Cixous, Hélène - HéLèNe Cixous (Essay Date 1975)
HÉLÈNE CIXOUS (ESSAY DATE 1975)
SOURCE: Cixous, Hélène. “The Laugh of the Medusa,” translated by Keith and Paula Cohen. In New French Feminisms: An Anthology, edited by Elaine Marks and Isabelle de Courtivron, pp. 245-47. New York: Schocken Books, 1981.
In the following excerpt from “The Laugh of the Medusa,” originally published in 1975, Cixous calls for all women to write and claim language and literature in order to liberate themselves from male oppression.
I shall speak about women’s writing: about what it will do. Woman must write her self: must write about women and bring women to writing, from which they have been driven away as violently as from their bodies—for the same reasons, by the same law, with the same fatal goal. Woman must put herself into the text—as into the world and into history—by her own movement.
The future must no longer be determined by the...
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