Écriture féminine

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Écriture féminine (also called female writing in German ) is a current of feminist philosophy and a concept from literary theory . The ideas that are summarized under écriture féminine are close to post-structuralism and French deconstructivist feminism and contain elements of psychoanalysis . The French writer and theorist Hélène Cixous is most strongly identified with the écriture féminine , but Luce Irigaray and Julia Kristeva are also regularly named as well-known representatives of female writing. The most important works on écriture féminine are two essays by Hélène Cixous, published in 1975: Le rire de la meduse (in German The Laughter of Medusa ) and Sorties (with Catherine Clément as co-author).

term

The French word écriture means "writing", "spelling" or "writing". In this context, the addition féminine is not translated as “feminine”, but as “feminine”, although “feminine” is not necessarily understood to be a physiological circumstance. Various and sometimes contradicting ideas from the Francophone philosophy of the 1970s are bundled under the term . The great commonality of the variations of the concept lies in the criticism of those who exclude, "( phallo -) logocentric ", that is, male-reason- oriented ways of thinking and speaking, which are rejected as an elitist discourse. The écriture féminine suggests alternative writing practices that turn away from the male literary canon .

One difficulty in the definition of the term arises from the fact that écriture féminine describes lines of thought of feminist philosophy in the descriptive sense and suggests concrete writing acts as a subversion of patriarchal orders in the prescriptive sense . The écriture féminine can thus be understood both as an analysis and as a program or as both theory and practice. Another difficulty in definition is the notorious refusal of Cixous (and others who are part of the current) to define “female writing”. According to Cixous, "it is impossible to define a feminine way of writing , that is an impossibility that will continue to exist, because this way of writing will never be theorized , circumscribed, and coded, which does not mean that it does not exist." Many texts of the écriture féminine - including The Laughter of Medusa - do not contain any concrete definitions of the concept, but are rather to be understood as pre-excercises of it, i.e. as examples of what female writing could mean and what it could look like. Nowadays, the écriture féminine is interpreted as a "search movement" that wants to develop writing beyond male rule structures. The écriture féminine is political, transgressive and cross-gender in its self-image.

Theoretical background

The écriture féminine is influenced by structuralist linguistics and is based on Jacques Derrida's deconstruction , Sigmund Freud's psychoanalysis and Jacques Lacan's reflections on the symbolic . According to Ferdinand de Saussure , linguistic signs consist of arbitrarily linked contents ( signifieds ) and expressions ( signifiers ). Derrida then formulated the term différance (a play on words from the French differer, "distinguish" or difference, "difference" or "difference"). The différance describes the general ambiguity of the linguistic sign, the distance between the linguistic sign and its content and the simultaneous presence and absence of meaning. Derrida'sche différance is also a key term for the écriture féminine , as the latter explores shifts in meaning in and through the gender matrix.

According to Derrida, the logocentric system of so-called occidental thought constructs meaning by setting up binary , hierarchically ordered oppositions (man / woman, good / bad, light / dark). The écriture féminine tries to uncover and break up these pairs of meanings. According to Lacan, the symbolic is the order of language and power as well as the “law of the father” ( name of the father ). The écriture féminine examines the (linguistic) options for action of the subjects ruled by this order, especially women. Since, according to Lacan, the unconscious is also structured like a language and thus “symbolically reshaped”, the écriture féminine asks itself to what extent and with what means an outbreak or a subversion is possible at all. Furthermore, the female desire suppressed according to Freud should be able to be released in “female writing”.

Basics according to Cixous

Features of the écriture féminine

According to Cixous, “female” texts tend to dissolve syntax and grammar. Furthermore, they are marked by movement, debauchery and excess. They are limitless or incomplete and contain symbols and the archaic . The écriture féminine allows breaks, jumps, associations and cross-connections. Female writing should discover the unconscious, come from the fringes of society and culture, express the "other" and excluded, work beyond all authorities and be a poetry of the body. Female writing cannot be separated from speaking and has a performance character; the dichotomy between body and mind turns out to be untenable in the écriture féminine . Gertrude Postl, Professor of Philosophy and Gender Studies , sums up the aesthetics of écriture féminine as follows : “This writing is associative , erratic, not systematic, it tries to grasp emotional and body-related shades, it is at the same time autobiography , commentary, feminist manifesto , political treatise , philosophical discourse , narration , poetry and song - an almost impenetrable fabric of genres and styles . ” Cixous especially names the texts of the Brazilian author Clarice Lispector as particularly suitable illustrations of her theory, but Ingeborg Bachmann , Marguerite Duras and Colette are also mentioned by Cixous as an example.

