Feminism Essay by Helene Cixous "Sorties"

Feminism Essay by Helene Cixous “Sorties”

Feminist literary theory is a complex, dynamic area of study that draws from a wide range of critical theories, including psychoanalysis, Marxism, cultural materialism, anthropology, and structuralism. Although feminist literary theory is often described simply as the use of feminist principles and techniques to analyze the textual constructions of gendered meaning, feminists' definitions of gender and of feminism have undergone a number of significant alterations since the early 1970s.

“Feminism has developed… a political language about gender that refuses the fixed and transhistorical definitions of masculinity and femininity in the dominant culture”.

From looking at the quotation above it is evident that we can identify some of the issues that are of major concern. By adopting already existing feminist insights and applying them in new ways, literary theorists transform them, thus creating an increasingly diversified field of study. Despite this diversity, most feminist literary theorists share several assumptions. To begin with, they generally agree that hierarchically ordered male/female gender relations impact all aspects of human social existence.

Literary representations have concrete, material effects on people's lives, these non-symmetrical male-female binaries both illustrate and reinforce the oppression of real-life women. Like feminism, which critically analyses and attempts to transform contemporary social systems, feminist literary theory entails a twofold movement encompassing both the critique of already existing sociolinguistic structures and the invention of alternative models of reading and writing.

In its earliest phases, this double movement focused almost exclusively on female-gendered issues; however, the increased participation of feminists of colour, coupled with the rise in gender studies during the early 1980s, has expanded feminism's field of study considerably. From 1970 onwards progressed into second wave feminism which focused mainly on the equal rights of women and liberal feminism.

L’ecriture feminine otherwise known as “writing the body” is the practise that is related to French feminism. Its discussion is concerned with subjectivity, sexuality and language. Many of its arguments have been predisposed to deconstruction and Post-Freudian psychoanalysis and subsequent to this it points out that all methods of representation in language, and the issue of femininity exceeding or defying illustration under patriarchal systems. The power of patriarchy is always burdened upon women; as well as men, by the widespread symbolic systems. It is believed in this field of discourse that, because women are developed physically different to that of how men are shaped it shows in the way it has influenced our language.

Ecriture feminine believes that there should be a substitute form of language that expresses this difference effectively, as this would help both women and men. It has been noticed that it is the way in which the construction of language which manage the feminine which detrimentally places the feminine exactly where it cannot be spoken. It was important that in all form of literary studies we saw the shift into L’ecriture feminine from the bounds of authorship and canonisation and focused more on different forms of equal representation.

Hélène Cixous shows many issues of which she argues that within our language there is a patriarchal hierarchy that puts language categories of positive and negative binary terms such as Sun/Moon and Day/Night. These provisions always typically favour the masculine aspect;

‘And all these pairs of oppositions are couples…Is the fact that Logocentrism subjects thought-all concepts, codes and values – to a binary system, related to “the” couple, man/woman.’

Secondly Cixous argues for the issue of negative influence of descriptions such as passivity instead of positively stimulating action that gives the name for phallogocentrism. Cixous mentions in ...

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‘And all these pairs of oppositions are couples…Is the fact that Logocentrism subjects thought-all concepts, codes and values – to a binary system, related to “the” couple, man/woman.’

Secondly Cixous argues for the issue of negative influence of descriptions such as passivity instead of positively stimulating action that gives the name for phallogocentrism. Cixous mentions in her essay that whenever the ‘question of ontology’ is raised the element is always traced back to the father.

In the first section of her essay “Sorties”, Cixous interrogates the binary opposition of masculine/feminine that has been built into our language. According to Cixous ‘woman’ is placed on the inferior side of the binary and the organised discourse depends upon the ‘woman’s’ passivity. In order for ‘woman’ to be passive, the man needs to be regarded as active. Cixous illustrates her point in the beginning of her essay by asking an important question “Where is she?” this indicates the point of, where ‘woman’ are placed in the binary both for language and society. Cixous points out that each opposition has a hierarchical relationship, where the ‘feminine’ side is always seen as the negative and powerless. Toril Moi explains, in her book Sexual/Textual Politics, that there is a connection between Cixous and Jacques Derrida’s;

“For Cixous, who at this point is heavily indebted to Jacques Derrida’s work, Western philosophy and literary thought are and have always been caught up in this endless series of hierarchical oppositions that always, in the end come back to the fundamental ‘couple’ of male/female.”

Therefore the reason behind Cixous’ work is to eradicate this binary form and weaken the strength of linear patriarchal thought.

“[Helene Cixous’] entire theoretical project can in one sense be summed up as the effort to undue this logocentric ideology: to proclaim ‘woman’ as the source of life, power and energy to hail the advent of a new, feminine language that ceaselessly subverts these patriarchal binary schemes where logocentism colludes with phallocentrism in an effort to silence and suppress women”

In this segment of her essay, Cixous explains her analysis of sexual difference. She states;

“The political economy of the masculine and of the feminine is organised by different requirements and constraints, which, when socialized and metaphorised, produce signs, relationships of power, relationships of production and of reproduction, an entire immense system of cultural inscription readable as masculine and feminine”

It is evident from her work that her beliefs are contradictory. Although in the first part of her essay;

“she refuses to accept the binary opposition of femininity and masculinity, Cixous frequently insists upon her own distinction between masculine and feminine libidinal economy.”

At the same time she denounces any type of essentialism, claiming that the female body as a place of where women can claim back their sexuality. Cixous’ other argument in the main part of her essay is about the masculine future. Cixous believes that as people we all have the ability to be bisexual as we all have the same qualities and capacities and emotional, passive and active.

