Lesbians on the French Stage: From Homosexuality to Monique Wittig's Lesbianization of the Theatre

Lesbians on the French Stage: From Homosexuality to Monique Wittig's Lesbianization of the Theatre JEANNELLE LAILLOU SAVONA Writing an article about French lesbian plays in 1995 is neither an easy nor an innocent task. First, the word lesbian itself covers several definitions based on different sexual practices and concepts of desire, a variety of historical, cultural , ethnic, and national life-styles, and often conflicting political agendas. As Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick has aptly shown, "lesbian," like "gay," often calls to mind two sets of oppositions which entail two controversial issues. The first one is that of gender identification: women-identified women (Adrienne Rich's "lesbian continuum,"1 for example, which can lead to female or feminist separatism) vs. men-identified women ("the inversion trope," which can consolidate the antihomophobic alliance with gay men). The second focuses on sexual object choice - same-sex vs. opposite-sex object - and has given rise to several different theories: constructivist vs. essentialist, for example, or psychoanalytical (which tends to be "universalizing") vs. socio-political (which leads to a "minoritizing" approach). According to Sedgwick, such coexisting categories are not only unstable, but their use always entails some divisiveness founded on epistemological contradictions.' As well, the idea of a lesbian play is even more problematic depending on whether one considers the erotics or sexual politics of a play or both, or whether one also takes into account the sexual orientation and degree of "oulness" of its author, director, actors, and even implied or real audiences. Finally, at this point in history. when writing in a North American context, it is hardly possible to approach the topic without taking politics into account, since most gay men and lesbians are now strongly united in their struggle against homophobia and against the present right-wing backlash affecting the treatment of the AIDS epidemic. But one of the dangers of adopting a political stance is the temptation to overvalue lesbian or gay plays on account of their scarcity or marginality and to favour one form of lesbian life or one aesthetic choice of representation over another. The difficulties I have just mentioned areespecia\ly pertinent when dealing Modern Drama, 39 (1996) 132 Lesbians on the French Stage 133 with a country like France, where most lesbian playwrights and directors continue to be closeted, most texts with a lesbian content unavailable in print, and the idea of a specific lesbian or gay audience remains remote, since, to my knowledge, there have not yet been any companies or theatres entirely devoted to the promotion of lesbian and/or gay productions.3 It is therefore with an eye on the theoretical pitfalls surrounding the notion of a lesbian play and within the limitations of a French background that I have chosen to study Gertrude morte eet apres-midi (Gertrude Died This Afternoon) (1984) by Monick Lepeu and Le Voyage sans fin (The Constant Journey) (1985) by Monique Wittig. The first treats the erotic passion between Gertrude Stein and Alice Toklas. The second represents a political attempt to "Iesbianize" the stage while addressing the topic of a feminist lesbian utopia. But before analyzing these two plays I would like to situate them briefly in their proper cultural and historical contexts. The French stage has never been particularly conspicuous for its representation of female homosexualities. Even in the seventies, when French women playwrights and directors began to be heard and respected, the subject remained rare and rather suppressed, despite the atmosphere of experimentation created by feminism. Indeed many women were embarrassed by lesbians, whom they tended to ignore or even silence. The clash between straight and lesbian feminists turned into a spectacular crisis in 1980 when Questions feministes, one of the leading French feminist journals, had to stop publication .after the resignation of all the radical lesbians from its editorial board. Furthermore , lesbians themselves were also ideologically divided within the Women's Movement. Most of them used the word lesbian, thus following Simone de Beauvoir who had devoted a sympathetic chapter of The Second Sex (1949) to "The Lesbian"; the concept gradually acquired a radical connotation after 1977 when such theorists as Monique Wittig and Monique Plaza, who wrote their first essays for Questions feministes, began...