French Feminist Utopias

Body/Language: French Feminist Utopias
Author(s): Cecile Lindsay

Source: The French Review, Vol. 60, No. 1 (Oct., 1986), pp. 46-55
Published by: American Association of Teachers of French
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THE FRENCH REVIEW, Vol. 60, No. 1, October 1986 Printed in U.S.A.
Body/Language: French Feminist Utopias
by Cecile Lindsay
I think the future belongs to women. Men

have been completely dethroned. Their
rhetoric is stale, used up. We must move on
to the rhetoric of women, one that is anchored
in the organism, in the body.
Marguerite Duras
Y a-t-il meme des femmes? Certes la theorie

de l'eternel fieminin compte encore des ad-
eptes: ils chuchotent: "Meme en Russie, elles
restent bien femmes"; mais d'autres gens bien
informes-et les memes aussi quelquefois-
soupirent: "La femme se perd, la femme est
perdue." On ne sait plus bien s'il existe encore
des femmes, s'il en existera toujours, s'il faut
ou non le souhaiter, quelle place elles occu-
pent en ce monde, quelle place elles devraient
y occuper.
Simone de Beauvoir
FEMINISM IS A NECESSARILY UTOPIAN ENTERPRISE; that is, it proposes utopias of

one kind or another. Books with titles like The Coming Matriarchy posit an
imminent future where socio-economic relations between the sexes will underg
radical revision.' Mary Daly's book Gyn/Ecology is a manifesto of sorts for a
new vision of female life that will have global ramifications; in this work, she
speaks of Otherworld Journeys and Beatific Visions.2 In France, a major pub
lishing house offers a collection of books under the rubric "Feminin futur," an
various schools of feminist thought propose a welter of "future visions." In thei
postulation of "feminine futures," of "other worlds," and of "moving beyond"
old societal forms into new and improved versions, feminist projections are
currently considered utopias in all accepted senses of that word; for the term
utopia has three entries in the dictionary: first, "an imaginary and indefinitely
remote place"; secondly, "a place of ideal perfection especially in . . . socia
conditions"; and finally, "an impractical scheme for social improvement."
'Elizabeth Nickles and Laura Ashcraft, The Coming Matriarchy, How Women Will Gain the Balance
of Power (New York: Seaview Books, 1981).
2 Mary Daly, Gyn/Ecology (Boston: Beacon Press, 1978).
3 Webster's New Collegiate Dictionary (Springfield, Mass.: Meriam Webster, 1977).
46
FRENCH FEMINIST UTOPIAS 47
Feminism's opponents, critic

ing to its third definition, w
light of the term's primary d
critiques of the existing sche
term-utopia--whose own his
which come bundling along w
signals the primary importan
past by contemporary femin
writers like Helene Cixous an
structure, syntax, and genre
tradition, cultural practices,
claim that language and writi
to provide the central conte
feminism's future.
The injunction to "write the body" is one of the most urgent and controversial
imperatives pronounced by contemporary French feminism. It has occasioned
bitter debate and division both as to what kind of utopia must be pursued, and
how that pursuit must be conducted. These programs or visions of the future
tend to take one of two general directions, each of which addresses the question
of the body and language, but in quite different ways. The two divergent
utopias generated by these different approaches to the body/language connec-
tion have something to show us about the potential of contemporary French
feminisms for changing the future, as well as the problems that they inherit
from the past.
Most commentators of the current feminist scene in France rightly insist on
the plurality of feminisms co-existing, often far from peacefully, on the same
terrain. The writers whose work I will deal with here-Wittig and Cixous-
both write texts which blur the distinction between "fiction" and "essay" or
"analysis," in addition to texts which can more easily be classified with one or
the other of those terms. They share a common goal: to challenge the oppression
of women by dominant ideology and culture, proposing in its stead the pursuit
of a more acceptable social order. Both affirm, moreover, that the pursuit of the
new order must take place in language and writing, and must deal with the
body. It is in their articulation of these elements for a new future that these
writers exhibit significant, even exemplary differences.
Sexual and linguistic difference is a guiding principle in the feminist project
enunciated by Helene Cixous. Cixous is the major advocate and practitioner of
what is known as ecriture feminine-feminine writing, which represents for
Cixous the most propitious means for dismantling patriarchal language, and,
through language, the social and cultural oppression of women. Cixous's 1975
text "Le Rire de la meduse" serves as a manifesto of ecriture feminine, elaborating
the link between the body, sexual difference, and language. For Cixous, women
have historically been silenced: made to assume the role of physicality and
materiality as a counter to masculine reason and discourse, women have been
48 FRENCH REVIEW
denied access to lang

