Helene Cixous
>A rare hybrid
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Leora Skolkin-Smith writes on the life and work of French feminist philosopher, novelist, and essayist Helene Cixous @ Quarterly Conversation.
“I go, we go,” Helene Cixous wrote when asked to describe her work. “On the way we keep a log-book, the book of the abyss and the shores. Everyone does. My books are thus like life and history, heterogenous chapters in a single vast book whose ending I will never know. The differences in the genres of the books I write reproduces the eventful aspects of a life in our century. A woman’s life into the bargain. To briefly indicate my directions: in my fictional texts I work in a poetic form and in philosophical contents on the mysteries of subjectivity.”
Helene Cixous has authored over forty books and over a hundred articles including works of fiction, drama, philosophy, feminism, and literary theory. Widely known, too, for her academic career, she founded the experimental Université de Paris VIII at Vincennes. In 1974, while still at Université de Paris VIII, she started the Centre de Recherches en Etudes Féminines, the first of its kind in Europe to focus primarily on the theme of the feminine gender in relation to world literature and language.
Read Full Post | Make a Comment ( None so far )For all her adventurous and original academic activism, Cixous is an intensely personal writer, and her “log-book” includes a close scrutiny of her emotional genesis from a childhood filled with loss, national dislocation, and a profound struggle for persona identity.
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