Monique Wittig
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
|
Related e |
|
Featured: |
Monique Wittig (1935 - January 3, 2003) was a French author and feminist theorist, particularly interested in overcoming gender. She published her first novel, L'opoponax, in 1964 . Her second novel, Les Guerillères (1969), was a landmark in lesbian feminism.
Biography
Monique Wittig was born in 1935 in Dannemarie in Haut-Rhin, France. She was one of the founders of the Mouvement de libération des femmes (MLF) (Women's Liberation Movement). On August 26, 1970, accompanied by numerous other women, she put flowers under the Arc de Triomphe to honour the wife of The Unknown Soldier; this symbolic action was considered to be the founding event of French feminism.
Performing well in academic study, Wittig earned her Ph.D. from the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, after completing a thesis on Le Chantier littéraire.
In 1971, she attended the Gouines rouges ("Red dykes"), the first lesbian group in Paris. She was also involved in the Féministes Révolutionnaires ("Revolutionary feminists"), a radical feminist group.
In 1976, she left Paris for the United States where she taught at numerous universities. She was a professor in women's studies and French at the University of Arizona in Tucson, where she died of a heart attack on January 3, 2003.
