Medusas latter - Manifest fra 1975

by Hélène Cixous

Essayet Medusas latter fra 1975 indvarslede en nytilgang til spørgsmål om køn, kønnede forskelle og seksualitet, der opstod i forbindelse med feminismen og kvindekampen i 1970'erne. Det er en filosofisk refleksion, et poetisk skrift og politisk manifest med en afgørende virkningshistorie.

Genres: Feminism, Nonfiction, Essays, Philosophy, Theory, France, Classics

52 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1975

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.

Reviews

[s.penkevich [hiatus-will return-miss you all]]

To be denied a voice is to be denied a space in history and this is why Hélène Cixous is kicking down the gates of patriarchy and using her voice as if through a bullhorn to shout “WRITE!” ‘ Write yourself.,’ the French Algerian essayist writes The Laugh of the Medua, her famous 1975 essay (translated into English by Paula and Keith Cohen), ‘your body must be heard.’ Following in a feminist tradition akin to Virginia Woolf’s argument’s in A Room of One’s Own, Cixous examines how a literary tradition of women has been denied and silenced by men in order to push them aside from history, arguing a censorship of women’s art is a censorship of women’s bodies. Establishing a bold and vocal écriture féminine—or ‘feminine writing’—on both a personal and historical level, she argues, is a path towards women’s liberation and a reconnection to their bodies and sexuality. ‘Write,’ she urges, especially to have ‘women write women’ because ‘only then will the immense resources of the unconscious spring forth.’ A brief yet powerful essay, Cixous expands upon the poststructuralist critiques of Jacques Derrida, refutes ideas from Sigmund Freud and Jacques Lacan in an argument to wrest language and logic free from patriarchal constraints in order to ascribe women’s identities and desires on their own terms, and reshapes the mythos of Medusa. If Medusa is a symbol to be feared, it is only because men find women’s agency to be a threat to the myth of patriarchal superiority and Cixous depicts Medusa as ‘not deadly,’ but instead that she’s ‘beautiful and she's laughing.’ A short yet lasting and important work in the legacy of literary criticism and women’s writing.

‘By writing herself, woman will return to the body which has been more than confiscated from her, which has been turned into the uncanny stranger on display - the ailing or dead figure, which so often turns out to be the nasty companion, the cause and location of inhibitions. Censor the body and you censor breath and speech at the same time.’

If we consider that it is through language that we assess the world around us, that language becomes the tool to comprehend reality and ourselves, than we must also recognize that language shapes us as well. In her landmark work of feminist criticisms, A Room of One’s Own, Virginia Woolf confronts how the lack of a women’s literary tradition has forced women to only see themselves represented in fiction through the imaginations of men and, thereby, understand themselves chained to the male gaze. Cixous expands upon this in The Laugh of the Medusa, following in the poststructuralist theories of Jacques Derrida—who famously wrote ‘there is nothing outside the text,’—to show women must create their own text, the écriture féminine, to exist outside the language of men.

‘Writing is precisely the very possibility of change, the space that can serve as a springboard for subversive thought, the precursory movement of a transformation of social and cultural structures.’

Women’s writing must resist and subvert phallogocentrism, which is a delightfully funny term coined by Derrida in Plato’s Pharmacy blending “phallocentrism” (privileging of the phallus) with “logocentrism” (belief in reason as the center of truth) for a term about patriarchal centering of the masculine and phallus as truth. Cixous admits it is difficult to completely avoid masculine language (or could use it subversively) and states Marguerite Duras, Colette, and Jean Genet are ‘the only inscriptions of femininity that [Cixous has] ever seen.’ However, if women have been labeled as an antithesis by men over history, they must create their own signifiers, write in a way that doesn’t center men and start with the empowerment than any feminine text is inherently subversive. As Woolf writes in Room, ‘so long as you write what you wish to write, that is all that matters.’

‘Write, let no one hold you back, let nothing stop you: not man; not the imbecilic capitalist machinery, in which publishing houses are the crafty, obsequious relayers of imperatives handed down by an economy that works against us and off our backs; and not yourself.’

As soon as the phallus came up you should have figured so too would Sigmund Freud. Surprise! Cixous is a very ‘all my homies hate Freud’ and, frankly, I loved this aspect of the book. Addressing psychoanalytic theory, Cixous pushes back against both Freud and Lacan’s theories of women experiencing a sort of “lack” and defining them by what they don’t have. That’s right we are talking about the penis again and Freud’s ideas on “castration.” The ideas from Cixous around an écriture féminine show that women do not suffer from a “lack” in this regard (not to mention it is an erasure of trans women and Cixous does spend some time responding to attacks on bisexuality as well) but from an oppression and silencing. There are some killer lines as well such as ‘the act of writing is equivalent to masculine (and so the woman who writes cuts herself out a paper penis)’ while pointing out how both masturbation and women’s writing were long associated with shame and done in secret. Writing, she argues, brings women back into being able to embrace their bodies and sexuality, but also to be unified with other women.

‘Men have committed the greatest crime against women. Insidiously, violently, they have led them to hate women, to be their own enemies, to mobilize their immense strength against themselves, to be the executants of their virile needs.’

Patriarchy, enforcing women to view themselves through phallocentric language and social standards, imbues a competition between women, Cixous argues, terming it as ‘antilove.’ Creating a écriture féminine is a way to sidestep the patriarchal interference and return to love. Freud, however, still finds women as something ‘monstrous’ and so comes the Medusa of the title.

‘In Western culture, strong women have historically been imagined as threats requiring male conquest and control, and Medusa herself has long been the go-to figure for those seeking to demonize female authority.’
- Elizabeth Johnston, The Original ‘Nasty Woman’

Rejecting the notion of Medusa as a monster, Cixous reclaims her as a symbol of joy and empowerment for women. Freud wrote in his posthumously published Das Medusenhaupt (Medusa's Head) that beheading equated to castration and ‘the terror of Medusa is thus a terror of castration that is linked to the sight of something…the female genitals, probably those of an adult, surrounded by hair, and essentially those of his mother.’ As one expects with Freud, the turning of men into stone is an erection metaphor in his eyes and he thus interprets Medusa as secondary in her own story to center men. As a rebuttal to Freud, and as commentary on how Medusa is objectified, acted upon, never given her own agency, Cixous writes that ‘a woman without a body, dumb, blind…is reduced to being the servant of the militant male, his shadow.’ 20th century looks at Medusa have addressed the issue of how a beautiful woman will be objectified, and woman with rightful anger is considered a monster. It is no surprise she has become a symbol of rage against the patriarchy, such as Natalie Haynes depiction of the head of Medusa in her novel Stone Blind saying ‘I feel like becoming the monster he made.’

