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Loading... Les Guérillèresby Monique Wittig
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"One of the most widely read feminist texts of the twentieth century, and Monique Wittig's most popular novel, Les Guerilleres imagines the attack on the language and bodies of men by a tribe of warrior women. Among the women's most powerful weapons is laughter, but they also threaten literary and linguistic customs of the patriarchal order with bullets. In this novel first published in 1969, Wittig animates a lesbian society that invites all women to join their fight, their circle, and their community. A pathbreaking 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."--BOOK JACKET. No library descriptions found. |
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Google Books — Loading... GenresMelvil Decimal System (DDC)843.914Literature French French fiction Modern Period 20th Century 1945-1999LC ClassificationRatingAverage:
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This book being so female-centric parallels how male-centric the Greeks were too. Because of that, this book is just another example of how radical feminism isn’t as radical as the media makes it out to be, because even though the story is about the war between the sexes its conclusion is compassion, basically. The line “we have been fighting as much for you as for ourselves” not only sums up the book but the 2nd wave movement in general! I think this book is very important because it contains a message of understanding and solidarity, without discounting the womens’ very real reasons to fight. Andrea Dworkin once said she wants to be remembered "In a museum, when male supremacy is dead. I'd like my work to be an anthropological artefact from an extinct, primitive society." This book seems like something from that society.
It took me about a month to read Les Guérillères, and it was so worth it. It took longer to read than it otherwise might’ve because I read it in the original French, cross referencing with a translation whenever I didn’t understand (which was pretty often!!). It’s a really dense book, but like half the words I didn’t understand turned out to be made up when I looked them up! But if you’re able to, I would definitely recommend reading it in french! I mean, there’s a reason the English edition’s title isn’t translated, it’s an untranslatable word! Wittig honestly seems kinda Oulipo-adjacent in how she plays with language. French has gendered third-person-plural pronouns, and the “gender neutral” is “ils”, same as the masculine. Therefore, in french the word “elles” (feminine plural) has a lot of power that the translation just doesn’t have. At times it’s translated to “the women” or the neutral “they”, which misses the point that Wittig herself expounds upon: “They say, the language you speak is made up of words that are killing you. They say, the language you speak is made up of signs that rightly speaking designate what men have appropriated.” ( )