Hélène Cixous, Rootprints: Memory and Life Writing by Hélène Cixous
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Perhaps it was a mistake for me to read this book first, without reading much of Cixous first. The interview, while long, provided for me much interest as to what Cixous was trying to do. I didn’t much appreciate the sectioning of the conversation, but I did like the free flow. In a way, it was about what writing is for her, what she does with it and how she exceeds herself through writing.
The interview revolves around what writing is, what it does, where it arises and ultimately what it means for others, for the self, what we find in it, and how we come to be… for Cixous, writing seems to be about touching herself and others in ways that were perhaps unsaid by language… for there is much language can say but does not find voice in social reality, or reality at all… and that exploration makes writing a kind of love, to love the other in the self too. If anything, the interview’s length attests to the ground it uncovers as it runs through all the gambit of the traditional meanings and attitudes surrounding writing to uncover at its root, love and the other.
As Cixous notes, we often cannot be tempted to love, running from it more often than pursuing it…
Perhaps I should return to this after reading more of Cixous’s work, instead of just snippets, for much of this read a little too abstractly for me. I guess at my basic nature, I’m a structuralist in many ways, which is why this was so hard for me to read.
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