‘Those who are locked up know better than their jailers the taste of free air.”’

A brief essay, yet one that has a novels worth of power and lasting legacy, The Laugh of Medusa is an incredible work from Hélène Cixous. It is a battle cry of empowerment for women to write, to find a voice, to 'break out of the snare of silence,' and to release themselves from the shackles of patriarchal language and thought. I would recommend it to anyone, it is a must read for sure.

5/5

‘To love, to watch-think-seek the other in the other, to despecularize, to unhoard. Does this seem difficult? It's not impossible, and this is what nourishes life--a love that has no commerce with the apprehensive desire that provides against the lack and stultifies the strange; a love that rejoices in the exchange that multiplies.’

[persephone ☾]

I'm living for the "i-hate-Freud-and-all-my-homies-hate-Freud" energy that radiates from this book.

[Carolyn]

"Let the priests tremble, we're going to show them our sexts!"

[Christopher]

If you have the opportunity, then I would suggest reading this work in french. It is only then that you will see the marvelous writing of Helene Cixous. Derrida was once quoted as saying that Cixous was the best contemporary french author, and I do not have my doubts about that. In this manifesto, Cixous calls out to all women, saying, "now is the time to write!" That through the written word, or "ecriture feminine," women can re-define themselves by their own performance and not only reclaim their sexuality but also subvert the repressive hierarchies established through the privileging of phallogocentrism. As such, I find Cixous' writing to be quite relevant for a growing generation of women and men that seek to re-define equality and promote sexual difference. A must read!

[Steven Godin]

Thought provoking read, if a little on the short side, which concerns the traditional representations of women by men in literature and other scholarly texts, Cixous begins her analysis by invoking the classical figure of Medusa, but she does so by refiguring how Medusa has been represented through the ages. Traditionally, Medusa has been seen as a physical and moral monstrosity; with snakes instead of lovely flowing hair, Medusa turns the men who look upon her to stone. However, Cixous’s Medusa laughs, which is both a joyful and a disruptive act that can lead to new directions for feminist writings. From the first paragraph, women’s writing is positioned as both liberating and intervening.

Cixous' theme of the female body and women’s sexuality in connection with writing for reasons that explain - that women are driven away both from their physical selves and from their own sexualities, sexuality informs and works in harmony with writing, and women’s sexuality and women’s writing are distinctly female. That which is beautiful in women’s lived experiences and in writing cannot be fully expressed or claimed until the taboo is lifted on women’s corporeal desires and sexualities, which is an unnecessary taboo that makes women feel ashamed of their bodies, and their work. More important, Cixous declares, by reclaiming their bodies, women will take back what is rightfully theirs. Making for the more confident female. The Laugh of the Medusa is a call to arms, urging women to reclaim their bodies and, by extension, their desires and identities through writing.

[Josiah Patterson]

As a feminist essay, The Laugh of the Medusa is written specifically to women imploring them to write. In all aspects, her writing is concise, navigable and powerfully sturring. At the very beginning, Cixous states, “woman must write her self: must write about women and bring women to writing, from which they have been driven as violently as from their bodies." The purpose of this writing is for women to bring meaning to their own history, their own bodies, and their own sexuality. Through this writing, women should bring other women into the fold of knowing and writing through their bodies which have been forbidden to them by the “conventional man." This “conventional man” is the embodiment of the phallocentrism that has oppressed and defined the female voice, body and sexuality. For man has his own right to say where his own masculinity and femininity are at and to see themselves clearly—just as women have that same right. Cixous calls for a move from the Old woman to the New woman by knowing her and by inscribing her femininity. The Old woman was suppressed by man who created in her an “antinarcissm” and an “antilove,” mobilizing the power of women against themselves, which is, according to Cixous, the greatest crime against women committed by man. Instead, it is women’s radicalism that must be used to move to the New woman who is free of this suppression.

This radical change from the Old to New is the invention of a “new insurgent” writing, liberating the woman and allowing her “to carry out the indispensable ruptures and transformations in her history." This transformation is on two levels. The first is the woman individually. She must write her self and reclaim the body that has been taken from her. Use her body to reclaim the whole self and cease being the shadow of man. This reclamation is done through writing and is only accomplished through her self-realization for her self-realization. The second level is the woman “seizing the right to speak” which has always been suppressed. Beautifully written, for Cixous the oral language of women is “that element which never stops resonating." This element holds the power to move women. Women must utilize this power that is both innate and permeating in order to create her new history. The new history that is forming for women extends beyond men’s imagination and “deprives them of their conceptual orthopedics." Man has always dominated and tried to define woman’s femininity, her writing, and her mind, but the new history can never be encoded or theorized because it “always surpasses the discourse that regulates the phallocentric system." Man cannot understand it and cannot subjugate it in any way with any figure. Man has always reduced writing to his own definitions and laws, trying to set a distinction between masculine and feminine writing. Anything man does not recognize is “bisexual, hence neuter” and removes any differentiation from that writing.

