Ex-Cities

by Hélène Cixous, Laurent Milesi (Translator of Cixous), Aaron Levy

"Ex-Cities," a new release in the Contemporary Artist Series at Slought Books, arises from a shared concern for displacement and exile in the work of Helene Cixous and British artist Maria Chevska. Visual documentation of "Vera's Room," Chevska's installation in the galleries, is interspersed throughout Cixous' text exploring the relation of art and literature to cities and their destruction. This bilingual publication includes a companion audio CD as well as a foreword by Eric Prenowitz and contributions by editors Aaron Levy and Jean-Michel Rabate. The companion CD is derived from a reading by Cixous at Slought Foundation in October 2005. Co-published with the Alice Paul Center for Research on Women and Gender at the University of Pennsylvania; translations by Laurent Milesi.

Maria: "I have known for a long time that one does not go anywhere. it is the cities or the countries that come or do not come to you. Cities are fateful letters. They only arrive lost. They only arrive posthumously.
Helene

"[Ex-Cities] takes displacement and exile as its points of departure in exploring the relation of art and literature to cities and their destruction. We can begin to read this meditation by remembering that cities are more than just habitats or geographical entities. They extend beyond networks of communication, commerce, sociality, or politics. Cities often exist in the form of memories and aspirations, and these cities are no less real despite their intangible nature. We always carry with us the memories of the cities that we have lived in or lost, abandoned or destroyed. These memories permit us to rebuild them from their ruins; we build new cities upon the memories of others." -- From the introduction by Aaron Levy (Editor)

143 pages, Paperback

Published October 13, 2006

About the author

Hélène Cixous is a Jewish-French, Algerian-born feminist well-known as one of the founders of poststructuralist feminist theory along with Luce Irigaray and Julia Kristeva. She is now a professor of English Literature at University of Paris VIII and chairs the Centre de Recherches en Etudes Féminines which she founded in 1974.

She has published numerous essays, playwrights, novels, poems, and literary criticism. Her academic works concern subjects of feminism, the human body, history, death, and theatre.