Hélène Cixous, (born June 5, 1937), is a French feminist writer, poet, playwright, philosopher and literary critic. She was born, and grew up, in Algeria, in a German Jewish family. She is a professor of English literature at the University of Paris-VIII, which she helped to found, and whose center for women's studies, the first in Europe, she founded. She has published widely, including twenty-three volumes of poems, six books of essays, five plays, and numerous influential articles. Along with Julia Kristeva, Cixous is one of the best-known of the late-20th-century "French feminists". She has also published with Jacques Derrida and her work is often considered part of deconstruction. June 5 is the 156th day of the year in the Gregorian calendar (157th in leap years), with 209 days remaining. ... 1937 was a common year starting on Friday (link will take you to calendar). ... Feminism is a body of social theory and a political movement primarily based on, and motivated by, the experiences of women. ... The term writer can apply to anyone who creates a written work, but the word more usually designates those who write creatively or professionally, or those who have written in many different forms. ... Poets are authors of poems, or of other forms of poetry such as dramatic verse. ... A playwright is an author of plays for performance in the theater. ... A philosopher is a person devoted to studying and producing results in philosophy. ... Wikisource Every Author - Online books and writers forums A Bibliography of Literary Theory, Criticism, and Philology (José Ángel García Landa, University of Zaragoza, Spain) Open Directory Project: Literature World Literature Electronic Text Archives Magazines and E-zines Online Writing Writers Resources Libraries, Digital Cataloguing, Metadata Distance Learning T... The word Jew (Hebrew: יהודי) is used in a wide number of ways, but generally refers to a follower of the Jewish faith, a child of a Jewish mother, or someone of Jewish descent with a connection to Jewish culture or ethnicity and often a combination of these attributes. ... The term English literature refers to literature written in the English language, or literature composed in English by writers who are not necessarily from England. ... The Sorbonne, Paris, in a 17th century engraving The historic University of Paris (French: Université de Paris) first appeared in the second half of the 12th century, but was in 1970 reorganized as 13 autonomous universities (University of Paris I–XIII). ... With stylus and tablet, an upper-class Pompeiian demonstrates her privilege: literacy Womens studies is an interdisciplinary academic field devoted to topics concerning women, feminism, gender, and politics. ... World map showing location of Europe A satellite composite image of Europe Europe is geologically and geographically a peninsula, forming the westernmost part of Eurasia. ... Julia Kristeva is a famous contemporary Bulgarian philosopher who lives and works in France. ... French feminism (which is a phrase mostly used in English-speaking countries) refers to the work of a group of feminists in France from the 1970s to the early 1990s. ... Jacques Derrida Jacques Derrida (July 15, 1930 – October 8, 2004) was an Algerian-born French literary critic and philosopher of Jewish descent, considered the first to develop deconstruction after it emerged in the work of Martin Heidegger. ... In critical theory and postmodernism, deconstruction is a textual occurrence which exists within Western systems of language and philosophy. ...

Cixous is best known to English readers for her 1975 essay "The Laugh of the Medusa" and her later book The Newly Born Woman. Her fiction, dramatic writing, and poetry are not often read in English, and much of this work has not been translated from the original French. The English language is a West Germanic language that originates in England. ... 1975 was a common year starting on Wednesday (the link is to a full 1975 calendar). ...

"The Laugh of the Medusa," an extremely literary essay, is well-known as an exhortation to a feminine mode of writing (the phrases "white ink" and "écriture féminine" are often cited, referring to this desired new way of writing). It is a strident critique of "logocentrism" and "phallogocentrism," having much in common with Jacques Derrida's slightly earlier thought. The essay also calls for an acknowledgement of universal bisexuality, or polymorphous perversity, which is clearly a precursor of queer theory's later emphases; and it swiftly rejects many kinds of essentialism which were still common in Anglo-American feminism at the time. Écriture féminine, literally womens writing, is a philosophy that promotes womens experiences and feelings to the point that it strengthens the work. ... Logocentrism, also called phallogocentrism, is a neologism coined by Jacques Derrida, used in Deconstruction (a postmodern form of philosophical criticism and literary criticism) to refer to the perceived tendency of Western thought to locate the center of any discourse within the logos (speech and words) and the phallus (embodiments representing... This article needs to be cleaned up to conform to a higher standard of article quality. ... Jacques Derrida Jacques Derrida (July 15, 1930 – October 8, 2004) was an Algerian-born French literary critic and philosopher of Jewish descent, considered the first to develop deconstruction after it emerged in the work of Martin Heidegger. ... Bisexuality is a sexual orientation characterized by esthetic attraction, romantic love and sexual desire for both males and females. ... Queer theory is a theory about sex and gender within the larger field of Queer studies. ... This is a disambiguation page — a navigational aid which lists other pages that might otherwise share the same title. ...

References

• "The Laugh of the Medusa". Orig. English pub. Signs, Summer 1976. Anthologized in:
  • New French Feminisms, ed. Elaine Marks and Isabelle de Courtivron. ISBN 0-87023-280-0.
  • The "Signs" Reader: Women, Gender, and Scholarship, ed. Abel and Abel. ISBN 0226000753.
• The Hélène Cixous Reader. ISBN 041504930X.

External links

• Cixous page from the Johns Hopkins Guide to Literary Theory (http://www.press.jhu.edu/books/hopkins_guide_to_literary_theory/helene_cixous.html)
• An introduction to Cixous by Julie Jaskin (http://www.engl.niu.edu/wac/cixous_intro.html)
• Stanford Presidential Lectures' Cixous page (http://prelectur.stanford.edu/lecturers/cixous/)
• A lecture on Cixous by Mary Klages (http://www.colorado.edu/English/engl2010mk/cixous.lec.html)
• Links on the "French Feminists" (http://bailiwick.lib.uiowa.edu/wstudies/frenchfem.html)
• "The Laugh of the Medusa" Resource Page (http://www.vanderbilt.edu/AnS/english/English295/albright/main1.htm)