Not beyond reaching out to other theorists, Cixous also uses Lacan’s idea that a phallocentric ideology is afraid of castration. A phallic monosexuality is the focus of man’s fear and women’s oppression. Bisexuality and the female sexuality—in its infinite and mobile complexity—are to man as a “dark continent,” a place unknowable and unexplorable. Yet, it is women who must reclaim the feared Medusa and fortify the thought that woman is not a castrated man—she holds her own sexuality and her own representation. She does not have the Freudian penis-envy or a “mechanical substitution” for her eternal jealousy. She is tired of the geneologized “litany of castration” that has suppressed her in all drives of her womanhood. Women must revolt from this suppression with explosion through language and through writing. Cixous states: “women have always functioned within the discourse of man, a signifier that has always referred back to the opposite signifier which annihilates its specific energy." She must break free of the old circuits that have dominated the relationship between man and woman, and woman and woman. A new history must be created out of a new relationship. All old concepts must be lifted away from the phallocentric to a new hierarchal exchange with the opposition [man]. Women must write to accomplish this. To write is to give without measurement, without the assurance of something in return. Writing is a birth and a transformation, unhindered by the Old history that came before.

Translation: this essay is brilliant!!

[Alina]

“You only have to look at the Medusa straight on to see her. And she's not deadly. She's beautiful and she's laughing.”

Hélène Cixous’s 1976 essay The Laugh of the Medusa is a polemic against the repression of women’s writing (by men and women alike) and the repression of women through writing (“often hidden or adorned with the mystifying charms of fiction”); it is a literary response to Freud’s Medusa's Head (and to “Freud and his followers” more broadly, as well as to the Nietzschean conception of woman); and it is a call to literary arms: a desperate cry urging women to write; to cherish themselves and write in a way that “inscribes femininity”, not in its deceptive “classic representation of women (as sensisitive-intuitive-dreamy, etc)”, but in all its stormy bodily rawness:

“I wished that that woman would write and proclaim this unique empire so that other women, other unacknowledged sovereigns, might exclaim: I, too, overflow; my desires have invented new desires, my body knows unheard-of songs. Time and again I, too, have felt so full of luminous torrents that I could burst—burst with forms much more beautiful than those which are put up in frames and sold for a stinking fortune. And I, too, said nothing, showed nothing; I didn’t open my mouth, I didn’t repaint my half of the world. I was ashamed. I was afraid, and I swallowed my shame and my fear. I said to myself: You are mad! What’s the meaning of these waves, these floods, these outbursts? Where is the ebullient, infinite woman who, immersed as she was in her naiveté, kept in the dark about herself, led into self-disdain by the great arm of parental-conjugal phallocentrism, hasn’t been ashamed of her strength? Who, surprised and horrified by the fantastic tumult of her drives (for she was made to believe that a well-adjusted normal woman has a … divine composure), hasn’t accused herself of being a monster? Who, feeling a funny desire stirring inside her (to sing, to write, to dare to speak, in short, to bring out something new), hasn’t thought she was sick? Well, her shameful sickness is that she resists death, that she makes trouble.”

This powerful essay is as incendiary as it is moving. And unfortunately, still necessary.

“The future must no longer be determined by the past. I do not deny that the effects of the past are still with us. But I refuse to strengthen them by repeating them, to confer upon them an irremovability the equivalent of destiny, to confuse the biological and the cultural. Anticipation is imperative.”

“Writing is precisely the very possibility of change, the space that can serve as a springboard for subversive thought, the precursory movement of a transformation of social and cultural structures.”

***
PS. Cixous and Lispector. In The Laugh of the Medusa, Cixous writes that “with a few rare exceptions, there have not yet been any writing that inscribes femininity; exceptions so rare, in fact, that, after plowing through literature across languages, cultures, and ages, one can only be startled at this vain scouting vision”. She goes on to write:

“Almost everything is yet to be written by women about femininity: about their sexuality, that is, its infinite and mobile complexity, about their eroticization, sudden turn-ons of a certain miniscule-immense area of their bodies; not about destiny, but about the adventure of such and such a drive, about trips, crossings, trudges, abrupt and gradual awakenings, discoveries of a zone at one time timorous and soon to be forthright. A woman's body, with its thousand and one thresholds of ardor-once, by smashing yokes and censors, she lets it articulate the profusion of meanings that run through it in every direction-will make the old single-grooved mother tongue reverberate with more than one language.”

Interestingly, it was two years after the publication of this essay that Hélène Cixous ‘discovered’ the writings of Clarice Lispector. It has been said that “Cixous … found in Lispector something of a soul mate” (albeit after the latter’s death). While Cixous was advocating for radical bodily feminine writing in The Laugh of the Medusa, Lispector had been (perhaps unconsciously) championing precisely this ‘mode’ of writing since the 1940s. Though Lispector had already achieved prominence in Brazil, Cixous played a crucial role in propagating her work internationally, eventually publishing in 1990 Reading with Clarice Lispector (which has now been added into my unending TBR).

Cixous describes her encounter with Lispector’s writing as follows:

“A writing came, with gleaming hands in the darkness, when I no longer dared to help myself, my writing so far away in pure solitude... I spoke no more, I feared my voice, I feared the birds' voices, and all of the calls that look outside, and there is no outside except nothingness, and are extinguished-a writing found me when I was unfindable to myself.” (from Vivre L’Orange/L’Heure de Clarice Lispector)

Having fallen in love with Clarice myself over the past year, I couldn’t help but feel that this passage from The Laugh of the Medusa was (unknowingly) written for her:

“Her writing can only keep going, without ever inscribing or discerning contours, daring to make these vertiginous crossings of the other(s) ephemeral and passionate sojourns in him, her, them, whom she inhabits long enough to look at from the point closest to their unconscious from the moment they awaken, to love them at the point closest to their drives; and then further, impregnated through and through with these brief, identificatory embraces, she goes and passes into infinity. She alone dares and wishes to know from within, where she, the outcast, has never ceased to hear the resonance of fore-language. She lets the other language speak-the language of 1,000 tongues which knows neither enclosure nor death. To life she refuses nothing. Her language does not contain, it carries; it does not hold back, it makes possible. When id is ambiguously uttered-the wonder of being several-she doesn't defend herself against these unknown women whom she's surprised at becoming, but derives pleasure from this gift of alterability. I am spacious, singing flesh, on which is grafted no one knows which I, more or less human, but alive because of transformation.”

[Josefine]

Unquestionably one of the seminal feminist texts of the 70s, it displays all the trappings of second wave feminism, stuck in the binaries and oddly Freud-focused. Still, Cixous language is dazzling and the force behind her words is extremely present.

