Hélène Cixous

The Laugh of the Medusa

Phyllis Alesia Perry

A 'wilful extremist' according to the London Times, Helene Cixous is hailed as one of the most formidable writers and thinkers of our time. From collaborating with the acclaimed performance company Theatre du Soleil, to producing a weighty body of both fiction and non-fiction, Cixous is celebrated for her brilliant contributions to contemporary culture. Acclaimed by luminaries such as Jacques Derrida, her writing has nonetheless been misunderstood and misread to a surprising extent. With the inclusion of Stigmata, one of her greatest works, in the Routledge Classics series, this is about to change. Questions that have long concerned her - the self and the other, autobiographies of writing, sexual difference, literary theory, post-colonial theory, death and life - are explored here and woven into a narrative.

Escaping Texts

Stigmata

In writing Le Livre de Promethea Häl_ne Cixous set for herself the task of bridging the immeasurable distance between love and language. She describes a love between twoøwomen in its totality, experienced as both a physical presence and a sense of infinity. The result is a stunning example of Pecriture feminine that won kudos when published in France in 1983. Its translation into English by Betsy Wing will extend the influence of a writer already famous for her novels and contributions to feminist theory. In her introduction Betsy Wing notes the contemporary emphasis on "fictions of presence." Cixous, in The Book of Promethea, works to "repair the separation between fiction and presence, trying to chronicle a very-present love without destroying it in the writing."

The Book of Promethea

Published in France as La jeune nee in 1975, and now translated for the first time into English, The Newly Born Woman seeks to uncover the veiled structures of language and society that have situated women in the position called 'woman's place.'

The Newly Born Woman

Susan Rubin Suleiman

This collection presents six essays by one of France's most remarkable contemporary authors. A notoriously playful stylist, here Hélène Cixous explores how the problematics of the sexes--viewed as a paradigm for all difference, which is the organizing principle behind identity and meaning--manifest themselves, write themselves, in texts. These superb translations do full justice to Cixous's prose, to its songlike flow and allusive brilliance.

"Coming to Writing" and Other Essays

Three Steps on the Ladder of Writing is a poetic, insightful, and ultimately moving exploration of 'the strange science of writing.' In a magnetic, irresistible narrative, Cixous reflects on the writing process and explores three distinct areas essential for 'great' writing: The School of the Dead -- the notion that something or someone must die in order for good writing to be born; The School of Dreams -- the crucial role dreams play in literary inspiration and output; and The School of Roots -- the importance of depth in the 'nether realms' in all aspects of writing. Cixous's love of language and passion for the written word is evident on every page. Her emotive style draws heavily on the writers she most admires: the Brazilian novelist Clarice Lispector, the Russian poet Marina Tsvetaeva, the Austrian novelists Ingeborg Bachmann and Thomas Bernhard, Dostoyevsky and, most of all, Kafka.

Three Steps on the Ladder of Writing

Geoffrey Bennington

Jaques Derrida

This book combines loosely "autobiographical" texts by two of the most influential French intellectuals of our time. "Savoir," by Hélène Cixous is an account of her experience of recovered sight after a lifetime of severe myopia; Jacques Derrida's "A Silkworm of One's Own" muses on a host of motifs, including his varied responses to "Savoir."

Veils

Clarice Lispector

The texts that comprise this volume were selected from Helene Cixous's seminars on the work of Clarice Lispector. They reflect Cixous's own meditations on problems of reading and writing, and on related themes such as exchange and the gift, love and passion, as well as trace the influence of Lispector's work on her own development. Reading the Brazilian writer from the vantage point of modern theory, Cixous aims to draw her into the mainstream of current debates which question the concept of the so-called rational "Cartesian" individual and which note the increasing power of the social and applied sciences that seek to establish control over the individual. The book includes extracts of Clarice Lispector's prose writing, such as "The Apple in the Dark - The Temptations of Understanding" and "The Hour of the Star:How Does One Desire Wealth or Poverty?".

Reading with Clarice Lispector

Hyperdream

A 'wilful extremist' according to the London Times, Hélène Cixous is hailed as one of the most formidable writers and thinkers of our time. Acclaimed by luminaries such as Jacques Derrida, her writing has nonetheless been misunderstood and misread, to a surprising extent. With the inclusion of Stigmata, one of her greatest works into the Routledge Classics series, this is about to change. Questions that have long concerned her – the self and the other, autobiographies of writing, sexual difference, literary theory, post-colonial theory, death and life – are explored here, woven into a stunning narrative. Displaying a remarkable virtuosity, the work of Cixous is heady stuff indeed: exciting, powerful, moving, and dangerous.

