Monique Wittig, who died in January 2003, was a leading French feminist, social theorist, prose poet, and novelist--and an activist who helped start the lesbian and women's liberation movements in France. This collection of essays by Wittig and on her work is the first sustained examination in English of her broad-ranging political, literary, and theoretical viewpoints. On Monique Wittig contains twelve essays, representing French, Francophone, and U.S. critics, including three previously unpublished pieces by Wittig herself. Among the essays is Diane Griffin Crowder's discussion of the U.S. feminist movement, Linda Zerilli's consideration of gender and will, and Teresa de Lauretis's examination of the development of lesbian theory. Together, these essays situate Wittig's work in terms of the cultural contexts of its production and reception. This volume also contains the first authenticated chronology of Wittig's life and features the first translation of "For a Movement of Women's Liberation," which Wittig published with other "militantes" in May 1970. As the first book to appear on Wittig following her death, On Monique Wittig is an indispensable tool for feminist scholars.

These political, philosophical, and literary essays mark the first collection of theoretical writing from the acclaimed novelist and French feminist writer Monique Wittig. “Among the most provocative and compelling feminist political visions since The Second Sex. These essays represent the radical extension of de Beauvoir’s theory, its unexpected lesbian future. Wittig’s theoretical insights are both precise and far-reaching, and her theoretical style is bold, incisive, even shattering.” —Judith Butler, Johns Hopkins University

One of the most widely read feminist texts of the twentieth century, and Monique Wittig’s most popular novel, Les Guérillères imagines the attack on the language and bodies of men by a tribe of warrior women. Among the women’s most powerful weapons in their assault is laughter, but they also threaten literary and linguistic customs of the patriarchal order with bullets. In this breathtakingly rapid novel first published in 1969, Wittig animates a lesbian society that invites all women to join their fight, their circle, and their community. A path-breaking novel about creating and sustaining freedom, the book derives much of its energy from its vaunting of the female body as a resource for literary invention.

Back in print, this daring novel constitutes a rhapsodic hymn to women's bodies and women's relationships. "That rare work in fiction . . . the art and the courage are of the highest level." -The Boston Globe

From the creation of a neuter pronoun in her earliest work, L’Opoponax, to the confusion of genres in her most recent fiction, Virgile, non, Monique Wittig uses literary subversion and invention to accomplish what Erika Ostrovsky appropriately defines as renversement, the annihilation of existing literary canons and the creation of highly innovative constructs. Erika Ostrovsky explores those aspects of Wittig’s work that best illustrate her literary approach. Among the countless revolutionary devices that Wittig uses to achieve renversement are the feminization of masculine gender names, the reorganization of myth patterns, and the replacement of traditional punctuation with her own system of grammatical emphasis and separation. It is the unexpected quantity and quality of such literary devices that make reading Monique Wittig’s fiction a fresh and rewarding experience. Such literary devices have earned Wittig the acclaim of her critics and peers—Marguerite Duras, Mary McCarthy, Alain Robbe-Grillet, Nathalie Sarraute, and Claude Simon, to name a few. While analyzing the intrinsic value of each of Wittig’s fictions separately, Erika Ostrovsky traces the progressive development of Wittig’s major literary devices as they appear and reappear in her fictions. Ostrovsky maintains that the seeds of those innovations that appear in Wittig’s most recent texts can be found as far back as L’Opoponax. This evidence of progression supports Ostrovsky’s theory that clues to Wittig’s future endeavors can be found in her past.

French Feminism Reader is a collection of essays representing the authors and issues from French theory most influential in the American context. The book is designed for use in courses, and it includes illuminating introductions to the work of each author. These introductions include biographical information, influences and intellectual context, major themes in the author's work as a whole, and specific introductions to the selections in this volume. The contributors represent the two trends in French theory that have proven most useful to American feminists: social theory and psychoanalytic theory. Both of these trends move away from any traditional discussions of nature toward discussions of socially constructed notions of sex, sexuality and gender roles. While feminists interested in social theory focus on the ways in which social institutions shape these notions, feminists interested in psychoanalytic theory focus on cultural representations of sex, sexuality and gender roles, and the ways that they affect the psyche. This collection includes selections by Simone de Beauvoir, Christine Delphy, Colette Guilluamin, Monique Wittig, Michele Le Doeuff, Julia Kristeva, Luce Irigaray, and Helene Cixous.