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"
Writing: as if I had the urge to go on enjoying, to
feel full, to push, to feel the force of my muscles,
and my harmony, to be pregnant and at the same time to
give myself the joys of parturition, the joys of both the
mother and the child. To give birth to myself and to nurse
myself, too. Life summons life. Pleasure seeks renewal.
-- "Coming to Writing"
Myth ends up having our hides. Logos opens up its great maw
and swallows us whole.
--"Coming to Writing"
Contextual Setting
Feminism, it's that infamous "f" word that makes even those
of us who consider ourselves well inside her walls a bit
uncomfortable. Even within academics, feminists have often
been unfairly labeled as man-hating feminazi's, and guarders
of political correctness. The truth is, although you may
disagree with some of the politics feminist theorists
espouse, if you were engaged in the politicization of
rhetoric within the classroom found in theorists such
as Eagleton, Berlin, and Friere and Macedo, then you
probably fall into the same camp as many feminist
scholars and certainly many feminist rhetoricians.
Like the theorists we have read in the last couple
of weeks, many feminists have a much broader agenda
that deals with the epistemic nature of our rhetoric
What theorists like Cixous and Kristeva are trying to do
is answer the questions that many of us may have personally
struggled with throughout our studies in rhetoric and perhaps
even our studies this summer. Why have women's voices been
so historically absent in a rich tradition of rhetoric that
spans over two thousand years? Is it simply a matter of women
being forbidden the education that would allow them into the
discourse community? or, is there actually a distinct woman's
way of thinking, speaking, and interacting, a women's rhetoric
if you will, that has made it difficult for women to
communicate in these forums? These are the types of questions
that Cixous is specifically interested in attempting to
answer.
Biographical Information
Cixous was born in Oran, Algeria in 1937, which was a colony
of France, and was raised in a German-Jewish household.
She received her agregation in English in 1959 and her
Docteur en lettres in 1968. Cixous has taught at many
different universities throughout France including the
University of Bordeaux (1962), the Sorbonne (1965-67),
and Nanterre (1967).
In the 1970's Cixous became involved in exploring the
relationship between sexuality and writing, the same kinds
of work being done by theorists like Kristeva, Barthes,
Derrida, and Irigaray (Shiach). In this time period she
composed such influential works as "Sortie," "The Laugh of
the Medusa," and "Coming to Writing."
Since the authoring of these texts in the seventies,
Cixous has become even more mysterious and complex, but
has somewhat lessened her radical ideology for a more
inclusive exploration of collective identities. She is
currently an English literature professor at the University
of Paris VIII-Vincennes where she has established a center
for women's studies and is a co-founder of the structuralist
journal Poetique.
Influential Thinkers for Cixous:
Heinrich von Kleist, Franz Kafka, Arthur Rimbaud, Clarice
Lispector, Jacques Derrida, Jaques Lacan, Sigmund Freud,
Heidegger
Because of her versatile and radical voice, it is difficult
to place Cixous in a particular scholarly category. She is a
professor, a radical feminist, a poet, a philosopher, and a
literary scholar, just to name a few. The particular facet
of her we will be interested in for this presentation,
however, is her position as a rhetorician.
Cixous' Influential Works
While Cixous has been she has been quite prolific in texts
that would fall, at least partially into the rhetorical cannon,
there are only a few influential works that have been
translated and are therefore accessible. Below is a
synopsis of two of her works, "The Laugh of the Medusa,"
and "Sortie" which are the most anthologized and cited.
Sortie (1975)--In this essay, Cixous describes the set
of hierarchical values, of which we are probably all familiar.
The oppositions she sets up include culture/nature;
head/heart; colonizer/colonized; and, speaking/writing.
She relates these to the opposition between man and women
and then engages in a political and philosophical rejection of
the dialectical relation of these terms, believing that they
depend on power and exclusion for their existence.
**Although Cixous would cringe at my categorization,
she seems to suggest two separate approaches to exploding
these dichotomies:
1. Deconstructive reading--in which we must challenge
ourselves to questions the naturalness or inevitability of
structural hierarchies (Freire and Macedo).
2. Subversive and political writing--in which she posits a
feminine writing practice she calls writing the body that
attempts to do away with hierarchical structures.
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 (Fisher)
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" (Gilbert xvii).
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 (Perelman, Toulmin) or the syntactical level
(Habermas). Ohmann's description of the new rhetoric as
"the pursuit,-- not simply the transmission--of truth and
right" (300) and Scott's belief that "truth is not prior
and immutable but is contingent" (313) 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 (see above quotes).
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).
Rhetorical Publications Available in English
Because Cixous has a very poetic and complex way of speaking,
much of her work has not been translated into English yet.
Though not exhaustive, this is a list of translated works I
was able to find.
Cixous, Hilhne. "Castration or Decapitation?" Trans.
Annette Kuhn. Signs 7 (1981): 41-55.
___________. "The Laugh of the Medusa." 1975. Trans. Keith
Cohen and Paula Cohen. Signs 1 (1976): 875-93.
Cixous, Hilhne and Catherine Clement. The Newly Born Woman.
1975. Trans. Betsy Wing. Minneapolis: University of
Minnesota Press, 1986.
Cixous, Hilhne. Coming to Writing and Other Essays.
Trans. Sarah Cornell et. al. Ed. Deborah Jenson
Cambridge Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1991.
___________. Three Steps on the Ladder of Writing.
(three-part lecture given at University of California,
1990). Trans. Sarah Cornell and Susan Sellers. New
York: Columbia Press, 1993.
Literary Criticism Available in English
Cixous, Hilhne. The Exile of James Joyce. 1972. Trans.
Sally A.J. Purcell. New York: D. Lewis, 1976.
Fiction Available in English
Cixous, Hilhne. The book of Promethea= Le livre de
Promethea. Trans. Betsy Wing. Lincoln, Nebraska:
University of Nebraska Press, 1991.
___________. Inside. Trans.
___________. Angst. 1977. Trans. Jo Levy, London:
John Clader, 1985.
A Few Major Publications on Cixous
Gilbert, Sandra M. Introduction. The Newly Born Woman.
By Hilhne Cixous and Catherine Clement 1975. Trans.
Betsy Wing. Minneapolis: University of
Minnesota Press, 1986
Sellers, Susan, ed. Writing Differences: Readings From
the Seminar of Hilhne Cixous. New York, N.Y: St. Martins
Press, Inc., 1988.
Shiach, Morag. Hilhne Cixous: A Politics of Writing.
London: Routledge, 1991.
Stanton, Domna C. "Difference on Trial: A Critique of the
Maternal Metaphor in Cixous, Irigaray and Kristeva."
Ed. N.K. Miller The Poetics of Gender. New York:
Columbia University Press, 1986.
Other Rhetorical References
Ohmann, Richard. "In Lieu of a New Rhetoric." Professing
the New Rhetorics: A Sourcebook. Ed Theresa Enos and
Stuart C. Brown. Englewook Cliffs, NJ: A Blair Press
Book, 1994.
Scott, Robert. "On Viewing Rhetoric as Epistemic."
Professing the New Rhetorics: A Sourcebook. Ed Theresa
Enos and Stuart C. Brown. Englewook Cliffs, NJ:
A Blair Press Book, 1994.