UC Santa Cruz

This dissertation explores writing and translation as modes through which to interpret problematics of language and gender in literature. In relation to the community I study, translating and writing are not separate gestures, but rather two vital pieces of a queer, feminist ontology that resists hierarchies and binaries within language. I examine the practice of writing-translation in a group of women living and working in Montreal during the 1980s and 90s—the Montreal lesbian feminist network. This period, together with the physical space of urban Montreal and its radical history, influenced the experimental art produced. During this time, Montreal served as a central meeting place for lesbian and feminist writers, poets, artists, literary translators, and performers from Anglophone and Francophone backgrounds. Though incredibly diverse in their experiences and histories, these women shared a common interest in expressing anti-hierarchical perspectives on gender, sexuality, and language through formal experimentation. The extent to which they collaborated varied greatly—from those who worked side by side on projects, to others who referenced one another in what Julia Kristeva referred to as the intertext, mapping a broader feminist lineage that transcends geographical and temporal boundaries. Their collaborations did not always require physical proximity, often occurring in a theoretical realm less constrained by hegemonic borders.The form of Éclater le langage mirrors the transgressive, rhizomatic, and collective nature of the Montreal network. The chapters are organized around major figures (Nicole Brossard, Gail Scott) and texts such as Le désert mauve and Heroine, while the overall structure of my study methodologically queers time. This approach refuses chronological storytelling by demonstrating how the past continues to haunt and influence the present in overlapping waves. Similarly, operating on their understanding of national borders as porous, I show the evolving relationship between feminist and lesbian texts in Montreal and their global influences. Like those network texts, Éclater le langage combines the creative and critical, utilizing oral testimony from participants along with my own writing, and experiments with untranslated work, literary ethnography, and bilingual writing in order to develop a liberatory, political writing practice.