Hélène Cixous (1937) Genealogy

A French Feminist

"Woman must write her self: must write about women and bring women to writing, from which they have been driven away as violently as from their bodies." 2039

- “ The Laugh of the Medusa” was published in 1975 and translated in 1976
- It became the theoretical foundation for the emergence of écriture féminine ("feminine writing").


“The focus of Cixous's discourse is écriture féminine ("feminine writing"), a project begun in the middle 1970s when Cixous, Luce Irigaray, Julia Kristeva, and Catherine Clément, among others, began reading texts in the particular contexts of women's experience” Source

Ecriture feminine is not only a possibility for female writers, rather, she believes it can also be employed by men. Just as women often lapse into masculine writing, Cixous believes that men can also tap into feminine writing


Primary Influence

Cixous's The Laugh of the Medusa Critiqued Against Showalter's Essay Feminist Criticism in the Wilderness. SOURCE

- Greek Mythology

- Cixous is influenced by Freud theory of sexual difference (having or lacking a penis)

- Lacans theory of the stages of the psyche (The imaginary, the symbolic, the real)


“Cixous owes a lot to Derrida, namely his analysis of binary thinking characteristic for logocentrism (Derrida's term), and also his concept of differance. Cixous often invents neologisms, and phallocentrism is one. Another one is the verb that is translated into English as "to hierarchize" and I use this word my text too.” SOURCE

Other Influences

- Simone de Beauvoir The Second Sex

De Beauvoir Revisited

Beauvoir declares that the western societies are patriarchal, controlled by males. She believed that the male in these societies defines what it means to be human, including, therefore, what it means to be female. Since the female is not male, Beauvoir asserts, she becomes the Other, an object whose existence is defined and interpreted by the male, the dominant being in the society. She is always subordinate to the male and finds herself a secondary or nonexistent player in the major institutions of her culture, such as the church, government, and educational systems. Beauvoir asserts that a woman must break the bonds of her patriarchal society and define herself if she wishes to become a significant human being in her right and defy male classification as the Other. She must ask herself what a woman is, and the answer must not be MANKIND, for such a term once again allows men to define women. Beauvoir insists that women see themselves as autonomous beings. Women, she maintains, must reject the societal construct that men are the subject or the absolute and women are the Other.

I find these ideas old fashioned not applicable to our current societies in which men and women have the same role and positions in all fields of life and major institutions. Therefore, what she is asserting is not exactly accurate at the present time. I find that Beauvoir herself classifies women and asks them to be the Other not the Patriarchal society. Even she doesn’t want women to belong to MANKIND in order to be the Other. What do you think?

Mulvey and Post-modern Women

Women erotic portrayal on magazines’ front pages, pictures of fashion supermodels, women celebrities and singers, make me feel that it is not the patriarchal society that displays women as sexual objects , on the contrary, it is women’s choice to be displayed this way. We are no long living in a patriarchal society in which men dictate their decisions on women. If women desire to be displayed otherwise, maybe the whole image of women will change. Far way from the cinema, when I see female students in campus as well as women in the street, I say it is not the phallocentric society that made them look this way. It is their own choice to display themselves as erotic objects for the male. It is their own liking and free will to dress, walk and talk in an erotic way not for the purpose of seducing men, but to feel contented with themselves and to have that sense of appreciating their beauty and body. This of course appeals to the “scopophilia” of men as part of their sensual pleasures, but it is not MAN'S will.

To add more, I don’t like the idea of identifying men and women by means of having or not having a penis. It is really shameful to be identified as human beings by our sexual organs whose behavior is subject to their basic instincts. This distinction applies to males and females of animals, and there is a great difference between a man or a woman on one hand and a male or female on the other. We as a race have been elevated in our creation to be something more than animals. We have our beliefs, principles, and the ability to control ourselves which make us different.

Lacanian Textual Analysis

Experiment Two
Micro-Lesson Plan

Objectives
- To apply Lacan’s ideas on Robinson’s “ Miniver Cheevy”

Miniver Cheevy
Edwin Arlington Robinson

Miniver Cheevy, child of scorn,
Grew lean while he assailed the seasons
He wept that he was ever born,
And he had reasons.

Miniver loved the days of old
When swords were bright and steeds were prancing;
The vision of a warrior bold
Would send him dancing.

Miniver sighed for what was not,
And dreamed, and rested from his labors;
He dreamed of Thebes and Camelot,
And Priam's neighbors.

Miniver mourned the ripe renown
That made so many a name so fragrant;
He mourned Romance, now on the town,
And Art, a vagrant.

Miniver loved the Medici,
Albeit he had never seen one;
He would have sinned incessantly
Could he have been one.