[Uroš Đurković]

Možda podsticaj za ovo čitanje potiče od filma „Titan” Žulije Dukurno. Menjajući kanale pre neki dan, video sam da se na RTS-u daje ovaj kanski pobednik, pa sam, radoznao kao i inače, odlučio da pogledam i to čudo. I mada mi je štošta tu bilo daleko, ne može da se spori ubitačna upečatljivost filma, na granici pucanja, ali tako da se ipak ne rasprska. A to nije mala stvar: stvoriti unutrašnju, uverljivu, a zapravo kranje nelogičnu filmsku logiku, težak je zadatak. „Titan” predstavlja buru: prenapregnuti telesni horor živahan poput stripa o superherojima. Ipak, ne bi bio to što jeste bez feminističkog impulsa, a on mi je sad jasniji nakon čitanja eseja Elen Siksu. „Osmeh meduze” klasik je feminističke literature i svako ko pretenduje da bude na tom polju autoritet, mora da bude dobro upoznat sa tekstom. To je, nažalost, mnogo ređi slučaj nego što bi neko mogao pomisliti, budući da ljudi danas ne znaju razliku između ženskog pisma i ženskog pisanja, a kamoli nečeg složenijeg kao što je nedovoljno jasni, ali sugestivni pojam „belog mastila”. Da ne bude zabune: žensko pismo (écriture féminine) je specifičan, samoosvešćeni postupak pisanja koji predstavlja otpor muškom logocentrizmu i ne ograničava se na ženski pol – Siksu navodi, na primer, navodi i Žana Ženea za predstavnika ženskog pisma. Takođe, delo bilo koje književnice ne mora da automatski potpada pod kategoriju ženskog pisma, a često upravo žene preuzimaju ustaljene (muške) obrasce razmišljanja, produžavajući postojeći poredak, te njihovo pisanje nije emancipatorsko, već ropsko. Žensko pisanje, sa druge strane, predstavlja ono pisanje koje su ostvarile osobe ženskog pola, kao i celinu tema koje upućuju na žensko iskustvo.

E sad, to što Siksu insistira da se žensko pismo ne može odrediti, zatvoriti, kodirati, ne znači da se ne može prepoznati ili da ne može postojati kao koncept. Možemo računati iako ne znamo definiciju broja, svađati se, iako ne znamo definiciju svađe ili voleti, mada ne znamo šta je ljubav. Ovo ne znači da je sve proizvoljna jezička igra, već da uvek postoji raskorak između teorije i prakse. Tako i sa ženskim pismom – ono je paradoksalno i intimno i političko i buntovno i podsvesno i aktvivno i pasivno. Ono je, zapravo, poziv na otpor i za drukčije, inkluzivnije mogućnosti sagledavanja sveta, za pronalaženje nenametnutosti, slobode. Siksu tako na više mesta insistira da je pisanje telo – ne piše se samo o telu, nego se samim telom piše, samim telom se sopstvo osvedočava. Istorija zapadnih ideja uglavnom nije uvaživala činjenicu ženskog tela kao nečeg merodavnog i stoga nam je uskraćeno nešto dragoceno. Tako je pisanje vrhunska misija – povratak sebi, povratak svom telu i oslobađanje. Ono mora biti ostvareno fluidno, igrivo, nelinearno, neekonomično, lirski nadahnuto – sve ostalo bilo bi nesubverzivno. Prošlost se ne negira, ali ne misli se da je obavezujuća. Vijugavo, fluidno, raspršeno, trijumfuje nad linearnim, racionalnim, fokusiranim i to, ako mene pitate, ne zbog igre, već reakcije. Bez misaonih provokacija nema novih paradigmi, neudobnosti su nam prekopotrebne jer nas uporno razbuđuju, podsećaju nas na nas same. I imajući sve ovo u vidu, shvatiti manifeste (a ovo jeste svojevrsni esej-manifest) doslovce znači ne razumeti ih. Shvaćeni doslovno, postaju mrtvi. Tek ako prihvatimo izazov i dozvolimo sebi da budemo provocirani i da pulsiramo zajedno sa tekstom, može se iz tog susreta roditi nešto čega nije bilo pre čitanja. A samo taj ostatak i znači. Ako se nešto može svesti na prepričavanje, znači da ne vredi. Ni „Titan” ni „Osmeh Meduze” ne mogu i dobro je da je tako. Zato, oprez!

[Adriana Scarpin]

Isso aqui é uma ode às mulheres escritoras quase na pegada de Um Teto Todo Seu da Woolf, mas mais psicanalítico e mais crítico dessa mesma psicanálise falocentrica que só as grandes feministas francesas da França dos anos 60 e 70 como Irigaray, Kristeva e Cixous ousavam ver.
Não esqueço da live que vi com a Cixous no começo desse ano em que disse que ao mostrar seus escritos para o Lacan, de quem era amiga, este dizia que ela era louca, mas com o tempo ele parou de dizer isso. Inclusive muito do seminário 23 sobre Joyce é oriundo dos estudos que Lacan fez com Cixous, uma grande especialista em Joyce.
Amo demais a escrita de Cixous, especialmente a aplicação de neologismos e a poética da prosa, pena ela ser tão pouco traduzida no Brasil, que O Riso da Medusa se torne avalanche e que ela finalmente se torne devidamente editada no Brasil.

E nunca se esqueçam, mulheres: ESCREVAM.

[Rozhan Sadeghi]

‏یک بار بهش گفتم حس‌م موقعی که می‌نویسم نزدیک به زمانیه که سکس می‌کنم. همونقدر با تنم در ارتباطم. برام عجیب و مرموز بود ارتباط تن، شوق و کشش جنسی با کلماتم.
امشب یکی از مهمترین چیزهای زندگیم رو خوندم. مقاله‌ی the laugh of the medusa هلن سیکسو. حسی که من تو این چند سال ‏داشتم رو، همین ارتباط مرموز نوشتن و تن، زبان و تن، زبان و زنانگی رو با زیباترین نثر ازش حرف زده بود. اینکه چرا زن باید بنویسه. چرا زن باید از زن و برای زن‌ بنویسه. و اشک ریختم، خوندم، نوشتم و سیکسو رو هزاران بار تو ذهنم بوسیدم.
این خط‌ها هم سوغاتی از لبخند مدوسا.
‏فقط لطفاً اگه قصد خوندنش رو دارید سر صبر و حوصله و با ذهن باز بخونید. اجازه بدید آروم آروم جلو بره، باهاتون حرف بزنه و شگفت‌زده‌تون کنه.

