"Woman must write her self: must write about women and bring women to writing, from which they have been driven away as violently as from their bodies" because their sexual pleasure has been repressed and denied expression.
Censor the body and you censor breath and speech at the same time. Write yourself. Your body must be heard.
-- "The Laugh of the Medusa"
Cixous is issuing her female readers an ultimatum of sorts: either they can read it and choose to stay trapped in their own bodies by a language that does not allow them to express themselves, or they can use their bodies as a way to communicate.
Dense with literary allusions, "The Laugh of the Medusa" is an exhortation to a "feminine mode" of writing; the phrases "white ink" and "écriture féminine" are often cited, referring to this desired new way of writing. It is a strident critique of logocentrism and phallogocentrism. The essay also calls for an acknowledgment of universal bisexuality or polymorphous perversity, a precursor of queer theory's later emphases, and swiftly rejects many kinds of essentialism which were still common in Anglo-American feminism at the time. Cixous's style of writing is richly intertextual, making a wide range of literary allusions. Critics have suggested that Cixous's arguments in "The Laugh of the Medusa," rather than liberating women, give ammunition to traditional sexist arguments that women are incapable of rational thought.
Écriture féminine: literally "women's writing," more closely, the inscription of the female body and female
difference in language and text. Generally, French feminists tended to focus their attention on language, analyzing the ways in which meaning is produced. They concluded that language as we commonly think of it is a decidedly male realm, which therefore only represents a world from the male point of view.
Hélène Cixous first coined écriture féminine in her essay, "The Laugh of the Medusa". Inspired by Cixous' essay, a recent book titled Laughing with Medusa (2006) analyzes the collective work of Julia Kristeva, Luce Irigaray, Bracha Ettinger and Hélène Cixous. These writers are as a whole referred to by Anglophones as "the French feminists". And when asked of her own writing she says,"I am there where the female unconscious speaks."
- Phallogocentric: Focused on or concerned with the phallus or penis as a symbol of male dominance; centered on men or on a male viewpoint, especially one held to entail the domination of women by men.
- Logocentrism: structuralist method of analysis, esp. of literary works, that focuses on words & language to the exclusion of non-linguistic matters--such as an author's individuality or historical context; excessive attention paid to the meanings of words or distinctions in their usage.
Cixous: “Je suis là où ça parle”—ça=id/it/the female unconscious. ("I am there where the female unconscious speaks.") [how does this differ from surrealism?]
Focus turns to sexuality, and physical body, as site for subversion of order; need to express sexuality: need to express femaleness as female sexuality (Cixous, Irigaray): thus to establish “site of difference” from which “phallogocentric concepts and controls can be seen through and taken apart” in theory and practice.
Site of difference is in female unconscious; psycho-sexual specificity defines difference. Like Irigaray concern over female oppression, need for id-liberated female discourse. Source of force in libido (sexual desire) rather than socio-cultural factors. “Masculine sexuality gravitates around the penis, engendering that centralized body (in political anatomy) under the dictatorship of its parts, woman does not bring about the same regionalization which serves the couple head/genitals and which is inscribed only within its boundaries. Her libido (sexual desire) is cosmic, just as her unconscious is worldwide”.
The Laugh of the Medusa (1975)--In this text, Cixous expands the concept of feminine writing by claiming its proximity to voice. She says that this writing should take place in the between, which is an abstract space that has no loyalty to opposing terms.
Cixous uses her poetic genius and academic savvy to create a text that is brilliantly effective in many ways. First, she succeeds in giving the reader a concept of feminine writing but convinces us that in actually defining of the term, we destroy its beauty. She also manages to give us an example of what this text might be like in her illusive and circular style, but still writes academically enough to be included in most major surveys of rhetoric, literary criticism, and feminist theory.
Overall Theoretical Approach
Much of Cixous' theory relies heavily on Freudian and Greek mythology in attempts to topple the narrative myths that dominate our culture. Cixous' believes that in order to escape the discourse of mastery we must begin to write the body. To Cixous, our sexuality and the language in which we communicate are inextricably linked. To free one means freedom for the other. To write from one's body is to flee reality, "to escape hierarchical bonds and thereby come closer to what Cixous calls joissance., which can be defined as a virtually metaphysical fulfillment of desire that goes far beyond [mere] satisfaction... [It is a] fusion of the erotic, the mystical, and the political". The implications of this philosophy to the rhetorical theories we have studied so far is, believe it or not, quite practical. It can be seen when we look at the large number of rhetoricians who believe that our language structures create meaning, whether at the argumentative level or the syntactical level. Ohmann's description of the new rhetoric as "the pursuit,-- not simply the transmission--of truth and right" and Scott's belief that "truth is not prior and immutable but is contingent" also supports this idea. For Cixous, then, the logical structure of our discourse protects those who occupy the privledged position in dichotomous terms by making hierarchical positions seem natural. By writing the body, she hopes to explode this linearity.
Criticism on Cixous
Some criticize Cixous for being essentialist, that she "reduces women to an essence ... and thus negates the possibility of the very change which she seeks to promote" (Shiach 17)
Other feminists have difficulty with her reclaiming of the maternal, as a starting place for her engagement with the politics of sexual difference. They fear that reclaiming the naturalness of motherhood, something with which women have been historically oppressed (Stanton 157-182).
- http://www.engl.niu.edu/wac/cixous_intro.html
Censor the body and you censor breath and speech at the same time. Write yourself. Your body must be heard.
