First off I would like to apologize because I was unable to get the link to Infection in the Sentence to work, so I was only able to read The Laugh of Medusa. So if anyone was able to make the link for Infection in the Sentence work please post about it.
That being said, The Laugh of Medusa brought up a few issues for me. It starts off by claiming thatg women have been driven out of writing. This led me to the question: how are women driven out of writing? If women are absent from writing, then is every representation of women in writing an inaccurate masculine portrayal?
The author also claims that there is no typical woman, so as a result they have “inexhaustible” imaginations. This made me wonder if there is a typical man? Is there a typical woman in writing?
She goes on to say that “woman must write woman. And man, man.” This is similar to a previous question that I posed, but is this statement true? Can men only accurately portray men in writing? Are women only capable of portraying women?
A prevelant theme of this essay is that through writing, women can become actualized as individuals. The author claims that women must write in order to reclaim power that has been denied from them. She goes as far as to say that women don’t own their body if they do not write without censorship. What do you make of this? Can writing help one understand themselves? Does writing give someone conrol over their identity?
Finally, I found it a bit odd the way that the author compared writing to sexuality. I was wondering what you all thought about that.
7 responses so far ↓
campusm79 // 16 November 2008 at 2.33 pm
Hey Sprinkles, if you sign onto Sakai, you can access the Gilbert and Gubar reading from Resources.
campusm79 // 16 November 2008 at 3.20 pm
In response to the questions posted in Sprinkles’s fifth paragraph, Cixous describes writing as “the space that can serve as a springboard for subversive thought†(249). I agree that writing does provide the space for people to reclaim their identities, to throw off the roles that have been imposed on them. It allows people to consider who they are in relation to how others in the world perceive them. I think that before a person who has been repressed can fully assert his/her identity in the real world, he/she needs to be able to articulate how he/she identifies. One has the space to do this in writing.
I agree with Cixous that there is no “typical womanâ€. Every woman has her own unique experiences. But I think it is still possible to speak of a collective woman. Cixous, when referring to “womanâ€, says that she is referring to “woman in her inevitable struggle against conventional man†(245). Women of different races and socio-economic statuses will have unique struggles. But despite these differences, it can be said that women, in general, lack a privilege that men have. There isn’t really a typical man; each individual man too has his own unique experiences. But there is a “conventional manâ€, a socially constructed opposite to woman that has been granted certain privileges.
A little random, but I was wondering—does anyone know when “womyn†first appeared in the literature? Cixous says, “It is time to liberate the New Woman from the Old†(248). I think in referring to the “Old Womanâ€, it would make sense, for me at least, for Cixous to use the more established, more patriarchal spelling of woman. But when referring to the “New Womanâ€, I would think that “Womyn†is more appropriate. But I guess, this spelling first came into use after Cixous’s time…
zzzzz // 16 November 2008 at 4.11 pm
I’m very intrigued by the idea of the existence of a “typical woman.” On the one hand, I see the existence of a typical sort of man as a denial for a typical woman. There is not necessarily a single idea associated with women that can span social and cultural realms to the extent that the typical idea of a man can. Women in different cultures have noticeably different characteristics as far as power, influence, behavior, etc, yet men generally display similar characteristics despite their cultural or social background. At the same time, however , I also can see the validity of creating a typical woman through her united struggle against man. It is a defining characteristic that brings women of all cultures and social groups together, because women are and nearly always will be in some sort of struggle against men.
sfbull5 // 16 November 2008 at 6.12 pm
I agree with all the posts above mine, and was going to write about the “typical woman” idea, but instead I’m going to highlight two other things I found interesting in the Cixous piece:
First, I found it interesting how she framed her piece as almost a reverse exclusion of men, as if that served as appropriate justice for the many centuries that women and their bodies have been enslaved by men. She talks about how “woman must write woman” so as to reclaim her body and actually write a text that honestly and accurately depicts women. In that way, she makes writing an inescapably gendered phenomenon.