[Rebeca]

I think we should take very carefully this essay and consider its historical context. We cann0t view it with contemporary 3rd-wave lenses, because it then comes as heavily transphobic and even racist with its constants comparisons of woman with the "Black Continent".
However, Cixous's call for the sexual liberation of women was refreshing during her time, only a few years after the Revolution of Paris '68. However, this liberation also calls for a check, because liberalism has appropriated it and made little girls believe that posting nudes is somehow liberating when it actually only contributes to the objectification of women, especially when those nudes are subject to the male gaze that inevitably, as Atwood points out, follows us wherever we go because it's already ingrained into our subconscious.
Still, the reivindication of the femenine without associating it to death and the monstrous is revolutionary unto itself, since it falls away from the male gaze that had associated them for the past century, especially during and after Romanticism. "[Medusa] is beautiful, and she is laughing." This reivindication allows women to feel feminine unapologetically, claiming and exploring their feminity and their bodies back.
All in all, this essay is necessary, but its social and historical context is almost as important as its content.

[Bookadmirer]

It's such a beautiful masterpiece. It focuses on the second wave of feminism and why women should write. It also falls under the category of psychoanalytical feminism. Overall, it's a wonderful feminist text.

[Ρένα Λούνα]

Η γνωριμία με τη Cixous ήρθε μέσα από την Ώρα του αστεριού της Lispector, η πλέον κατάλληλη εισαγωγή για τη μια, το επίμετρο που έγραψε για την άλλη.

Από τις εκδόσεις Τοποβόρος με τα ιδιαίτερα εξώφυλλα, έρχεται το γέλιο της Μέδουσας το οποίο δεν είναι άλλο παρά η απάντηση για το Κεφάλι της Μέδουσας του Φρόιντ:

«Η Μέδουσα και οι δύο αδερφές της παρουσίαζαν επίσης ένα τρομαχτικό θέαμα. Είχαν τεράστια κεφάλια, τα μαλλιά τους αποτελούταν από συνεστραμμένα φίδια, τα δόντια τους ήταν τόσο μακριά όσο οι χαυλιόδοντες των χοίρων και πετούσαν στον αέρα με τα χρυσά τους φτερά. Άντρες αρκετά ατυχείς να κοιτάξουν τη Μέδουσα στο διαβολικό της μάτι μεταμορφώνονταν αμέσως σε πέτρα. Στην κλασσική εποχή, φορούσαν συχνά μενταγιόν και άλλα κοσμήματα που απεικόνιζαν την τρομαχτική όψη της Μέδουσας για να απομακρύνουν τα κακά πνεύματα και οι πολεμιστές ζωγράφιζαν γυναικεία γεννητικά όργανα στις ασπίδες τους για να τρομάζουν τον εχθρό»

«Μας καθήλωσαν μεταξύ δύο φριχτών μύθων: μεταξύ της Μέδουσας και της αβύσσου. […] Χρειάζεται μόνο να κοιτάξεις την Μέδουσα ευθέως για να την δεις. Και δεν είναι θανάσιμη. Είναι όμορφη και γελάει.»

Ένα από τα σημαντικότερα φεμινιστικά κείμενα της δεκαετίας του '70, παραδόξως και επιτυχώς-καλώς, επικεντρωμένο στον Φρόιντ. Η γλώσσα της Cixous είναι εκθαμβωτική και η δύναμη πίσω από τα λόγια της είναι εξαιρετικά παρούσα.

Η Cixous ξεκινάει τη γραφή της, μιλώντας για τη γυναικεία εγ-γραφή, τη σημασία αυτού του συλλογικού βιώματος. Όσα αφηγήθηκε με λογοτεχνικότητα η Γκίλμαν φέρνει και η Cixous, με έναν λόγο ποιητικό – ψυχαναλυτικό - ιστορικό – δοκιμιακό.

Ανάμεσα σε βίωμα και δοκίμιο, καταθέτει τις μυθοπλασίες του παρελθόντος που επιμένουν σαν ρίζα δοντιού μέσα στη γυναικεία πραγματικότητα. Αφηγήσεις που κλείνουν στόματα και ορίζουν τους κανόνες της ζωής μας - σε σημεία, ήμουν σίγουρη πως πρόκειται για πρόσφατο κείμενο, κάτι που με έριξε στη θλίψη, σκεπτόμενη πως το ‘αλλάζουν τα πράγματα΄ είναι εξίσου παλιό με αυτές τις αφηγήσεις ή έστω ελάχιστα πιο σύγχρονο. Πάντοτε υπήρχε αντίσταση άλλωστε. Η Cixous υπογραμμίζει τις υποτιμήσεις γύρω από τον αντρικό λόγο και το σε ποια θέση καταλήγει να είναι η γυναίκα η οποία γράφει. Πώς να γράψει έχοντας διδαχθεί μόνο αντρικές λέξεις; Πώς να γράψει για γυναικεία σεξουαλικότητα έχοντας διδαχθεί αντρικές λέξεις και αντρική σεξουαλικότητα; Πώς να γράψει έχοντας βαπτιστεί στον ανδρικό λογοκεντρισμό;

Η γυναικεία σεξουαλικότητα, εντός του άπειρου, κινητού και πολύπλοκου φάσματος, αναγράφεται ως «σκοτεινή ήπειρος», ένα μέρος άγνωστο και ανεξερεύνητο. Τρομαχτικό, απειλητικό, κυριολεκτικά φροϋδικά, σκοτεινό. Η Cixous προτρέπει να διεκδικηθεί από εμάς για εμάς. Ενάντια στον Φρόιντ και στον Νίτσε και περιέργως κοντά σε κάποια σημεία του Λακάν, θυμίζει πως η γυναικεία σεξουαλικότητα (όπως και ο γυναικείος λόγος) έχει τη δικιά της μορφή και δεν έχει καμία σχέση με την αντρική αναπαράσταση του ‘ευνουχισμένου άνδρα’, του γνωστού και μη εξαιρετέου φθόνου του πέους. Η Cixous προτρέπει σε μεταμόρφωση της γυναίκας, από δουλική στα πατριαρχικά διδάγματα σε γυναίκα που η χειραφέτησή της αφορά την ελευθερία μας.

