Gender Trouble of subjectivity In speaking, the “I” assumes the totality of language and, hence, speaks potentially from all positions—that is, in a universal mode “Gender works upon this ontological fact to annul it,” she writes, assuming the primary principle of equal access to the universal to qualify as that “ontological fact.”37 This principle of equal access, however, is itself grounded in an ontological presumption of the unity of speaking beings in a Being that is prior to sexed being Gender, she argues, “tries to accomplish the division of Being,” but “Being as being is not divided.”38 Here the coherent assertion of the “I” presupposes not only the totality of language, but the unity of being If nowhere else quite so plainly, Wittig places herself here within the traditional discourse of the philosophical pursuit of presence, Being, radical and uninterrupted plenitude In distinction from a Derridean position that would understand all signification to rely on an operational différance, Wittig argues that speaking requires and invokes a seamless identity of all things This foundationalist fiction gives her a point of departure by which to criticize existing social institutions.The critical question remains, however, what contingent social relations does that presumption of being, authority, and universal subjecthood serve? Why value the usurpation of that authoritarian notion of the subject? Why not pursue the decentering of the subject and its universalizing epistemic strategies? Although Wittig criticizes “the straight mind” for universalizing its point of view, it appears that she not only universalizes “the” straight mind, but fails to consider the totalitarian consequences of such a theory of sovereign speech acts Politically, the division of being—a violence against the field of ontological plenitude, in her view—into the distinction between the universal and the particular conditions a relation of subjection Domination must be understood as the denial of a prior and primary unity of all persons in a prelinguistic being Domination occurs through a language which, in its plastic social action, creates a secondorder, artificial ontology, an illusion of difference, disparity, and, consequently, hierarchy that becomes social reality 150