Miniver cursed the commonplace
And eyed a khaki suit with loathing:
He missed the medieval grace
Of iron clothing.

Miniver scorned the gold he sought,
But sore annoyed was he without it;
Miniver thought, and thought, and thought,
And thought about it.

Miniver Cheevy, born too late,
Scratched his head and kept on thinking;
Miniver coughed, and called it fate,
And kept on drinking.

Methodology

1. Before reading the text, the teacher should explain to his students the biography of Edwin Arlington Robinson, and to provide them with an access to his childhood, ideas, and major themes.

2. After reading the poem closely in groups, students should answer the following questions.

* Explain the fragmentation (divided self) of Miniver Cheevy

* Capture whatever hint in the text that shows Miniver’s desire to return to the imaginary.

* Explain the symbols of lack in Miniver’s Psyche and link it to Edwin Arlington Robinson if possible.

* What are the elements of the “Real” in Miniver’s character?

* Highlight the brief moments of joy or terror or desire that arise from the deep unconscious of Miniver cheevy to remind him of the time of perfect wholeness.

* Look for any link between the desire of Miniver and the desire of the Edwin Robinson himself.

In Search for Meaning

1. Marx : Superstructures (law, cultural institutions, religion, schools and literature) directly reflect the base ( production) (that is controlled by the dominant class – bourgeois). Therefore;
2. The base is superior to the superstructures; any change in the base is paralleled by a change in the superstructures. (the relation is economic)
3. Gramsci: the relation is not economic but hegemonic-the dominant class ( the base- Bourgeois) establishes and maintains hegemony over other classes by virtue of its organic intellectuals or by force when consent fails. Therefore;
4. What is the use of literature (part of the superstructures) if it propagates the ideas of the dominant class?
5. Allthusser: (The relation is ideological) Superstructures (Ideological State Apparatuses ) reproduces the relations of production (base). This means
6. The superstructure can and does influence the base . (the opposite of Marx and answers my question about Gramsci WHY DO THEY WRITE LITERATURE?)
7. In other words literature and superstructures influence the base not the opposite.

PLEASE CORRECT ME IF I AM MISTAKEN

Critique of Gramsci's The Formation of the Intellectuals

Gramsci ,the Marxist reformer, takes Marxism to another different direction from the path of traditional ideologists. He calls for the domination of the culture’s ideology “hegemony” rather than the domination of the ruling party. Hegemony is the collective “spontaneous consent given by the great masses of population to general direction imposed on social life by the dominant fundamental group.” (1143) And “The intellectuals are the dominant group’s deputies exercising the subaltern functions of social hegemony and political government” (Ibid). My point of critique is that consent has to coexist, in Gramsci’s article, with the coercive force of the state against “those groups who don’t consent either actively or passively” (ibid). To him, dominance requires both coercion and consent; coercion “when consent fails”. On one hand, this might look as a democratic shift from the traditional Marxist ideology that emphasizes the rule of the party as the one and only dominant power. But on the other hand, and despite my respect to his reformative attitudes, I find that he is still “dominated” by the question of power; the power of the institution over people. This time Gramsci handles the power question in a cleverer Machiavellian way than the way of his traditional comrades. To explain what I mean, I’ll quote Machiavelli himself in this concern:

“You must know there are two ways of contesting, the one by the law, the other by force; the first method is proper to men, the second to beasts; but because the first is frequently not sufficient, it is necessary to have recourse to the second…… it is necessary for a prince to know how to make use of both natures, and that one without the other is not durable. A prince, therefore, being compelled knowingly to adopt the beast, ought to choose the fox and the lion; because the lion cannot defend himself against snares and the fox cannot defend himself against wolves.” (The Prince chapter XVIII)

Machiavelli, here, instructs his prince how to maintain his power over people and explains to him the same strategy previously explained by Gramsci of consent and force. Gaining consent, according to Gramsci, is the function of Intellectuals (who are supposed to play the part of the fox) through their articulations, and the Party has to play the role of the lion.

My second point of critique is that I can’t figure out what is the relation of this article to literature and critical theory.

Is it a Call for Culture or Anarchy ?

The Compulsory Education Act in 1870 in the Victorian England led to the emergence of a new generation of newly educated middle class people. These people believed in modern civilization and wanted to be part of the growing empire. They had their own ambitions of a better life among a never changing conservative society. At that time, reading and writing was a privilege of the elite like Tennyson, Arnold, Browning …etc., that is not supposed to be practiced by the so called “Philistines”, referring to the new rising middle class generation. Therefore, Arnold considers them the enemies of culture and the reason behind anarchy.

