Écriture Féminine : thinking the female body through writing [abstract]

This presentation was made during the session "Creating a Space for the Female Body."Abstract of a presentation given at the 2008 Body Project conference at the University of Missouri-Columbia.Traditional feminist readings of Helene Cixous's theory of ecriture feminine have centered on the essentialist debate, overlooking the important contribution to gender studies her theoretical work constitutes. In this paper I will explore how ecriture feminine is useful to theorizing the female body as narrative. Promising to "speak about women's writing: about what it will do," Cixous, in "The Laugh of the Medusa," exhorts women to write, insisting that only through writing will "woman . . . return to the body, which has been more than confiscated by her" (2039, 2043)