, 9/17) In and of this body,you have so many names, none of them proper;your parabasis is your permanent metamorphosis-never one and the same. am never permittedto fix lesbien, Although I attributenamesto you I, Lecorps your identity by naming you-"such is the interdict you have laid on m/e" (Wittig 1973, 9/19), for it would make you a singulartarget,it would plunge you into danger.In this body I speakwith more than one mouth: I am both she who calls out and "J/esuiscellequia lesecret de tonnom [Iam she who keeps secret yourname]. I retain its syllablesbehind m/y closed mouth even while I wouldrathercry them out over the sea so that they might fall and be somberly engulfedtherein"(Wittig 1973, 147/130). There is no traceof you. Yourface yourbody [toncorps] your silhouette are lost. In your place there is a void. In m/y body there is a pressure at the level of the belly at the level of [corps] the thorax.... Becauseof them I seekyoubut withoutknowing it.... I search,I question m/yselfin the silence in the lack of traces, I question an absence so strangethat it makes a hole within m/y body.Then I know in absolutelyinfallible fashion that I am in need of you, I requireyourpresence,I seek you, I imploreyou, I summonyou to appearyou who are featureless without hands breastsbelly vulva limbs thoughts, you at the very moment when you are nothing more than a pressurean insistence within m/y body.You lie on the sea, you enter m/e by the eyes, you arrivein the air I breathe,I summon you to show yourself,I solicit you to emergefrom this non-presence which engulfsyou. Youreyes perhapsarephosphorescent, your

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lips arepale m/ymuchdesiredone [m/atresdesiree], you torment m/e with a slow love. (Wittig 1973, 31/35-36) we need one another.If I, in the writingof this Doubly,to composethis corps, book,mustdisembowelyou to find you (and still you guard yoursecret-I utter conditionsand appropriations, all of these names,partsand attributes, without ever once, "your" properand totalizingname "O radiantFelise"(Wittig 1973, 185/163)-) you firstencounterm/e in hell in a state of decay.Unnamed but amore.I am permitted wearingthe maskof Orpheusyou sing-lento me torquet to follow you out of hell "on condition that you do not turn roundto look at m/e." M/y kneecaps appearat m/y knees from which shredsof flesh fall. M/y armpitsare musty.M/y breastsare eaten away.I have a hole in m/y throat. The smell that escapes from m/e is noisome.Youdo not stopyournostrils.Youdo not exclaimwith frightwhen at a given moment m/y putrescentand half-liquid body touches the length of your bare back. Not once do you turnround,not even when I begin to howl in despairthe tears tricklingdown m/y gnawedcheeks to beg you to leave m/e in m/y tomb to brutallydescribeto you m/y decomposition.... Only there at the exit towardsthe trees and the forest do you turn to face m/e with a bound and it is true that looking into youreyes I revive with prodigiousspeed. (Wittig 1973, 9/20) If the "noisome"scent of Le corpslesbien seems dystopic it is becauseeven if it sets out, like the scent of the opoponax,a promiseof cure, it cannot on its own, in one stroke, cure all. You in all of your fragmentation,your empty are necessaryto the enterprise.What will signification,yourunpredictability you do?How will you read? Wittig'scorpsis a war machine, and the battle (corpsa corps)to which it enjoins you is endless and never pure. One coup is never enough. To build a Trojanhorseone mustalso accountforthe possibilityof being taken in by such a ruse. Or in other words, "To try to write love is to confront the muck of language"(Barthes 1978, 99). Insofaras "you"and "I"may be discursively mobilized,undoubtedly"we" will suffercontamination by other discursive will never "talkstraight" "We" mobilizations. (Bakhtin1981, 275)-not even, or especially,to each other. So "we"speakTheLesbian Body,wherein "I emit a suddencry,I make a modulation,I ululate,21 suddenlyI am become a storm, I menace you" (Wittig 1973, 163/143). It is not as if I haven't warnedyouThis corps which is not a corps(e)begins and ends in the underworld, is a shadowconsignedto un-coveringoccultation in the word.Le corpslesbien hell for its perversion-although its hell is no ordinary hell but rathera garden of delights:"In this darkadoredadornedgehenna say yourfarewells"(Wittig

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1973, 7/15). Having begunwith such farewells,you will not be the same.The materialof this corpsis discourse-yours and mine, a constantlyremotivated, heteroglot language,"one"which speaksin more than one tongue-occult, duplicitous,never quite clear. Its secret is a markof (our) textual intimacy. Even as it speaksit protects,and what it unearthsat any one level-like onyx, darkwith its parallellines of translucentcolors-may ultimatelyappearquite dense and obscure.Fromthe firsthints of its condemnationto a hell which is de-formdoes not settle, but permanently not a hell, the parabatic corpslesbien in order to be is to is composed, say, undone-decomposed ing, loves. Which composed by decomposition and enumerationof scatteredparts, yours and one can never be One. Although, nevertheothersand mine. Le corpslesbien: are there less, many.Legions.

