The Lesbian Body re/translated an interview with Deborah Ardilli

This interview analyses the different approach taken by Deborah Ardilli in her recent Italian retranslation of Le Corps Lesbien by Monique Wittig as opposed to its first Italian translation (1976) by Elisabetta Rasy and Christine Bazzin, especially in regard to the pronoun j/e. Given the importance of pronouns in general, and of the pronoun I (j/e) in The Lesbian Body, understood by Wittig as the “the symbol of the lived, rending experience which is m/y writing, of this cutting in two which throughout literature is the exercise of a language which does not constitute m/e as subject”, this interview discusses Wittig’s practice of “despoiling” the pronouns of their everyday meaning, and its links to the importance of intertexuality, that is to the many references to the work of other writers. This explication of the divided and made-and-unmade pronouns is contextualized within current debates, in Italy, and elsewhere, on language inclusivity and queer feminist translation, and serves a starting point for investigating what it means to be a lesbian for Wittig.