Podcast Summary: New Books Network – Natacha Chetcuti-Osorovitz and Sara Garbagnoli, "La Pensée Wittig: Une Introduction" (Payot, 2025)
Host: Gina Stam | Guest: Sara Garbagnoli | Date: September 26, 2025
Episode Overview
This episode features a deep conversation between host Gina Stam and Sara Garbagnoli, co-author (with Natacha Chetcuti-Osorovitz) of La Pensée Wittig: Une Introduction. The book introduces the thought of the influential French feminist thinker and writer Monique Wittig. The discussion delves into Wittig’s intellectual legacy, her context within French materialist feminism, her views on heterosexuality as a political regime, the politics of lesbianism, and her pioneering use of language and literature as tools for radical transformation.
Key Discussion Points & Insights
Sara Garbagnoli’s Personal Connection to Wittig
- Discovering Wittig: Garbagnoli shares that she encountered Wittig’s work in her 30s, describing it as "oxygen" after years of societal shame around lesbianism.
- Quote [03:18]: “Her writing quite literally gave me oxygen … a new pair of glasses, a new pair of lenses through which I could see the world differently.” – Sara Garbagnoli
- Motivation for the Book: The desire to honor Wittig’s impact, emphasizing her “radicality and contemporarity” and the enduring importance of her concepts like denaturalization and utopia for feminists and queer and anti-racist struggles.
The Significance of "La Pensée Wittig" [05:11]
- Double Resonance: The title signifies both Wittig’s intellectual legacy and the emergence of her thought as a conceptual paradigm.
- Exposes categories like sex, race, and difference as contingent political constructs, not natural facts.
- Quote [06:06]: “La Pensée Wittig names ... a mode of thought that directly contests what Wittig herself calls La Pensée Straight.”
The Book’s Dual Structure [06:43]
- Primer and Historiography: The book functions as both an introduction to Wittig’s writing and a historiographical account positioning her within the French feminist movements of the 1970s–1990s.
- Countering Distortions: Seeks to restore Wittig’s materialist context and reconnect her theory with her literary practice.
Transformative Escape: "Les Évasions Transformatrice" [08:52]
- Escape as Political Praxis: Escape means acknowledging and fleeing the totalitarian nature of heterosexuality—not as denial, but as a creative, transformative practice challenging naturalized categories of men and women.
- Quote [09:31]: “[Wittig] insists that freedom is possible, and to become conscious of constraint is for her the way to open a margin of manoeuvre.”
Materialist Feminism Explained [10:44]
- Not Biology, But Class: Materialist feminism sees women as a social class, not biologically determined, formed through relations of domination and appropriation by men.
- Contrast to Other Feminisms:
- Differentialist: Rejects sexual difference as ideological, not natural.
- Liberal: Rejects integration/accommodation; aims for abolition of the sex class system.
- Quote [12:17]: “Sex is not a biological destiny but a political category ... the ideological mechanism that conceals relations of exploitation.”
Heterosexuality as an Unquestioned Regime [13:17]
- Feminist Blind Spot: Even influential feminists (e.g., Simone de Beauvoir) left heterosexuality unchallenged, treating it as natural and inevitable, thus reinforcing its power.
- Quote [13:56]: “This failure to interrogate heterosexuality ... meant reproducing its naturalization.”
The Heterosexual Contract (Rousseau Revisited) [14:39]
- Exposing Patriarchal Foundations: Wittig re-reads Rousseau’s social contract as a “heterosexual contract” based on exclusion and appropriation of women.
- Quote [15:26]: “…not a pact among equals, but what she calls a baster contract.”
The Problem of Consent [16:28]
- Consent as Illusion: Within the heterosexual regime, “consent” is compromised, since the regime predates, structures, and limits subjectivity itself.
- Quote [16:53]: “Consent cannot serve as a meaningful marker of freedom, since the conditions for autonomy are structured by ... oppression, by coercion.”
Lesbianism as Political Position and Literary Innovation [18:58]
- Breaking the Contract: Declaring oneself a lesbian is an explicit rupture with the heterosexual system, a move both lived and literary.
- Pronoun Experimentation: Wittig’s pioneering use of pronouns and narrative voice suspends gender, disrupts binary categories, and enacts theoretical ideas in literature (e.g., Le Poponax, Les Guérillères, Le Corps Lesbien).
- Quote [20:37]: “All these innovations are not stylistic ornaments, but they are integral to Wittig's theoretical and political project.”
Wittig’s Unfinished Project on Lesbianism [22:37]
- Ambitious Scope: Planned a sociological and historical treatise presenting lesbianism as a paradigm for analyzing heterosexuality, highlighting the privileged epistemic and political standpoint it provides.
- Reimagining Lesbian History and Myth: In Lesbian People: Material for a Dictionary and similar works, reconstructs lesbian culture as an act of joyful resistance against systematic erasure.
