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Dedans
A young girl recounts the passionate love she feels for her father and faces an identity crisis when he dies
211 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1969
About the author
Hélène Cixous
187 books1,005 followersHélène 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.
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.
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Displaying 1 - 16 of 16 reviews
February 23, 2016
It is said that love is as strong as death. But death is as strong as love and I am inside.
*
[…] I was discovering the properties and the language of my soul. For the first time I separated myself from everyone else, and decided to change everything. My soul was a solid, both transparent and capable of erupting. It stayed motionless in time and space: it went along challenging itself, always courting what seemed impossible to my reason and inaccessible to my body. I had to aim well above myself if I did not want to be only me.
*
It’s one of those truth for which I don’t yet have words.
*
[…] on one side I am attached to the invisible face of my life, on the other joined to the shadowy head of my race and on the right I hear the booming of amorphous floods summoned up to fill the empty space of the future and on the left I hear the hundred voices of memory stirring the thick substance of time past.
*
You never lose time unless you kill it. And it isn’t easy. In general, even when killed, time will return.
*
[…] I was discovering the properties and the language of my soul. For the first time I separated myself from everyone else, and decided to change everything. My soul was a solid, both transparent and capable of erupting. It stayed motionless in time and space: it went along challenging itself, always courting what seemed impossible to my reason and inaccessible to my body. I had to aim well above myself if I did not want to be only me.
*
It’s one of those truth for which I don’t yet have words.
*
[…] on one side I am attached to the invisible face of my life, on the other joined to the shadowy head of my race and on the right I hear the booming of amorphous floods summoned up to fill the empty space of the future and on the left I hear the hundred voices of memory stirring the thick substance of time past.
*
You never lose time unless you kill it. And it isn’t easy. In general, even when killed, time will return.
September 21, 2026
17- “Sadly I worshipped my childhood, I was fragile and all-powerful at the same time. I had the right to rule in a world created for my pleasure, which was enough for me. What was real interested me not at all for it did not burden me. I had time to watch the most unenterprising insects, to make a beetle go round and round, to make a string of ants climb up a stem, I had time to count my steps, and to count the number of stamens in the heart of a daisy. I knew all about dates, odors, shapes.”
22- “I was huddled in the right angle of a room, in the center of the gaping world full of disorder and noise. No one here knew. It wasn't a matter of stealing anything anymore. No doubt I would never succeed in finding my way to knowledge. All I had left were memory and the unknown. But I had no urge to know, and no desire to remain, nor to return to a world where there was no place for me, nor to be thrown into a life where every object hurt and everyone was frightening. In my corner, my soul furiously fought off the intrusion of facts and my body helped by making ugly faces and lurching forward, which drove off the intruders. Time had come down upon me with all the weight of its waters, which the sky could no longer contain. The waters rose, I was alone, standing in the place my father had left; behind me, cities were piling up in several layers of cliffs made of houses. Before I died, I had a last surge of pride.”
33- “Others loomed up when I least expected them, they burst the surface of simple things like boils. They divided up what had always seemed to be whole. My fingers were chopped up into joints, my hand, which to me was beautiful and alive, was carved up, jointed, far away. Thus I learned that I didn't know the fifty thousand parts of my body any more than fifty thousand other things. All I could do was to name these fragments of myself, which had both advantages and disadvantages. The fifty thousand pieces were scattering me. Inside my skin I was already at the point of rotting, my epidermis was peeling away, I had to pay for each trip out of the house with a more or less important part of me. At this rate, time would soon have me in pieces, I was slowly dying toward death. But out of this dangerous multiplicity of my flesh I created an impregnable city where I lived without fear. By that time, I had already acquired the infinite modes of time and space, available within me, but I did not have matter, places, houses, climates, and especially the necessary difference between life and death; all of that I found in the dividing up of my body. Life does not exist, death does not exist, it's only what remains, and what disappears. What is living is what is not dead. In my body I could establish all the differences and as long as there was one difference, just one, I would hold on to life. To ensure my immortality, it was enough for me to keep up with death, whose needs are modest: a tooth, some hair, a few nail parings, sometimes a bit of flesh and blood, would feed death, my ally. For the time being, death was satisfied with scraps because my youth limited my demands. As I got older, we would modify the bargain, if ever I should get to the point of wanting to go beyond my organic limits, which I didn't have in mind at the time.”
