Re/citing Monique Wittig - Josh Szymanski (Progress Review 3)

This presentation will describe an overview of my thesis on the work of French lesbian-feminist, Monique Wittig, and how my interpretations of her ideas has developed over the four years spent engaging her works. This presentation will also, however, work to reflect on my own positioning and the feminist-political role of the thesis in ‘returning’ to Wittig’s work. Given this thesis’ focus on ideas of interpretation and meaning, it remains a pertinent question for me, as an author and reader, to question my own role in interpreting Wittig’s works – particularly when this interpretation not only claims to present some measure of ‘accuracy’ (or, at the very least, relevance) in its reading, but also since it claims to offer ideas of political import and urgency for feminist thought. Part of this discussion will be framed through with what Clare Hemmings, in her 2011 book, Why Stories Matter, calls a process of ‘reciting’. By taking up Hemmings’ discussion of how political narratives about feminism’s own past and future trajectory have, and continue to be, part of the means by which feminism outlines for itself its own identity and goals, I start by framing my own thesis as a similar act of ‘story-telling’. What I argue is that this thesis offers a different story about Wittig’s work – one that, at times, conflicts with other historical feminist narratives (around essentialism, lesbian-separatism, the sex/gender system) – but one, as well, that offers an account of how Wittig might function as a protagonist in future feminist stories. While the positioning of my thesis and my interpretation of Wittig in this way is not meant to diminish the significance and import of the feminist-political ideas engaged with (these stories do, after all, matter), it will, I hope, work to undercut any interpretive sovereignty my thesis might seem to claim over Wittig’s work. The contribution of this thesis aims not to offer the final word on Wittig’s lesbian-feminism, but rather open a narrative space such that other stories might continue to be told about Wittig