The Straight Mind by Monique Wittig

Author:Monique Wittig [Wittig, Monique]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Beacon Press
Published: 2020-10-15T00:00:00+00:00

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Odd Even

One Many

Right Left

Male Female

Rest Motion

Straight Curved

Light Dark

Good Bad

Square Oblong

We may observe that

right left

male female

light dark

good bad

are terms of judgment and evaluation, ethical concepts, that are foreign to the series from which I extracted them. The first series is a technical, instrumental series corresponding to a division needed by the tool for which it was created (a kind of carpenter’s square called a gnomon). Since Pythagoras and the members of his school were mathematicians, one can comprehend their series. The second series is heterogeneous to the first one. So it so happens that as soon as the precious conceptual tools resting on division (variations, comparisons, differences) were created, they were immediately (or almost immediately by the successors of the school of Pythagoras) turned into a means of creating metaphysical and moral differentiation in Being.

There is then with Aristotle a displacement, a jump in the comprehension of these concepts, which he used for his historical approach to philosophy and what he called metaphysics. From being practical concepts they became abstract ones. From terms whose function had been to sort out, to classify, to make measurement possible (in itself a work of genius) they were translated into a metaphysical dimension, and pretty soon they got totally dissociated from their context. Furthermore, the evaluative and ethical terms (right, male, light, good) of the tabulation of opposites, as used within the metaphysical interpretation of Aristotle (and Plato), modified the meaning of technical terms like “One.” Everything that was “good” belonged to the series of the One (as Being). Everything that was “many” (different) belonged to the series of the “bad,” assimilated to nonbeing, to unrest, to everything that questions what is good. Thus we left the domain of deduction to enter the domain of interpretation.

In the dialectical field created by Plato and Aristotle we find a series of oppositions inspired by the first mathematical tabulation, but distorted. Thus under the series of the “One” (the absolute being nondivided, divinity itself) we have “male” (and “light”) that were from then on never dislodged from their dominant position. Under the other series appear the unrestful: the common people, the females, the “slaves of the poor,” the “dark” (barbarians who cannot distinguish between slaves and women), all reduced to the parameter of non-Being. For Being is being good, male, straight, one, in other words, godlike, while non-Being is being anything else (many), female: it means discord, unrest, dark, and bad. (See Aristotle’s Politics.)

Plato played with the terms One and the Same (as being God and the Good) and the Other (which is not the same as God which is non-Being, bad). Thus dialectics operates on a series of oppositions that basically have a metaphysical connotation: Being or non-Being. From our point of view, Hegel, in his dialectics of master versus slave, does not proceed very differently. Marx himself, although trying to historicize the oppositions into conflicts (social ones, practical ones), was a prisoner of the metaphysical series, of the dialectical series. Bourgeoisie is on the side of the One, of Being; Proletariat is on the side of the Other, the non-Being.

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