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Le Corps Lesbien
« Pour Le Corps lesbien j’étais face à la nécessité d’écrire un livre entièrement lesbien dans sa thématique, son vocabulaire et sa texture, un livre lesbien du début à la fin, de la première à la quatrième de couverture. Je me trouvais par conséquent devant une double béance : celle de la page blanche que doivent affronter tous les écrivains lorsqu’ils commencent un livre, et une autre de nature différente : il n’existait aucun livre de ce genre. Jamais je n’ai relevé un défi aussi radical. Pouvais-je tenter cela ? En étais-je seulement capable ? Et quel serait alors ce livre ? J’ai gardé le manuscrit six mois dans un tiroir avant de le donner à mon éditeur. » Monique Wittig
192 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1973
205 people are currently reading
5655 people want to read
About the author
Monique Wittig
37 books384 followersMonique Wittig was a French author and feminist theorist particularly interested in overcoming gender and the heterosexual contract. She published her first novel, L'opoponax, in 1964 . Her second novel, Les Guérillères (1969), was a landmark in lesbian feminism.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 155 reviews
January 10, 2023
lesbianism is about eating and goring another woman.
December 11, 2009
a celebration of the body from the inside out-- bones, bile, blood & guts handled with erotic jubilation in a world without men... a unique reading experience
August 29, 2008
So, you might be a little thrown off by this title from me...but it's really as subversive a book about language, it's structure and feminism as you can get. Much less "lesbian" when translated to English from the original French, it manages to be both beautiful and disgusting. God, it's so good.
July 23, 2024
One of the most unhinged, lewd, violent, and vivid things I have ever read. This is why women’s stories matter. 🌈
June 13, 2024
monique tu es complètement folle !!!!!!
October 24, 2021
got me crying and blushing in the club
August 15, 2025
Lecture commencée mais pas achevée, pour la première fois, il y a quelques années. Je n'avais pas la maturité suffisante pour saisir à quel point ce texte est révolutionnaire.
Lecture cette fois-ci achevée et avec immense plaisir. La réinvention lesbienne de la langue écrite alliée à un tel érotisme, c'est fou. Fou de grandeur, de beauté, de poésie, de conséquences.
Après avoir lu Wittig, je n'arrive plus à voir les textes littéraires qui abordent le romantisme et/ou la sexualité que sous deux prismes : soit j'y vois des schémas wittigiens inspirés de ce sublime Corps Lesbien, soit des schémas hétérosexuels ô combien soporifiques et envieux des amours lesbiennes.
Bravo Monique pour les travaux. Je pense que c'est un livre auquel je reviendrai beaucoup au cours de ma vie. Très hâte de lire ses autres pépites.
Lecture cette fois-ci achevée et avec immense plaisir. La réinvention lesbienne de la langue écrite alliée à un tel érotisme, c'est fou. Fou de grandeur, de beauté, de poésie, de conséquences.
Après avoir lu Wittig, je n'arrive plus à voir les textes littéraires qui abordent le romantisme et/ou la sexualité que sous deux prismes : soit j'y vois des schémas wittigiens inspirés de ce sublime Corps Lesbien, soit des schémas hétérosexuels ô combien soporifiques et envieux des amours lesbiennes.
Bravo Monique pour les travaux. Je pense que c'est un livre auquel je reviendrai beaucoup au cours de ma vie. Très hâte de lire ses autres pépites.
February 23, 2008
You know how sometimes in a library when you've already gotten far too many books and your arms are full you reach a point of abandon and just throw anything on the pile? That's what was happening to me when I plucked The Lesbian Body on down from the shelf because, I figured, I like lesbians and I like bodies. I thought it might come in handy at a certain time of night. From the cover and description ("a rhapsodic hymn to women's bodies and women's relationships") I guessed that it would probably be a little bit ridiculous and a little bit sentimental, which I have to say I think it was, but not in the way that I expected.
In the introduction, Wittig writes of "The desire to bring the real body violently to life in the words of the book (everything that is written exists), the desire to do violence by writing to the language which I (j/e) can enter only by force." The urgency with which she was writing and the impossible scale of what she considered her mission are affecting. In a certain mood, the excitement could be contagious. You could picture the author, flushed and frantically writing, trying to push language to its limits, as though if she could just be brave enough, bold enough, violent enough, the whole compromised world might come down and a new one come up in its place, the distance between the self and the desired finally transcended.
