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?