From looking at the way in which Cixous deals with important issues there are many problems with her method of criticism. Her emphasis upon the female body as a signifier is challenging because it necessarily attaches the sign ‘woman’ with biology and coupled with this Cixous also frequently refers to the ‘woman’ as being the physical expression of her own voice.

“This constant return to biblical myth and mythological imagery signals her investment in the world of myth: a world that, like the distant country of fairy tales is seen as pervasively meaningful, as closure and unity. The mythical or religious discourse presents a universe where all difference, struggle, and discord can in the end be satisfactorily be resolved.”

French philosopher Michele Le Doeuff considers the thoughts of feminists like Cixous and adds input on the debate on women and language. Le Doeuff explores the way in which our system of thinking ‘creates itself in what it represses’. Le Doeuff argues that;

“this other is demarcated ‘feminine’, a definition which philosophy recreates: ‘whether we like it or not, we are within philosophy, surrounded by masculine-feminine divisions that philosophy has helped to articulate and refine.”

Along with other French feminists such as Luce Irigaray, Cixous’ work draws on the writings of Jacques Lacan. The lacanian model comes out of the work of psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud and French structural linguist Ferdinand de Saussure. The importance of the collection of theorists is an interest in connecting language, psyche and sexuality. Cixous found Lacan’s writing to be both a ground for her analysis and a site for critique. Lacan’s theory develops the notion of the development of the male ego from Pre-Oedipal imaginary to symbolic, using the castration complex which is both a sexual and linguistic model. Cixous is optimistic towards the possibilities for the Pre-Oedipal phase and she suggests instead that the feminine is a way of disrupting the Law of the Father.

The Pre-Oedipal is a period before the creation of oppositional binaries. In this way, Cixous’ notion of feminine writing can be both feminine and non-essentialist. Irigaray again invokes Freud and Lacan to claim that female sexual pleasure is based in touch, not in sight. According to Freud, woman has ‘nothing to see’, no distinct nameable form to her genital configuration. According to Lacan as well as Freud, the first human experience of sexual/erotic pleasure comes from touch, from physical contact with the caregiver's body, which they presume to be a female body.

It is evident through close reference to the second section of her essay that her notion of bisexuality which bares relevance to Jacques Derrida as Lacan or Freud, is situated in poststructuralist concepts of employing the deconstruction of binaries with a feminist analyst of sexual difference. The underlying argument that is present throughout her essay argues that language that has been based on oppositions like male/female and presence/absence reproduces a patriarchal order which places the feminine as the subordinate to the masculine. As a reader Cixous is able to imagine herself “bisexually” and to identify with both the male and female characters. This is where she is associated with such concepts as phallogocentrism and logocentrism. Cixous asks women to think differently about their histories, not in the sense of origins but it terms of our language and in doing so theorises women’s writing in terms of the physical act of writing.

Luce Irigaray, like Cixous believes that a woman’s femininity is not amply placed with in the patriarchal symbolic and she argues that women should be a larger part of that symbolic structure. Irigaray is able to overcome this problem and does so using parody within her writings. We can see elements of such parody in her essay entitled, The Sex Which is Not One, an essay which challenges Freud’s psychoanalytic opinions that women bear no positive sex of their own because they are not men. For we can see how Irigaray tries to exploit this shell that holds women back from their own advantage;

“As for woman, she touches herself in and out of herself without any need for meditation, and before there is any way to distinguish activity from passivity.”

Although both Cixous and Irigaray both agree that women should be represented outside the symbolic structure, Luce Irigaray takes this idea further and argues that women should not accept this outside position either. Keith Green and Jill LeBihan explain Luce Irigaray’s thoughts in Critical Theory and Practice: A Coursebook;

“her strategy is to write the feminine into the masculine text by subverting traditional rhetorical strategies and putting a playful female body in the place of the serious male body.”

Although Cixous does want to see a progression away from the symbolical structural method that Lacan developed, it is still alienating the woman in an outside position. Julia Kristeva uses a more daring approach as she concurs with both Cixous and Irigaray, however she adopts both of these critics beliefs to language and includes the adopting of the ‘semiotic’. This within her own terms represents the feminine characteristic of language.

When looking closely at ‘Sorties’ by Cixous it can be depicted that her tool of critique it is noticed that the basis of her argument that women should no longer be placed outside the Symbolic structure is agreeable, her argument that women are always depicted as passive instead of active. It could be argued that there are many flaws in Cixous technique as she categorises the word ‘woman’ too much as one being and she does not recognise that there are also ‘women’. As women seem to relate more to one another in a, you/I debate based upon assumptions reinforced in patriarchy, relationships such as mother/daughter or student/teacher.

It can be argued that Cixous is marginalising women with different experiences, such as women of colour and there are problems with the female body being portrayed as the signifier as it attaches the sign ‘woman’ with biology. However, her approach is useful as a basis of feminism when coupled with other feminist methods such as Irigaray usage of the ‘semiotic’ to the idea of binary oppositions and portraying women as active beings.

Toril Moi claims that,

“fundamentally contradictory, Cixous’ theory of writing and femininity shifts back and forth from a Derridean emphasis on textuality s difference to a full blown account of writing as voice, presence, origin”.

Therefore, when looking at the text ‘Sorties’ it can finally be argued that Cixous does not actually tackle her problem of defining what feminism is, she does suggest some ideas that feminism is infinite in it’s ‘form’ and this can suggest that her earlier idea where there is a hierarchy in language that only represents males.