Arnold, assumes himself very well cultured, and accordingly; “perfect” ,as he sees the function of culture, not only in terms of gaining knowledge, but also in doing good “ it is not merely the scientific passion for pure knowledge, but also the moral and social passion for doing good”827. But he is not doing any good to himself nor to anyone else by reflecting such discriminative thoughts against his people and using offensive terminology that doesn’t show the reality of things.
I was really astonished when I checked the meaning of the word “Philistines” in the American Heritage Dictionary and it showed like this:
“ a. A smug, ignorant, especially middle-class person who is regarded as being indifferent or antagonistic to artistic and cultural values. b. The one who lacks knowledge in a specific area.” If Arnold uses the word in this sense, it means that he is promoting hatred and discrimination, rather than making religion “to prevail” or “ perfecting himself”, by the name of culture. I was really offended when I read this article and I do believe that good intention and objectives should be approached and achieved by good means. And I see that Arnold is not doing so.

Structural Analysis of De Man’s Essay “Semiology and Rhetoric”

PART ONE
Form and content

Unwitting assumption of critical theories

FORM VS CONTENT
Outside VS inside
Extrinsic VS intrinsic
(Formalism, structuralism, historicism) VS deconstruction
Outside reference VS no outside reference
(author, period, history, reader or culture) VS text
Shell VS kernel

Even if the metaphor has been reversed, theories are still entangled in the same polarity of the same metaphor:

Content --------> outside
And
form --------> inside

OR
Content --------> inside
And
form --------> outside

PART TWO

SEMIOLOGY VS GRAMMAR

Syntagmatic VS Paradigmatic
Superior VS inferior
Conveys meaning VS cannot convey meaning
Main VS subordinate
Suspends logic VS logical

PART THREE (Conclusion)

METAPHORE AND METONYMY

Metonymy of metaphor --------->rhetoricizes grammar

Power of rhetoric ---------> discernable grammatical system

Death of the Author and the Hypertext

Building on our in class discussion regarding the death of the author and the hyper text, check this interesting essay that discuses the same question. (you have to download it first)
http://www.dmc.dit.ie/maim2002/riccardo/essays%20and%20mp/essays/media%20philosophy.doc

Practicing the Death of the Author

The following quotations from Barthe’s essay “The Death of The Author,” will serve as guides for composing a practical lesson plan.

- “who is speaking thus”
- “writing is the destruction of every voice”
- “ writing is a neutral composite space where our subject slips away”
- “an author does not exist prior to or outside of language”
- “To give a text an Author is to impose a limit on that text, to furnish it with a final signified”
- “the birth of the reader must be at the cost of the death of the Author.”
- “ A text is made up of multiple writings, drawn from many cultures and entering into mutual relations of dialogue, contestations, but there is one place this multiplicity is focused and that place is the reader not … the author.”



Experimental micro-lesson plan

Objectives
- To reinforce students’ personal interpretation of poetry. (recreating the text through the act of reading)
- To help students to free themselves from the limits imposed by the author, and to give them the chance discover new meanings rather than those intended by the author.
- To let students set out their own understanding of the characteristics of the voice in the poem of discussion depending on their reading of the text not on the author’s biography.
- To ask students to write down the inter-textuality brought to their minds by the text.

Methodology
- Students will read Ben Jonson’s “ON MY FIRST SON” in groups of four.

1 FAREWELL, thou child of my right hand, and joy,
2 My sin was too much hope of thee, loved boy;
3 Seven years th' wert lent to me, and I thee pay,
4 Exacted by thy fate, on the just day.
5 O, I could lose all father now. For why
6 Will man lament the state he should envy?
7 To have so soon 'scaped world's and flesh's rage,
8 And, if no other misery, yet age?
9 Rest in soft peace, and, asked, say here doth lie
10 Ben Jonson his best piece of poetry;
11 For whose sake, henceforth, all his vows be such
12 As what he loves may never like too much.

- The poem will be presented without the name of the poet or the time of writing.
- Students will be required to discuss the following questions:
What do you thing the meaning of the poem is?
What is your personal interpretation of the first and tenth lines?
Does it remind you of any other literary text (inter-textuality)? What are the facets of similarity?
What are the characteristic of the voice in the poem.? What are the textual signs or details that made you think so?
- students should be provided with the intended meaning of the author, and should be asked to compare it to their own interpretation.

