After Reading Les Guérillères
Monique Wittig, trans. by David Le Vay. Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 1971.
by Rhonda Patzia
I was once a physical powerhouse, loving to feel in my body the precision and coordination of movement. I felt most myself when playing in trees, shooting a basket, cliff jumping into water, marathon running, skiing, sprinting through the forest, and uniting with nature in the moonlight. Considering my physical past, how ironic that I should read Les Guérillères on a day that I could hardly move my body.
How ironic that while propped-up limp on the couch with mega-doses of steroids running through my veins, hoping they would jump-start my body after a multiple sclerosis exacerbation, I read of a band of strong women who play and hunt through the countryside and wage war on the old ways of seeing and doing. Paradoxically, even though my limbs were immobile as I read, I felt powerful. Not because I was being offered an escape from my body, but because as an entire body I felt included.
An early passage describes the living women bringing out a mummy to dry in the sun and returning her inside when rain approaches:
The dead woman is clothed in a long tunic of green velvet, covered with white embroidery and gilded ornaments. They have hung little bells on her neck, on her sleeves. They have put medallions in her hair. When they take hold of the box to bring it out the dead woman begins to tinkle everywhere.
I read the passage. I couldn't move my legs. I cried. I had to use a pillow to hold up the book so I could read more about this circle of women, who were so connected to one another that they attentively put bells on their dead (I like to imagine them all with bells as they take care of one another). The living women in Les Guérillères connect to the dead as if all are part of the same continuum. Death is not a negation or ending. I went tinkling with bells through the rest of the book, better able to imagine my inclusion in such a powerful tribe. My legs wouldn't move. I tinkled on. My arms were numb. I tinkled on… I read and imagined on…
Les Guérillères moved me to imagine how I now connect with all women. The tribal women seemed to reach through the pages of the book to touch and hold me ardently, tenderly. They pulled me from my stagnation on the couch into their ring, even though I could hardly stand on my legs. I felt that strong women everywhere, ever bonding and banding-together for change, were grabbing my hands and including me in their circle of female bodies, whether broken or intact: dancing bodies, moving bodies, fighting bodies, safe bodies, strong bodies. I felt myself joining a powerful community, despite the way my legs fell inertly to the floor.
The circle is the recurring symbol that Monique Wittig uses to depict the power of unified women in Les Guérillères. The warriors create the "O" symbol from their own circular vulvas, which reflect the world like a mirror. They use it as a compass to "navigate from sunrise to sunset" "O" is their war cry. Their battle shields are round.
The circle has always appealed to my imagination as a metaphor for community. Monique Wittig's writing invited me to enter and participate in the circle of women. Within this circle, I have realized a depth of community, of joining, that has utterly transformed me.
Without truly knowing our bodies and how they join with other female bodies, I'm convinced that in an important sense we women remain blind and paralyzed. For example, because I was once alienated from women (didn't want to be fully associated with the gender because I perceived it as weak), I didn't respect and understand my own intelligence. I would make decisions according to intuition, then apologize for them because they weren't rational. By seeing how I connect with women and by learning to value the nuances of women's intelligence, I have come to have confidence in my own ideas-- and in my own movement.
Beware of dispersal. Remain united like the characters in a book. Do not abandon the collectivity. The women are seated on the piles of leaves holding hands watching the clouds that pass outside.
Les Guérillères allowed me to imagine holding hands in circles of women even when I am dying. Injury and death were such givens for Wittig's warriors (and I could feel their fear and bravery when facing their own mortality) that the maimed, ill and dead among them were respected, even revered – and never disconnected from the rest. As I lay limp on the couch, my body leapt to imagine the same for myself.
I want my body to speak to other female bodies about rightful inclusion. I want us each to feel a part of an amazing female community…circling…and tinkling everywhere.
I am still a physical powerhouse…I just can't move my legs sometimes.
working note
Writing an after-reading is more than analyzing and critiquing a book. I think of it as a timeless and spaceless dialogue between bodies, sitting down with an author and entreating, "Tell me about the world. Tell me about myself." Many of the feminist authors I have read wrote from their entire body. I can tell. I can feel it through my own body. I think of their books as gifts to me. In an important way, they offer their bodies to my body, and consequently, I have a deeper sense of my own.
Sometimes after bringing a book profoundly into my body, I cry.
about the author
Rhonda Patzia has worked as a professional portrait photographer for many years and also has earned a Master of Arts degree in Embodiment Studies and Transformative Language Arts from Goddard College. In addition to her photography work, she facilitates writing workshops, most often for women with multiple sclerosis. Her current project, Bodies in Focus, is a photography exhibit of women in various stages of nakedness, accompanied by the writing of individual subjects. The project’s combination of words and images offers her portrait subjects a new and intense experience of themselves as bodies and also offers other females, as well as culture in general, the gift of realistic images of women. Rhonda lives in Pella, Iowa with her partner, Mike.
