Helene Cixous

"Listen to a woman speak at a public gathering (if she hasn't painfully lost her wind). She doesn't 'speak', she throws her trembling body forward; she lets go of herself, she flies; all of her passes into her voice, and it's with her body that she vitally supports the 'logic' of her speech. Her flesh speaks true. She lays herself bare. In fact, she physically materializes what she's thinking; she signifies it with her body. In a certain way she inscribes what she's saying, because she doesn't deny her drives the intractable and impassioned part they have in speaking. Her speech, even when 'theoretical' or political, is never simple or linear or 'objectified', generalized: she draws her story into history"
"The Laugh of the medusa"
Feminisms: An Anthology of Literary Theory and Criticism (NJ: Rutgers, 1991)


Quotes:

Censor the body and you censor breath and speech at the same time. Write yourself. Your body must be heard.


-- "The Laugh of the Medusa"



Writing: as if I had the urge to go on enjoying, to feel full, to push, to feel the force of my muscles, and my harmony, to be pregnant and at the same time to give myself the joys of parturition, the joys of both the mother and the child. To give birth to myself and to nurse myself, too. Life summons life. Pleasure seeks renewal.

-- "Coming to Writing"



Myth ends up having our hides. Logos opens up its great maw and swallows us whole.

--"Coming to Writing"



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZKUQWv0irVw