With over 70 works to her name, including plays, poems, novels, and essays, the Algerian-born French writer, Hélène Cixous, has established herself as a formidable presence in the literary world. Her passion for writing is evident. But what about Cixous as a speaker?

In 1999, the French radio programme, A Voix Nue, broadcast a series of interviews with Cixous, in which she discusses some of the experiences that have influenced her work. In the third episode, she talks about arriving in France and encountering misogyny for the first time. She also delves into her views on the French language, which echo the liberation of language that she called for in Le Rire de la Méduse almost 25 years earlier. Published in 1974, the article gave birth to the subversive feminist theory of l’écriture feminine: a style of writing, which, although impossible to define, shares a quality of openness to otherness. It is fluid and disruptive, becoming a passageway beyond limits.[i]

While Le Rire frequently incites the development of a new genre of writing, its call to action is not limited to pen and paper. Cixous’s message extends to the simple act of female self-expression.[ii] As a professor, she has witnessed first-hand the fear that chokes her female students who dare to speak. So, she celebrates the female speaker who dares to overcome the so-called ‘anti-narcissism’ imposed by a ‘discours gouverné par le phallus’.[iii]

Fig. 1: Hélène Cixous, Le rire de la méduse, (Galilée, 1974) p.47.

For Cixous, feminine speech manifests itself as a full-body experience. The act of speech itself invokes a physical reaction. The woman does not simply open her mouth; her whole body tells her story. As in writing, in radio we don’t have visual access to body language. Instead, the focus is on the manipulation of language to create meaning. Nevertheless, the radio interview benefits from a few aspects that writing does not.

The Radio Interview

The explicit expression of tone through cadence and pitch, coupled with the very nature of the interview genre – which seeks to reveal information about its subject – creates an intimate atmosphere and provides insight into Cixous’s natural style of discourse. Regardless of the level of preparation, there is always room for spontaneity and improvisation in speech, as thoughts arise organically in conversation. Consequently, speech becomes a heightened version of the linguistically liberated style for which l’écriture féminine is known, adopting a very fluid, non-linear structure.

Since its introduction to the domestic sphere in the 1920s, radio has evolved alongside a large female audience that has traditionally been confined to homemaking roles.[iv] Although attitudes towards gender were shifting at the time of this broadcast, as Cixous affirms throughout, ‘ça n’a pas change de mentalité’.[v] As it is audio only, Radio facilitates multitasking, making it an accessible source of information and entertainment for the busy maid or mother. Thus, by reaching out to them Cixous follows this concept of ‘femme pour femmes’, illustrated in Le Rire. Opening herself up to this audience allows for the mutual nurturing of this innermost sense of the ‘other’, specifically, ‘l’autre femme’.[vi]

 Fig. 2: Cixous, 1974, p.48.

From human to woman

In the interview, when Cixous speaks, she is not just speaking for herself, but on behalf of the female experience in France, lamenting the continual sense of exile:

« Je reste une femme dans un monde où les femmes sont loin, loin, loin… d’être acceptée normalement… »

This phrase exemplifies the natural spontaneity of speech. Once Cixous has repeated ‘loin’ a third time she pauses as if she has completed her phrase before adding on the context of being accepted into ‘la norme’.[vii] Here, the pause does not feel unintentional, as it might be if she were simply searching for the right words. Rather, the addition of context feels like an afterthought. It’s as though she is clarifying her meaning to the interviewer. The way she enunciates the final ‘loin’ with a falling pitch makes the phrase sound like a complete statement. It provokes a metaphorical image of women physically distant and exiled from their own agency.

This poetic form of expression is used generally, throughout Cixous’ speech in this episode, and it corresponds deeply with l’écriture féminine. However, as demonstrated here, oral communication requires more explanation of such metaphors as there is an immediate audience. While the reader can take their time to mull over each sentence in Le Rire, the listener – especially, the interviewer – must decipher the meaning at once in order to continue the conversation. Nevertheless, Cixous effectively uses wordplay throughout her speech, incredibly naturally, and in a way that is both impactful and self-explanatory.

