Cixous, Hélène, 1937-

A biographical entry on the Jewish-Algerian-French writer Hélène Cixous commands close attention to her work because, in her case, “life writing,” as she calls it, is a key topic for her imaginative and critical enterprise in the fields of poetic fiction, literary theory, feminist analysis, and the theater. Unlike any other contemporary writer, Cixous speaks with breathtaking precision about the myriad contradictions and consequences of “being Jewish” and “being a woman.” She subjects these parts of her existence to various, often radical, types of questioning and at the same time defines them as morally, politically, and poetically decisive for her life. Since she found so little space for such an exploration of cultural and sexual difference, she created new methods, institutions and words for this purpose. Noteworthy among her creations are the much-debated method of “feminine writing” as writing of the body, the DEA in Études Féminines at the University of Paris VIII, and the grammatical manipulation of words, such as “Jewoman,” which literally render the effects of cultural and sexual difference.

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Hélène Cixous (b. 1937) is a writer and philosopher. Transgressing the limits of academic language by and with poetic language, she is widely lauded for both her experimental writing style and her experimental practice, which traverses many discourses. An influential theorist, as well as a novelist, playwright, and poet, Cixous is also noted for her role in initiating and developing new models of education. Much of her prominence developed around écriture feminine, a method and practice that addresses Cixous's ongoing concern with the effects of difference, exclusion, the struggle for identity, and the overcoming of Western logocentrism. These ideas were prominently exposed in her widely influential essay Le rire de la Méduse from 1975 (The Laugh of the Medusa). This work is considered a key text within her concept of écriture feminine, and informs her advocacy for the freeing of writing, and the freeing of the self through writing.