than men; they m
somptueux": "plus q
les femmes sont cor
from their bodies
sexuality. Thus, Cix
is for women to "s'ec
[...] en s'6crivant, la
dont on a fait l'inqu
souvent est le mauva
on censure du meme
Ecris-toi: il faut qu
ressources de l'incons
le monde, des valeur
The specificity of e
physical bodies of w
beyond doubt that
biological differen
different for wome
is always, immedia
culturally."" Althou
back to woman's na
vened to represen
impression that it i
morphous nature of
change the old ord
sommes au commen
"Le corps de la fem
fracassant les jougs
en tous sens le parc
la vieille langue m
difference is thus th
feminine.
Cixous's own texts provide examples of this new writing. Her style has been
characterized as "stream of the unconscious,"6 flowing in long sentences full of
hyperbolic metaphors about wombs and mother's milk, which is generally
equated with the "encre blanche" of ecriture feminine. Cixous has written on
James Joyce, and she shares with him an emphasis on extravagant punning in
several languages and tones, a writing aimed at dislodging the Aristotelian logic
4 Hil6ne Cixous, "Le Rire de la m6duse," in l'Arc, No. 61, p. 48.

5 Christiane Makward, "Interview with H61ene Cixous," Sub-stance 13 (1976), p. 28.
6 Helene Vivienne Wenzel, "The Text as Body/Politics: An Appreciation of Monique Wittig's
Writings in Context," Feminist Studies 7, No. 2 (Summer 1981), p. 268.
of dominant syntax and dete

of tones and voices as a form
with Bakhtin's notion of a
insistent theme is the call to
new type of text. Thus she d
mere et texte-enfant, text
Laisse voler l'ecriture!."7 Ecritu
female body-she recuperate
of that body's libidinal and g
Cixous claims the work of M
but she has reservations abou
"With her, undoubtedly, the
intoxicated with words becau
it with words: this body, in fa
the anxiety of hysteria."8 Th
what are finally two quite di
difference, and on the futur
cultural forms.
In 1969 Cixous was awarded the prestigious Prix Medicis for a fictional text
entitled Dedans. Dedans provides a lengthy meditation on and challenge to the
Oedipal conflict from "within" the perspective of the family, and specifically of
the girl child. Five years earlier, Wittig had received the same prize for L'Opo-
ponax, a female Bildungsroman that inverts the traditional givens of that genre
by exploring a quasi-utopian childhood where two schoolgirls resist social
feminization to discover their sexuality and their love for each other. The
contrast between Dedans and L'Opoponax illuminates the divergence between
Cixous and Wittig. While Cixous's concern is to dwell on, and within, the
Oedipal scenario provided by the discourse of psychoanalysis, Wittig sets out
in her first book to sketch a world apart where l'opoponax-a mysterious
childhood invention that comes to stand for sexual awareness-challenges both
heterosexuality and the literary canon as instruments of dominance. Wittig's
next novel, Les Guerilleres, continues these challenges in a more graphically
revolutionary and utopian sense. The title's neologism evokes at once the
warrior-woman and the guerilla fighter. The narration presents a future revo-
lutionary war between the sexes, where guerilla-type attacks systematically
destroy both patriarchal institutions and inherited patriarchal language. The
overthrow of the oppressive regime can only be accomplished through violent
activity: "Elles disent, que celles qui revendiquent un langage nouveau appren-
nent d'abord la violence. Elles disent, que celles qui veulent transformer le
monde s'emparent avant tout des fusils. Elles disent qu'elles partent de zero.
Elles disent que c'est un monde nouveau qui commence."9 The feminine plural
7 Back cover of Souffles (Paris: Editions des femmes, 1975).

