See Clearly with Monique Wittig

She was the great pioneer of gender studies! Born in 1935 and passed away 20 years ago, it is high time to revisit her major work, La Pensée Straight (Balland, 2001). For Monique Wittig, women and men belong to two distinct and unequal classes. “Historically, we can see that the male class has appropriated the universal (…)”. Monique Wittig does not call for the abandonment of the universal in favor of singularities and particularities, but rather for a questioning of its misuse. She calls for a struggle so that women can reclaim it and the universal can take on its full meaning! Her thinking is stimulating: “That the universal has been appropriated historically, so be it. But a fact of such importance to humanity is not set in stone. It is constantly being remade, at every moment, and it needs the active contribution, hic et nunc, of all speakers to take effect without interruption.”

The TPR recognizes Monique Wittig as a novelist and philosopher who brilliantly questioned language. “The abstract form, the general, the universal, is precisely what the so-called masculine grammatical gender means.” For the philosopher, it is in language that “the straight mind” is powerfully embodied. She therefore worked tirelessly to reveal its messages and subtexts. For example, in “Les Guérillères” (Minuit, 1969), she achieves a decentering effect through the constant use of “elles,” making “ils” appear as a marked term, thus hindering generic neutrality. All her struggles plunge into the very heart of words to bring about a language free of constraints.

How can we universalize the universal? This is the lofty, demanding, even impressive ambition of Monique Wittig, which we propose to illuminate with a talent equal to her own: Adèle Haenel. Who better than this actress, herself a pioneer, to give voice to the brilliance of a liberating thought?