Cixous repeatedly expresses her wariness of reductive language that would simplify her practice of écriture feminine. Still, she makes clear that she wishes to offer new ways of writing and speaking, and that she writes to women: “I write this as a woman, towards women. When I say ‘woman,’ I’m speaking of woman in her inevitable struggle against conventional man; and of a universal woman subject who must bring women to their senses and to their meaning in history” (1976, p. 875). To do so, she emphasizes the fictional and poetic elements in her writing. She says that, for her, what is most true is poetic writing and what is most true is seeing life naked: “What is most true is poetic. What is most true is naked life. I can only attain this mode of seeing with the aid of poetic writing. I apply myself to “seeing” the world nude, that is almost e-nu-merating the world, with the naked, obstinate, defenceless eye of my nearsightedness. And while looking very very closely, I copy. The world written nude is poetic” (1997, p. 3).
Cixousian writing is constantly bent back onto itself and thus may seem confusing since it is not ordinary prosaic prose but already poetic, and thus (seeming unwittingly) showing what it is about. She uses neologisms, metaphors, puns, parodies, jests, and alliterations in multilayered self-reflexive texts. The phenomenological reader might suggest that Cixous seems to practice the epoché with her expression of seeing the world naked. Seeing the world naked would be the perfect epoché since it means seeing without overlays, distortions, projections, or impositions. It means seeing in the kind of way that Rilke talks of as poetic “in-seeing into the heart of things.” And it can refer to the kind of seeing that Levinas describes as seeing the naked face of the other.
The Laugh of the Medusa (1976) is an appropriate text to engage with the fundamental contexts of Cixous’s liberating feminist and literary feminine writing style. Famously, Cixous refers to the story of Medusa who was originally a beauti- ful maiden, but when Poseidon seduced her in the temple of Athena, the goddess Minerva punished Medusa by transforming her beautiful hair in terrifying phallic snakes. This caused great disturbance among the deities. Perseus was charged to find Medusa and cut off her monstrous head. Perseus was the noble son of Zeus and Danaë, a princess. He had to fulfill this task to save his mother. During that period of conspiring, Medusa was pregnant by Poseidon. So, it appears that Medusa was being punished for her predicament, even though Poseidon was the male sexual aggressor and father of the unborn.
Perseus was warned not to look straight at Medusa because of her potent eyes. He was armed with a mirrored shield by Athena, gold-winged sandals by Hermes, and a sword by Hephaestus, god of the underworld. Perseus searched and found Medusa and approached her, while not looking at her straight on but via the reflec- tion from the mirrored shield he had received from Athena. Of course, the very idea of the male not looking the woman straight in her eyes betrays the unequal gendered encounter between the powerfully armed Perseus and the pregnant Medusa.
Perseus beheads Medusa. Her body perishes but now her head becomes even more powerfully potent: her eyes can turn into stone anyone who looks at Medusa’s head which has been transformed into a terrifying beauty in spite of the snakes—though many thought her ugly. Whatever Medusa’s potent eyes stare at turns into stone. However, Medusa never turns any women into stone, only men, who fear the potency of the deadly female spirit inside the head of Medusa. Typically, men fail to see the original beauty and profoundly mysterious femininity of the maiden Medusa for fear that her look may turn them weak and impotent. After the slaying of Medusa, Athena attaches Medusa’s head to her own battle shield.
Selected Readings:
Cixous, H. (1976). The Laugh of the Medusa. London: Routledge.
Cixous, H. (1977). La Venue à l’Écriture. Paris: Union Générale d’Éditions.
Cixous, H. (1994). Hélène Cixous Reader. London: Routledge.
Cixous, H. (1997). Rootprints: Memory and Life Writing. London: Routledge.
Cixous, H. (1998). Stigmata. London: Routledge.