38- “I'm discovering what becomes of childhood when it's shoved back into dead time. In this flesh that the years have tarnished, someone is struggling and yearning for the ground; not moving, I leave my body there pinned across the void down to the ground by the shape of my clothing, and allow my wits to penetrate the lady's body on all sides, so that they can go and explore the monstrous labyrinths of she whom I will now call my "little mama death." Death is already alive in the trees and bushes of the nervous system enveloped by sensitive tissue, which I somehow knew were there beneath the opaque skin. With my thousands of scanning eyes, sharp as needles, I penetrate the lady; she is a carrier and receptive, about to liquify; all it would take is a slit in her skin about thirty centimeters long for everything to come out, pain, warmth, fears and worries; then I'd be able to see the face of her earliest childhood hiding in some cavity. Let's wait.
I hope.”
98- “I was so sure of the blackness and the end; I forgot that nature knows everything, and perhaps it is God, or himself, who planted it up there, to assure me that everything is really over. For sometimes I think that everything isn't over because there was no beginning, sometimes, when everything is exhausted, I lose the past too, and this thought hurls me from the high balcony into the bay where all meanings are drowned. For I live on my legacy of pain, and I sleep under roofs long since abandoned, and it's loss that makes my heart beat. For there was a beginning, and there was an end, and I feed on both.”
22- “I was huddled in the right angle of a room, in the center of the gaping world full of disorder and noise. No one here knew. It wasn't a matter of stealing anything anymore. No doubt I would never succeed in finding my way to knowledge. All I had left were memory and the unknown. But I had no urge to know, and no desire to remain, nor to return to a world where there was no place for me, nor to be thrown into a life where every object hurt and everyone was frightening. In my corner, my soul furiously fought off the intrusion of facts and my body helped by making ugly faces and lurching forward, which drove off the intruders. Time had come down upon me with all the weight of its waters, which the sky could no longer contain. The waters rose, I was alone, standing in the place my father had left; behind me, cities were piling up in several layers of cliffs made of houses. Before I died, I had a last surge of pride.”
33- “Others loomed up when I least expected them, they burst the surface of simple things like boils. They divided up what had always seemed to be whole. My fingers were chopped up into joints, my hand, which to me was beautiful and alive, was carved up, jointed, far away. Thus I learned that I didn't know the fifty thousand parts of my body any more than fifty thousand other things. All I could do was to name these fragments of myself, which had both advantages and disadvantages. The fifty thousand pieces were scattering me. Inside my skin I was already at the point of rotting, my epidermis was peeling away, I had to pay for each trip out of the house with a more or less important part of me. At this rate, time would soon have me in pieces, I was slowly dying toward death. But out of this dangerous multiplicity of my flesh I created an impregnable city where I lived without fear. By that time, I had already acquired the infinite modes of time and space, available within me, but I did not have matter, places, houses, climates, and especially the necessary difference between life and death; all of that I found in the dividing up of my body. Life does not exist, death does not exist, it's only what remains, and what disappears. What is living is what is not dead. In my body I could establish all the differences and as long as there was one difference, just one, I would hold on to life. To ensure my immortality, it was enough for me to keep up with death, whose needs are modest: a tooth, some hair, a few nail parings, sometimes a bit of flesh and blood, would feed death, my ally. For the time being, death was satisfied with scraps because my youth limited my demands. As I got older, we would modify the bargain, if ever I should get to the point of wanting to go beyond my organic limits, which I didn't have in mind at the time.”
