The Straight Mind

by Monique Wittig

  Sometimes an interlocutor breaks off, drops the conversation, and withdraws to undetermined places. Sometimes, too, there is a “here” and a “there,” but this indication of distance does not correspond to place, but to a disparity at work in the language: Those people there and these people here are not speaking the same language. The point of view, far from being unique, is constantly and quickly shifting, according to the interlocutors’ interventions, provoking changes of meaning, variations. The multiplicity of this point of view and its mobility are produced and sustained by the rhythm of the writing that is broken up by what is called discourse and its accidents. It is important to emphasize this multiplicity as far as the psychological, ethical, or political interpretation of the characters is concerned, for no interpretation is possible. It is, on the contrary, continually prevented. Not one of the spoken discourses, not even the inner dialogues or the inner discourses, is assumed by the author and, further, there is no privileged interlocutor entrusted with her point of view (contrary to Plato’s Socrates), that which forces the reader to adopt them all successively, as temporary scenarios, as in Martereau, for example. Thus “le lecteur, sans cesse tendu, aux aguets, comme s’il était à la place de celui à qui les paroles s’adressent, mobilise tous ses instincts de défense, tous ses dons d’intuition, sa mémoire, ses facultés de jugement et de raisonnement” [the reader, who has remained intent, on the lookout, as though he were in the shoes of the person to whom the words are directed, mobilizes all his instincts of defense, all his powers of intuition, his memory, his faculties of judgment and reasoning].1

  I would delight in speaking of the very substance of the text itself, of the rhythm, the sequences, and their mode of development, of the use of words as isolated words dispersing between interlocutors, of the spectacular oscillations of the text at moments when shifts in point of view take place, of the interlocutory sequences, of the clichés that are orchestrated around a word, as though by baton, of the birth and deployment in counterpoint of a text. This text responds like some kind of antique Greek choir, not tragic but sarcastic, commenting on the fortuities of the discourse, of the dynamic gathering of all the elements in a unique movement that carries them all away and which is the text.

  But I must speak of a more philosophical matter. That is why I mentioned Plato, although, contrary to his interlocutors, Sarraute’s do not deliver it as a whole.

  The use of speech, such as it is practiced everyday, is an operation that suffocates language and thus the ego, whose deadly stake is the hiding, the dissimulating, as carefully as possible, of the nature of language. What is caught unaware here and suffocates are the words between the words, before the “fathers,” before the “mothers,” before the “you’s,” before “the arising of the dead,” before “structuralisma,” before “capitalisma.” What is smothered by all kinds of talk, whether it be that of the street or of the philosopher’s study, is the first language (of which the dictionary gives us an approximate idea): the one in which meaning has not yet occurred, the one which is for all, which belongs to all, and which everyone in turn can take, use, bend toward a meaning. For this is the social pact that binds us, the exclusive contract (none other is possible), a social contract that exists just as Rousseau imagined it, one where the “right of the strongest” is a contradiction in terms, one where there are neither men nor women, neither races nor oppression, nothing but what can be named progressively, word by word, language. Here we are all free and equal or there would be no possible pact. We all learned to speak with the awareness that words can be exchanged, that language forms itself in a relation of absolute reciprocity. If not, who would be mad enough to want to talk? The tremendous power—such as linguists have made it known to us—the power to use, proceeding from oneself alone, all language, with its words of dazzling sounds and meanings, belongs to us all. Language exists as the commonplace2 where one can revel freely and, in one stroke, through words, offer to others at arm’s length the same license, one without which there would be no meaning. “Par toutes leurs voyelles, par toutes leurs consonnes [les mots] se tendent, s’ouvrent, aspirent, s’imbibent, s’emplissent, se gonflent, s’épandent à la mesure d’espaces infinis, à la mesure de bonheurs sans bornes” [With all their vowels, their consonants, (words) stretch, open up, inhale, become saturated, fill up, swell, spread over infinite space, over boundless happinesses.3

