Thinking the Unthinkable: Hélène Cixous and the feminine marginality

Document Type : Research Paper

Authors

1 PhD of philosophy, University of Camerino, Italy.

2 Associate Professor at Department of Philosophy, Imam Khomeini International University, Qazvin, İran

Abstract

< p >HélèneCixous, the renowned contemporary philosopher and feminist, provides such a heretic account of femininity which transcends the feminist social or political movements. She believes that “the female” can create a new identity for itself, when keeps its distance from the masculine symbolic order. Of course, this has nothing to do with the absence of women in the cultural realm, rather the problem is that if the female aspects of human being are not to be eliminated, a new ontology is required to sustain it in a pointlessness situation, so that it can always resist the conventional perceptual patterns. In other words, the female can only make its identity and the nature of rationality dynamic, when it injects the strangeness in the masculine order. This means keeping a position on the margins of history, while also infusing the feminine energies into the symbolic body. In this research, we try to show that for Cixous, emergence of the new is dependent both on some kind of feminine otherness and the marginality. This can be realized by various dismantling tools such as women’s writing and polyphonic identities. Finally we make it clear that through the female otherness or being on the margins, the feminine can provide a way of thinking about those realities which have not been thought up so far in the symbolic rationality, or have always been rejected as the unthinkable.

Keywords

References

 
-       Cixous, Helene (1993) Three Steps in the Ladder of Writing. Columbia University Press.
-       Cixous, Helene. (2008) White Ink; interviews. Eds by Susan Sellers.  Acumen.
-       Cixous, Helene. (1981) The Laugh of the Medusa, in Isabelle de Courtivon and Elaine Marks (eds), New French Feminism, Minneapolis: University of Massachusetts Press.
-       Cixous, Helene. (1997) Rootprints: Memory and Life Writing. Routledge.
-       Cixous, Helene, (1986) the Newly Born Woman. Minnesota. University of Minnesota Press.
-       Cixous, Helene, (1976) the Laugh of the Medusa, Trans by Keith Cohen, Paula Cohen, in Signs, Vol 1. No 4. (Summer 1976). 880.
-       Lee, Jacobus, A. Barreca. Regina (eds). (1999) Helene Cixous: Critical Impressions. Gordon and Breach Publishers.
-       Dobson, Julia. (2001) Helene Cixous and the Theater: the Scene of Writing. Peter Lang Publication.
-       Woodward, Michel (2002) in Identity and Difference. Eds by, Kathryn Woodward. Open University.
-       Sellers, Susan; Blyth, Ian. (2004) Helene Cixous: Live theory. New York London: Continuum.
-       Sellers, Susan, (eds). (1994) The Helene Cixous Reader, London and New York, Routledge.
Send comment about this article
CAPTCHA Image
Journal of Philosophical Investigations
Volume 14, Issue 32 - Serial Number 32
Articles
2020
Pages 181-195

Files

Share

How to cite

Statistics