Male and female economics

Since, according to Cixous, men are shaped by Freud's fear of castration , their writing is marked by an attempt to preserve, contain and contain. Cixous summarizes this under the heading “male economy”. A “female economy”, on the other hand, is one of wasteful gifts and expenditures, of abundance and excess. According to Freud, Cixous derives these characteristics from the different libido of men and women. Similar to Cixous, Kristeva also pleads in Revolution of Poetic Language for writing that undermines the symbolic order (or the law of the father ) and sweeps out repressed (feminine) instincts . With both Cixous and Kristeva, the breakout from the all-encompassing “male economy” in history and language works through a return to the pre-linguistic and pre-symbolic phase.

Authorship and "white ink"

Cixous and Irigaray combine authorship with motherhood in order to undermine the common equation of masculinity and spiritual position. According to Cixous, women wrote with the “white ink” resembling breast milk, which is to be seen as an attempt to enhance female aesthetic practice. Male authorship serves the self-assurance as an autonomous subject and goes with a denial and repression of the origin of one's own existence, which is why female writing as an alternative to this should be a kind of “self-birth” through a text. "Write! Writing is for you, you are for yourself, your body is yours, take it, ”says Cixous in The Laughter of Medusa.

The body and the writing

The body generally plays a special role in Cixous' approaches to écriture féminine . The body and especially the voice as an instrument without semantic limitation enables the non-symbolic and pre-symbolic, i.e. everything that evades the patriarchal order, to enter literature. These ideas can already be found with Michel Serres as “meat” and with Roland Barthes as “grain” (roughness) of the voice. Andrea Rinnert sums up Cixous' approach as follows: "The activity of writing is conceived here as an unavoidable body function and as an indispensable possibility to feel one's own vitality instead of a path to a textual end product." For Cixous, writing is literally an embodiment: The Woman “doesn't 'speak', she throws her trembling body in the air, she lets herself go , she flies, she goes completely into her voice, with her body she underlines the 'logic' of her speech; their flesh tells the truth. [...] In fact, she fleshly materializes what she thinks, she means it with her body. In certain whites , she writes down what she says because she does not deny the drive its undisciplinary and passionate participation in the word. ”The female author does not just write about something, but tries to overcome her own identity and to give it to the other person. to give the subject of literature an existence by writing, to let it write itself.

Men and the écriture féminine

According to Cixous, men can in principle also produce "feminine writing", that is, they can produce writing that subverts phallocentric orders. The practice of écriture féminine is therefore not tied to a gender or determined by gender or physiognomy. Rather, Cixous and Irigaray work with the terms “female” and “male” as well as “femininity” and “masculinity” as historical-cultural categories. In Das Lachen der Medusa , Cixous mentions specific examples of male authors or texts by male authors who, in their opinion, can also be assigned to the écriture féminine , such as James Joyce's Ulysses and Jean Genet's Pompes funébres (in German Das Totenfest ). Conversely, not every letter written by women would automatically be an écriture féminine . According to Cixous, women can themselves be part of the patriarchal order , since they are made into their "own enemies" and "servants of (the) male dirty work". In fact, Cixous criticized many women authors for their “phallic” writing, especially women from the 19th century, including Virginia Woolf .

criticism

In particular, the literary theoretical and writing didactic considerations of the écriture féminine were criticized for their contradicting statements on the “masculine” and “feminine” within the feminist movement and philosophy. Cixous always explicitly distances herself from rigid gender concepts and role models , but implicitly invokes them again, for example in her remarks on the maternal aspect of authorship. Because Cixous' argument ultimately remains ambiguous or contradicting the relationship between “female economy” and real women, she was accused of essentialism , contrary to her stated intention . The concept of the female libido, which was developed as a contrast to Freud's male libido, remains unclear despite its central role within the écriture féminine . Cixous' focus on the body was also interpreted as biologism and as an idealization and romanticization of the female body. The écriture féminine also criticized the concentration on the literary and linguistic sphere, “playing with words” and the lack of specific political calls for action to improve the situation of women in society . In addition, the écriture féminine poses an impossible task for women who claim to be able to produce texts far removed from the established order, which carries the risk of being branded as “phallic” authors despite everything.