Unfortunately it seems that trying to amp up the language as much as possible ends up having the opposite effect and much of The Lesbian Body is repetitive and even boring. The language is so ceaselessly, insistently erotic that it becomes unerotic in its predictability. Here is a passage that I think is pretty representative: "Your hand followed by your arm have entered into m/y throat, you traverse m/y larynx, you arrive at m/y lungs, you itemize m/y organs, you make m/e die ten thousands deaths while I smile, you rip out m/y stomach, you tear m/y intestines, you project the uttermost fury into m/y body, I cry out but not from pain, I am overtaken seized hold of, I go over to you entirely, I explode the small units of my ego, I am threatened, I am desired by you. A tree shoots in m/y body, it moves it branches with extreme violence with extreme gentleness, or else it is a bush of burning thorns it tears the other side of m/u exposed muscles m/y insides m/y interiors, I am inhabited, I am not dreaming, I am penetrated by you, now I must struggle against bursting to retain m/y overall perception, I reassemble you in all m/y organs, I burst." There is something frustratingly literal about all of this.
Still, I ended up reading the whole thing although I didn't expect to. There were moments when sudden unexpected images were really arresting, and then the rawness of it did, I think, add to the impact. But I would have to disagree with the jacket blurb "the art and the courage are of the highest level." I couldn't really speak to the courage without sounding, maybe, ungrateful and inconsiderate. Perhaps it's that The Lesbian Body did its work so well that the message seems a little tired to us today. I certainly imagine it was fresher in the climate in which it was originally published. As far as the level of the art, well, I think it's pretty clear that aesthetic considerations weren't the writer's primary concern. I have to say, a little bit apologetically yet, that, though I admire them in a way, strength of feeling and rawness aren't enough to trump aesthetic merit. All the same, I found myself reaching for this book at a time of night that I wasn't exactly reaching for the Henry James, so it did offer both pleasures and merits not always found in works that might be aesthetically better.
In the introduction, Wittig writes of "The desire to bring the real body violently to life in the words of the book (everything that is written exists), the desire to do violence by writing to the language which I (j/e) can enter only by force." The urgency with which she was writing and the impossible scale of what she considered her mission are affecting. In a certain mood, the excitement could be contagious. You could picture the author, flushed and frantically writing, trying to push language to its limits, as though if she could just be brave enough, bold enough, violent enough, the whole compromised world might come down and a new one come up in its place, the distance between the self and the desired finally transcended.
Unfortunately it seems that trying to amp up the language as much as possible ends up having the opposite effect and much of The Lesbian Body is repetitive and even boring. The language is so ceaselessly, insistently erotic that it becomes unerotic in its predictability. Here is a passage that I think is pretty representative: "Your hand followed by your arm have entered into m/y throat, you traverse m/y larynx, you arrive at m/y lungs, you itemize m/y organs, you make m/e die ten thousands deaths while I smile, you rip out m/y stomach, you tear m/y intestines, you project the uttermost fury into m/y body, I cry out but not from pain, I am overtaken seized hold of, I go over to you entirely, I explode the small units of my ego, I am threatened, I am desired by you. A tree shoots in m/y body, it moves it branches with extreme violence with extreme gentleness, or else it is a bush of burning thorns it tears the other side of m/u exposed muscles m/y insides m/y interiors, I am inhabited, I am not dreaming, I am penetrated by you, now I must struggle against bursting to retain m/y overall perception, I reassemble you in all m/y organs, I burst." There is something frustratingly literal about all of this.
Still, I ended up reading the whole thing although I didn't expect to. There were moments when sudden unexpected images were really arresting, and then the rawness of it did, I think, add to the impact. But I would have to disagree with the jacket blurb "the art and the courage are of the highest level." I couldn't really speak to the courage without sounding, maybe, ungrateful and inconsiderate. Perhaps it's that The Lesbian Body did its work so well that the message seems a little tired to us today. I certainly imagine it was fresher in the climate in which it was originally published. As far as the level of the art, well, I think it's pretty clear that aesthetic considerations weren't the writer's primary concern. I have to say, a little bit apologetically yet, that, though I admire them in a way, strength of feeling and rawness aren't enough to trump aesthetic merit. All the same, I found myself reaching for this book at a time of night that I wasn't exactly reaching for the Henry James, so it did offer both pleasures and merits not always found in works that might be aesthetically better.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
January 11, 2023
je n’ai pas les mots et en même temps j’ai tant de choses à dire. juste, les lesbiennes, les reines de ce monde.
