Feb 15 thought paper

Charlotte Tschider
02/15/2005
Thought paper

The “Laugh of the Medusa” demonstrates to me the connection between body and language, writing and gender, an important connection for the feminist movement. In Cixous reminds us of, in a sense, a Barthesian interpretation of self-making, though the weight here settles on the inventiveness of the female. Instead of reducing her meaning/importance, she reinforces it on the world.

Cixous first couples the body and writing in terms of secrecy:

Writing is for you, you are for you; your body is yours, take it. I know why you haven’t written. . . Because writing is at once high, too great for you, it’s reserved for the great—that is, for “great men”; and it’s “silly.” Besides, you’ve written a little, but in secret. And you punished yourself for writing, because you didn’t go all the way; or because you wrote, irresistibly, as when we would masturbate in secret, not to go further, but to attenuate the tension a bit. . . (Cixous 1525)

This self-creation and representation of the body through writing demonstrates the connection we’ve been reading thus far: the connection between the writing and the author or scriptor as inter-connected. No longer is the author the inspiration for the writing, nor is the novel interpretation solely from the author or from a higher being, the author/scriptor now is re-created through the writing as an act, the performative sense of “doing” into being.

However, the feminist interpretation of body/writing as one ends. The author here reinforces a powerful role: the woman is woman because she writes of woman and in a feminine way. As Cixous explains on 1528, “There always remains in woman that force which produces/is produced by the other—in particular, the other woman. In her, matrix, cradler. . . There is hidden and always ready in woman the source; the locus for the other.” In writing of woman, it not only empowers the writer but empowers the other woman, the woman with no voice. Power here holds an integral role in feminist interpretations of author—when the “great” author has at once been the “looming, great man,” singular in nature, and standing as an inpenetrable tower, the woman feels at once as if she is in the shadow. Feminist ecriture offers an opportunity for women to step out of the shadow, and by denying the existence of such a tower, rise to new heights themselves. Here, however, the author, while creating self and others through writing, still maintains and reinforces her powerful existence in life/body.

Feminism here allows the man and the woman to combine their sexualities through their writing, by becoming “bisexual.” At this point, it allows women to writing in a masculine way, men in a feminine way, and both as a combination. Here, writing still has gender, but combines it in such a way that the power structure is evened. No longer is the lower looming, but rather, writers are allowed the chance to interpret and explain both, intertwining writing. However, until that point, the woman must continue to write what she knows. Though the man can write the feminine, he alone does not even the power field; only the woman, in writing herself and other women can do this.