NOTES An earlierversionof this paperwasgiven in April 1990 as a partof the Humanities Center GraduateStudent Forumat the Johns Hopkins University.I want to thank members of that audienceas well as mystudentsof the last two yearsforworkingthrough this materialwith me. I have benefittedgreatlyfromtheir questionsand comments.In like to thank BessRose, Ruth Leys,DebraKeates,Judith addition,I wouldparticularly for Hypatia for their many Butler,my sister,LisaCope, and the two anonymousreaders helpfulcriticismsand suggestions. 1. BecauseI have usedboth Wittig'sFrenchtexts and their Englishtranslations in this paper,referencesin the body of the paperwill be given by the Frenchpublication dates.Thus (Wittig 1973) refersto Le corpslesbien and TheLesbian Body,althoughthe I usedwasnot published translation until 1986.The pagenumbers given in a citationare to the Frenchedition, and the double,however,with the firstset of numbersreferring secondto the English,as in: (Wittig 1985b,17-18/15).Fullreferences formostof Wittig's worksarethusdoubleas well, and includeboth FrenchandEnglisheditionsin one entry. I have also alternatedbetween usingthe Frenchtitle, Le corpslesbien, and the English This alternation isnot informed I usedthe French title, TheLesbian Body. bysheercaprice: title when I wantedto underscore the military or moremortalaspectof the body,playing on the resonanceof corpsand corpsein English.Likewise,I usedthe Englishtitle when I wantedthe emphasisto be on the wordlesbian. 2. LesGouines (the Red Dykes)wasa groupof lesbiansformedin Francein Rouges feministsuppression 1971 to combat mainstream of lesbianvoices and issues.Monique fractures and disputes Wittig was interviewedon the questionof these lesbian/feminist Actuelin 1974, in an articleentitled "Monique by the magazine Wittig et les lesbiennes barbues" See Rosenfeld(1988, 461, 466). Lesbians). (MoniqueWittig and the Bearded 3. Wittig often allegorizes and parodiesa homophobicfear of lesbian"difference" (well exhibitedin the interviewtitle mentionedabovein note 2) bywritingout a lesbian Forexample,in LeCorps lesbien non(1985b; bodilydifference. (1973), aswell as inVirgile, translated asAcross theAcheron), she makeslesbiancharacters to have furorwings appear or feathersor scales. Section 4 of Virgile, non plays out a scene in which the lesbian in hell, saying,see, I am one of you,just protagonist, Wittig, stripsdown in a laundromat

