scholarly journals Rethinking the politics of writing differently through écriture féminine

2018 ◽  
Vol 50 (1) ◽  
pp. 11-23 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sheena J. Vachhani
Keyword(s):  
Sexual Difference ◽  
The Body ◽  
Helene Cixous ◽  
Luce Irigaray ◽  
Ecriture Feminine ◽  
Writing Practices ◽  
Feminist Politics ◽  
Feminist Thought ◽  
The Feminine ◽  
Feminist Writing

This article examines the writing practices most often associated with French feminist thought called écriture féminine and subjects it to debates concerning embodied writing in management and organisation studies. Écriture féminine explores the intersections between language, sexual difference and writing from the body. Often considered a distinct and alluring strand of feminist writing and philosophy, I draw together possibilities for its use and explore implications that emerge for teaching and researching management and organisations. With focus on two modes of writing the feminine, through Luce Irigaray and Hélène Cixous, the intersections between sex/text are examined and form ways of decentring conventional modes of writing. The article concludes with discussing the politics of writing differently for researching, teaching and writing about organisations, the need to expose the effects of a masculine singularity in writing and how it may suppress and conceal possibilities but also offer opportunities for claiming space for an affective feminist politics inscribed in language.

Bisexuality in Cixous's Le Nom d'Œdipe

1998 ◽  
Vol 23 (3) ◽  
pp. 242-248
Author(s):  
Sandra Freeman
Keyword(s):  
Sexual Difference ◽  
The Body ◽  
Sexual Pleasure ◽  
Helene Cixous ◽  
Binary Opposition ◽  
Future Tense ◽  
Male And Female ◽  
The Future ◽  
Feminist Writing ◽  
Living Being

In her essay, ‘The Laugh of the Medusa’, Hélène Cixous talks about bisexuality and writing. Feminist writing may be said to be truly bisexual not in the sense which does away with sexual difference thereby producing neutrality, but in the sense that male and female are both omnipresent, exchanging, intermingling, enriching each other. Freed from the constraints of conventional binary opposition, male and female are able to unite, divide, multiply in an almost endless expansion of possibilities. The celebration of difference which does not divide, which is at the heart of sexual pleasure, transfusing and transforming the whole living being, will be found in women's writing, since women's songs spring from a body which denies castration. I use the future tense, since in the same essay Cixous declares that these songs use the future tense, since these songs have not yet been written, that women must liberate themselves from the dominance of the phallus, of men's language, in order to give voice to thensensuality, their sexuality, in all its complexity; to speak in the language which existed before patriarchal dominance, the fore-language which has a multiplicity of tongues. To sing a woman's song, in the language of the body, which rejects the law of the castrating father, telling of a total sexual pleasure knowing no guilt, no boundaries, is a courageous act in a world which has invented the direst forms of punishment for such transgression.

Feminist Theory

2021 ◽  
pp. 488-503
Author(s):  
Jean Mills
Keyword(s):  
Feminist Theory ◽  
Political Thought ◽  
Life Writing ◽  
The Body ◽  
Feminist Politics ◽  
Feminist Thought ◽  
Feminist Discourse ◽  
Women's Lives ◽  
Feminist Community ◽  
Critical Responses

This chapter examines Virginia Woolf’s foundational role in the development of feminist theory, placing her theoretical positions on women’s lives and life-writing, privacy, the body, and self-expression in dialogue with a diverse and actively changing continuum of feminist thought. Focusing on the return of rage to the forefront of feminist discourse and social media’s effect upon feminist politics, the chapter chronicles the changing critical responses to Woolf’s feminisms, in relation to her positions on feminist identities and feminist community. The chapter also investigates the ways in which women of colour feminists disclosed Woolf’s racialized self and racist thinking to assess the place of Woolf’s feminism in contemporary political thought. From issues seeking to reconcile and value difference and diversity with the uses of ambivalence and calls for unity and integration, the chapter places the concepts and vocabulary of feminist theory within the context of Virginia Woolf’s work and example.

Historicizing Slavery in West Indian Feminisms

1998 ◽  
Vol 59 (1) ◽  
pp. 34-56 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hilary McD. Beckles
Keyword(s):  
West Indies ◽  
Nation State ◽  
The West ◽  
Feminine Identity ◽  
Historical Texts ◽  
Feminist Politics ◽  
Feminist Thought ◽  
Feminist Writing ◽  
Gender Neutrality

This paper traces the evolution of a coherent feminist genre in written historical texts during and after slavery, and in relation to contemporary feminist writing in the West Indies. The paper problematizes the category ‘woman’ during slavery, arguing that femininity was itself deeply differentiated by class and race, thus leading to historical disunity in the notion of feminine identity during slavery. This gender neutrality has not been sufficiently appreciated in contemporary feminist thought leading to liberal feminist politics in the region. This has proved counter productive in the attempts of Caribbean feminist theorizing to provide alternative understandings of the construction of the nation-state as it emerged out of slavery and the role of women themselves in the shaping of modern Caribbean society.