8 Sub-stance 13 (1976), p. 27.
9 Monique Wittig, Les Gu&illWres (Paris: Les Editions de Minuit, 1969), pp. 120-121. Subsequent
references will be cited in the text.
50 FRENCH REVIEW
pronoun elles is us
warrior-women ushers in a new era of collective life. Science fiction elements
such as futuristic domiciles and weapons complete the picture of a positive
utopia achieved through the violent overthrow of received language and
inherited structures. Upon its publication and translation into English (1969
and 1974), Les Guerilleres was hailed as a manifesto of radical feminist oppo-
sition.
While males are peripheral in L'Opoponax, they are the object of all-out war
in Les Gue'rilleres, which, although it closes on a note of reconciliation with
males after the females' victory, nevertheless continues to use the pronoun elle
almost exclusively. While a few males figure briefly as "protagonists" in this
mythic narrative, even the male army is presented as a vague and rather absen
enemy. In Wittig's next book, Le Corps lesbien, men are totally absent. The
protagonists have left the "continent noir" of female sexuality for the island o
Lesbos, a brightly-colored "ile des vivantes," where the living are strictly femal
in gender. But if we view Wittig's works as a progression, and much suggest
that we should, then the rigidly separatist lesbian colony of Lesbos paradoxicall
makes no distinction between biological males and females. For Wittig's feminis
theory sees the term lesbian as an indicator of political and social class rathe
than as a designation of sexual identity or preference. Lesbian peoples-which
becomes the title of her next work-are those peoples who reject the oppositions
and hierarchies at work in a language which sees "man" as the neutral,
unmarked gender and "woman' as the derivative nomenclature, the second sex.
Simone de Beauvoir's celebrated statement "One is not born a woman' is the
title of an essay by Wittig on the issue of terminology, and along with the
"woman," she strenuously rejects that of "mother' as an age-old carrie
exploitation and dominance of the female's productivity by the male pow
apparatus. Naming-both the name one carries and the right to confer nam
is a central philosophical issue in all of Wittig's work. Although the term le
thus connotes neither sexual gender nor preference, the protagonist love
Le Corps lesbien are graphically and grammatically female, an instance of p
justice: for just as the neutral, unmarked subject of discourse has always up
now been man, Wittig takes as her example of the radicalized subject of t
future the female of the species.
Le Corps lesbien is composed of short texts which alternate with an on-g
enumeration in large block letters of all the parts, products, and functions,
external and internal, of the "lesbian body.' The short poetic texts pre
startling encounters between two lovers who alternate in dissecting, devour
resurrecting, invading, sundering, reconstructing, and joining with the ot
body. The lovers' bodies are not always or integrally human, but can metam
phose wholly or partly into horses, wolves, cats, or even protozoa. A vision
the body that is radically other emerges: like the protozoa with its vibra
cilia, this body is surface without interior, a Moebius strip; it is capab
sensation throughout, with no differentiation into erogenous or fetishized z
it transcends sexual categories. Wittig's sustained challenge to the integralit
the body as it has traditonall

challenges to conventional co
Oedipe or by Jean-Frangois Ly
Thus Cixous's reservations a
with are not off-target: it is
radically different way. For i
and breasts of the female bo
undesirable areas or products
activity. In the very violence
leveled; it finds alternative m
fend de ta gorge a ton pubis
m/e repands dans toi, tu te m
cou presse par m/es bras, j
autres."'0
This violence visited upon
language is treated in Wittig'
lesbien is a first person narra
into j/e. All first person pro
sundered, giving the text an
Thus both the body and the w
this writing are not those of
addresses the notion of body
as it is linked in our cultur
subject-as whole, autonomo
qualities that make up a met
the carrier of signification. T
and the writing in Wittig's
metaphors for writing, as it
specifically attacked as a wea
eres, who reject all the thing
genitals: a flower, a cherry, a
in old texts, but the gu'rillere
or symbols: "Elles disent qu'e
qui dans les premiers temps
evidente. Par exemple elles n
etoiles. Elles ne disent pas qu
nuit eclatant (sic)" (LG p. 81
certain type of writing, Le C
which has gone beyond the
figures conspicuously rejected
lactation, or nurturance, or an
Similarly, the mother-daugh
10 Monique Wittig, Le Corps lesbi