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a torso, a belly, legs and the rest. So I have like you, "at any rate with two shoulders, with personsof my own sex, nothing specialto exhibit, only perfecthumanconformity a mostobviousand commonplace (Wittig 1985b,16/14). But this nonviolent similarity" assertionof lesbian "conformity" appears,to the women who see Wittig, as a violent of sexualdifference.One womanrushesinto the streetcryingrape,and others irruption begin to point out that Wittig has furor scaleson her body and a clitoris"aslong as a To her own surprise, middlefinger." Wittig beginsto see herselfas those aroundher see her, coveredwith furor scales.Becauseshe'sa lesbianin Wittig'soeuvre,however,she valuations of her,saying,"Ah,here'ssomethingto eventuallyrevaluesthese "deformed" keep me warmin winter!"or reflectingthat her scaleswill glitterbeautifullyin the sun. of Simone de 4. In "One Is Not Borna Woman," Wittig takesup the mostfamiliar Beauvoir's phrases,"One is not born,but becomesa woman"(Beauvoir1974, 301) and furtherthat "a lesbianis not a woman"(Wittig 1981, 53; alsoWittig 1980, 110). asserts In the courseof her article,Wittig arguesfor an uncouplingof male and female insofar as the only and all natural,a transhistorical as they have appeared regimeof gendered a lesbianis not a womanbecauseone that allowsfor no change.By her argument, "fact" one of two ready-made is not born "possessing" genders.Rather,one is engenderedby social relations,and a womanbecomesso in relationto a man.To change the structure of such social relations,Wittig suggeststhat we mustbegin to think about the material it. Such a task is of cultureand languagewithout immediately sexingand hierarchizing and as she fashionsit, the as the workof "materialist what she characterizes feminism"; is the stuffand politicsof writing. "material" 5. See Guy Debordand Gil J. Wolman(1981, 8-14). DebordandWolmanmaintain areboth culturaland political (i.e., engageaesthetic for revolution" that the "premises andthat anyrevolutionary aswell as morecanonically"political" discourse) politicsmust In and culture. a all of dominant aggressively humorously propagandistic activelyengage tone, they insist that "[t]heliteraryand artisticheritageof humanityshouldbe usedfor to go beyondany ideaof scandal It is, of course,necessary purposes. propaganda partisan of an elite avant-garandotherproponents of the surrealists [i.e.,go beyondthe practices it will be open to everyoneto detour dist shock-as-revolution politics].... [Ultimately] entire situationsby deliberately changingthis or that determinantcondition of them" (Debordand Wolman1981, 9, 14). 6. See Wittig (1985a, 11). the 7. Foran analysisof the dual logic of femininityunderpatriarchy, particularly conjunctive and partitive aspects of motherhoodas its privilegedfigure,see Jacobus (1986, 137-93). 8. See Rosenfeld(1981, 7) for an accountof Wittig'sinnovationsand coinagesto and "femme." counterthe denotativelimitationsof the words"woman" and the subversive 9. See Butler(1990, 91-149) on Foucault, "usurpation" Wittig, See also and redeploymentof gender roles or regulatory tags such as "homosexual." Foucault(1980, 101) and Foucaultand O'Higgens(1982). workon Wittig. I do not think, however, 10. I am very indebtedto JudithButler's in Wittig'sessaysare inconsistentwith and language that claimsmadeaboutsubjectivity stated"political her novelisticpractice-in effect,thatWittig's project[is]situatedin the As it is theorizedin Wittig'sessays,"I"does not traditionaldiscourseof ontotheology." or a "coherent "assume god-likedimensions" unityof being"(Butler1990, 117). Rather, and Wittig'slinguisticpracticeconsistentlyexposesandexploitsboth the appropriability or speaking"I." the internaldivisionof any subjectivity

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and detoumement of various 11. It is worthwhile to note Wittig'sappropriation of Deleuzeand Guattari, formulations namely,the notions of the nomadicwarmachine See Nomadology: The WarMachine and the concepts of majorand minor literatures. a MinorLiterature (Deleuze and (Deleuze and Guattari 1986b) and Kafka:Towards of "nomadology," Deleuzeand Guattariarguethat Guattari1986a). In their discussions there are two differentmodes of "science"or knowledge,the State and the nomadic. on the inventionsof nomad "Statescience is constantlyimposingits formof sovereignty notions science"(1986b, 20)-controlling and attemptingto eliminatesuch "dynamic" as "becoming,heterogeneity,infinitesimal,passageto the limit, continuousvariation, (1986b, 21). Matterin nomadscience "is etc.," in favorof "civilstaticand ordinalrules" never"prepared," ladenwith singularities," "homogeneous," fullyformalizable essentially ( 1986b,31). Nomadsciencedoesnot battlethe Statedirectlyin somekindof entrenched of face-offbut rathermakesconstantlocal difference(rebellion)fromthe State program of expression" unification.Nomad science is a minor"form (1986b, 109)-thus its links or canonicalformsof expression. to writing-whereas State science involvesmajor (This of canonicaltexts-for the most leavesopen the questionof minoror quixoticreadings to do.) partwhat Deleuzeand Guattariappear termsandsomeverygeneralconceptsfromDeleuze It seemsto me that Wittigborrows and Guattari without borrowingtheir style. Or, perhaps more importantly,Wittig borrows,"nomadically," against Deleuze and Guattari'spresumptionof a persistent of a certainkindof dualityin the restriction not to mentionthe maintenance masculinity, of the descriptionof possibleoppositionsto one between a monolithic majoror State or science. minoror nomadicliterature literature or science and a multifarious and "universal" 12. Foranalysesof the implications and effectsof "marked" subjecAnzaldua tivity in relationto race,see Fanon(1967), C6saire(1972), and,morerecently, (1987 and 1990), and Morrison(1989). 13. In part,Wittig'scritiqueof anddistancefrom&criture stemsfromjustsuch feminine a suspicionof the politicalviabilityof declaring a separate andsuperior sphereforwomen. She writes,"Thatthere is no 'femininewriting' mustbe saidat the outset,andone makes a mistake in using and giving currencyto this expression.What is this 'feminine'in 'feminine writing'?It stands for Woman,thus merginga practice with a myth .... 'Femininewriting'is the naturalizing metaphorof the brutalpolitical fact of the domination of women,and as such it enlarges the apparatus underwhich 'femininity' presents itself:that is, 'Difference, FemaleBody/Nature.'... '[W]riting' [in this guise] Specificity, failsto appearas workand a production since the words'writing' and 'feminine' process, are combinedin orderto designatea sort of biologicalproductionpeculiarto 'Woman,' " (Wittig 1983, 63). Forthe purposes a secretionnaturalto 'Woman' of this paper,I will leave aside the questionof whetheror not Wittig'sis a fair assessment of the worksof such as Cixous.Forcomparisons criture of Cixous and Wittig that deal with f6ministes this question to some extent, see Allen (1988), Crowder(1983), Parker(1989), and Wenzel (1981). For supplementary, contextual information,see Duchen (1986) and Richman(1980). 14. Fora very fine readingof The Lesbian Bodyto which I am greatlyindebted,see Shaktini(1989). 15. We mustcertainlynot failto takeinto accounthow shockingit is in manydialects or languages fora feminizedpronounto be usedin a generalor universalizing fashion.In Gloria Anzalduadescribessuch a situation:"The first time I Borderlands/La Frontera, heardtwo women, a PuertoRican and a Cuban,saythe word'nosotras,' I wasshocked.I