38- “I'm discovering what becomes of childhood when it's shoved back into dead time. In this flesh that the years have tarnished, someone is struggling and yearning for the ground; not moving, I leave my body there pinned across the void down to the ground by the shape of my clothing, and allow my wits to penetrate the lady's body on all sides, so that they can go and explore the monstrous labyrinths of she whom I will now call my "little mama death." Death is already alive in the trees and bushes of the nervous system enveloped by sensitive tissue, which I somehow knew were there beneath the opaque skin. With my thousands of scanning eyes, sharp as needles, I penetrate the lady; she is a carrier and receptive, about to liquify; all it would take is a slit in her skin about thirty centimeters long for everything to come out, pain, warmth, fears and worries; then I'd be able to see the face of her earliest childhood hiding in some cavity. Let's wait.
I hope.”
98- “I was so sure of the blackness and the end; I forgot that nature knows everything, and perhaps it is God, or himself, who planted it up there, to assure me that everything is really over. For sometimes I think that everything isn't over because there was no beginning, sometimes, when everything is exhausted, I lose the past too, and this thought hurls me from the high balcony into the bay where all meanings are drowned. For I live on my legacy of pain, and I sleep under roofs long since abandoned, and it's loss that makes my heart beat. For there was a beginning, and there was an end, and I feed on both.”
September 19, 2016
Under sitt täta och rätt så svårgenomträngliga språk så är Inuti förvånandsvärt lekfull. Första delen är också en av de finare skildringar av att vara liten som jag läst:
jag var ännu tillräckligt nära marken, på den rätta höjden, växterna och de snälla djurens. Krig, pengar, tidningar, nyheter rullade fram över mitt huvud, utan att beröra mig mer än åskan - - -För egen del tycker jag dock att en sådan här text kunde varit kortare (även om den om den redan är på endast 130 sidor). Jag har svårt att förankra mig i den - den är väldigt välskriven, men jag blev utmattad.
March 18, 2011
180311: another very short feminist novel focused on emotion and not plot. maybe i would have enjoyed it if i read french but i do not think so. is this a subgenre of french writing? short poetic fragments of prose, no plot, no incidence, a lot of emotions. in this case an expression of extreme love for her father. maybe i need to read feminist theory to enjoy this...?
April 19, 2026
En historia som präglas av motsatspar. Liv och död, man och kvinna, utanför och inuti. Alla paralleller till varandra. Mannen är död är utanför medan kvinnan är liv är inuti.
Under berättelsens gång förs paren närmare varandra. Gränserna görs otydliga av det fria/fragmentariska berättandet och de suddiga och svepande bilder som beskrivs destabiliserar de uppbyggda strukturerna.
Det är coolt skrivet, men inte riktigt min grej. Jag uppskattar naturens närvaro i bildspråket och det lätt drömlika berättandet där personer flyter in i varandra, men hela historien är väldigt fallocentrisk. Dock kan det vara jag som är korkad då boken ofta beskrivs som ett feministiskt verk. Kanske att man kan hitta det i dekonstruktionen av manligt/kvinnligt, men kvinnan definieras fortfarande i förhållande till mannen? Tror heller inte riktigt jag fattade vad som hände hela tiden, vilket kan vara spännande, men det blev lite för mycket.
Under berättelsens gång förs paren närmare varandra. Gränserna görs otydliga av det fria/fragmentariska berättandet och de suddiga och svepande bilder som beskrivs destabiliserar de uppbyggda strukturerna.
Det är coolt skrivet, men inte riktigt min grej. Jag uppskattar naturens närvaro i bildspråket och det lätt drömlika berättandet där personer flyter in i varandra, men hela historien är väldigt fallocentrisk. Dock kan det vara jag som är korkad då boken ofta beskrivs som ett feministiskt verk. Kanske att man kan hitta det i dekonstruktionen av manligt/kvinnligt, men kvinnan definieras fortfarande i förhållande till mannen? Tror heller inte riktigt jag fattade vad som hände hela tiden, vilket kan vara spännande, men det blev lite för mycket.
May 19, 2020
Svårt att sätta betyg, bitvis en solklar 5a men totalt så tyckte jag att jag inte fick så mycket ut av den...