«Η γυναίκα πρέπει να γράψει τον εαυτό της: πρέπει να γράψει για τις γυναίκες και να φέρει τις γυναίκες στο γράψιμο, από το οποίο έχουν εκδιωχθεί τόσο βίαια όσο και από το σώμα τους.»

Στο τέλος αναλύει τη δομή των γυναικείων τεράτων, το πιο απολαυστικό ίσως κομμάτι του λόγους της, ξεσκεπάζοντας όσα έτσι κι αλλιώς υπήρχαν σε κοινή θέα στην κουλτούρα των φύλων.

Τα κείμενα που έλειψαν όταν η ψυχανάλυση ξεκίνησε να εξαπλώνεται, κείμενα που είτε παρεμποδίστηκαν να γραφτούν, είτε θάφτηκαν με τα γνωστά πατριαρχικά εργαλεία: μείωση, διακωμώδηση, ντροπή, είτε όποια έβρισκε φωνή την έβρισκε ως μια ακόμα μούσα της πατριαρχικής δομής του κλάδου. Κείμενα που βρίσκονται πιο κοντά στις πιο επείγουσες ανάγκες παρά στην ενδοσκόπηση του πιο κυριάρχου αρρενωπού, ανάμεσα στη γνωστή, βαρετή και επικίνδυνη ζούγκλα.

Το κείμενο της Cixous παραμένει ανατριχιαστικό, ξεσηκωτικό, επαναστατικό, συγκινητικό.

Η αυτοπεποίθηση στο θηλυκό δεν είναι απλά όρος ενδυνάμωσης, αλλά κάλεσμα στα όπλα.

[Anushka]

what a fantastic piece!

[Parnian]

متنی زیبا در توصیف زنانگی. تاثیری که سیکسو از مقاله "گفتار دمیده" دریدا گرفته تا از نوشتار زنانه صحبت کنه خیلی درست و قابل توجهه.

[Stephen Secomb]

From: MensWork/Gathering Women, Vol 1, 3, 1995, (pp.8-9)

I READ HÉLÈNE CIXOUS
Stephen Secomb

(Obsolescent) review of "The Laugh of the Medusa" (1975), (New French Feminisms,
Claire Marks and Babette de Courtivron (Eds). Sussex: Harvester Press, 1986).

Twenty years after it was written, I read Hélène Cixous' 'The Laugh of the Medusa', and I am suddenly angry.

My immediate desire is to dust off my best level scholarly tone and write a scathing review. I want to lash out, to hurt. But honestly, what's the point after so long? And who could be bothered reading it anyway? There are already more than enough carefully studied, scholarly words cluttering up the intellectual ether. Besides, my reaction has little, if anything, to do with reason or ideas or clever sequences of words. It is immediate.

I read Hélène Cixous, and I wonder at my anger.

***

Hélène Cixous is talking to woman 'in her inevitable struggle against conventional man'. (245)

She says:

Write, let no one hold you back, let nothing stop you: not man; not the imbecilic capitalist machinery, in which publishing houses are the crafty, obsequious relayers of imperatives handed down by an economy that works against us and off our backs; and not yourself. (247)

Amen!

Conventional man is as alien to me now as he was when, a quarter of a century ago, I was sent from my mother's side and the world of women to find my own place in the world. He was wary of me. He tried to teach me. My difference was a problem (a threat?). Real men don't play with the girls, or read books or do their homework or try to please the teacher. Music? Ha! That's for girls! Real men play football and laugh and shout and boast. Real men fight amongst themselves. (Well... you know, boys will be boys!) Real men take pride in remaining impassive.

Take it like a man! Real men don't cry!

He had names for me: mum's boy, poof, milksop, wimp, effeminate, weird, (you're just a girl!). But these were just words. He also hit and punched and kicked me, my difference. The paternal 'discipline', the schoolyard tousles and torments - every day new, more ingenious versions. (Boys developing their creativity, their self-expression.) I left school as early as I legally could to try and find my place in the adult world. But then there was the street-strutting machismo and the bastardisation visited by tradesman on non-conforming apprentice.

Hélène Cixous says: 'Woman be unafraid of any other place, of any same, or any other.' (260)

I didn't want to hide away from the mainstream, it didn't seem right somehow. So I became strong. Where once conventional man knew I was frightened, and if he beat me I'd cry, I learned to use my understanding for protection. I came to know his drives, and I could sense the finest changes in his moods and stand aside for self-protection. I learned how to fend off impending violence with words. I began to confront him with his violence, throw it back in his face, or else placate him with soothing, cooing noises. I was no longer afraid. He could no longer hurt me, but neither did he, nor could he, include me in his world. He lived the only life he knew, the only world, but it was a world from which I was precluded by my own 'I-hood'.

Hélène Cixous says: 'Write! and your self-seeking text will know itself.' (260)

Self-knowledge! Ah, the stuff of dreams.

I write my otherness, my difference to conventional man, in faith.

I was other to his rivalries and spirit of competition. My world was a world of care for others, of intimacy, inclusion, reciprocity, sharing. I was other to his instincts as hunter and organizer. My instincts told me to go out and experience the world in its unaltered and chaotic grandeur. I was other to his unerring insight into the weak point and his drive to exploit this for whatever greater good he may conceive. 'Good' to me could only involve the unqualified good for all. I was other to his passion for prowess and performance and control and mastery, and to his pride in achievement. I could at best achieve a measure of self-control, self-mastery. Beyond that I had to take the world as it unfolded before me, in this I could see no alternative.

