Notes on the Essay by Julie goodspeed-chadwick on Hélène Cixous’ ‘The Laugh of the Medusa’

The Laugh of the Medusa by Hélène Cixous.

Published in:Salem Press Encyclopedia of Literature, 2022, Research Starters

By:Goodspeed-Chadwick, Julie

First published: “Le Rire de la méduse,” 1975 (English translation, 1976)

Type of work: Literary criticism

The Work:

Hélène Cixous, in “The Laugh of the Medusa,” advocates new ways of thinking and writing about women and literature. The essay has become a staple of feminist criticism because of its incisive critique of patriarchal politics, its endorsement of a feminist philosophy that is grounded in poststructuralism and psychoanalytic theory, and its modeling or representation of the possibilities of écriture féminine (“feminine writing”)—what Cixous calls white ink. “The Laugh of the Medusa” is also a call to arms, urging women to reclaim their bodies and, by extension, their desires and identities through writing.

Concerned with traditional representations of women by men in literature and other scholarly texts, Cixous begins her analysis by invoking the classical figure of Medusa, but she does so by refiguring how Medusa has been represented through the ages. In this way, Cixous reclaims her. Traditionally, Medusa has been portrayed as a physical and moral monster; with snakes in place of hair, Medusa turns the men who look upon her to stone. However, Cixous’s Medusa laughs, which is both a joyful and a disruptive act that can lead to new directions for women’s (feminist) writing. From the first paragraph, women’s writing is positioned as both liberating and intervening.

Phallocentrism, a male-dominated, masculine-coded linguistic and philosophical system—or, to put it more simply, male bias—keeps women from accessing their own stories. Without this access, women lack knowledge of the multiple ways to be; women, thus, have no body and are thus nobody. It is imperative, Cixous argues, that a woman must, broadly speaking, “write her self” and “put herself into the text—as into the world and into history—by her own movement.” Essentially, Cixous calls upon women to assert themselves in writing and in the world by leaving their literary imprint, and she speaks in terms associated with revolution. Among Cixous’s aims are to “break up” and “destroy” and “to foresee the unforeseeable, to project.” Thus, her agenda in “The Laugh of the Medusa” is to call into question and break from the existing literary and social order and to embrace a new vision for women and literature through the form and content of her own essay.

Cixous has been criticized for what some see as essentialist tendencies in her work, meaning that she perceives women as biologically determined and universally similar. While Cixous does reference psychoanalysts like Sigmund Freud and Jacques Lacan, she moves away from their absolutism. Instead, she emphasizes plurality and multiplicity. Cixous, in arguing that there is no “general” or “typical” woman, focuses her study on what women have in common: a history ofexclusion and a legacy of limited agency and visibility.

Cixous discusses the female body and women’s sexuality in connection with writing for several reasons: Women are driven away both from their own bodies and from their own sexualities, sexuality informs and works in tandem with writing, and women’s sexuality and women’s writing are distinctly female. That which is beautiful in women’s lived experiences and in writing cannot be fully expressed or claimed until the taboo is lifted on women’s corporeal desires and sexualities—a taboo that makes women feel ashamed of their bodies, and their work. More important, Cixous declares, by reclaiming their bodies, women will take back what is rightfully theirs.

The conception of women and writing, wherein Cixous fuses the body and the mind, dismantles the Cartesian notion of a mind/body split. Cixous is invested in unifying the figure of woman by making her whole, and so her theoretical stance is opposed to the binary opposition of mind and body. She underscores the affirmative nature of her enterprise and refutes the notion, proposed by Freud, that women are lacking power (and, by extension, worth or value) without the phallus and are, as Cixous clarifies, “deprived” and “wounded.” In this conception, the symbolic power of the phallus leaves women disempowered because it entraps them between two “horrifying” myths: the Medusa and the abyss. Cixous suggests that, because men have been the mythmakers in Western culture, it is imperative that women assume the role of mythmaking and revise the existing narratives so that “history [can] change its meaning.” Rather than accept Medusa as the monster who defines femininity, Cixous resituates Medusa, causing her to be both “beautiful” and, symbolically, “laughing.” This laughter is disruptive and playful, and it mirrors the abstract principles Cixous sets out for women’s writing, the agenda of which will disrupt existing ideologies and established texts and exude playfulness and joyfulness in the process.

