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sarahcollins's picture

Cixous's vision for feminism

My response also is pretty long, so here's the short version, and I elaborated a little more in my blog, because there's probably some gaping holes in what's here:  

Cixous’s essay was the most intriguing for me because it framed the question of whether there is such thing as a definite feminine style of writing in terms of what the world would be like if woman’s way of thinking were just as deeply rooted and institutionalized as men’s, if woman’s half of the world were painted, in her words.

Cixous also basically redefined what “personal” means, at least in comparison to Kauffman’s definition, because she sees writing as a woman (“I-Woman, escapee” (888)) unrelated to the personal.

I don’t necessarily agree with her definition of feminine writing (achronological, multifaceted, both the author’s self and Other, emotional, embracing rather than hating, and most interestingly (at least to me) anonymous (888), or even whether there is such a thing, but it does raise some questions fundamental to feminist studies – is there an inherent difference between how “men” and “women” (if those catagories exist) think and write? Is it biological, evolutionary, cultural, or even existent? Is it even limited to women? because Allen’s essay I thought asserted otherwise, that the Keres people think in a “feminine” way, that is non-hierarchically and matriarchically. 

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