Hélène Cixous says:

Men still have everything to say about their sexuality, everything to write. For what they have said so far, for the most part, stems from the opposition activity/passivity from the power relation between a fantasized obligatory virility meant to invade, to colonize, and the consequential phantasm of woman as "dark continent" to penetrate and to "pacify". (247)

In the work-day world of construction sites and all-male work camps, I listened to the talk of men. I listened to their tales of fucking and fighting and cars and felt like I was from another universe. Theirs' were tales of conquest; of hunting and overcoming; of victor and vanquished. This was all alien to me. I knew nothing of sexual conquest, I thought sexuality was about mutuality, trust, honesty, sharing.

My sexuality was about the interplay of mind, body and heart times two. It was about play; about teasing, withholding, surrendering. It was about inventiveness; about finding new and interesting things about my partner, and about myself. It was about balance; balance between desires, denial, fulfilment. It was about communication. It was about care, and love.

My sexuality was symphonic. It was inseparable from sharing my life with a loved one, knowing she also loved me. It was the sharing of feelings, understanding, empathy, sympathy, experiences, knowledge, ignorance, sophistication, naivety, strength, weakness, fear, hope... It was the mutual unwithheld sharing of self. It was giving for the pleasure of giving, and receiving with the delight of a freely given gift. It was giving the self and receiving the gift of another self. It was growth and learning. It was embracing faith and trust. It was openness. It was mutual care. It was intensity and lightness and melancholy and joy and tears and laughter and play and sleep.

It was life.

I couldn't even begin to share my thoughts with the men at work. There was no starting point. I listened to their tales and felt my otherness descend on me like an accusation.

Hélène Cixous talks of 'the privileged alibis' of Reason and its self-admiring, self-stimulating, self-congratulations. (249)

I went back to school after ten years of work, then on to university. I learnt Reason. I learnt how to craft beautiful, impregnable chains of logic. I learnt the harmonies of words and ideas, of point and counterpoint, of deduction, induction, syllogisms, algorithms, heuristics. Chain mail for a vulnerable soul; I could for the first time stand tall in the world, clad only in my mind. I stood protected, invulnerable.

But Reason gave me arguments, not answers. I wanted knowledge; it gave me 'Truth'. It gave me a uni-dimensional understanding when I wanted wisdom. It gave me the words to regroup and attack or deflect, but not to embrace.

I looked to feminism and found more words. I found the words I wanted: 'care', 'inclusion', 'relational', 'strength in vulnerability'. But these were inextricably enmeshed with words that created a new opposition and excluded me: 'his-story', 'phallocentrism', the pejorative 'man'.

Of course I knew why. I knew women were writing primarily for women, not for me. I knew the exclusions of women - from public life, from the canons. I knew the things women lived with every day. I could see how women's sexuality, their dreams and hopes, their care and openness, their vulnerability, their ideals were all constantly thrust back at them, used on them like scythes. I knew they were writing under siege. Somehow though, the knowledge didn't help much. I was still other.

I left the university to try and sort out my confusion, my gender. Reams of convoluted outbursts. Outbursts to paper the walls of my life.

Hélène Cixous says: 'Woman must write woman. And man, man... It's up to him to say where his masculinity and femininity are at.' (247)

Now I am confused; lost. My body is man, my gender is...?

Conventional man says I must be masculine; do men's things; hide my fear; gloss over it with bluff and long sentences. I must repress my uncertainty, my weaknesses, my vulnerability, focus instead on the other things inside me: the thrill of the chase, the exhilaration of competition, the instinct to conquer, to possess. I look inside and see none of these things. But neither do I see 'masculine' and 'feminine'. How can I say where my femininity is at when all I see inside is undifferentiated me?

I look inside and find "SEX: male, GENDER: other" and, try as I might, I can't quite suppress the churlish thought that man writes man for man, and woman, woman for woman, and that's all there is to it.

But then, maybe this was what Hélène Cixous said all along anyway.

***

I sit alone in my airy flat, looking out over a serene river and listening to a solitary violin playing Bach, and get rid of my anger, my problem. It serves no useful purpose. I write the dys-symphony of my body. If I must, I can accept that as 'man', I write 'man', but mine is a dialect that as yet even I hardly recognize.

[Matthew Ted]

A short but brilliant essay about women and writing by French, Algerian-born Hélène Cixous, first published in 1975. This new translation by Eric Prenowitz is due to be published in November under the plain-coloured Penguin Classics series. The element of the book, imagining Medusa, not as a terrifying monster but as a beautiful and laughing woman, reminded of Camus's Myth of Sisyphus springboard (imagining Sisyphus as happy). This shift of perspective sits as the hot coal in the middle of this essay. I use the words 'hot coal' as this is far from stuffy or boring: Cixous's writing is full of verve and beauty. It is hard not to be inspired by her 'call to action'. Below are some of my favourite quotes. A very worthy read.

‘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 have not written. (And why I did not write before I was twenty-seven.) Because writing is what’s too high, too big for you, it’s reserved for the greats, that is, for ‘great men’, and at the same time it’s ‘silly’ […] Write, let no one hold you back, let nothing stop you: neither man; nor the imbecile capitalist machine in which the wily and obsequious publishing houses relay the demands of an economy that functions against us and on our backs; nor yourself.’ p. 4-5

‘Only the poets, not the novelists, who are in solidarity with representation. Because poetry exists only by finding its force in the unconscious, and the unconscious, the limitless other land, is the place where the repressed survive: women, or as Hoffmann would say, fairies.’ p. 11

‘The feminine affirms (as the poets suspected) ‘. . . and yes I said yes I will Yes.’ And yes, says Molly, as she carries Ulysses beyond any book towards a new writing, I said yes, I want Yes.’ p. 22

‘Unlike men who cling so strongly to their titles and entitlements, stock exchanges, heads, crowns and everything they headline, women laugh in the face of the fear of decapitation (or castration), explore anonymity without masculine fear and trembling, an anonymity into which they can merge without being annihilated: because they are givers.’ p. 30

