I myself have never been able to find out precisely what feminism is: I only know that people call me a feminist whenever I express sentiments that differentiate me from a doormat...~ Rebecca West

Women must take control of their own speech, and of the symbolic

You only have to look at the Medusa straight on to see her. And she’s not deadly. She’s beautiful and she’s laughing.

Women Must Write

• “Write! Writing is for you, you are for you; your body is yours, take it” (392)

Women Have Been Repressed

• And worst of all, men have turned women against themselves (393).

No Writing that “inscribes feminity”

• Writing is “marked” and has been the locus for the subjugation of women

• However, now, writing allows a space for subversive thought (394)

Rejection of Reason/Passion, Mind/Body Binaries

• Censor the body and you censor the breath and speech at the same time (395)

• To forge for herself the antilogos weapon (395)

Suspicion of written word as power element

• Women have difficulty speaking aloud in a group of men, but should break away from the “snare of silence” (395)

• In women, there is not that scission, that division made by the common man between the logic of oral speech and the logic of the text (396).

• Women’s creative power of the body infuses their language. She writes in white ink (396)

Woman as both Universal and Personal

• In woman, personal history blends together with the history of all women, as well as national and world history (397)

Do not deny a difference

• Bisexuality, neutrality, denies a difference that exists and works against women.

The Dark Continent is neither dark nor unexplorable (398)

• Brings elements traditionally associated with female (subconscious, darkness, supernatural) into “mainstream”

• Masculine modes of philosophical and psychological interpretation (sublation) works against women (399)

Flying is woman’s gesture (400)

• Note that “voler” also means “to steal”• Metaphor for acquisition of own voice.

Upheaval

• A feminine text cannot fail to be more than subversive (401)

• Women need to take control of the symbolic – note Cixous’ use of “female” symbols throughout the essay

Above all women must gain control of their own choices.

• It’s up to you to break the old circuits (403).

General Stylistic/rhetorical Principles

• Ecriture feminine (never really defines this, but to do so would defy her own strategy)

• “logos” is phallocentric• “circular” “fluid” structure – no structure,

because that which is fluid cannot be contained.

• Use throughout of “feminine” symbols and sexual language.