Influence of the écriture féminine

Sigrid Nieberle notes the écriture féminine achievements in literary studies that have been pushed into the background in favor of other theories in the context of the third wave of feminism or have been replaced by other concepts of gender studies . According to Nieberle, the écriture féminine provided an instrument for the analysis of postmodern literature with regard to its polyphony, polyperspectivity , inter- and meta-textuality , self-referentiality and the critical and creative handling of traditional genres and the dissolution of their schemes. Lena Lindhoff underlines the efforts of the écriture féminine for “another writing” and “an economy of recognition and exchange” instead of the violent becoming subject through the suppression of the “other”, but concludes that ultimately more questions would be raised than answers can be given becomes. Herta Nagl-Docekal mentions the role of écriture féminine in exploring the relationship between artistic creation and femininity. She sees this project of French feminism on the one hand as strategically important for the historical development of the feminist art movement and on the other hand as an important step on the way to a feminist aesthetic. Jutta Osinski writes about Cixous: "You have to perceive the texts as a mixture of theories and beautiful literature, because otherwise they are hardly legible". Contemporary feminist theory shares this perception and locates the écriture féminine somewhere between literary theory, writing didactics and philosophy or everywhere at the same time. This vagueness, which was in part originally intended, is in keeping with the subversive and border-crossing character of écriture féminine .

