The concept of Ecriture Feminine in Helene Cixous's "The Laugh of the Medusa"

Essay from the year 2012 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Literature, grade: 1,7, Christian-Albrechts-University of Kiel, language: English, abstract: In the year 1975 the French feminist author Helene Cixous published an essay called "TheLaugh of the Medusa". In it, she develops an entirely new theoretical concept with the aim ofgiving rise to feminist voice. The central ideas of Ecriture Feminine, literally "women'swriting", are going to be presented in this paper. In the first part, a brief description ofCixous's intellectual milieu is given in order to show the actual reason that led her to come upwith a new notion of liberating women from patriarchy. In this context, an elaboration onpoststructuralism, the philosophical current Cixous belonged to, follows. Closely related tothat is the authors skepticism towards Sigmund Freud's language philosophy. Specificallyspeaking, Freud's statements on the penis envy theory. Primary attention is paid to the theoryof phallocentrism, which can be seen as one of the main reasons for Cixous's writings. For abetter understanding of this term, the concept of logocentrism is also explained, as well.Logocentrism can be seen as a pillar of the theory of phallocentrism and therefore it deservesto be mentioned at this point.In the second part, we deal with the question of what is actually meant by "women's writing".Furthermore, we will analyze which role the female body and sexuality plays in this context.This excursion is highly interesting as it is crucial for the understanding of her concept. Sincethe female body is considered a key for women to resist masculinist thinking and, hence, thesystematic repression of women. Apart from that, we try to show whether features ofEcriture Feminine are evident in the "The Laugh of the Medusa". Moreover, a differentviewpoint on Cixous's theory is shown in the chapter "Criticism" in which arguments for andagainst her theory are shown. In point five "Conclusion" the main aspects of this paper aresummed up.When writing this paper, the main source of information were essays on women's writing andFrench feminist writing, dating from 1987 to 1986. Besides, secondary literature on literaryand cultural theory as well as feminist practice and poststructuralist theory were used. Recentresearch on Cixous's work, however, could not be found. The only source dealing particularlywith her writings dates from 1991.