  Language exists as a paradise made of visible, audible, palpable, palatable words:

  quand le fracas des mots heurtés les uns contre les autres couvre leur sens . . . quand frottés les uns contre les autres, ils le recouvrent de gerbes étincelantes . . . quand dans chaque mot son sens réduit à un petit noyau est entouré de vastes étendues brumeuses . . . quand il est dissimulé par un jeu de reflets, de réverbérations, de miroitements . . . quand les mots entourés d’un halo semblent voguer suspendus à distance les uns des autres . . . quand se posant en nous un par un, ils s’implantent, s’imbibent lentement de notre plus obscure substance, nous emplissent tout entiers, se dilatent, s’épandent à notre mesure, au-delà de notre mesure, hors de toute mesure?

  [when the clash of words colliding with one another drowns their meaning . . . when, rubbed together, they produce a shower of sparks which conceals it . . . when the meaning of each word is reduced to a tiny kernel surrounded by vast, misty spaces . . . when it is hidden under the play of reflections, of reverberations, of scintillations . . . when words are surrounded by a halo and seem to float, suspended at a distance from one another . . . when they settle into us one by one, embed themselves, slowly imbibe our most obscure substance, fill our every nook and cranny, dilate, spread to our measure, beyond our measure, beyond all measure?]4

  But even while the social contract, such as it is, guarantees the entire and exclusive disposition of language to everyone, and while, in accordance with this same right, it guarantees the possibility of its exchange with any interlocutor on the same terms—for the very fact that the exchange is possible guarantees reciprocity—it nevertheless appears that the two modes of relating to language have nothing in common, It is almost as though, suddenly, instead of there being one contract, there were two. In one, the explicit contract—the one where the “I” is made a human being by being given the use of speech, the one where the practice of language is constitutive of the “I” who speaks it—face to face with words, “I” is a hero (héros—héraut, Hérault, erre haut)5 to which the world, which it forms and deforms at will, belongs. And everyone agrees to grant this right to the “I”; it is a universal agreement. Here, I do not have to stand on ceremony, I can put my boots on the table, I am almighty, or as Pinget says in Baga, I am the “roi de moi” [I am my own king]. In the other contract, the implicit one, the very opposite takes place. With the appearance of an interlocutor, the poles are reversed:

  Disons que ce qui pourrait les faire céder à ce besoin de fuite . . . nous l’avons tous éprouvé . . . ce serait la perspective de ce à quoi elles seront obligées de se soumettre . . . cette petite opération . . . Petite? Mais à quoi bon essayer raisonnablement, docilement, décemment, craintivement, de s’abriter derrière “petite”? Soyons francs, pas petite, pas petite du tout . . . le mot qui lui convient est “énorme” . . . une énorme opération, une véritable mue.

  [Let us say that what might make them give way to this need to escape . . . we have all felt it . . . would be the prospect of what they would be obliged to submit to . . . that little operation . . . Little? But what good is it to try—reasonably, docilely, decently, fearfully—to take refuge behind “little”? Let us be frank, not little, not little as all . . . the appropriate word is “enormous” . . . an enormous operation, a veritable molt.]6

  That the other advances in his own words is sufficient for the “I,” even before it utters a word, to be thrown a robe which is anything but a royal cloak:

  D’elle quelque chose se dégage . . . comme un fluide . . . comme des rayons . . . il sent que sous leur effet il su
bit une opération par laquelle il est mis en forme, qui lui donne un corps, un sexe, un âge, l’affuble d’un signe comme une formule mathématique résumant un long développement.