April 16, 2025
I Cixous språk finns varken tid eller rum, men jag tycker att det saknas en röd tråd. Något att förankra allt i.
July 15, 2014
Dedans offers a profound abstract topology of the forming of female subjectivity in the face of adversity that comes from the outside, entering and reconfiguring the interior feelings of seemingly lonely wanderers. It's perfect and a deserved winner of the "Prix Médecins".
December 9, 2017
This is good, quality, stuff. For individuals. About content not process. About death of the self, and transformation.
September 30, 2018
poetic and beautiful language. but it's hard keeping up the interest throughout the book and it would have made better as a short story or poems due to the lack of plot.
June 28, 2025
A book alive and elusive, entirely unbelievable if thought too vague. No, the vision is singular and specific and never held but felt in glimpses. Cixous is defining the incommunicable attributes of Him and the grief that's left and what happens in the effort for reclamation. Death is a cow chewing cud over Paris, just a word, surpassed by grammar, not open or shut, the only thing that differentiates us.
"
US. My father and his father, his mother and I, are in a house with no windows and all the doors shut, which my secret father tells me is called : "The hand of God." It is written on the front door, which I have never gone through since I have never been anywhere but inside, in any case my eyes have never beheld anything but the house, which I remember from the bygone days, when I was shorter and my forehead reached my father's waist when he stood up, and when the ceiling was almost as high as the midday sun stuck on a spike of the fence seen through a window. We live in the Hand of God. My father calls me "my daughter," and his father and his mother call me "my daughter," and his father and his mother call me "my daughter" too and they call my father "my son" or "your father."
"
"
US. My father and his father, his mother and I, are in a house with no windows and all the doors shut, which my secret father tells me is called : "The hand of God." It is written on the front door, which I have never gone through since I have never been anywhere but inside, in any case my eyes have never beheld anything but the house, which I remember from the bygone days, when I was shorter and my forehead reached my father's waist when he stood up, and when the ceiling was almost as high as the midday sun stuck on a spike of the fence seen through a window. We live in the Hand of God. My father calls me "my daughter," and his father and his mother call me "my daughter," and his father and his mother call me "my daughter" too and they call my father "my son" or "your father."
"
August 4, 2023
Det här är en prosa som mest liknar lyrik i det att den är som en drömskrift. Det är ett språk inifrån, som skriver i bilder, i språkets ur-betydelser och uppdelningar, och det kretsar kring en faders död, kärleken till en fader som fortsätter i dottern, som också i andra delen fortfarande söker sin fader i sina män. Det är mycket jag inte förstår, med drömlogik som ger antydningar åt olika håll men allting är ganska lösligt och poetiskt, öppet för tolkning, ger en känsla i förståelsen som är flytande snarare än precis. Det är något slags tillstånd man hamnar i i läsningen snarare, och jag tror att det är det hon vill åt, ge en känsla snarare än en berättelse. Behöver man veta? Det hade varit lättare att navigera, att hålla fast, men jag tror inte att det önskade resultatet är förståelse, utan upplevelse.
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February 15, 2024Themes: fluid and collective vs individual subjectivity/unstable/interchangeable sense of self, the undecidability of identity, self vs the other, dedans vs dehors, de-rooted/de-grounded from temporality and space (boundlessness), discovering the limitations of one's agency, gendered socialisation, embodiment, existentialism (?). Being dedans can alienate us from others, from the ‘nous’, who are not dedans.
January 10, 2023
Opera prima di un'autrice francofona il cui talento non viene assolutamente riconosciuto, forse per la particolarità della sua scrittura che è "femminile" sì, e per questo potente.
January 20, 2024
Loveee the first half. Felt. But not so much for the last half.
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February 25, 2008Normally I'm quite taken with the way Cixous plays in and with language, but it's all I can do to muster up enough energy to just try to finish. The daddy-obsession present in this particular book is at the same time cloying and cold. Oh Cixous, you've done so much better.
Displaying 1 - 16 of 16 reviews