Kristeva - Bordo - Cixous
Kristeva - Bordo - Cixous
Kristeva - Bordo - Cixous
Gamze Sabanc Contemporary Approaches in Literary Criticism 17th March 2012 FEMINIST THEORIES by BORDO, CIXOUS and KRISTEVA The first text that I read was the Revolution in Poetic Language written by Julia Kristeva. The strength of her work and the importance of her contribution stem directly from her rigorous effort at developing a theory of the unspeakable, hence unrepresentable, dimension of language. Kristeva continues by stating that we must break out of these static philosophies of language; that is the symbolic systematically constructed and enforced by the society, because it represses the process of the body and the subject. It is in breaking out of this repression, we can gain access to the generating of significance (2167) and subvert the production of meaning: the eruption of the semiotic [feminine] within the symbolic is what provides the creative and innovative impulse of modern poetic language (2166). Even though the relationship between the acquisition of language and gender construction is not truly stated, I think this idea of Kristeva, the creation of poetic language within the symbolic order, can be inspiring for women to establish a self-realized identity. Most importantly, it can subvert the normalized masculine dominated form of writing into a less fixed, more playful, multiple, feminine understanding of language. Like Kristeva, Cixous also focuses on the qualities of the pre-linguistic imaginary (it is called semiotic by Kristeva), the realm of bodily pleasures and drives untouched by castration and separation in The Laugh of The Medusa. She designates criture fminine, a feminine writing. For her, writing as woman is to join a group of poetic revolutionists seeking to overturn established phallogocentric (sign or symbolic) systems. However, Cixous explains the criture feminine with two incompatible logics, one of which is characterized by
Nazlpnar 2 the traditionally repressed female body parts expressed by the woman writer: There is always within her at least a little of that good mothers milk. She writes in white ink (2037). The other claim of her is that both men and women could write criture feminine. Like most critics, it is also difficult for me to understand how these two opposites ideas can be true at the same time if woman and therefore her writing is oppressed in an established phallogocentric system. In Unbearable Weight: Feminism, Western Culture and the Body, Susan Bordo presents an engaging and insightful study of ideological domination at the site of the body. Her collection of essays predominantly focuses on how cultural products ranging from advertisements, talk shows, and movies to legal deci-sions and medical studies propagate a version of mind-body dualism that adversely affects both men's and women's. attitudes towad women's bodies. Like Butler and Cixous, Bordo also claim that knowledge and gender differences are embodied through the enforced cultural notions, and then inscribed on body (2360), especially on the female body. What is more appealing for me is Bordos ideas about eating disorders. She contends that eating disorders are neither pathological nor bizarre when viewed as a cultural phenomenon but rather are "utterly continuous with a dominant element of the experience of being female in this culture" (2365). To tell the truth, I have never thought before that these kind of disorders are socially-constructed. In conclusion, what Butler, Cixous and Bordo seek to liberate is the tortured voice of the woman imprisoned within phallogocentric systems of representation, the mutilated bodies caught and sentenced by the Law of the Father. Unfortunately, none of them tell us how to escape the prisons that have been created for us. They do not give us much practical advice about how to resist the tyranny of slenderness.
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Work Cited Bordo, Susan. Unbearable Weight. The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism. Norton & Company: USA. 2001. 2360 2376. Cixous, Helene. The Laugh of The Medusa. The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism. Norton & Company: USA. 2001. 2035 - 2056. Kristeva, Julia. Revolution in Poetic Language. The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism. Norton & Company: USA. 2001. 2165 - 2179.