Hélène Cixous is a foundational figure in poststructuralist feminist theory, with her writings exploring themes of feminism, the human body, history, death, and theatre. Her work is characterized by a profound engagement with subjectivity and the feminine experience. Cixous is renowned for her distinctive literary style, which often weaves together philosophy, poetry, and autobiography. Her influence extends across numerous fields of the humanities, continuing to inspire new generations of scholars and writers.
Helene Cixous, a prominent French feminist theorist and playwright, showcases her influential ideas in "Stigmata," a collection of her latest essays. This compilation highlights her significant contributions to twentieth-century literary theory, offering insights into her unique perspectives on gender, identity, and literature.
An exploration into the strange science of writing, in which the author reflects on the writing process and explores three distinct areas essential for great writing: the crucial role dreams play in literary inspiration; the importance of depth; and the notion of death.
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?".
Stigmata collects some of Helene Cixous' most intriguing meditations. A unique book, it is a testimony to an extraordinary writer.
The first translation into English of Mother Homer is Dead, written in the immediate aftermath of the death of the Cixous's mother in the 103rd year of her life.
"In 1968-69 I wanted to die, that is to say, stop living, being killed, but it was blocked on all sides," wrote Hélène Cixous, esteemed French feminist, playwright, philosopher, literary critic, and novelist. Instead of suicide, she began to dream of writing a tomb for herself. This tomb became a work that is a testament to Cixous's life and spirit and a secret book, the first book she ever authored. Originally written in 1970, Tombe is a Homerian recasting of Shakespeare's Venus and Adonis in the thickets of Central Park, a book Cixous provocatively calls the "all-powerful-other of all my books, it sparks them off, makes them run, it is their Messiah." Masterfully translated by Laurent Milesi, Tombe preserves the sonic complexities and intricate wordplay at the core of Cixous's writing, and reveals the struggles, ideas, and intents at the center of her work. With a new prologue by the author, this is a necessary document in the development of Cixous's aesthetic as a writer and theorist, and will be eagerly welcomed by readers as a crucial building block in the foundation of her later work.
The luminous tale of a young French scholar who travels to the United States to consult the manuscripts of beloved authors
Describes a love between two women in its totality, experienced as both a physical presence and a sense of infinity. This book also notes the contemporary emphasis on 'fictions of presence'.
We defy augury. There's a special providence in the fall of a sparrow. If it be now, 'tis not to come ... the readiness is all. Under the sign of Hamlet's last act, Hélène Cixous, in her eightieth year, launched her new book--and the latest chapter in her Human Comedy, her Search for Lost Time. Surely one of the most delightful, in its exposure of the seams of her extraordinary craft, We Defy Augury finds the reader among familiar faces. In these pages we encounter Eve, the indomitable mother; Jacques Derrida, the faithful friend; children, neighbors; and always the literary forebears: Montaigne, Diderot, Proust, and, in one moving passage, Erich Maria Remarque. We Defy Augury moves easily from Cixous's Algerian childhood, to Bacharach in the Rhineland, to, eerily, the Windows on the World restaurant atop the World Trade Center, in the year 2000. In one of the most astonishing passages in this tour-de-force performance of the art of digression, Cixous proclaims: "My books are free in their movements and in their choice of routes [...] They are the product of many makers, dreamed, dictated, cobbled together." This unique experience, which could only have come from the pen of Cixous, is now available in English, and readers are sure to delight in this latest work by one of France's most celebrated writer-philosophers.
An inventive literary account of Cixous's remarkable journey to her mother's birthplace and of the Jewish community of a German town that was wiped out in the Holocaust.