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hadnot knownthe wordexisted.Chicanasusenosotros whetherwe'remaleor female.... is a male discourse" (Anzaldua1987, 54). Language is a Greektermfor the moment in ancient comedieswhen the chorus 16. Parabasis "oversteps"its proper bounds and, impersonatingor speaking for the playwright, the audience. approaches 17. "Your bodyis what travelsin andout of yourmouth"(my translation).(Anzaldua 1987, 80). What Englishmust translateas 18. Indeed, there are no "ones"in Le corpslesbien. "one"arenot-quitesubstantivizing "m/atresbelle m/atresfortem/a adjectivesin French: tresindomptable m/a tressavantem/a tresferocem/a tresdouce m/aplusaimee"(Wittig 1973, 7). 19. As faras Wittig is concerned,if there is such a partit is not the missingone but one amongothers.See Wittig (1969, 57E): "They[elles]say that they do not favorany that it wasformerly a forbidden of [the body's] object.They saythat partson the grounds of theirown ideology." they do not want to becomeprisoners Indeedthis "we"is alreadya propagation-as 20. By o/ur ears w/e will propagate. of Personin the Verb: Benvenistewill sayin "Relationships "'[W]e'is not a multiplication between'I'and the 'non-I,'no matterwhat the content of identicalobjectsbut a junction of this 'non-I'maybe. This junctionformsa new totalitywhich is of a very specialtype whose componentsare not equivalent:in 'we' it is always'I' which predominates since or multiplied therecannot be 'we'except by startingwith 'I'... '[W]e'is not a quantified 'I';it is an 'I' expandedbeyondthe strictlimitsof the person,enlarged,and at the same time amorphous.. . . [T]he plural is a factor of limitlessness,not multiplication" (Benveniste 1971, 202, 203, 204). des amantes, 21. An owl'scry,a hoot. In Brouillon "ululement" is pourun dictionnaire "[t]hecryof the owl which somelesbiansuseto findtheirwayat night in the forest,when the moon is dark"(Wittig and Zeig 1976, 239).

REFERENCES 1988.Poetic politics:How the Amazonstook the Acropolis.Hypatia Allen, Jeffner. 3(2): 107-22. The new mestiza. San Francisco: Anzaldia, Gloria. 1987. Borderlands/La frontera: Spinlute. sters/aunt soul: Haciendo caras.San Francisco: aunt lute , ed. 1990. Making face, making foundation. Michael Holquist,ed. and trans.with Bakhtin,Mikhail. 1981. The dialogic imagination. Austin:Universityof TexasPress. CarylEmerson. and his world.Helene Iswolsky,trans. Bloomington:Indiana . 1984. Rabelais UniversityPress. discourse. RichardHoward,trans.New York:Hill and Barthes,Roland. 1978. A lover's Wang. ed. and trans.New York: Beauvoir,Simone de. 1974. The secondsex. H. M. Parshley, VintageBooks. ingeneral Benveniste,Emile. 1971.Problems Meek,trans.Coral linguistics. MaryElizabeth Gables,FL:Universityof MiamiPress.

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