references will be cited in the text.
52 FRENCH REVIEW
concerns of much fe
of Lesbos are amante
Obviously, two very
represented here by
where feminine writ
which are specificall
alternatives to inher
Wittig, the future h
differences that Cix
these two versions of
in print and in pers
1979, Cixous took a s
that they had negati
out "What France? Th
writers thus takes p
nology and language,
of the future. In th
American, who see
peaceful, oceanic fut
certain reservations
violence aimed at bo
In a number of essa
raised about the assu
for the future.12 For
physiological/psych
following passage fr
pulsion vocale, tout
pulsion de gestation,
une envie de ventr
posed to this rhetori
female sexuality exi
men) experience thei
notion of a shared,
occasional remark ab
seem overwhelmingly
as universal, biologic
these feminine give
problematically total
in the sense of impr
" As reported by Wenzel
12See Wenzel, cited ab
Understanding of l'icritu
Griffin Crowder, "Amazo
Writing," Contemporary
the Goddesses, or The Int
of an idealism or essentialism
fortably like the old rhetoric
in society and keep them the
impulse to nurture, for inst
glorification of motherhood
for writing is equated with
echoes of the little girl's desi
phallic signification which w
necessarily brings up the que
Lacan termed the Symbolic, a
a return to verbal nature such
writers who are otherwise ve
dominant dogma. One critic
Materialist feminists, then, att
still sees woman as man's op
different-breasts, vagina,
liberating utopia thus project
seeks to dislodge; man is stil
logic of binary opposition rem
the past it purports to reject.
In Les Guerilleres the warr
collectively gone beyond the
qu'il faut alors cesser d'exalte
le dernier lien qui les rattache
qui exalte le corps fragmente
ainsi. Elles, corps integres pre
ble dans un autre monde" (L
advocate going beyond both t
in one way or another have p
look both backward and forw
time before the era of oppres
souviens-toi. Tu dis qu'il n'y
n'existe pas. Mais souviens-to
invente" (LG. p. 126). The inju
state points to its status no
construct for viewing the pre
than "natural." However, bot
of a necessary, originary (alb
existing the present decaden
lost innocence, and a vocabul
more explicit in Wittig's Bro
comprises a tentative dictiona
of this lexicon provides a his
13 Wenzel, p. 257.
54 FRENCH REVIEW
passed, beginning
through the disharm
ages until finally:
Cela ne s'est pas fai
All four of Wittig
genres into subver
considered a female
Corps lesbien has b
dictionnaire des am
a sense, then, all fou
liberation from inh
Les Guerilleres pro
enment. An evolut
proposed in this pr
trap of biological e
equally suspect sch
subversive qualitie
unironic Bildungsr
ecriture feminine,
discourses-be they
a perennial oppress
if Wittig's utopian
sense, and obliges u
that term.
For Wittig insists
of class struggle,
groups:
The class struggle is precisely that which resolves the contradictions between two
opposed classes by abolishing them at the same time as it constitutes and reveals
them as classes. The class struggle between women and men, which should be
undertaken by all women, is that which resolves the contradictions between the
sexes, abolishing them at the same time as it makes them understood. The important
idea for me is that before the conflict (rebellion, struggle), there are no categories of
opposition but only of difference. And it is not before the struggle breaks out that
the violent reality of the oppositions and the political nature of the differences
becomes manifest. For as long as oppositions (differences) appear as given, already
there, before all thought, "natural," as long as there is no conflict and no struggle,
there is no dialectic, there is no change, no movement.15
For Wittig, the only way to oppose oppression is through the violent re-
ordering of received language, received literary forms, and received notions of
the body's "nature." In as much as her project replicates the movement of some
Hegelian spirit from lost plenitude to an eventual liberation, it is a utopian vision
"4 Monique Wittig, Brouillon pour un dictionnaire des amantes (Paris: Grasset, 1976), p. 9.
15 Monique Wittig, "The Category of Sex," Feminist Studies 2, No. 2 (Fall 1982), p. 65.
contaminated by the rejected

improbable future, appended
much as it admits of the poss
than natural, it is a positive e
slightly, to change, to moveme
UNIVERSITY OF NEVADA, RENO

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Body/Language: French Feminist Utopias

Author(s): Cecile Lindsay

Body/Language: French Feminist Utopias

I think the future belongs to women. Men

Y a-t-il meme des femmes? Certes la theorie

FEMINISM IS A NECESSARILY UTOPIAN ENTERPRISE; that is, it proposes utopias of

Feminism's opponents, critic

denied access to lang

4 Hil6ne Cixous, "Le Rire de la m6duse," in l'Arc, No. 61, p. 48.

of dominant syntax and dete

7 Back cover of Souffles (Paris: Editions des femmes, 1975).

the body as it has traditonall

10 Monique Wittig, Le Corps lesbi

contaminated by the rejected

UNIVERSITY OF NEVADA, RENO

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