Écriture féminine

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Écriture féminine, literally "gendered women's writing,"[1] is a strain of feminist literary theory that originated in France in the 1970s.

Hélène Cixous first uses this term in her essay, "The Laugh of the Medusa" (1975), in which she asserts, "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." Elaine Showalter defines it as "the inscription of the feminine body and female difference in language and text."[2] Écriture féminine places experience before language, and privileges non-linear, cyclical writing that evades "the discourse that regulates the phallocentric system."[3] Because language is not a neutral medium, the argument can be made that it functions as an instrument of patriarchal expression. Peter Barry writes that “the female writer is seen as suffering the handicap of having to use a medium (prose writing) which is essentially a male instrument fashioned for male purposes”[4]. Ecriture féminine thus exists as an antithesis of masculine writing, or as a means of escape for women. In the words of Rosemarie Tong, “Cixous challenged women to write themselves out of the world men constructed for women. She urged women to put themselves-the unthinkable/unthought-into words.”[5]

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.[6]

With regard to phallocentric writing, Tong explains that "male sexuality, which centers on what Cixous called the "big dick", is ultimately boring in its pointedness and singularity. Like male sexuality, masculine writing, which Cixous usually termed phallogocentric writing, is also ultimately boring" and furthermore, that "stamped with the official seal of social approval, masculine writing is too weighted down to move or change"[5].

Write, let no one hold you back, let nothing stop you: not man; not the imbecilic capitalist machinery, in which the publishing houses are the crafty, obsequious relayers of imperatives handed down by an economy that works against us and off our backs; not yourself. Smug-faced readers, managing editors, and big bosses don't like the true texts of women- female-sexed texts. That kind scares them.[7]

For Cixous, écriture féminine is not only a possibility for female writers; rather, she believes it can be (and has been) employed by male authors such as James Joyce. Some have found this idea difficult to reconcile with Cixous’ definition of écriture féminine (often termed ‘white ink’) because of the many references she makes to the female body (“There is always in her at least a little of that good mother’s milk. She writes in white ink”[8]) when characterizing the essence of écriture féminine and explaining its origin. This notion raises problems for some theorists:

"Ecriture féminine, then, is by its nature transgressive, rule-transcending, intoxicated, but it is clear that the notion as put forward by Cixous raises many problems. The realm of the body, for instance, is seen as somehow immune to social and gender condition and able to issue forth a pure essence of the feminine. Such essentialism is difficult to square with feminism which emphasizes femininity as a social construction…"[9]

Écriture féminine was especially well developed by French and other European feminists. It is now widely recognized by Anglophone scholars as a sub-category of feminist literary theory. Hélène Cixous, Monique Wittig, Luce Irigaray[10] and Julia Kristeva[11],[12] were foundational theorists of the movement, and also other writers including Bracha Ettinger[13] and psychoanalytical theory [14] joined this field in the early 1990s. [15] The book Laughing with Medusa (2006) analyses the work of Julia Kristeva, Luce Irigaray, Bracha Ettinger and Hélène Cixous.[16] Collectively these writers are sometimes referred to by Anglophones as "the French feminists," though Mary Klages has pointed out that "poststructuralist theoretical feminists" would be a more accurate term.[6] Madeleine Gagnon is a more recent proponent.

[edit] Notes

  1. ^ Baldick, Chris. Oxford Concise Dictionary of Literary Terms. OUP, 1990. 65.
  2. ^ Showalter, Elaine. "Feminist Criticism in the Wilderness." The New Feminist Criticism: essays on women, literature, and theory. Elaine Showalter, ed. London: Virago, 1986. 249.
  3. ^ Cixous, Hélène. "The Laugh of the Medusa." New French Feminisms. Elaine Marks and Isabelle de Courtivron, eds. New York: Schocken, 1981. 253.
  4. ^ Barry, Peter. Beginning Theory : An Introduction to Literary and Cultural Theory. New York: Manchester UP, 2002.126
  5. ^ a b Tong, Rosemarie Putnam. Feminist Thought : A More Comprehensive Introduction. New York: Westview P, 2008.276.
  6. ^ a b Klages, Mary. "Helene Cixous: The Laugh of the Medusa."
  7. ^ Hélène Cixous, Summer 1976.
  8. ^ Klages, Mary. "Helene Cixous: 'The Laugh of the Medusa.
  9. ^ Barry, Peter. Beginning Theory : An Introduction to Literary and Cultural Theory. New York: Manchester UP, 2002.128.
  10. ^ Irigaray, Luce, Speculum of the Other Woman, Cornell University Press, 1985
  11. ^ Kristeva, Julia Revolution in Poetic Language, Columbia University Press, 1984
  12. ^ Griselda Pollock, "To Inscribe in the Feminine: A Kristevan Impossibility? Or Femininity, Melancholy and Sublimation." Parallax, n. 8, [Vol. 4(3)], 1998. 81-117.
  13. ^ Ettinger, Bracha, Matrix . Halal(a) - Lapsus. Notes on Painting, 1985-1992. MOMA, Oxford, 1993. (ISBN 0-905836-81-2). [Reprinted in: Artworking 1985-1999. Edited by Piet Coessens. Ghent-Amsterdam: Ludion / Brussels: Palais des Beaux-Arts, 2000. (ISBN 90-5544-283-6)
  14. ^ Ettinger, Bracha, The Matrixial Borderspace (essays1994-1999), Minnesota University Press, 2006
  15. ^ Pollock, Griselda, "Does Art Think?", in: Art and Thought Blackwell, 2003
  16. ^ Zajko, Vanda and Leonard, Miriam, Laughing with Medusa. Oxford University Press, 2006

[edit] External links

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