Questions to Luce Irigaray

Hypatia ◽  
1996 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 122-140 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kate Ince
Keyword(s):  
Emmanuel Levinas ◽  
Sexual Difference ◽  
Luce Irigaray ◽  
The Feminine

This article traces the “dialogue” between the work of the philosophers Luce Irigaray and Emmanuel Levinas. It attempts to construct a more nuanced discussion than has been given to date of Irigaray's critique of Levinas, particularly as formulated in “Questions to Emmanuel Levinas” (Irigaray 1991)-It suggests that the concepts of the feminine and of voluptuosity articulated by Levinas have more to contribute to Irigaray's project of an ethics of sexual difference than she herself sometimes appears to think.

Donna Haraway's Cyborg Touching (Up/On) Luce Irigaray's Ethics and the Interval Between: Poethics as Embodied Writing

Hypatia ◽  
2012 ◽  
Vol 27 (1) ◽  
pp. 182-200 ◽  
Author(s):  
Margaret E. Toye
Keyword(s):  
The Body ◽  
Ethical Framework ◽  
Luce Irigaray ◽  
Feminist Ethics ◽  
Aesthetics And Politics ◽  
Ecriture Feminine ◽  
Ethical Concept ◽  
Embodied Writing ◽  
The Many

In this article, I argue that Donna Haraway's figure of the cyborg needs to be reassessed and extricated from the many misunderstandings that surround it. First, I suggest that we consider her cyborg as an ethical concept. I propose that her cyborg can be productively placed within the ethical framework developed by Luce Irigaray, especially in relationship to her concept of the “interval between.” Second, I consider how Haraway's “cyborg writing” can be understood as embodied ethical writing, that is, as a contemporary écriture feminine. I believe that this cyborgian “writing the body” offers us a way of both creating and understanding texts that think through ethics, bodies, aesthetics, and politics together as part of a vital and relevant contemporary feminist ethics of embodiment. I employ the term “poethics” as a useful way to describe such a practice.

O MANTO DE PENÉLOPE E TEIA DE ARACNE: TECITURAS FEMINISTAS DE NIETZSCHE

2020 ◽  
Vol 1 (42) ◽  
pp. 373
Author(s):  
Mariana Andrade
Keyword(s):  
Helene Cixous ◽  
Luce Irigaray ◽  
Ecriture Feminine

Em Sobre verdade e mentira no sentido extra-moral, Nietzsche põe em evidência o esquecimento ou apagamento da gênese metafórica da linguagem. Segundo o filósofo, a linguagem seria como que um cemitério de metáforas: metáforas mortas e engessadas nos conceitos ao ponto de esquecerem a si mesmas enquanto metáforas e se tornarem “verdades”. Gostaríamos, então, nas pegadas das possibilidades aventadas por Nietzsche, de desenterrar uma dessas metáforas esquecidas da linguagem: explorar a relação originária, etimológica e metafórica, entre texto e tecido. Ora, todas as atividades associadas à tecelagem e à costura foram, histórica e culturalmente, relegadas às mulheres e relacionadas ao universo feminino. Suspeitamos, e é este o sentido do presente ensaio, que esse esquecimento esconda também uma relação entre a escrita e o feminino que foi apagada e suplantada ao longo da história. O nosso esforço será, então, o de trazer à tona as múltiplas constelações entre o feminino e a escrita. Para realizar tal tarefa, nossa investigação percorrerá o seguinte trajeto: partindo de um primeiro excurso pelo pensamento nietzschiano seguiremos, num segundo momento, por um desvio de resgate metafórico pela mitologia grega e desembocarmos, por fim, na defesa da écriture féminine realizada pelas filósofas Luce Irigaray e Hélène Cixous.

scholarly journals Subjektiwiteit en vroulike liggaamlikheid in enkele tekste van Riana Scheepers en Antjie Krog

Literator ◽  
1999 ◽  
Vol 20 (2) ◽  
pp. 107-122
Author(s):  
A. Visagie
Keyword(s):  
Short Stories ◽  
Female Body ◽  
The Body ◽  
Helene Cixous ◽  
Luce Irigaray ◽  
Female Subjectivity ◽  
Feminine Subjectivity ◽  
Female Speaker

