Studies International Forum, Vol. 12, No. 3, 1989, Special Issue on
Feminism and Science In Memory of Ruth Bleier, edited by Sue V.
Rosser, p. 328. All the remaining citations in this section are from her article and from two articles she cites David C. Page, et al., The sex- determining region of the human Y chromosome
encodes a finger protein in Cell, No. 51, pp. 1091–1104, and Eva Eicher and Linda
Washburn, Genetic control of primary sex determination in mice,”
Annual Review of Genetics, No. 20, pp. 327–360.
25. Wittig notes that English compared to French has the reputation of being almost genderless, while French passes fora very gendered language. It is true that strictly speaking, English does not apply the mark of gender to inanimate objects, to things or nonhuman beings. But as far as the categories
of the person are concerned, both languages are bearers of gender to the same extent (The Mark of Gender
Feminist Issues, Vol. 5, No, Fall 1985, p. 3. Also in
The Straight Mind and Other Essays, pp. See chapter 3, n. 4).
26. Although Wittig herself does not argue the point, her theory might account for the violence enacted against sexed subjects—women, lesbians, gay men, to name a few—as the violent enforcement of a category violently constructed. In other words, sexual crimes against these bodies effectively reduce them to their sex thereby reaffirming and enforcing the reduction of the category itself. Because discourse is not restricted
to writing or speaking, but is also social action, even violent social action,
we ought also to understand rape, sexual violence, “queer-bashing” as the category of sex inaction. Monique Wittig, One is Not Born a Woman
Feminist Issues, Vol. 1, No. Winter 1981, p. 48. Also in
The Straight Mind and Other Essays, pp. see chapter 3, n. 49.
28. Ibid, p. 17.
29. Wittig, The Mark of Gender p. 4.
30. Monique Wittig, The Straight Mind
Feminist Issues, Vol. 1, No. Summer 1980, p. 105. Also in
The Straight Mind and Other Essays, pp.
21–32, see chapter 3, n. 49.
31. Ibid, p. 107.
32. Ibid, p. 106.
33. The Mark of Gender p. 4.
Gender Trouble212
34. Ibid, p. 5.
35. Ibid, p. 6.
36. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Monique Wittig, Paradigm in
Homosexualities and French Literature:Cultural Contexts/Critical Texts, eds. Elaine
Marks and George Stambolian(Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1979), p. 119. Consider the radical difference, however, between Wittig’s acceptance of the use of language that valorizes the speaking subject as autonomous and universal and
Deleuze’s Nietzschean effort to displace the speaking I as the center of linguistic power. Although both are critical of psychoanalysis, Deleuze’s critique of the subject through recourse to the will-to-power sustains closer parallels to the displacement of the speaking subject by the semiotic/unconscious within Lacanian and post-Lacanian psychoanalytic discourse. For Wittig, it appears that sexuality and desire are self- determined articulations of the individual subject, whereas for both
Deleuze and
his psychoanalytic opponents, desire of necessity displaces and decenters the subject. Far from presupposing a subject Deleuze argues, desire cannot be attained except at the point where someone is deprived of the power of saying I Gilles Deleuze and Claire Parnet,
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