THE PROBLEM OF GENDER AND SUBJECTIVITY POSED BY THE NEW SUBJECT PRONOUN 'J/E' IN THE WRITING OF MONIQUE WITTIG (FRANCE)

This dissertation is a study of the French feminist writer Monique Wittig's text, Le corps lesbien (The Lesbian Body) and its deconstruction of the domination of male-identified subjectivity in language. The appendices include a concordance of the text and a cross reference of first lines for French and English editions.; Starting with the contradictory position of Simone de Beauvoir, I identify the insoluble problem of phallogocentrism for the female-identified subject. That which dominates is meaningful to and identifiable with the phallic subject. That which is dominated is nominal, absent or objectified in word-centered systems of representation. I argue that the symbolic domination of women by men is materially based in the appropriation of women's sex and reproduction. Female subjectivity is thereby objectified. Lesbians are essentially absent from this system, since we refuse men the appropriation of our sexuality and, hence, our reproduction. From the marginality of this position in respect to the phallus, lesbians occupy a potential position of radical critique. We must reconstruct our subjectivity in words by deconstructing phallogocentrism. This, I argue, is essentially what Wittig has done in writing Le corps lesbien.; Through complex experiments with written text, Wittig shows her^readers how subjectivity constitutes and is constituted by language,^literature and myth. The generic lesbian subject of Wittig appears to^us throughout the text signified by the self-marking slash in "j/e"^(" I "), and other first person singular pronouns and adjectives. Thus, the "normally" transparent phallic subject "je" ("I") becomes opaque. By more subtle processes, Wittig's present tense, first person narrator assumes a multiplicity of lesbian personas, including those of standard writers (e.g. Homer, du Bellay, Baudelaire) and myths (e.g. Isis/Osiris, Orpheus/Eurydice), as she rewrites their phallogocentric texts from a lesbian point of view.; The effect of Wittig's "lesbianizing" is that male-identified subjectivity loses its customary invisibility for us as readers. The title, Le corps lesbien, becomes the central metaphor to which all textual meaning refers, effecting a displacement of the phallus as Absolute metaphor of reference.