See also

literature

  • Hélène Cixous [author], Esther Hutfless u. A. [Ed.]: Hélène Cixous. The Laughter of Medusa along with current posts. Vienna: Passagen Verlag, 2013.
  • Sigrid Nieberle: Gender Studies And Literature: An Introduction. Introductions to German studies. Darmstadt: WBG (Wiss. Buchges.), 2013, pp. 50–54.
  • Lena Lindhoff: Introduction to feminist literary theory . 2., revised. Aufl. Ed. Metzler Collection 285: Introductions, Methodology. Stuttgart [u. a.]: Metzler, 2003, pp. 113-119.
  • Jutta Osinski: Introduction to Feminist Literary Studies. Berlin: Erich Schmidt Verlag, 1998, pp. 58-60.
  • Andrea Rinnert: body, femininity, authorship. An inspection of feminist literary theories. Ulrike Helmer Verlag, Königstein / Taunus 2001, pp. 73–80.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Hélène Cixous: The Laughter of Medusa . In: Esther Hutfless et al. (Ed.): Hélène Cixous. The laugh of Medusa along with current articles . Passagen Verlag, Vienna 2013, ISBN 978-3-7092-0049-0 , pp. 47 .
  2. ^ Gertrude Postl: A Politics of Writing and Laughing: Attempt to contextualize Hélène Cixous' Medusa text . In: Esther Hutfless et al. (Ed.): Hélène Cixous. The laugh of Medusa along with current articles . Passagen Verlag, Vienna 2013, ISBN 978-3-7092-0049-0 , pp. 24 .
  3. ^ Sigrid Nieberle: Gender Studies and Literature. An introduction . WBG Scientific Book Society, Darmstadt 2013, ISBN 978-3-534-22715-0 , p. 52 .
  4. ↑ Lena Lindhoff: Introduction to feminist literary theory . 2nd Edition. JB Metzler, Stuttgart / Weimar 2003, ISBN 3-476-12285-9 , pp. 116 .
  5. ↑ Ursula I. Meyer: Cixous, Hélène. French philosopher and literary scholar. In: Ursula I. Meyer and others (Ed.): Philosophinnen-Lexikon . tape 2 . ein-FACH-verlag, Aachen 1994, ISBN 3-928089-05-6 , p. 96 .
  6. ↑ a b Gertrude Postl: A Politics of Writing and Laughing: Attempting a historical contextualization of Hélène Cixous' Medusa text . In: Esther Hutfless et al. (Ed.): Hélène Cixous. The laugh of Medusa along with current articles . Passagen Verlag, Vienna 2013, ISBN 978-3-7092-0049-0 , pp. 34 .
  7. ↑ Gertrude Postl: A Politics of Writing and Laughing. Attempt to historical contextualize Hélène Cixous' Medusa text . In: Esther Hutfless et al. (Ed.): Hélène Cixous. The laugh of Medusa along with current articles . Passagen Verlag, Vienna 2013, ISBN 978-3-7092-0049-0 , pp. 28 ff .
  8. ↑ a b c Andrea Rinnert: Body, Femininity, Authorship. An inspection of feminist literary theories . Ulrike Helmer, Königstein / Taunus 2001, ISBN 3-89741-064-8 , p. 79 .
  9. ↑ Hélène Cixous: The Laughter of Medusa . In: Esther Hutfless et al. (Ed.): Hélène Cixous. The laugh of Medusa along with current articles . Passagen Verlag, Vienna 2013, ISBN 978-3-7092-0049-0 , pp. 40 .
  10. ^ Sigrid Nieberle: Gender Studies and Literature . WBG Scientific Book Society, Darmstadt 2013, ISBN 978-3-534-22715-0 , p. 51 .
  11. ↑ Andrea Rinnert: Body, Femininity, Authorship . Ulrike Helmer Verlag, Königstein / Taunus 2001, ISBN 3-89741-064-8 , p. 73 .
  12. ↑ Hélène Cixous: The Laughter of Medusa . In: Esther Hutfless et al. (Ed.): Hélène Cixous. The laugh of Medusa along with current articles . Passagen Verlag, Vienna 2013, ISBN 978-3-7092-0049-0 , pp. 45 .
  13. ↑ a b Lena Lindhoff: Introduction to feminist literary theory . 2nd Edition. JB Metzler, Stuttgart / Weimar 2003, ISBN 3-476-12285-9 , pp. 115 .
  14. ↑ a b Andrea Rinnert: Body, Femininity, Authorship. An inspection of feminist literary theories . Ulrike Helmer Verlag, Königstein / Taunus 2001, ISBN 3-89741-064-8 , p. 76 .
  15. ↑ Hélène Cixous: The Laughter of Medusa . In: Esther Hutfless et al. (Ed.): Hélène Cixous. The laugh of Medusa along with current articles . Passagen, Vienna 2013, ISBN 978-3-7092-0049-0 , pp. 50 .
  16. ↑ Hélène Cixous: The Laughter of Medusa . In: Esther Hutfless et al. (Ed.): Hélène Cixous. The laugh of Medusa along with current articles . Passagen Verlag, Vienna 2013, ISBN 978-3-7092-0049-0 , pp. 42 .
  17. ↑ a b Lena Lindhoff: Introduction to feminist literary theory . 2nd Edition. JB Metzler, Stuttgart / Weimar 2003, ISBN 3-476-12285-9 , pp. 118 .
  18. ↑ Herta Nagl-Docekal: Feminist Philosophy . Westview Press, Boulder, Colorado 2004, ISBN 0-8133-4189-2 , pp. 63 .
  19. ↑ a b Gertrude Postl: A Politics of Writing and Laughing: Attempting a historical contextualization of Hélène Cixous' Medusa text. In: Esther Hutfless et al. (Ed.): Hélène Cixous. The laugh of Medusa along with current articles . Passagen Verlag, Vienna 2013, ISBN 978-3-7092-0049-0 , pp. 25 .
  20. ↑ Herta Nagl-Docekal: Feminist Philosophy . Westview Press, Boulder, Colorado 2004, ISBN 0-8133-4189-2 , pp. 67 .
  21. ^ Sigrid Nieberle: Gender Studies and Literature. An introduction . WBG Scientific Book Society, Darmstadt 2013, ISBN 978-3-534-22715-0 , p. 53 .
  22. ↑ Herta Nagl-Docekal: Feminist Philosophy . Westview Press, Boulder, Colorado 2004, ISBN 0-8133-4189-2 , pp. 73 .
  23. ↑ Jutta Osinski: Introduction to Feminist Literary Studies . Erich Schmidt Verlag, Berlin 1998, ISBN 3-503-03710-1 , p. 59 .