Subjectivity and feminine corporeality in texts by Riana Scheepers and Antjie KrogBoth Die ding in die vuur by Riana Scheepers and Gedigte 1989-1995 by Antjie Krog are characterized by a profound interest in women in relation to their bodies. As Luce Irigaray (1981:100) and Héléne Cixous (1981:256) have indicated, it is essential to approach the debate about female subjectivity from the discourse of the body. Irigaray believes that women will accede to subjectivity from an experience of their bodies as multiple and diverse. In the short stories of Riana Scheepers the bodies of women are depicted as confiscated and destroyed by the discourses of both African and Western patriarchy. However, the writing of Scheepers does not mobilize the constructive potential of the female body to create a new subjectivity. In her poetry Antjie Krog engages the female body in a transitory exploration of the masculine other. An analysis of “ek staan op 'n moerse rots langs the see by Paternoster" leads to the conclusion that the female speaker in this poem by Krog emerges from her non-appropriating journey through the masculine other within sight o f a feminine subjectivity based on the liberating potential of the female body.

Writing through the labyrinth: Using l’ecriture feminine in leadership studies

Leadership ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 64-80 ◽  
Author(s):  
Briony Lipton
Keyword(s):  
Gender Discrimination ◽  
Women In Leadership ◽  
The Body ◽  
Helene Cixous ◽  
Greek Mythology ◽  
Leadership Studies ◽  
Leadership Positions ◽  
Creative Agency ◽  
Writing Practices ◽  
The University

Metaphors enable us to understand organisations in distinctive ways and explain the paucity of women in leadership positions, and yet, when gender discrimination is addressed via metaphor, women’s responses, resistance and agency are rarely included in such analyses. In this article, I employ a narrative writing practice inspired by the work of Hélène Cixous as a way of exploring how we might research and write differently in leadership studies. Cixous invites women to reclaim their sexuality and subjectivity through a feminine mode of women’s writing and what she defines as l'ecriture feminine can be interpreted as a liberating bodily practice that aims to release women’s repressed creative agency and transform phallogocentric structures. Using the Greek mythology of the Minotaur and the Labyrinth, this article weaves together these seemingly disparate concepts of myth, metaphor and feminist writing practices with leadership discourse to explore the ways in which academic women experience the university organisation as a labyrinth, how they navigate pathways to promotion and practice leadership. This creative analytic operates as a metanarrative that offers new ways of researching and writing leadership studies from the body, and reveals how myths continue to influence present experiences and structures in unexpected ways.

SUBJECTIVITY, CREATIVE ACT AND EROS OF WOMEN: "THE ESSENCE" COMIC AND SELECTED FEMINIST THEORIES

2020 ◽  
Vol 60 (2) ◽  
pp. 60-70
Author(s):  
Magda Hamer
Keyword(s):  
Female Identity ◽  
Helene Cixous ◽  
Luce Irigaray ◽  
Female Desire ◽  
Ecriture Feminine ◽  
Collective Work ◽  
Feminist Theories ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The Right ◽  
Nomadic Subject

Starting from the modern interpretation of the theories: parler femme by Luce Irigaray (adopting a speaking position that will enable woman/women to articulate their own sexuality, speak with their own voice) and écriture feminine by Hélène Cixous (a text freed by writing a female desire that carries the potential of revolutionary transformations) I come to the theory of the nomadic subject by Rosi Braidotti (the central categories are movement, changeability and the endless process of shaping the subject). I ask questions about the possibilities and limitations of finding or building a female identity and subject through creativity, empowering women in the domain of images related to sexuality, and the right to talk about their desires as creating their own place in the space of culture. As an example of creative acts building subjectivity, I present an erotic comic "Being" which is the first collective work on Polish soil that is supposed to express erotic fantasies from the perspective of women.

scholarly journals Die Bewegung des Anderen in den Schreibszenen von Hélène Cixous

2021 ◽  
pp. 127-141
Author(s):  
Karoline Gritzner
Keyword(s):  
Short Story ◽  
Sexual Difference ◽  
The Other ◽  
Present Moment ◽  
Helene Cixous ◽  
Ecriture Feminine ◽  
Presence And Absence ◽  
Written Word ◽  
The Relationship

This essay explores the significance of movement and alterity in Hélène Cixous’s practice of writing, which she defines as an »exposure« to the other and as a sensitization to the present moment. The focus is on Cixous’s presentation of different modalities of being that are indissociable from the materiality of ‚écriture féminine‘. These range from the necessity for blindness in the act of writing and the discovery of imaginary worlds, to experiences of flight, sexual difference and modes of »de-selfing« in the process of writing. The transformative event-character of Cixous’s writing is foregrounded in her short story ‚Savoir‘, where the relationship between seeing and not-seeing, presence and absence, knowledge and desire is captured in the fleeting traces of the written word.

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