Abstract
The concept of an écriture féminine — or feminine writing — derives from the work of Hélène Cixous, though it also has links with that of other French feminists. Before turning to their work, I return briefly to the writings of Jacques Derrida, whose theories offer a helpful context for the insistence on a writing that will include the repressed — feminine — other of conventional forms.
If there’s no earth, invent it, if the earth doesn’t go fast enough leave it behind, take off, if there’s no road, make one, invent it with feet, hands, arms, passion, necessity.
Hélène Cixous
You take pleasure with me as with you I take pleasure in the rejoicing of this reciprocal living — and identifying — together.
Luce Irigaray
Everyone knows that a place exists which is not economically or politically indebted to all the vileness and compromise. That is not obliged to reproduce the system. That is writing. If there is a somewhere else that can escape the infernal repetition, it lies in that direction, where it writes itself, where it dreams, where it invents new worlds.
Hélène Cixous
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Notes and References
See Jacques Derrida, La Dissémination (Paris: Seuil, 1972) especially ‘La Pharmacie de Platon’.
Jacques Derrida, Of Grammatology (1967), translated by Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1977) and
Marges de la philosophie (Paris: Minuit, 1972)
Marguerite Duras and Xavière Gauthier, Les Parleuses (Paris: Minuit, 1974).
Annie Leclerc, Parole de femme (Paris: Grasset, 1974).
See Michèle Montrelay, L’Ombre et le nom (Paris: Minuit, 1977).
In his reading of the German philosopher Hegel, in Writing and Difference, translated by Alan Bass (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1978) Derrida concentrates on the metaphors Hegel uses to show how these disrupt the logic of Hegel’s argument, and turn the argument on its head.
Luce Irigaray, ‘Plato’s Hystera’, in Speculum of the Other Woman (1974), translated by Gillian C. Gill (New York: Cornell University Press, 1985) pp. 243–364.
Luce Irigaray, ‘The Power of Discourse and the Subordination of the Feminine’, This Sex Which Is Not One (1977), translated by Catherine Porter (New York: Cornell University Press, 1985) pp. 68–85.
Hélène Cixous, The Newly Born Woman (1975), with Catherine Clément, translated by Betsy Wing (University of Minnesota Press, 1986).
Hélène Cixous, ‘La Venue à l’écriture’ (1976), collected in Entre l’écriture(Paris: des femmes, 1986).
Hélène Cixous, ‘Conversations’, in Writing Differences, Susan Sellers (ed.) (Milton Keynes: Open University Press; and New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1988).
See my discussion in ‘Biting the Teacher’s Apple: Opening Doors for Women in Higher Education’, in Teaching Women: Feminism and English Studies, Ann Thompson and Helen Wilcox (eds) (Manchester University Press, 1989) pp. 30–32.
See my discussion in ‘Writing Woman: Hélène Cixous’ Political “Sexts” ‘, in Women’s Studies International Forum Special Issue on Political Fiction, Candida Lacey (ed.) (Oxford, New York, Toronto, Sydney and Frankfurt: Pergamon Press, 1986) pp. 443–7.
For a more detailed account of Cixous’ use of the unconscious in her writing see Delighting the Heart: A Notebook by Women Writers, Susan Sellers (ed.) (London: The Women’s Press, 1989) pp. 18, 69, 98.
Hélène Cixous’ project can be compared with the work of the twentieth century German philosopher Martin Heidegger, whose writings she frequently refers to in her Paris seminar. Heidegger has argued that the object created by our conceptual system in the West must be freed from its subservient and imprisoned position before man — as subject — can become liberated. Heidegger advocates listening, and a careful and patient attention to the process of ‘being’, as well as the acquisition of a knowledge which does not seek to impose itself on the world. A useful introduction to Heidegger’s work for the English reader is Poetry, Language, Thought, translated by Albert Hofstadter (New York: Harper and Row, 1975).
Hélène Cixous’ Angst (1977), translated by Jo Levy (London: John Calder and New York: Riverrun Press, 1985) discussed above, also exemplifies a feminine writing.
Hélène Cixous, Le Livre de Promethea (Paris: Gallimard, 1983). A translation of this text into English is currently in preparation by Betsy Wing for Harvard University Press. A translated extract from Le Livre de Promethea, together with a detailed reading, is given by Sarah Cornell in her essay ‘Hélène Cixous’ Le Livre de Promethea: Paradise Refound’, Writing Differences, pp. 127–40.
Christiane Rochefort, C’est bizarre l’écriture (Paris: Grasset, 1970).
Christiane Rochefort, Les Petits Enfants du siècle (Paris: Grasset, 1961).
Marie Cardinal, Autrement dit, with Annie Leclerc (Paris: Grasset, 1977).
Jeanne Hyvrard, Mère la mort (Paris: Minuit, 1976).
Chantal Chawaf, Elwina, le roman fée (Paris: Flammarion, 1985).
Chantal Chawaf, Le Soleil et la terre (Paris: Pauvert, 1977).
Chantal Chawaf, L’Intérieur des heures (Paris: des femmes, 1987).
Marugerite Duras, The Lover (1984), translated by Barbara Bray (London: Flamingo, 1986).
Monique Wittig, Les Guérillères (Paris: Minuit, 1969).
Geneviève Serreau, Un enfer très convenable (Paris: Gallimard, 1981).
Marie Redonnet, Rose Mélie Rose (Paris: Minuit, 1987).
Michèle Ramond, Vous (Paris: des femmes, 1988).
See Claire Etcherelli’s Elise ou la vraie vie (‘Elise or Real Life’) (Paris: Denoël, 1967) for an example of French women’s writing which does not share the concerns of an éoriture féminine.
Angela Carter, The Passion of New Eve (1977) (London: Virago, 1982).
Marge Piercy, Woman on the Edge of Time (1976) (London: The Women’s Press, 1979).
See, as an example, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak’s argument, in ‘French Feminism in an International Frame’, Yale French Studies, vol. 62, 1981, that ‘even if one knows how to undo identities, one does not necessarily escape the historical determination of sexism’ (p. 169).
Janet Todd, in her Feminist Literary History (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1988) similarly argues that the (self) preoccupations of French feminism obscure not only history but the material power relations which language reflects (p. 71).
See, as an example Terry Eagleton’s criticism of Julia Kristeva in his Literary Criticism: An Introduction (Oxford: Blackwell, 1983): ‘she pays too little attention to the political content of a text’ (p. 190).
See also Ann Rosalind Jones’ essay ‘Writing the Body: Toward An Understanding of écriture Féminine’. in Feminist Literary Theory: A Reader, Mary Eagleton (ed.) (Oxford: Blackwell, 1986) pp. 228–31.
See, for example, Naomi Schor’s ‘Reading Double: Sand’s Difference’, in The Poetics of Gender, Nancy Miller (ed.) (New York: Columbia University Press, 1986) pp. 248–69 (especially her insistence that ‘a new articulation must be elaborated to take into account the place of history in the play of difference’, p. 267).
American feminist Adrienne Rich, in her Of Woman Born: Motherhood as Experience and Institution (1976) (London: Virago, 1977) argues for a re-valuing of our physical selves as a ‘resource’ rather than a ‘destiny’, as well as a place for the corporeal in understanding.
Patricia Spallone’s Beyond Conception: The New Politics of Reproduction, (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1989) provides a helpful introduction to the general area of reproductive engineering for non-specialist readers.
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© 1991 Susan Sellers
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Susan, S. (1991). Towards an écriture féminine. In: Language and Sexual Difference. Palgrave, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-21782-3_6
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