The Lesbian Body

In this genre- and gender-bending work of theory-fiction, legendary French writer and activist of the 1970s feminist movement Monique Wittig celebrates the body -- female, lesbian, literary -- and challenges the order of heterosexuality in literature and history.

First published in French in 1973, The Lesbian Body foregrounds the relationship between a lover and a beloved -- also a writer and a text -- as Wittig explores the ideological, historical, and physical feminine subject. Organized according to the principle of montage, poetic passages are juxtaposed with anatomic lists that mark female eros. Through expressions of joy, violence, and tenderness, the site of pleasure is celebrated over that of reproduction.

In her transfiguration of gender and its paradigms, Wittig transformed French vocabulary, feminizing grammar and lesbianizing myths. This edition brings Wittig's groundbreaking work back into circulation for the first time since the mid-1980s in a revised English translation, with an introduction by Paul B. Preciado.