Solidary Flight and Active Passion [24:53, 27:12]
- Solitary and Collective: Wittig’s literary journeys show departures from normative categories that are at once personal and political (“solidary flight”).
- Active Passion: Reframes “passion” as agency, a drive for world-making, not passive suffering.
- Quote [27:46]: “Passion becomes active when it is mobilized as a form of resistance, but also as a form of creation ... as a power to dismantle existing relation and to forge others.”
Political Writing and Language as Terrain [29:11]
- Literature as Intervention: Language and genre transmit and entrench dominant (“straight”) ideology. The “minoritarian writer” must infiltrate and subvert these forms to undermine domination.
- Quote [29:46]: “Literature is a terrain where the dominant order inscribed itself ... The canon... is one of the primary vehicles through which the straight mind reproduces itself.”
Concrete Literary Techniques [30:49]
- Destabilizing Language: Wittig’s innovations include enumerations (names, body parts, invented bibliographies) to reveal absences and silences (“la lacuna”), signifying both erasure and anticipation of new subjectivities.
- Quote [34:24]: “Recourse to the lacuna ... is aesthetically and politically central to Wittig's poetics. It signals the erasure of minoritarian subjects, but also the anticipation of what does not exist yet.”
The Trojan Horse Metaphor [35:15]
- Infiltration and Transformation: Wittig sees her writing as a "Trojan horse," entering dominant structures to transform them from within.
- Quote [35:33]: “The Trojan horse designates writings as a practice of infiltration and a practice of transformation of the literary field.”
Minoritarian Voice and Danger to Dominant Culture [36:47]
- Exposing Universality as Constructed: The minoritarian voice de-naturalizes dominant categories, revealing them as historically contingent, not universal—hence, it is perceived as threatening.
- Quote [37:18]: “The minoritarian voice is dangerous because it carries with critique and invention…”
Target Audience and Hopes for the Book [39:03]
- Minoritarian Readers: Especially aims to reach those marginalized by patriarchal, heteronormative, and racist systems, offering Wittig’s thought as “oxygen” and as a tool for survival, resistance, and transformation.
- Quote [39:22]: “For them, Wittig's thought can provide oxygen—the intellectual and imaginative resources necessary to survive, to resist and to begin to reconfigure and to transform the world.”
Future Projects [40:30]
- Next Steps: Research on Colette Guillaumin and studies on the "anti-woke crusade" through Wittig and Guillaumin’s theories—aimed at demonstrating the denaturalization of domination and the possibility for revolutionary change.
Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments
- “[Wittig’s] writing quite literally gave me oxygen... Vitiq gives us oxygens… her radical thought struck me with the force of a new pair of glasses.” – Sara Garbagnoli ([03:18])
- “Sex is not a biological destiny, but a political category.” – Sara Garbagnoli ([12:17])
- “The minoritarian voice is dangerous because it carries with critique and invention—critique in the sense that it unmasks domination disguised as nature.” – Sara Garbagnoli ([37:18])
- “Passion becomes active when it is mobilized as a form of resistance, but also as a form of creation, as a power to dismantle existing relation and to forge others.” – Sara Garbagnoli ([27:46])
- “The Trojan horse designates writings as a practice of infiltration and a practice of transformation of the literary field.” – Sara Garbagnoli ([35:33])
- “For them, Wittig’s thought can provide oxygen—the intellectual and imaginative resources necessary to survive, to resist and to begin to reconfigure and to transform the world.” – Sara Garbagnoli ([39:22])
Important Timestamps
- [02:59] – Garbagnoli’s personal discovery of Wittig and motivation for writing the book
- [05:11] – The significance of the title "La Pensée Wittig"
- [10:44] – Explanation of materialist feminism and Wittig’s distinct contributions
- [14:39] – Wittig’s reinterpretation of Rousseau’s social contract
- [16:28] – The troubled role of consent in the heterosexual regime
- [18:58] – Lesbianism as a political and literary position; pronoun innovations
- [22:37] – Wittig’s unfinished project on lesbianism
- [24:53] – "Solidary flight" and active passion in Wittig’s later works
- [29:11] – The political operation of literature and language
- [30:49] – Wittig’s literary techniques: enumeration and the importance of the “lacuna”
- [35:15] – The Trojan horse metaphor for literary intervention
- [36:47] – The disruptive power of the minoritarian voice
- [39:03] – Who the book is for and its intended impact
Summary Tone
The conversation is intellectually rigorous, reflective, and passionately engaged—matching both Wittig’s revolutionary fervor and Garbagnoli’s commitment to bringing Wittig’s work to new generations of readers and activists. The tone combines scholarly precision with personal testimony, underlining the life-changing and resistant potential of feminist and minoritarian thought.
This episode is a compelling introduction to Wittig’s radical legacy and offers essential insights for anyone interested in feminist theory, queer studies, literary innovation, and the transformative power of political writing.