Summary: Publisher Summary 1 Beautiful War explores the interdependent political, linguistic, and erotic registers of lesbian feminism in Monique Wittig's novels, querying in particular how they function collectively to destabilize male hegemony and heterosexism. Beginning with the assertion that Wattig expressly dismantles the Classical veneration of la belle femme in order to create an agent more capable of social change (la femme belliqueuse), the author traces the permutations of violence through her four novels, L'Opoponax, Les Guerilleres, Le Corps Lesbien, and Virgile, Non and examines the relevance of brutality to Wittig's feminist agenda. Drawing on literary criticism, intellectual and political history, queer theory, and feminist theory in his readings of the primary texts, the author argues that Wittig's œuvre constitutes a progressive textual actualization of paradigm shifts toward gender parity and a permanent banishment of the primacy of male and heterosexist political and sexual discourse.   Publisher Summary 2 French lesbian feminist author Wittig (1935-2003) made the gay body a locus of attack in her writing, says Davis (Spanish and French, Western Carolina U.). He argues that she infused violence into her works because of a perplexing lesbian feminist impetus, and invoked privilege as a member of a subculture to confront representations of her minority in much the same way that the terms fagot and nigger are appropriated by people who are subjected to their use as insults. Quotations are in French followed by English translation. There is no index. Annotation 漏2010 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)