November 14, 2025
mi sento letteralmente così
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May 21, 2025fucking transcendent, wittig snapped
January 3, 2020
In reflecting on this novel, I was reminded of the following quote from Larry Kramer's
The Normal Heart
, wherein the gay narrator proclaims that “I belong to a culture that includes Proust, Henry James, Tchaikovsky, Cole Porter, Plato, Socrates, Aristotle, Alexander the Great, Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, Christopher Marlowe, Walt Whitman, Herman Melville, Tennessee Williams, Byron, E. M. Forster.." etc. ad nauseam. But what sort of history do lesbians have?
The Lesbian Body sees Wittig reckoning with that lack of history. Classic figures of Greek homosexuality such as Achilles and Patroclus are transformed into "Achillea and Patroclea." Zeus becomes Xena; Jesus Christ, Christa. But with the context of women's history and oppression always in the foreground, Wittig cannot simply change a few names and call it a liberation. Men must be removed from the equation, in all forms: masculine or male-dominated forms such as the novel, narrative, plot, history, legacy, the body, sex, and love (to name a few) must be deconstructed, destroyed, disregarded. The result is a piece of work that's disgusting and bloody and repetitive and exhausting and ultimately effective.
Though it sometimes feels like a relic of 60s/70s radical feminism, there are moments that feel startlingly relevant today. Lesbian sex has never been described in such unromantic, at times horrifying terms. It still feels like a cold drink to the face of those who have fetishized our sex lives for decades.
The Lesbian Body sees Wittig reckoning with that lack of history. Classic figures of Greek homosexuality such as Achilles and Patroclus are transformed into "Achillea and Patroclea." Zeus becomes Xena; Jesus Christ, Christa. But with the context of women's history and oppression always in the foreground, Wittig cannot simply change a few names and call it a liberation. Men must be removed from the equation, in all forms: masculine or male-dominated forms such as the novel, narrative, plot, history, legacy, the body, sex, and love (to name a few) must be deconstructed, destroyed, disregarded. The result is a piece of work that's disgusting and bloody and repetitive and exhausting and ultimately effective.
Though it sometimes feels like a relic of 60s/70s radical feminism, there are moments that feel startlingly relevant today. Lesbian sex has never been described in such unromantic, at times horrifying terms. It still feels like a cold drink to the face of those who have fetishized our sex lives for decades.
August 7, 2015
Part anatomy index, part Greek/Egyptian mythos fanfiction, all disgustingly good.
July 16, 2022
Maravilloso
January 26, 2025
la wittig volia escriure un llibre “entièrement lesbien”, i ho ha aconseguit! del començament fins al final, això és mitologia lesbiana, com tota la seva obra. al començament pensava que no estava entenent res, però a poc a poc m’he anat adonant que aquest és un dels objectius de l’autora: trencar amb tot el que existia i existeix, el llenguatge i la narrativa tal i com els coneixem. crec que s’ha de llegir i rellegir molts cops per donar-li una nova forma i significat a cada lectura. viscaaaaaaaaaaaa
May 21, 2023
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2023, c'est l'année des 50 ans du Corps lesbien de Monique Wittig, alors pour commencer l'année c'est de ce livre qu'on va parler. Oeuvre littéraire hybride, inclassable (comme souvent chez Wittig), Le corps lesbien c'est une succession de scènes à la fois amoureuses et sexuelles. Personne n'a écrit le sexe comme Wittig, l'adoration, la violence, le sale et le sublime. Personne n'a écrit les lesbiennes comme Wittig : avec ce "j/e" décomposé qui symbolise à lui seul tout le travail qu'elle effectue sur la langue, le pronom, les marques du genre.
Il me semble que l'important pour approcher la fiction de Wittig, c'est de se défaire de l'envie d'y comprendre quelque chose. Son écriture est complexe, mais pas élitiste : elle n'est pas en position de domination lorsqu'elle écrit la sexualité lesbienne. Le texte n'a pas besoin d'être analysé pour être apprécié !