Second, she opens by saying “I write this as a woman, toward women” (245). Throughout the vast majority of her text, she uses the first person voice, talking about women in terms of “I” and “we,” because she wants to include herself in the process of women’s liberation through writing. However, there are times when she talks about “women” from a more distanced perspective, as if she is only referring to the women who have yet to liberate themselves (because, in some sense, as a writer, she has already succeeded in accomplishing the goals she sets out for all women). The example of this that originally caught my eye is on page 248, where she says, “Men have committed the greatest crime against women. Insidiously, violently, they have led them to hate women, to be THEIR [as opposed to OUR] own enemies…”. This use of “their” instead of “our” makes me read this paragraph as if she is being somewhat elitist or removed from the ongoing struggles of feminine liberation and discovery of identity.
mercurylanes // 17 November 2008 at 12.46 am
It seems to me that a lot of Cixous’ argument for the unique position (and unique potential) of women writers seems to hinge on the biological capacity to give birth–”There always remains in woman that force which produces/is produced by the other” (252). Women have the capability to “contain” (and gestate?) the other, hence they have the capability to overcome/reconnect/hold within themselves seperations. Woman even, in some sense, “mothers herself.” On second thought I may be horribly misreading this. But Cixous does seem to buy in to the essentialist conception of gender, so it would follow that biology plays into it on some level.
The thing I had the hardest time wrapping my brain around was her argument that the division between “the logic of oral speech and the logic of the text” is essentially masculine and aimed at “mastery”–hence women’s writing is “the anti-logos weapon.” What is this division, and what’s so masculine about it?
2southgreen // 17 November 2008 at 3.27 am
First, I’d like to comment on the subject in general:
I’m a woman, and I’m having a hard time with this subject. I guess I feel like in my life, I haven’t been subjugated “as a woman” nearly as much as I have for other reasons. I don’t feel the need to spell my gender “womyn,” (granted that’s from the comments rather than the text) or to have a unique kind of literature. I recognize that I’m different from men, but that hasn’t made me feel inferior or superior. Obviously, some men hate women. It’s unfair and unfortunate, but, I believe, unavoidable. There are a million forms of prejudice. Whatever you are, someone will illogically hate you for it, be it due to race, gender, sexual orientation, nationality, age, etc. Balanced education and popular culture may reduce this, and to that degree I’m for it. However, I’m also very much for people developing resilience. Without suffering of some sort, so many great literary works never could have come to be. I don’t mean to say we should hurt each other for the good of creative expression, but we shouldn’t child-proof our world or enact a gender-based eye for an eye.
I consider myself a feminist, I honestly do. In our history and now in other cultures, horrible crimes have been committed against women en masse. I want very much to change that. Let’s take responsibility for raising our children not to be prejudiced or ignorant. Let’s ensure that various groups are treated equally under the law. But let’s not retaliate or form cults of exclusivity. I feel like we would only be returning the harm.
Now to some specific points regarding the text:
I don’t think the format of our literature especially excludes women. I also don’t think that any kind of progress could be made by intentionally excluding men from the writing of women. That idea strikes me as EXTREMELY ridiculous, childish, even. Nor do I think women should only write women or have an exclusive license to do so. Some of my favorite female characters have come from men and some of my favorite male characters have come from women. Overemphasizing gender and looking for hidden subjugation puts tragic restraint on literature, in our endless quest to be politically correct. On the other hand, I can certainly imagine that many women are better at writing about women and many men about men. Why not celebrate that diversity and encourage authors to pursue what they enjoy and what they do well at? I hate the idea of critics saying “authors should do this.” Why not let the market of readers decide?
Finally, I was a bit offended by text section referred to in the comment above:
“Men have committed the greatest crime against women. Insidiously, violently, they have led them to hate women, to be their own enemies…â€
I think that as women who realize their strength and capability, we have to stop portraying ourselves as victims of what men have done in the past. If women hate women, women should take some responsibility. Influential though male-dominated culture has been, we have not been stripped of our free choice. This statement seems to me so counter to what feminists try to accomplish. Let’s stop focusing on subjugation or what men have done to us. Let’s move forward as adults responsible for our own fate.
spotofbother // 17 November 2008 at 11.06 am
Hmm. I like the idea that women write themselves only without censorship because it is poststructuralist. The idea that gender is entirely discursive is what Judith Butler focuses on. With that said, I think that the idea of excluding men, as 2southgreen said, is extremely ineffective because the feminist movement isn’t by any means divided exactly across the sex/gender line. I think oversimplifying the writing of men, seeing it only through the eyes of a rigid feminism takes a lot of the possibility of an engaged dialogue away. Again the idea that “women must write women. And man men,” seems to me oversimplifying. And I wonder how much Cixous is implicitly accepting the historical binaries women have been subjugated to over the centuries.
Similarly, I felt that the Gilbert and Gubar article accepted these binaries in its look at history, which to some extent is necessary because historically, women really did have their one place and occupation. At the same time however, I wonder if a look into the future by these two authors would deem the designations male and female as perfectly acceptable.
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