Hélène Cixous: One (and) All by Jennifer Jenson

Reading Cixous is quite a bit like reading poetry: the reader comes away

with more of a sensation of meaning than an ability to re-state what

knowledge has been imparted through the text. How much of Cixous’ style is

affected by the translation of her texts cannot be quantitatively

determined. What is clear, however, is that her writing is distinctive

and, were we to believe her assertion, its distinctiveness lies in her

ability to "write woman" which means to write the [woman’s] body (1234,

1236). In "The Laugh of the Medusa," and "A Woman Mistress," Cixous aims

to destroy the historical perceptions women have held toward themselves,

and to create an anticipation for a "new insurgent writing which, when the

moment of her liberation has come, will allow [her] to carry out the

indispensable ruptures and transformations in her history" (1236). Cixous

provides an example of this kind of writing with her unique rhetorical

style which captures the essence of what she believes is the power of

woman: the ability to encompass multiplicities in identity and meaning.

It is difficult to write about Cixous’ writing in a structured fashion

because her writing is her writing; it so clearly avoids all recognizable

or familiar patterns of traditional rhetoric. Often, the only way to

re-tell her story is to retain her original words, a strategy which cannot

be seen as a cop out. After all, if we force her voice into a more

familiar mold, we would be enforcing the very historical ideas of writing

that she attacks because they are complicit in the suppression of the

woman’s voice. "The entire history of writing" she says, "…has been at one

with the phallocentric tradition" (1235). To use a more traditional

rhetorical style, or to co-opt it, would simply create what she calls

"marked writing" (1235). Marked writing is that which "has been run by a

libidinal and cultural…economy" which is the center of a phallocentric

society. On the other hand there is the "discourse of mastery" (1245).

This is a rhetorical style that employs a hierarchy of master and student

but does aim to repress the student. Cixous purposely uses this structured

discourse when she teaches because she does not believe that women should

stop participating in what is generally accepted as the discourse style of

our culture. Instead, she seeks opportunities to discover and employ

whatever discursive strategy will best meet the needs of that situation.

In her theoretical writing, she creates what Catherine Clément calls "a

writing half-way between theory and fiction" (1245). Cixous would say she

writes from the body; an exemplification of the potential for a distinctive

feminine discourse.

For Cixous, a feminine discourse must react against the Freudian and

Lacanian representations of woman as the gender which lacks; a position

which arose out of a focus on the phallus as the privileged symbol of

biological, and hence cultural/social/intellectual superiority. As editors

Bizzell and Herzberg point out, the Medusa figure makes sense as one of

Cixous’ metaphors because Medusa represents the Freudian interpretation of

woman as a castrated man; a being that was horrible to look at yet

overwhelmingly enticing because her grimacing mouth "…ringed with curling

‘hair’ resembles the female genitalia, at once arousing and terrifying

because no penis is there" (1227). Cixous counters:

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. (1239)

Cixous’ suggestion to "look at the Medusa straight on to see her" is

typical of her approach to changing history. She believes that a direct

response to the repressive, patriarchal ideologemes of the past is the only

way to change the future. She chooses writing as the vehicle for this

change because writing seems to be, for her, the ideal way for woman to

both find and express herself. She directs in the very first paragraph of

"Laugh of the Medusa": "Woman must write herself; must write about women

and bring women to writing, from which they have been driven away as

violently as from their bodies" (2343). This directive hints at one of the

major themes of Cixous’ writing: that the essence, strength, intelligence,

and beauty of woman is inseparable from her body and that is why the

representation of woman’s body as "lacking" has been so successfully

destructive and repressive. Therefore, for Cixous, the body and the text

are companion vehicles for reflection and reflexion, of one another. And

it is in this perspective that Cixous discusses the ability of women and

multiplicities.

Cixous’ notion of the multiple female identity is complicated, but the

main idea is that woman, because of her womb, in every aspect of her being,

can be herself and another. This status is illustrated in the way a woman

gives: She gives life to give love, to get love which gives life to her.