Wittig disait que "le pari était de triompher des mots très prenants de la pornographie" : à mes yeux, c'est réussi. Je pense que c'est ce texte qui m'a donné envie de travailler sur l'érotisme lesbien en littérature !
2023, c'est l'année des 50 ans du Corps lesbien de Monique Wittig, alors pour commencer l'année c'est de ce livre qu'on va parler. Oeuvre littéraire hybride, inclassable (comme souvent chez Wittig), Le corps lesbien c'est une succession de scènes à la fois amoureuses et sexuelles. Personne n'a écrit le sexe comme Wittig, l'adoration, la violence, le sale et le sublime. Personne n'a écrit les lesbiennes comme Wittig : avec ce "j/e" décomposé qui symbolise à lui seul tout le travail qu'elle effectue sur la langue, le pronom, les marques du genre.
Il me semble que l'important pour approcher la fiction de Wittig, c'est de se défaire de l'envie d'y comprendre quelque chose. Son écriture est complexe, mais pas élitiste : elle n'est pas en position de domination lorsqu'elle écrit la sexualité lesbienne. Le texte n'a pas besoin d'être analysé pour être apprécié !
Wittig disait que "le pari était de triompher des mots très prenants de la pornographie" : à mes yeux, c'est réussi. Je pense que c'est ce texte qui m'a donné envie de travailler sur l'érotisme lesbien en littérature !
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February 9, 2023"al contacto con m/i estómago responte tu estómago, el ronquido en m/is pulmones es un ronquido en los tuyos, y/o soy el fin sin derecho sin revés sin lugar m/i estómago aparece entre m/is senos m/is pulmones atraviesan la piel de m/i espalda."
al parecer monique wittig escribió en mi genero favorito.. el inclasificable!! el cuerpo lesbiano no es ni poesia ni narrativa, es algo asi como una prosa lirica fragmentada en pasajes individuales un tanto mitoligicos que comparten entre ellos un mismo tema: la constante construccion y destruccion del cuerpo, both literally and metaphorically; siempre entre la voz principal y una segunda mujer que a veces es su mas amada y en otras su public enemy #1, pero en cualquier caso objeto recurrente de su deep rooted obsession. ha sido a ratos asqueroso y a ratos muy lindo. no es muy largo pero si bastante intenso y como ya he dicho antes aqui y en twitter... tremendamente ethel cain coded, con un hint de julia ducournau cinematic universe. para las lesbianas q esten into that.
al parecer monique wittig escribió en mi genero favorito.. el inclasificable!! el cuerpo lesbiano no es ni poesia ni narrativa, es algo asi como una prosa lirica fragmentada en pasajes individuales un tanto mitoligicos que comparten entre ellos un mismo tema: la constante construccion y destruccion del cuerpo, both literally and metaphorically; siempre entre la voz principal y una segunda mujer que a veces es su mas amada y en otras su public enemy #1, pero en cualquier caso objeto recurrente de su deep rooted obsession. ha sido a ratos asqueroso y a ratos muy lindo. no es muy largo pero si bastante intenso y como ya he dicho antes aqui y en twitter... tremendamente ethel cain coded, con un hint de julia ducournau cinematic universe. para las lesbianas q esten into that.
May 4, 2021
This book was truly an out of body experience. I devoured word after word, each line a confirmation of the lesbian desire that I feel, desire that is monstrous, gruesome, and belonging to another world, exiled from heterosexual society, that captures what it means as a lesbian to love other women: I surrendered myself wholly to the text and felt in my heart the warmth of the waves, the music on the island, and the desperation in the narrator’s voice, as if the text was one long love letter. I wish I could truly articulate what I felt as I was reading the book but it feels near impossible, except to say that I am so grateful this book exists. My heart is in pieces; Monique Wittig, thank you for my life.
(also cannot imagine if i was actually able to speak french and could read this book as it was originally written?!!!)
(also cannot imagine if i was actually able to speak french and could read this book as it was originally written?!!!)
