The Laugh of the Medusa

While I found Helene Cixous' writing to be both compelling and beautiful, I have to disagree with her overall argument. My largest problem resides with her introduction to the entire essay.

"Woman must write herself: must write about women and bring women to writing, from which they have been driven away as violently as from their bodies...Woman must put herself into the text--as into the world and into history--by her own movement."

It is my personal opinion that this very statement is deconstructive and contradictory. The language used by Cixous undermines her very objective. To say that a woman must do anything is to place her in fetters yet again. Yes, if a woman were to write about women she would certainly "bring women to writing," however, I feel that no woman should be forced to do anything. Also, if all women are supposed to put themselves into the texts, this will only set them further apart in the world of writing, "from which they have been driven away as violently as from their bodies." for a woman to make herself not only a writer, but rather a "woman writer" is to simply make another category. A writer who strives only to be a "woman writer" will only make it as far as the outskirts of the literary world. A woman should not have to hide her womanhood in order to become a great and acknowledged writer, nor should she have to flaunt it.

I could not really tell if Cixous was calling for equality or not and this is what I struggled with during my reading of her essay. If her call was in fact, one for equality, then I think she may perhaps have missed her mark. To differentiate women writers from the rest of the writing world is to place them in a box, set them apart, almost negate their very existence. Perhaps my feelings about this are too strong, though I cannot help but wonder why on earth a woman would strive to be defined by her gender. Shouldn't the ultimate goal be indifference to gender and for that matter ethnicity. It can or can't matter. I am simply arguing that it is unfair to assert that it should matter.

A woman is a woman, but a writer, well, should we define writer by gender conventions? Perhaps this is a situational concern, but I feel a pull to say no.