-- "The Laugh of the Medusa"
Cixous is issuing her female readers an ultimatum of sorts: either they can read it and choose to stay trapped in their own bodies by a language that does not allow them to express themselves, or they can use their bodies as a way to communicate.
Dense with literary allusions, "The Laugh of the Medusa" is an exhortation to a "feminine mode" of writing; the phrases "white ink" and "écriture féminine" are often cited, referring to this desired new way of writing. It is a strident critique of logocentrism and phallogocentrism. The essay also calls for an acknowledgment of universal bisexuality or polymorphous perversity, a precursor of queer theory's later emphases, and swiftly rejects many kinds of essentialism which were still common in Anglo-American feminism at the time. Cixous's style of writing is richly intertextual, making a wide range of literary allusions. Critics have suggested that Cixous's arguments in "The Laugh of the Medusa," rather than liberating women, give ammunition to traditional sexist arguments that women are incapable of rational thought.
Écriture féminine: literally "women's writing," more closely, the inscription of the female body and female
difference in language and text. Generally, French feminists tended to focus their attention on language, analyzing the ways in which meaning is produced. They concluded that language as we commonly think of it is a decidedly male realm, which therefore only represents a world from the male point of view.
Hélène Cixous first coined écriture féminine in her essay, "The Laugh of the Medusa". Inspired by Cixous' essay, a recent book titled Laughing with Medusa (2006) analyzes the collective work of Julia Kristeva, Luce Irigaray, Bracha Ettinger and Hélène Cixous. These writers are as a whole referred to by Anglophones as "the French feminists". And when asked of her own writing she says,"I am there where the female unconscious speaks."
- Phallogocentric: Focused on or concerned with the phallus or penis as a symbol of male dominance; centered on men or on a male viewpoint, especially one held to entail the domination of women by men.
- Logocentrism: structuralist method of analysis, esp. of literary works, that focuses on words & language to the exclusion of non-linguistic matters--such as an author's individuality or historical context; excessive attention paid to the meanings of words or distinctions in their usage.
Cixous: “Je suis là où ça parle”—ça=id/it/the female unconscious. ("I am there where the female unconscious speaks.") [how does this differ from surrealism?]
Focus turns to sexuality, and physical body, as site for subversion of order; need to express sexuality: need to express femaleness as female sexuality (Cixous, Irigaray): thus to establish “site of difference” from which “phallogocentric concepts and controls can be seen through and taken apart” in theory and practice.
Site of difference is in female unconscious; psycho-sexual specificity defines difference. Like Irigaray concern over female oppression, need for id-liberated female discourse. Source of force in libido (sexual desire) rather than socio-cultural factors. “Masculine sexuality gravitates around the penis, engendering that centralized body (in political anatomy) under the dictatorship of its parts, woman does not bring about the same regionalization which serves the couple head/genitals and which is inscribed only within its boundaries. Her libido (sexual desire) is cosmic, just as her unconscious is worldwide”.
For Cixous, l’écriture féminine: “her writing can only keep going, without ever inscribing or discerning contours . . . . she lets the other language speak—the language of 1,000 tongues which knows neither enclosure nor death . . . her language does not contain, it carries; it does not hold back, it makes possible". Focus on bodily experience as oppositional to phallic/symbolic order, emphasizing female sexuality & genital/libidinal difference from men. With Cixous this becomes “write the body!”
Cixous uses her poetic genius and academic savvy to create a text that is brilliantly effective in many ways. First, she succeeds in giving the reader a concept of feminine writing but convinces us that in actually defining of the term, we destroy its beauty. She also manages to give us an example of what this text might be like in her illusive and circular style, but still writes academically enough to be included in most major surveys of rhetoric, literary criticism, and feminist theory.
Overall Theoretical Approach
Much of Cixous' theory relies heavily on Freudian and Greek mythology in attempts to topple the narrative myths that dominate our culture. Cixous' believes that in order to escape the discourse of mastery we must begin to write the body. To Cixous, our sexuality and the language in which we communicate are inextricably linked. To free one means freedom for the other. To write from one's body is to flee reality, "to escape hierarchical bonds and thereby come closer to what Cixous calls joissance., which can be defined as a virtually metaphysical fulfillment of desire that goes far beyond [mere] satisfaction... [It is a] fusion of the erotic, the mystical, and the political". The implications of this philosophy to the rhetorical theories we have studied so far is, believe it or not, quite practical. It can be seen when we look at the large number of rhetoricians who believe that our language structures create meaning, whether at the argumentative level or the syntactical level. Ohmann's description of the new rhetoric as "the pursuit,-- not simply the transmission--of truth and right" and Scott's belief that "truth is not prior and immutable but is contingent" also supports this idea. For Cixous, then, the logical structure of our discourse protects those who occupy the privledged position in dichotomous terms by making hierarchical positions seem natural. By writing the body, she hopes to explode this linearity.
Criticism on Cixous
Some criticize Cixous for being essentialist, that she "reduces women to an essence ... and thus negates the possibility of the very change which she seeks to promote" (Shiach 17)
Other feminists have difficulty with her reclaiming of the maternal, as a starting place for her engagement with the politics of sexual difference. They fear that reclaiming the naturalness of motherhood, something with which women have been historically oppressed (Stanton 157-182).
- http://www.engl.niu.edu/wac/cixous_intro.html
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