Écriture Féminine : thinking the female body through writing [abstract]

Abstract

Traditional feminist readings of Helene Cixous's theory of ecriture feminine have centered on the essentialist debate, overlooking the important contribution to gender studies her theoretical work constitutes. In this paper I will explore how ecriture feminine is useful to theorizing the female body as narrative. Promising to "speak about women's writing: about what it will do," Cixous, in "The Laugh of the Medusa," exhorts women to write, insisting that only through writing will "woman . . . return to the body, which has been more than confiscated by her" (2039, 2043).