‘If she is a whole, a woman is a whole composed of parts that are wholes, not simple partial objects, but a moving and changing ensemble, an illimited cosmos traversed tirelessly by Eros, an immense astral space that is not organised around a sun that’s more of a star than the others.’ p. 31

‘Write! And while searching for itself, Your text will know that it is more than flesh and blood, dough kneading itself, rising, insurrectional, with sonorous perfumed ingredients, moving combination of flying colours, leaves and rivers flowing to the sea that we feed. ‘Ah!’ the men will say, ‘here’s her sea,’ while handing me their basin full of water from the little phallic mother they can’t let go. But our seas are what we make of them, full of fish or not, opaque or transparent, red or black, high or calm, narrow or endless, and we are ourselves seas, sands, corals, seaweeds, beaches, tides, swimming women, children, waves.’ p. 32-33

‘[…] just like the desire to write: a desire to live oneself on the inside, a desire for the womb, for language, for blood.’ p. 36

[Thanks to Penguin for the advance copy for review.]

[Camino]

qué os voy a decir yo, chicas, del texto en el que se parió la frase que me dió la vida:
« un texto femenino no puede ser más que subversivo »

[Jassmine]

Censor the body and you censor breath and speech at the same time. Write yourself. Your body must be heard.

The central thesis of this text is that women masturbation and women writing are intimately linked together, sharing their essences. Do you think that's bonkers? I highly encourage you to read this then, because I felt like it was quite brilliant. This text definitely spoke to part of me... On the other hand we have here very strong Freudian influences, which I don't tend to be the biggest fan of. At the same time, this text isn't essentialist as you might think from the core idea. Men very well can be masters of women writing - though this also is a little problematic considering the only male writer she names who can do it (she gives us three names in total) is gay... She doesn't tell us what made her pick those authors, so we can't really tell, be the stereotype is surely present here.
This isn't an easy read, but definitely one of the really interesting feminist texts.

Besides, you've written a little, but in secret. And it wasn't good, because it was in secret, and because you punished yourself for writing, because you didn't go all the way, or because you wrote, irresistibly, as when we would masturbate in secret, not to go further, but to attenuate the tension a bit, just enough to take the edge off. And then as soon as we come, we go and make ourselves feel guilty-so as to be forgiven; or to forget, to bury it until the next time.

[Ruby]

"Almost everything is yet to be written by women about femininity: about their sexuality, that is, its infinite and mobile complexity; about their eroticization, sudden turn-ons of a certain minuscule-immense area of their bodies; not about destiny, but about the adventure of such and such a drive, about trips, crossings, trudges, abrupt and gradual awakenings, discoveries of a zone at once timorous and soon to be forthright."

[Eli M]

"The Laugh of the Medusa" shows its age, but I enjoyed the read nonetheless. Cixous has some beautiful sentences and provides a compelling argument for the alignment of body with language. I especially enjoyed reading it against Lacan, whom Cixous frequently takes to task. I do wonder if her unsettlement of the male/female binary is entirely successful; despite her claims that women must escape the binary of A/not-A, she does insist on separating women from men.

[lucia]

"Wouldn't the worst be, isn't the worst, in truth, that women aren't castrated, that they have only to stop listening to the sirens (for the sirens were men) for history to change its meaning?
You only have to look at the Medusa straight on to see her. And she's not deadly. She's beautiful and she's laughing"

[Antonia]

Fantastisk.

"Det räcker med att betrakta Medusa framifrån för att se henne: och hon dödar inte. Hon är vacker och hon skrattar".

Gråter över detta citat! Det är sån kraft.

[Mighty Aphrodite]

Per secoli la scrittura è stata un dominio interamente maschile. Per ragioni che si dicevano biologiche, una donna non poteva scrivere, non poteva studiare. Una donna istruita era un abominio, qualcosa al di là delle leggi della natura, quel mistero da sempre associato al sesso femminile – imperscrutabile e terribile – così vicino alla vita e alla morte.

Per superare questa concezione abbiamo dovuto – noi donne – fare un viaggio a ritroso, indietro nel tempo e nello spazio, ritornare a quel corpo che non abbiamo potuto dire nostro per secoli, che abbiamo dovuto nascondere come una colpa, nel ricordo di una mela morsa e di una tentazione condivisa. Da quel corpo siamo tornate a scrivere, a tracciare le linee del nostro desiderio, del nostro pensiero; da quel corpo – sconosciuto, ambivalente, pieno di sfaccettature – siamo tornate a conoscere noi stesse, a riscrivere le regole della nostra stessa esistenza, senza lasciare che fosse l’uomo a dirci cosa dovevamo essere.

E quelle parole che da sempre giravano nella nostra testa, che più volte abbiamo masticato e rimasticato nella nostra bocca, sono apparse sulla carta, con un inchiostro che sapeva di latte e di sangue. Ma anche scrivere è un rischio, si può cadere molto facilmente nelle trappole che gli uomini disseminano nelle loro opere, si può cedere al desiderio di far parte di qualcosa di più grande e – per questo – adeguarsi ad una scrittura che non ha nulla di personale, ma che continua a reiterare gli schemi della cultura fallocentrica dominante.

Continua a leggere qui: https://parlaredilibri.wordpress.com/...

[Agnes]

JAG ÄLSKAR HÉLÈNE CIXOUS OCH JAG ÄLSKAR ÉCRITURE FÉMININE! Måste läsa om den här då och då. Fylld av liv fylld av kraft. Lyft och envis och stark och klarsynt.

[Alix]

"Who, surprised and horrified by the fantastic tumult of her drives, hasn't accused herself of being a monster?" or "...because the unconscious, that other limitless country, is the place where the repressed manage to survive: women, or as Hoffmann would say, fairies. "

[andreea.]

.

[tee]

a volcanic, thunderous text which lives up to its powerful title

[Ana Pau Carbonell]

i'm putting it here because this was so dense and hard to get through omfg.

i did like a lot of the points she makes but why was it so hard to understand am I an idiot