Notes on Cixous,
"The Laugh of the Medusa"

LINKS

• Interesting Comparsion of Cixous and Gilbert's essay on Literary Paternity in Madwoman
• Resource Page on "The Laugh of the Medusa"
• An Introduction to Cixous with biographical background
• Commentary on Cixous from Stanford




---

GROUPS (6 for sections a-f)

• title for the section (longer explanation of 5 steps of deconstruction )
• list two or three important ideas in section
• vocabulary words
• add to list of feminine vs phallocentric qualities
• note things you don't understand

SECTION OUTLINE
347    A-- THE FUTURE AND THE PAST: WHAT HAS BEEN REPRESSED -- CALL TO ARMS/ BREAKING THE DEADLOCK/ Woman Shameless in HER PLEASURE  DC: ESTABLISH THE DICHOTOMY

• Changing of the future-- refusal to repeat the past: "anticipation is imperative" (establish the utopian context of the essay)
• doesn't believe there is one general, universal woman (defining terms: What is "woman" -- that which is other than man.
• woman's visionary world which has been repressed (connection btw writing and masturbation--> both secret, both followed by guilt, but both done for own personal pleasure, not following rules or serving anyone else)
• negative side-- bad steroetypes that keep women repressed: kept in the dark, monsters, witches, from beklow, from beyond

349    B -- HER TURN TO SPEAK (NEGATIVE SECTION ON ALL THE THINGS THAT HAVEW BEEN REPRESSED) THE VERY POSSIBILITY OF CHANGE CD: SHOW THAT ONE TERM HAS HISTROICALLY BEEN PRIVILEGED OVER THE OTHER

• men have led women to hate women
• women are repressed and need to speak
• few really feminine writings; most writing by women has not been feminine

• woman must be heard -- seize the moment to stand up and speak  (Connection of speech with the body)
• women must write themesevels --> another connection to the body.  writing is connected to body and to unconscious
• evokes the idea of teh mother in every woman as a way of saying every woman has the potential to nurture, "Stands up against separation"

353    D -- CASTRATION OF THE PAPER PENIS  (BOTH/AND rather than EITHER /OR)

• wants a true bisexuality that is not a form of castration
• women are benefiting from bisexuality because it stirs up and pursues differences  T
• They have only told us of the "white continent" and what that means is that literature is biased because

we have never been told to explore the dark side.  We have been taught that the dark side was" too dark" to
explore and that it represents negativity and danger.
Men have to be afraid of women in order to keep the two groups, majority and minority groups, separated.
Women must stop listening to the" sirens,"  otherwise  known as men, and realize that their bodies and thoughts are
beautiful very much like Medusa.
 
• 
  

358    F --

The Flying Mother
1) When the repressed collective "woman" returns it will be an explosive return
2)Woman has always functioned within the discourse of man, she must invent her own language
3)Flying is woman's language.  Woman can fly because she can both give her body unselfishly (she does this in flight, when she does not cling to her body), and she can claim the joyous benefits of her body for herself.
 

 

Qualities associated with the Feminine	Phallogocentrism
giver mother emotional connected to body new woman -- vibrant, militant	self-admiring self-stimulating self-congrattulatory

• connection between writing and the body; btw identity and pleasure