“Crushed”: Monique Wittig, Djuna Barnes, and Mistranslating Lesbian Writing

Abstract: The connection between Monique Wittig and Djuna Barnes has largely been reduced to the fact that Wittig translated Barnes’s short-story collection Spill-way (under the title La passion ) or else to mentions of Barnes in “The Point of View.” Working with archival materials and across versions of Wittig’s writings, this article elaborates a broader textual history between the two authors, arguing that certain key details ultimately reveal not Barnes’s influence on Wittig’s thought, as we might expect, but rather Wittig’s enduring influence on the reception of Barnes’s short fiction as part of a distinctly lesbian, distinctly Wittigian literary discourse.