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Muzaffer Derya Nazlıpınar

Dr. Gamze Sabancı

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 écriture féminine, 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 écriture feminine with two incompatible logics, one of which is characterized by

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the traditionally repressed female body parts expressed by the woman writer: “There is always

within her at least a little of that good mother’s milk. She writes in white ink” (2037). The

other claim of her is that both men and women could write écriture 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 Bordo’s 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.