Unlike phallocentrism, Cixous argues, women’s writing cannot be pinned down. However, it is clear that Medusa the monster gives way in Cixous’s essay to the beautiful, laughing, loving, and flying mother figure. For Cixous, writing is both an intellectual and a bodily act that takes into account female desire, experience, sisterhood, and love. The body is featured as the trope par excellence. To a lesser extent, Cixous uses the image of water to describe women’s writing. Water has long been associated with femininity (that is, women’s cycles, life-giving properties) and feminism (that is, encompassing nature, unfixed qualities, transformative nature, multiple characteristics). What is most classically feminist, though, about Cixous’s essay is her admonition to women that they should have a choice: They should choose, for example, whether or not to become mothers (and, for Cixous, becoming a mother is an esteemed responsibility).

The experimental style of “The Laugh of the Medusa” mirrors its content: Cixous puts into practice her theory of white ink. In her notion of white ink, she embraces aspects of female experience that have been denigrated: sexuality, sisterhood, and motherhood. White ink, a metaphor for écriture féminine , is likened to the “good mother’s milk.” In this way, white ink is marked writing; it designates the writing from the female body that Cixous advocates. As such, white ink is associated with breast milk. It is nourishing although, abstractly, difficult to define and read because it is almost invisible. White ink appears as experimental writing because it thwarts traditional forms and subject matter in its objective of capturing female experience, psychology, and desire. It is more closely associated with the psychoanalytic realm of the imaginary/semiotic, a place associated with the womb and the baby’s experience of and connection with the mother’s body, where all desires and needs are met and the baby is unified with the mother. Conversely, the black ink of phallocentrism is associated with the psychoanalytic realm of the symbolic, where behavior and meanings are ordered according to a male system of rules and punishment. Because writing is, in some way, a record of a life lived, Cixous sanctions white ink and feminist theory by producing a feminist essay that is radical in both its content and form.

Women need to write in their own language about their own lives. This radical tenet leads Cixous to explain that the metaphor of flying belongs to women solely: Women have had to fly stealthily in the past to “possess anything,” but now they can fly openly, even soar, in language. In other words, women need to liberate themselves in writing and through writing. In short, white ink and Cixous’s feminist politics will require a reorienting of self and reading strategies: The objective of “The Laugh of the Medusa” is to “break up the [supposed] ’truth’ with laughter.’”

Bibliography

Barry, Peter. Beginning Theory: An Introduction to Literary and Cultural Theory . 2d ed. New York: Manchester University Press, 2002. A helpful introduction to literary theory that provides an excellent and elegant overview of various critical theories. Chapter 6, a feminist criticism, contextualizes Cixous’s work. Includes a good suggested-readings list.

Benstock, Shari, Suzanne Ferriss, and Susanne Woods. A Handbook of Literary Feminisms . New York: Oxford University Press, 2002. A concise introduction to feminist theory that offers a short discussion on literary theory, language, and Cixous’s ideas on écriture feminine .

Blyth, Ian, with Susan Sellers. Hélène Cixous: Live Theory . New York: Continuum, 2004. In this book examining Cixous’s theoretical writing, the authors contextualize her body of work, including “The Laugh of the Medusa.”

Cixous, Hélène. White Ink: Interviews on Sex, Text, and Politics . New York: Columbia University Press, 2008. This book comprises interviews with Cixous. Chapter 6, “My Text Is Written in White and Black, in ’Milk and Night,’” is an insightful interview that touches on “The Laugh of the Medusa.”

Guerin, Wilfred L., et al. A Handbook of Critical Approaches to Literature. 5th ed. New York: Oxford University Press, 2005. Although the discussion on Cixous is abbreviated, the section on feminism and psychoanalysis may provide some useful background.

Jacobus, Lee A., and Regina Barreca. Hélène Cixous: Critical Impressions. Amsterdam: Gordon & Breach, 1999. This anthology of essays originated from a special journal issue on Cixous in LIT: Literature Interpretation Theory . See the pertinent essays “The Medusa’s Slip: Hélène Cixous and the Underpinnings of Écriture Féminine” by Anu Aneja and “Hélène Cixous: A Space Between—Women and (Their) Language” by Pamela A. Turner.

Zajko, Vanda, and Miriam Leonard. Laughing with Medusa: Classical Myth and Feminist Thought . New York: Oxford University Press, 2006. This book features a particularly interesting assortment of essays connected by their focus on classical myth—such as that surrounding Medusa—and feminism.

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