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September 30, 2021“Y/o soy la que tiene el secreto de tu nombre. Y/o retengo sus sílabas tras m/i boca cerrada cuando precisamente quisiera gritarlo por encima de la mar para que ellas se precipiten en ella, caigan en ella se ahoguen en ella. El movimiento del barco lleva consigo la imagen violeta de la luna acá y allá a un lado y a otro de su eje. Y/o m/e levanto, y/o miro el cielo, y/o te suplico. Y/o no puedo ya soportar más a solas el peso de un nombre que te designa m/i muy bella tu nuca tus mejillas tu mirada tus hombros tus senos tus brazos tu vientre tu sexo tu espalda tus nalgas tus muslos tus piernas tus pies desnudos.”
January 17, 2014
This book was gritty, graphic, dark, erotic, and very visceral. It also read more like prose poetry than actual fiction.
Not for the faint of heart.
Not for the faint of heart.
February 9, 2023
Un hommage à la féminité à la fois érotique, noir et à la dimension presque spirituelle.
J’ai eu beaucoup de mal avec la forme et l’écriture alors que les mots étaient puissants.
Je ne saurais dire si j’ai aimé ou non, c’est une expérience étrange.
À lire pour l’ambition de Wittig.
J’ai eu beaucoup de mal avec la forme et l’écriture alors que les mots étaient puissants.
Je ne saurais dire si j’ai aimé ou non, c’est une expérience étrange.
À lire pour l’ambition de Wittig.
March 16, 2024
ITS INSANE AND DISGUSTING AND LESBIAN !!! A GORY LESBIAN BOOK IDK IF ITS BCZ ITS 6AM BUT MERCI WITTIG DANS UN STYLE INCROYABLE LOVED ITTT5T
August 21, 2024
Monique tu as pris mes neurones mes viscères fumantes mes genoux lustrés et rendu sexy les mythes pénibles appris en cours de latin merciiiii
Bon et sinon. C'est juste trop beau. Déconstruit comme Artaud, romantique et noir comme Baudelaire, chantant comme Homère, précis comme la médecine mais en mieux - en lesbien...
Woolf et Miller mixées avec les frissons des flashs de ma dernière très bonne baise argh.
Tellement parfait inattendu différent et orgueuilleusement lesbien.
Magistral. De la merveilleuse littérature érotique et amoureuse.
Pfiou.
Je m'en remets pas je suis kécho 😭😭😭
Bon et sinon. C'est juste trop beau. Déconstruit comme Artaud, romantique et noir comme Baudelaire, chantant comme Homère, précis comme la médecine mais en mieux - en lesbien...
Woolf et Miller mixées avec les frissons des flashs de ma dernière très bonne baise argh.
Tellement parfait inattendu différent et orgueuilleusement lesbien.
Magistral. De la merveilleuse littérature érotique et amoureuse.
Pfiou.
Je m'en remets pas je suis kécho 😭😭😭
August 10, 2021
Honestly je comprends le projet politique, linguistique et littéraire et c'est grave intéressant mais j'ai absolument RIEN compris au bouquin like what is this c'est incompréhensible. Je mets quand même 3 étoiles car l'expérience de lecture est incroyable et le projet derrière est excellent mais je sais pas si je suis passée totalement à côté de l'histoire ou si juste c'est normal de rien comprendre et de juste vibe en lisant ?? Anyway dans tous les cas je vais lire des critiques about it car ça m'intéresse trop and my dear lesbians qui sont un minimum politisées et qui connaissent le projet politique / linguistique de wittig foncez je recommande trop l'expérience de lecture.
August 23, 2016
I did not know going in that this was a narrative told by a "Je" ("I") about the graphic death of their significant other, a "Tu" ("You"). It was simply, for me, a long epic poem about lesbian love. A beautiful, eloquent, jarring, and heart-brakingly honest account of the life and death of love and what it means for the speaker, but an epic poem nonetheless.
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June 17, 2023No sé en quien estaría pensando la autora mientras escribía este libro pero se nota que eran muy buenas amigas 😊
December 26, 2024
vive les lesbiennes
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August 30, 2025accent on *body*. very interesting, I understood certain parts more intimately than others. love and desire are two really intense things
June 7, 2025
A story about a pair of lovers existing across centuries(?), showing their love again and again by, among other things, stripping each other down to the viscera and eating each other raw. Surprisingly gory and unhinged, not at ALL what I was expecting (especially considered this came out in…the 70s?) but man I enjoyed it.
June 14, 2024
this was so weird but also so beautiful. def want to reread. maybe even in the original french (no promises tho).
Displaying 1 - 30 of 155 reviews