Beautiful War
explores the interdependent political, linguistic, and erotic registers of lesbian feminism in Monique Wittig's novels, querying in particular how they function collectively to destabilize male hegemony and heterosexism. Beginning with the assertion that Wittig expressly dismantles the Classical veneration of
la belle femme
in order to create an agent more capable of social change (
la femme belliqueuse
), the author traces the permutations of violence through her four novels,
L'Opoponax, Les Guérillères, Le Corps Lesbien,
and
Virgile, Non
and examines the relevance of brutality to Wittig's feminist agenda. Drawing on literary criticism, intellectual and political history, queer theory, and feminist theory in his readings of the primary texts, the author argues that Wittig's œuvre constitutes a progressive textual actualization of paradigm shifts toward gender parity and a permanent banishment of the primacy of male and heterosexist political and sexual discourse.