Mireille Calle-Gruber

Hľn̈e Cixous

This first English translation of Cixous' book, Photos de Racine , explores Cixous' development as a writer and intellectual. A must for students and scholars of French feminist theory, gender studies and literary theory.

Memory and Life Writing

Hélène Cixous, Rootprints

This work of fiction by leading contemporary French author Hélène Cixous is about the most implacable of human certainties - death. But what if death did not inevitably spell the end of life? Hyperdream invests this fragile, tentative suspension of disbelief with the sheer force of its poetic audacity, inventing a sort of magic telephone: a wireless lifeline against all the odds to the dearly departed. Cixous is widely read among general readers and students of feminism and literature.

The first book by Hélène Cixous on painting and the contemporary arts. This collection gathers most of Hélène Cixous' texts devoted to contemporary artists, such as the painter Nancy Spero, the photographer Andres Serrano, the visual artist Roni Horn, the fashion designer Sonia Rykiel and the choreographer Karine Saporta, among others. The artworks belong to different genres and media - photography, painting, installations, film, choreography and fashion design - while the commentaries all deal with some of Hélène Cixous' privileged themes: exile, war, violence (against women) and exclusion, as well as love, memory, beauty and tenderness.Neither art criticism nor a collection of critical essays, Hélène Cixous responds to these artworks as a poet, reading them as if they were poems. Written between 1985 and 2010, most of these essays are unpublished in English, or published only in rare catalogues or art books.

Writings on Contemporary Arts and Aesthetics

Poetry in Painting

An inner journey across space and time linking the "author" to other poets, this lyrical essay-poem continues Helene Cixous's rewriting of notions of boundary, self, other, and author. Cixous here interrogates the status of the author, connecting distant instances of herself with other writers who traverse genders, generations, and national boundaries. First Days of the Year is a celebration of beginnings and future possibilities, based on necessity and hope, constantly mediating writing and living, life and death. Like all of Cixous's profoundly original works, it seductively leads the reader into a new way of thinking by disrupting fixed ideas of psychic identity, subjectivity, and language.

First Days of the Year

HeÌ leÌ€ne Cixous

SELLERS

This key collection of feminist writing includes essays, works of fiction, lectures and drama, all arranged chronologically. Spanning twenty years, it demonstrates the development of one of the great creative minds of the 20ieth century.This is the first truly representative collection of texts by Helene Cixous. The substantial pieces range broadly across her entire oeuvre, and include essays, works of fiction, lectures and drama. Arranged helpfully in chronological order, the extracts span twenty years of intellectual thought and demonstrate clearly the development of one of the most creative and brilliant minds of the twentieth century.With a foreword by Jacques Derrida, a preface by Cixous herself, and first-class editorial material by Susan Sellers, The Helene Cixous Reader is destined to become a key text of feminist writing.

The Hélène Cixous Reader

This book is an account of, and commentary on, a collection of dreams by the novelist, playwright and theorist Hélène Cixous.

Dream I Tell You

“Deberíamos escribir como soñamos”, dijo alguna vez Hélène Cixous. Entre el sueño y la pesadilla, Tumba explora los misterios del amor, la pérdida y la resurrección. 

Vida y muerte. Desde la onírica Peruvia –mítica reinvención de Estados Unidos–, en donde los muertos regresan y las palabras brotan como cuerpos, la autora teje una elegía viviente que subvierte los límites de la narración lineal. A través de una escritura que palpita, que respira, que sangra –una escritura con el cuerpo–, Cixous invoca a Dioniso y a Osiris, a Derrida y a su padre, en una batalla de sombras y memorias.

Obra de duelo y deseo, Tumba es también un artefacto filosófico y teatral, una novela-laberinto que obliga a mirar más allá del velo de lo visible. A escuchar lo que se calla. A leer no con los ojos, sino con la piel.

Dispuesta a la interrogación permanente y a la mirada inquisitiva que quiere narrarlo todo, Hélène Cixous ha escrito a través de la filosofía, el psicoanálisis, la lingüística, la historia, la memoria íntima y la ensoñación onírica una de las obras literarias más singulares de nuestro tiempo.

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Tumba

« Le soleil se couchait à notre commencement et se lève à notre fin. Je suis née en Orient je suis morte à l'Occident. Le monde est petit et le temps est court. Je suis dedans. On dit que l'amour est aussi fort que la mort. Mais la mort est aussi forte que l'amour et je suis dedans. Et la vie est plus forte que la mort, et je suis dedans. Mais Dieu est plus fort que la vie et la mort. On dit que la vie et la mort sont au pouvoir de la langue. Dans mon jardin d'enfer les mots sont mes fous. Je suis assise sur un trône de feu et j'écoute ma langue. » H.C.

Hélène Cixous

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