Yet, a woman’s giving is not an ablation - a loss - of any kind. Her

giving is always a re-creating of herself and another who is not her: the

"other." Woman also has the ability to "know" the "other," because she can

and does hold the "other" inside of her. This can be illustrated

biologically. First, woman holds the potential for creating life in the

ovum contained within her. Second, she holds the developing fetus within

her - she is herself and "other" at the same time. As Cixous puts it,

"There is hidden and always ready in woman the source; the locus for the

other….(the child that she was, that she is, that she makes, remakes,

undoes, there at the point where, the same, she others herself)" (1237).

Because woman can know herself and the other simultaneously, she is also

capable of multiplicities of meaning. Therefore, Cixous does not believe

that there is, or will be, a single female discourse. To the contrary, she

says, "there will be thousands of different kinds of feminine words"

(1246). This multiplicity of language will not separate women from the

general discourse, but will add multiple occasions and situations for women

to participate while retaining an ability to utilize what Cixous calls "the

code for general communication" (1246). Keeping with her belief that the

physical body of woman is inseparable from her intellectual body, Cixous

talks about woman’s ability to imagine, create, and "foresee the

unforeseeable" future (1233) and the relation to multiple orgasm. She says

first, "But what strikes me is the infinite richness of their individual

constitutions….Women’s imaginary is inexhaustible, like music, painting,

writing" (1233). Later she adds, "Because she arrives, vibrant, over and

over again, we are at the beginning of a new history, or rather of a

process of becoming in which several histories intersect with one another.

As subject for history, woman always occurs simultaneously in several

places (1237). Being able to exist in multiple places at once is the core

of Cixous’ philosophy. She is not a separatist, like some of the other

French feminists. She simply wants women to recognize that they are

biologically, intellectually, and spiritually different from men, and that

this difference does not bring shame, but opportunity.

For Cixous, a revised view of woman’s differences as strengths will be the

power behind the creation of a "new history" in which "a feminine practice

of writing" will "always surpass the discourse that regulates the

phallocentric system" (1237, 1238). While she does not believe that it is

possible to codify or even theorize feminine writing, she does not consider

this a barrier; it is woman’s ability to participate in this type of

discourse that will provide its meaning. She describes this type of

discourse as a continual exchange of experiences between subjects in which

there will be "a multiple and inexhaustible course with millions of

encounters and transformations of the same into the other and into the

in-between, from which woman takes her forms" (1238). This idea recalls

her theory that women continually give life to the other, which is not

herself, while retaining the ability to be a part of the other by an

intimate knowledge of which only she is capable. This type of discourse

and knowledge is, unlike masculine discourse, sustaining and inclusive.

Whereas the masculine dialogue of structure and hierarchy resembles "fixed

sequences of struggle and expulsion of some other form of death" (1238) in

which the speaker is the master and the interlocutor is mastered, a

feminine discourse is based on continual, multiple interactions. This type

of discourse is an act of giving knowledge that isn’t sacrificial; it is

oblatory – an act of offering that does not imply loss. At its best,

speaking and writing in order to impart knowledge can be "a discourse that

annihilates sexual difference" (1251) because it does not require a

win/lose binary. Cixous believes that the phallocentric culture has been

built on these types of binaries and that while woman can operate in a

binary environment when necessary, she "doesn’t enjoy herself in it" (1251).

This feeling, that woman are capable of succeeding in situations which do

not particularly encourage their strongest abilities, is itself the

strength that Cixous believes will propel women to "smash everything, to

shatter the framework of institutions, to blow up the law, to break up the

"truth" with laughter" (1241). By qualifying those violent words with

"laughter," Cixous seems to be encouraging a revolution that is not

destructive, but constructive. She wants to add new words, new discourses,

new opportunities and communities, but she does not want to do this by

dominating or repressing anyone else. She talks about the importance of

developing the ability to "function on the level of knowledge without

knowing," which is to be a master of knowledge without doing so as a means

to gain power. She admits, "I set my sights high: I demand that love

struggle within the master against the will for power" (1247). But if she

is right that woman can employ multiplicities on so many levels, then she

certainly can personify a master who lives "in a state of weakness" (1247).

Work Cited

Bizzell, Patricia and Bruce Herzberg, eds. The Rhetorical Tradition:

Readings from Classical

Times to the Present. Boston: Bedford, 1990.