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Hélène Cixous

Hélène Cixous is a renowned French philosopher and writer known for pioneering écriture feminine, a form of feminist writing. She grew up in Algeria to a German mother and French Algerian father, which influenced her thinking around issues of identity. Cixous has published over 70 works exploring relationships between language, psychoanalysis, subjectivity, and politics. She helped found experimental universities in Paris and established one of the first research centers for feminist studies in Europe. Cixous continues writing boundary-pushing works that combine criticism, memoir, and history.

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306 views3 pages

Hélène Cixous

Hélène Cixous is a renowned French philosopher and writer known for pioneering écriture feminine, a form of feminist writing. She grew up in Algeria to a German mother and French Algerian father, which influenced her thinking around issues of identity. Cixous has published over 70 works exploring relationships between language, psychoanalysis, subjectivity, and politics. She helped found experimental universities in Paris and established one of the first research centers for feminist studies in Europe. Cixous continues writing boundary-pushing works that combine criticism, memoir, and history.

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Hlne Cixous

b. 1937

Philosopher and writer Hlne Cixous is widely considered one of


the preeminent French intellectuals writing under the sign of
deconstruction. A close friend of Jacques Derrida, Cixous
pioneered criture feminine, a form of writing distinct from
patriarchal models of communication premised on exclusion and
expropriation. For Cixous, language is the site of struggles over
sexuality, identity, and difference; to alter language is to effect
social change.

In her many works of philosophy and critical theory, Cixous


explores relationships among language, psychoanalysis,
subjectivity, and politics. They include The Exile of James Joyce, or
the Art of Displacement (1969, translation 1972), which was her
doctoral thesis; The Laugh of the Medusa (1975), in which she lays
out the basic tenets of criture feminine; and Angst (1977), which
marked the beginning of her association with the feminist publishing
house Des Femmes. Cixouss first work of fiction, Dedans (1969),
won a prestigious Prix Mdicis. Cixous has published more than 70
collections of philosophy, theory, poetry, plays, novels, and hybrid
works that explore history, autobiography, and identity. Since the
1990s, she has been closely associated with the avant-garde theater
group Theater du Soleil and its director, Ariane Mnouchkine.

Cixouss early life was formative in the development of her thinking


about power, nationality, and identity. She was born in Oran,
Algeria, to an Austro-German mother and French Algerian father;
he died of tuberculosis when she was young. German was Cixouss
first language, and she has written about the diasporic conditions of
her early life: My own writing was born in Algeria out of a lost
country of the dead father and the foreign mother. Cixous studied
English and German literature in France and earned
heragrgation (teachers exam) in English in 1959; in 1962, she
became assistanteat the University of Bordeaux. After moving to
Paris, she was appointedmatre assistante at the Sorbonne
and matre de confrences at Nanterre. Cixous was deeply involved
in the Paris student riots of 1968 and helped found the experimental
Universit de Paris VIII. In 1974, she founded the Centre de
Recherches en Etudes Fminines, the first such center in Europe.

Cixous continues to write and publish works that negotiate and


transgress boundaries between criticism, memoir, and history.
Essays from the 1990s were collected in Stigmata: Escaping
Texts (2002). She also continues to write plays, many of which were
collected in English translation in The Selected Plays of Hlne
Cixous (2003). Her 1970 classic Le Troisime Corps was recently
published in English as The Third Body (2009).

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