Lit Theory - Cixous - "The Laugh of Medusa"

Helene Cixous

1.     “The Laugh of Medusa”

a.     Women must write her self and write about women and bring women to writing.

b.     We are breaking away from old paradigms.

                                               i.     There are no guides for women.

c.     Woman is identified as the shared experience against the repression of men and of the universal women who needs to provide common sense to all women.

d.     Woman’s imaginary is endless.

e.     Men have mobilized women’s own immense strength against themselves.

f.      It’s time for women to liberate themselves.

g.     Women must write for themself as expressing their thoughts will free them.

                                               i.     Individually, woman will return to the body which has been confiscated from her.  She will be expressed as more than bad or good.

                                             ii.     It will give women the opportunity to speak.

1.     Women have traditionally been suppressed.

2.     Speaking forms a new place other than silence.

                                            iii.     There will be resistance from men.

                                            iv.     Ignorance from both sexes is what prevents the distinction of the feminine and masculine writing.

h.     The analogy that the Dark Continent is neither dark nor unexplorable.  It is only so because people have been made to believe it such.

                                               i.     The same analogy can be applied to female writers.

i.      The two unrepresentable things are death and the feminine. 

                                               i.     They (men) need femininity to be associated with death.  Suggests men need to be afraid of women.

j.      Women have been associated with their body in literature, and men with success.

k.     Men tend to center their thoughts and ego around their penis.

                                               i.     Women have desires but they are more expansive then a singular area of pleasure.  This gives women the ability to write to levels men cannot.

l.      Women should not fear men, nor succumb to their ways to induce women writers back into repression.

m.   Change is happening and women are becoming engaged.

Works Cited

Cixous, Helene. “The Laugh of Medusa.” The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism.  Ed. Vincent B. Leitch et al.  2^nd ed. New York: W.W.Norton & Co., 2010.  1938-1960. Print.