HELENE CIXOUS
“And why don’t you write? Write! Writing is for you, you are for you; your body is yours, take it. I know why you haven’t written.(And why I didn’t write before the age of twenty-seven.). Because writing is at once too high, too grat for you, it ‘s reserved for the great- that is, for “great men”; and it’s “silly” Besides, you ‘ve written a little, but in secret.” The laugh of the Medusa.
http://www.dwrl.utexas.edu/~davis/crs/e321/Cixous-Laugh.pdf
NOTES from the article> HELENE CIXOUS: an imaginary utopia. (Moi, T. (1985), Sexual, Textual, Politics, Methuen & Co., New York)
- 1970, France
- She writes about the realtioship betwwen feminity/ women/feminism/text
- She refuses the label of feminism- bourgeois> feminists are womanm who wants power, respect, social legitimation.
- She mades a strong critic against the patriarcal mode of thought.
PATRIARCHAL BINARY THOUGHT on OPPOSITIONS
Activity- Passivity
Day – Night
Sun- Moon
Father- Mother
Head- Emotion
Logos – Pathos
Intelligible- Sensitive
Culture- Nature
The fundamental couple of male/female in the end comes back.
Nature – History Nature- Art
Nature- Mind
Passion- Action
DEATH > Victory against the passivity.
It doesn’t matter which of thesse couple ones choose to highlight the hidden female/male opposition is traced anyway. But in these couple some one has to win and in order to achieve that has to destroy the other.Then there is a meaning. So in order for something to acquire meaning must destroy its opposite. Under the patriarchy the male is the Victor, the one that destroys. The woman “Either is passive otherwise she doesn’t exist” .
A.J Greimas> meaning is produced precisely through binary oppostions.
Derrida> meaning is achieved through the “free play of the signifier”>Open -ended play between the presence of the signifier and the absence of the other. In order to make a distinction between writing and speech we have to realise that wirting is very close to difference.
ECRITURE FEMININE
- For Cixous the concept of feminine writing is “the work in difference” .
- She believes in the inherentbisexual nature of the human beings.
- classic conception of bisexuality- the Other bisexuality
- This Other bisexuality is >Multiple, variable and ever – changing and is consisting as it does of the “ exclucion either of the difference or of one sex”. It “doesn’t annul differences, but stirs them, pursues them, increases them”.
REALM of PROPER:
PROPER> PROPERTY> APPROPRIA
Masculinity and masculine system of values. “Masculine libidinal economy”
- Emphasis on:
SELF- IDENTITY
SELF- AGGRANDIZEMENT
ARROGATIVE DOMINANCE
that leads to male obsession for classification, systematization, hierarchization
- Fears that are related: of expropriation, castration, separation, loss of the attribute.
- Property is proximity, nearness.
REALM OF GIFT
“Deconstructive space of pleasure and orgasmic interchange with the other”
- Gift perceived by a man
DANGER. When you receive it you open to others, is established inequality (difference), there is imbalance of power.
SO man wishes to RETURN THE GIFT
“Return”: the economy is founded on a system of returns. If a man spends and is spent, it’s on condition that his power return (Castration, 50)
- Gift perceived by woman
GENEROSITY. Gives without the thought of return.