  [Something emanates from her . . . Something like a fluid, like rays . . . under whose effect he feels he is undergoing an operation which gives him a form, which gives him a body, a sex, an age, rigs him out with a sign like a mathematical formula that sums up a long development.]7

  Even before “I” knows it, “I” is made a prisoner, it becomes the victim, of a fool’s deal. What it has mistaken for absolute liberty, the necessary reciprocity, without which language is impossible, is but the surrender, a deal that overthrows the “I” at the mercy of the slightest word. That this word be uttered and

  le centre, le lieu secret où se trouvait l’état-major et d’où lui, chef suprême, les cartes étalées sous les yeux, examinant la configuration du terrain, écoutant les rapports, prenant les décisions, dirigeait les opérations, une bombe l’a soufflé . . . il est projeté à terre, ses insignes arrachés, il s’est secoué, contraint à se relever et à marcher, poussé à coups de crosse, à coups de pied dans le troupeau grisâtre des captifs, tous portant la même tenue, classés dans la même catégorie.

  [The center, the secret spot where the General Staff is located and from where he, the Commander-in-Chief, all the maps spread out for him to see, examining the lay of the land, listening to reports, taking decisions, directing operations, a bomb hit it . . . he is thrown to the ground, his insignia torn off, he is shaken, obliged to get up and walk, pushed forward, by blows from rifle butts, kicks, into the gray flock of the prisoners, all dressed alike, classified in the same category.]8

  In the second contract, the implicit one, in the interlocution no holds are barred and may the strongest win, he deserves it. To speak of one’s right would be inappropriate in this case, for one is the strongest only by taking advantage of the unlimited power over the other granted by language, a power all the more unlimited because it has no recognized social existence. It is, therefore, with complete impunity that the strongest in words can become a criminal. Words, les paroles,

  pourvu qu’elles présentent une apparence à peu près anodine et banale peuvent être et sont souvent en effet, sans que personne y trouve à redire, sans que la victime ose clairement se l’avouer, l’arme quotidienne, insidieuse et très efficace, d’innombrables petits crimes. Car rien n’égale la vitesse avec laquelle elles touchent l’interlocuteur au moment où il est le moins sur ses gardes, ne lui donnant souvent qu’une sensation de chatouillement désagreable ou de légère brûlure, la précision avec laquelle elles vont droit en lui aux points les plus secrets et les plus vulnérables, se logent dans ses replis les plus profonds, sans qu’il ait le désir, ni les moyens, ni le temps de riposter.

  [provided they present a more or less harmless, commonplace appearance, can be and, in fact, without anyone’s taking exception, without the victim’s even daring to admit it frankly himself . . . often are the daily, insidious, and very effective weapon responsible for countless minor crimes. For there is nothing to equal the rapidity with which they attain to the other person at the moment when he is least on his guard, often giving him merely the sensation of disagreeable tickling or slight burning; or the precision with which they enter straight into him at his most secret and vulnerable points, and lodge in his innermost recesses, without his having the desire, the means, or the time to retort.]9

  With the turn of a word, one is brought into line and led between two gentlemen, like the narrator in Martereau, for that which, in accord with the primary pact, establishes the “I” as free, now holds it bound hand and foot. Winged words are also bludgeons, language is a lure, paradise is also the hell of discourses, no longer the confusion of languages as in Babel, or discord, but the grand ordinance, the bringing into line of a strict meaning, of a social meaning.

  What is taking place between the two contracts? Why is it that, at any moment, no longer almighty subject, no longer king, “I” can find itself rolling in the dust at the foot of the throne? When Sartre spoke in the preface to Portrait d’un inconnu (Portrait of a Man Unknown, 1956) of the “va et vient incessant du particulier au général” [incessant coming and going from the particular to the general], that which is the approach of any science, he was thinking of the tropisms, of this movement of consciousness, of this indicator of a reaction to one or several words, and he was imagining a particular consciousness trying to reach the general. Actually, however, it is just the contrary, since each time “I” is spoken in the singular, it is then, according to Sarraute, that “I” is the general, an “infinite,” a “nebula,” a “world.” And one interlocutor, only one, is sufficient for the “I” to pass from the general to a simple particular in a movement that is exactly the reverse of that attributed to science.

