Date: Wed, 20 Aug 1997 16:26:51 +0000
From: H.Robinson-AT-ulst.ac.uk (Hilary Robinson)
Subject: Re: Cixous Monarch notes?


Beth wrote:
>
>Funny you should mention distinguishing Cix's ecriture feminine from I's
>parler-femme, I'm trying to sort through the threads of these ideas. What
>do you/anybody else out there see as the main differences and convergences
>of these two concepts?
>
well, as I've just said in another post, I don't know enough about HC. Luce
I's parler femme is usually translated as 'speaking (as) woman', which is a
little confusing. 'speaking as a woman' would be a tautology for LI: How
can a woman do anything *but* speak as a woman? (see her interview with A
Jardine; 'writing as  a woman' in Je Tu Nous). Maybe it's best to leave it
in the French as we do jouissance and différance.

I read parler femme as differing from écriture feminine first in its
insistance upon women, rather than upon the quality of the feminine (which
I prefer politically, no matter how many scare-quotes HC wants around
'feminine'). Second, 'écriture' I think runs the danger of doing what LI
calls 'capitalizing' what is communicated, (though this may only be so in a
reductive reading).

Parler femme relates I think to LI's understanding of morphology.
(Capitalizing is a movement of the phallic morphologic.) Thus parler femme
could also (less elegantly!) be understood as 'speaking the morphologic of
'the lips' and that which is mucous'. It is this morphologic which will
inform the development of any symbolic appropriate to women, and thus any
speech, writing, art, made within that symbolic.

I've just been muddling this through over the last couple of weeks, so this
is still quite raw...

hilary




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