INFLUENCES ON CIXOUS’
WRITING:
Due to her wide variety of
interests, Cixous pulls ideas from all realms of academia. Some
of the most notable influences on her writings have been Jacques
Derrida, Sigmund Freud, Jacques
Lacan and Arthur
Rimbaud:
Psychoanalyst
Sigmund Freud established the initial theories which would serve as a basis for
some of Cixous' arguments in developmental
psychology. Freud's analysis of gender roles and sexual identity concluded with
separate paths for boys and girls through the Oedipus complex, theories of
which Cixous was particularly critical.
For this developmental theory, Freud
posed the question: "What do women want?" In Freud's mind all aspects
of life centered around the penis, so Freud believed
that everything would be fulfilled with the presence of a penis, thus coining
the term "penis envy". This theory follows the young girl
until she realizes that she does not have a penis, he believes this happens
around the age of four. At this point, the young girl will reject clitoral
stimulation because it does not require a penis. Prior to this discovery
the young girl will prefer the company of her mother; afterward, however, she
will reject her mother because she blames her for not being born with a penis.
In Freud's mind, girls must make the
transition from clitoris to vagina in order to become a functioning adult
woman. They will reject their mother, therefore redirect their desire from
females to males and willingly choose the passive sexual role. Freud believes
that a "normal" adult woman's sexual pleasure comes from that of
being penetrated with a penis.
This theory examines the
transformation of a male child's natural love for his mother into sexual
desire. Due to the oral stage of development, a male child will become fixated
with his mother due to breast feeding. However the child sees his father as a
rival for his mother's body, so Freud believes that the males
child will feel resentment and aggression towards his father.
This theory is closely tied to
Freud's castration complex which examines how the young
boy will turn to pleasuring himself because he cannot sleep with his mother.
The young boy will also be fearful of repercussions by his father if he is
caught masturbating
because he will know that he is doing it in substitution of his mother. This
complex is expanded upon by Jacques Lacan, another
psychoanalyst.
In his "Law
of the Father", Lacan re-reads
Freud's castration complex to understand how we obtain this image of
"self" and where our desires come from.
Lacan
believes that when we enter into language, which he terms "the
Symbolic", there is a deep "split" that occurs in our
unconscious self. This split will cause a gap between the language and our
emotions. Therefore the Symbolic (language) will always occur outside of the
self, so the subject will never be in control of it. According to Lacan, we will be perpetually seeking a way to fill or
bridge that gap between our "self" and the Symbolic. If we are never
able to bridge the gap, we can never return to a state of "pure
bliss" in which no split occurred. This gap is what Lacan
defines as desire. We can never fill or reject our desires in order to become
happy again because the "self" can never exist outside of language.
Contemporaries, lifelong friends,
and intellectuals, Jacques Derrida and Cixous
both grew up as French Jews in
Through deconstruction,
Derrida employed the term logocentrism (which was
not his coinage). This is the concept that explains how language relies on a hierarchical
system that values the spoken word over the written word in Western
culture. The idea of binary
opposition is essential to Cixous' position on
language.
Cixous and
Luce
Irigaray combined Derrida's logocentric
idea and Lacan's symbol for desire, creating the term
phallogocentrism. This
term focuses on Derrida's social structure of speech and binary opposition as
the center of reference for language, with the phallic being privileged and how
women are only defined by what they lack; not A vs. B, but, rather A vs. not-A
In
In 2003, the Bibliothèque
held the conference "Genèses Généalogies
Genres: Autour de l'oeuvre d'Hélène Cixous". Among the
speakers were Mireille Calle-Gruber,
Marie Odile Germain,
Jacques Derrida, Annie Leclerc, Ariane
Mnouchkine, Ginette Michaud,
and Hélène Cixous herself.
“Hélène Cixous”
from Wikipedia, 6.12.08, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H%C3%A9l%C3%A8ne_Cixous
Academic year 2008/2009
© a.r.e.a./Dr.Vicente Forés López
© Sonia Macián Gil
somagil@alumni.uv.es
Universitat de València Press