  It is there, in the interval between locution and interlocution, that the conflict emerges: the strange wrenching, the tension in the movement from particular to general, experienced by any human being when from an “I”—unique in language, shapeless, boundless, infinite—it suddenly becomes nothing or almost nothing, “you,” “he,” “she,” “a small, rather ugly fellow,” an interlocutor. The brutal reduction (a “véritable mue” [true molt]) implies that the so-promising contract was glaringly false. And thus, for Sarraute, it implies not only that the social meaning or the contradictions between the general interest and the particular interest, in exercising a constant pressure over the exchange of language, particularly in the interlocution, are at the origin of the conflict; it is also toward the entire system that Sarraute turns the interrogation: toward the fundamental flaw in the contract, the worm in the fruit, toward the fact that the contract in its very structure is an impossibility—given that, through language, “I” is at once everything, “I” has every power (as a locutor), and that, suddenly, there is the downfall wherein “I” loses all power (as an interlocutor) and is endangered by words that can cause madness, kill. The social significance, the commonplaces are not the cause: they come after, and are used. It even seems that that is what they are there for, “one has only to draw from the common stock.” Moreover, they are at everyone’s disposal, everyone makes fervent use of them, the weak, the strong, each, in his own way, playing the victim, the cocky one, the model young couple, the self-assured man, without there being any winners or losers. The reductive “you” which levels them, demeans them, labels them “honteuses et rougissantes dans leur ridicule nudité, esclaves anonymes enchaînées l’une à l’autre, bétail conduit pêle-mêle au marché” [ashamed and blushing in their ridiculous nudity, anonymous slaves chained one to the other, cattle led pell-mell to the market]10 can, like a boomerang, turn back on the aggressor, as is the case in Martereau, where the powerful one, in turn, becomes impoverished: “tendre faible transi de froid . . . les gamins lui jettent des pierres. . . . La face peinte, affublé d’oripeaux grotesques, elle le force chaque soir à faire le pitre, à crier cocorico sur l’estrade d’un beuglant, sous les rires, les huées.” [Tender, weak, numb with cold . . . the street urchins throw stones at him. . . . With his face painted, rigged out in an absurd get-up, she forces him each evening to play the clown, to crow “cock-a-doodle-do” on the stage of a cheap cabaret, while the audience howls and hoots.]11

  Any social actor makes use of this weapon of commonplaces, whatever his situation, for it is the debased form of reciprocity that has founded the exchange contract. But the conflict due to the confrontation of the two modes of relation to language (locution and interlocution) remains, nevertheless, insurmountable, from whatever point of view.

  The substance of Sarraute’s novels envelops this double movement, this deadly embrace, with its violent, vehement, passionate words. That is what leads me to say that the paradise of the social contract exists only in literature, where the tropisms, by their violence, are able to counter any reduction of the “I” to a common denominator, to tear open the closely woven material o
f the commonplaces, and to continually prevent their organization into a system of compulsory meaning.

  Notes

  Foreword

  1. Cf. Charlotte Bunch, “Learning from Lesbian Separatism,” Ms. (November 1976).

  2. Ariane Brunet and Louise Turcotte, “Separatism and Radicalism: An Analysis of the Differences and Similarities,” trans. Lee Heppner, in For Lesbians Only: A Separatist Anthology (London: Onlywomen Press, 1988), p. 450.

  3. Adrienne Rich, “Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence,” Signs 5, no. 4 (Summer 1980).

  4. Rich, p. 648.

  5. Rich, p. 659.

  The Category of Sex

  1. André Breton, Le Premier Manifeste du Surréalisme, 1924.

  2. Pleasure in sex is no more the subject of this paper than is happiness in slavery.

  One Is Not Born a Woman

  1. Christine Delphy, “Pour un féminisme matérialiste,” L’Arc 61 (1975). Translated as “For a Materialist Feminism,” Feminist Issues 1, no. 2 (Winter 1981).

  2. Colette Guillaumin, “Race et Nature: Système des marques, idée de groupe naturel et rapports sociaux,” Pluriel, no. 11 (1977). Translated as “Race and Nature: The System of Marks, the Idea of a Natural Group and Social Relationships,” Feminist Issues 8, no. 2 (Fall 1988).