Check this interseting critique of " the death of the Author" http://mh.cla.umn.edu/ebibss5.html

Transcendental Signified as the Basis of Deconstruction Theory

In his defense of writing in his book Of Grammatology , Derrida introduces some concepts that later became central to the deconstruction theory. The most important of which is the transcendental signified “If reading must not be content with doubling the text, it cannot legitimately transgress the text toward something other than it, toward a referent (a reality that is metaphysical, historical….” 1825. To explain the meaning of the transcendental signified with reference to the article itself as well as my previous understanding of this concept, I can say that Derrida assumes that the entire history of Western metaphysics from Plato to the present is founded on a classic, fundamental error. This error is searching for a transcendental signified, an “ external point of reference” ( like God, religion, reason, science….) upon which one may build a concept or philosophy. This transcendental signified would provide the ultimate meaning and would be the origin of origins. This transcendental signified is centered in the process of interpretation and whatever else is decentered. To Derrida THIS IS A GREAT ERROR because
1. There is no ultimate truth or a unifying element in universe, and thus no ultimate reality (including whatever transcendental signified). What is left is only difference.
2. Any text, in the light of this fact, has almost an infinite number of possible interpretations, and there is no assumed one signified meaning.
Accordingly, whatever pre-constructed meaning of a text has to be deconstructed to examine the possible different meanings. What is centered has to be decentered and what is privileged has to be unprivileged. Rather than providing how a text means ( like new criticism methodology), or discovering how a text means ( Structuralism methodology), Deconstruction aim at showing that what a text claims saying and what it actually says are “discernibly” different.
I have to say at the end, that Derrida requires eliminating whatever transcendental signified in the process of interpretation, but, at the same time, he himself constructs a transcendental signified. Rejecting whatever value or outside referent in the process of interpretation is a referent itself and assuming that is no ultimate truth is a transcendental signified as well. It is a referent that we have to keep in mind and refer to all the time and before doing anything. Therefore, how can Derrida ask us to practice what he is not actually doing himself?

Todorov’s Structural Strategy

Structuralists seek a system of codes they believe to convey the meaning. For them what really matters is how a text convenes meaning rather than what meaning is conveyed. This is the center of the structuralists’ methodology. For example, we usually assume that white color refers to purity, innocence or peace, but a Structuralist would question what is the sign system or the code that allows readers to interpret white color as “purity’ or ‘innocence’. In short, a structuralist has to find out how language works to convey the meaning. This takes place by explaining the relations among various components of the language.
Todorov follows the same strategy; he states that the purpose of his approach “is not to articulate a paraphrase but a theory of the structure and operation of the literary discourse.” 2100.
Furthermore, when Todorov analyzes the plot of Decameron tales, he resorts to the stylistics of the text to figure out the stream of the dramatic action: he examines the minimal schema of the plot, analyzes the narrative clause, showing the verbs that refer to actions, categorizes modality…….etc.
Through these items, Todorov tries to discover how language functions to convey the meaning. This is the essence of structuralism..

Strauss’s Matrix Structural Analysis Method

In his essay, “The Structural Study of Myth,” Strauss’s uses the matrix structural method of analysis that is usually used to analyze complex structures of meaning. Unlike the classical method of analysis that depends on providing answers by means of analytical beam formulation [paradigmatic relations (horizontal)], the matrix method examines the interrelations between parts of meaning [Syntagmatic relations (Vertical)] on the level of sentences, or between parts of meaning and other parts (defining larger unites like context). The use of the matrix method doesn’t make things easier to grasp for those who don’t like mathematics like myself, on the contrary it might make things more difficult to understand. But, I have to admit that it tries to show the logical relations between different parts of meaning. To give an example, the grouping of events in the matrix of Oedipus myth, made it easy to me to trace the overrating and underrating of blood relations as two binaries on one hand, and the denial and persistence of the autochthonous origin of man on the other. But I wonder how a classical method would be able to analyze the meaning as intended by Strauss himself.

The Significance of Theory

The difficulty of theory, as elaborated by Eagleton, was not extensively discussed in class and I would like to shed light on that idea which I find appealing to me. Eagleton states that theory is difficult, not only because of its sophistication and discourse, but mainly because of “its demand that we return to childhood by rejecting what seems natural and refusing to be fobbed off with shifty answers from well-meaning elders.” (Eagleton 35) ‘Natural’ in the previous quotation refers to “ our routine social practices” as he explains on page 34 and since theory is “a social practice” (p 24) the first quotations implies rejecting the theory itself because they are not familiar with the social practices of the elders. I find that the major source of difficulty in Theory is that it stands alone as a subject away from literature. In other words the subject of literature “fades out” and self-reflexivity becomes more important than the subject of literature itself. The function of theory is mainly to develop a systematic sense of appreciation and understanding to literature, but when it become more important than literature itself, I prefer to be a child rejecting the practices of the elders.