This wordplay highlights the absurdity of this ‘chose terrible’ inflicted upon her due to her status as a young woman already married and still in education. She expands on the emotional effect this has on her, describing it as a ‘choc culturel et personnel’ that left her with physical symptoms.[ix]

A recurring theme in l’écriture féminine is a focus on the body and its experiences, which are used in this excerpt to convey the physical and emotional tax of this ‘choc’. Despite her hyperbole – using the expression ‘mourir de froid’ with the intensifier ‘absolument’ and dramatically stretching out the verb ‘mourais’ – the tone is very earnest and matter-of fact. Consequently, she relates the intensity of these symptoms and the emotionality behind them, thereby evoking the listener’s empathy.

Cixous, ‘le maître’ : Deconstructing gender opposition

Having become a doctor and professor early on in her career in a phallocentric field, she acknowledges her luck in being integrated into a sphere of men capable of seeing past the fearmongering around femininity.[xiii] Here, she refers to her doctoral supervisor Jean-Jacques Mayoux, and the intellectual Jacques Derrida, whom she met while researching the work of James Joyce and who are influential to her work. Ever the anti-Freudian, Cixous defines them as being ‘au-delà de la castration’, which mimics the refute of his psychoanalytical theories that is foundational to l’écriture féminine. Such theories insist that femininity is dark and threatening to ‘manhood’, representing an unknowable negative that opposes the positive masculinity.[xiv] Cixous consistently rejects this idea of gender opposition, instead talking of ‘la différence sexuelle’,[xv] which formed the basis of the doctorate of ‘études féminines’ she invented in 1974.  

« La différence, ça veut dire le masculin, le féminin, s’échangeant, se touchant, se considérant, se mesurant, s’interrogeant et pas l’un sans l’autre »

Of course, as gender studies have evolved in recent years and gender can now be viewed as a multidimensional spectrum, critics have dismissed the concept of l’écriture féminine as too binary. However, in this passage, the string of present participle verbs accompanied by the reflexive pronoun ‘se’ emphasise the fluidity of gender within this binary spectrum that Cixous is expressing. She eloquently and poetically reinforces the idea of the symbiotic relationship of gender. In Le Rire this is described as ‘bisexuality’ (in the biological sense), which situates aspects of both genders in every human being, man or woman.[xvi] We can see this in her use of language, as well as the very fact that l’écriture féminine was developed during her doctoral thesis on the work on James Joyce – a man. Very clearly, she expresses this ‘bisexuality’, and, although in Le Rire she recognises the biologically female capacity of pregnancy and motherhood as a significant factor that influences l’écriture féminine, it is certainly not a necessity.

Thus, she places the ‘opposing’ ends of the gender spectrum on the same playing field in language, tying them together in a way that harmonises and neutralises the gender binary.

« Elle va féminiser… »

However, we must understand that Cixous’ argument is built within a language based on an archaic understanding of gender which, theoretically, limits its expression. But, while French feminists have previously called for new codification to dismantle the patriarchy embedded in the French language,[xviii] Cixous argues against this. Masculinity in the concept of l’écriture féminine is defined as authoritative and logical, thus as Cixous explains in the interview, ‘la force de la loi[…] est toujours assez phallique’.[xix]  Instead, she chants ‘Elle va feminiser’, asserting that language will evolve naturally without intervention.[xx]

For Cixous, gendered language is a toy – a tool for poetic expression. Constantly disregarding the limits, in the style of l’écriture feminine, Cixous experiments with language in both her writing and her speech. The radio interview provides an excellent opportunity to witness this, as she moves freely from topic to topic, expressing herself in an intimate, more personal way as she focuses on her own experiences.

End Notes

---

[i] Verena Andermatt Conley, Hélène Cixous: Writing the Feminine (Nebraska: University of Nebraska Press, 1991), p. 36.

[ii] Hélène Cixous, Le Rire de la Méduse, (Galilée, 1974) p.46.

[iii] Ibid.

[iv] Kristin Skoog and Alexander Badenoch, ‘Women and Radio: sounding out new paths in women’s history’, in Women’s History Review, 29.2, (2019), 177-182, doi:10.1080/09612025.2019.1600648, p.179.

[v] Marie-Christine Navarro and Hélène Cixous, ‘Hélène Cixous, l’écriture de l’exil’, A voix nue, (1999) <https://www.radiofrance.fr/franceculture/podcasts/les-nuits-de-france-culture/a-voix-nue-helene-cixous-3-5-1ere-diffusion-21-07-1999-5699738 > [accessed 17/10/2025] (10.42)

[vi] Cixous, Le Rire de la Méduse, p.48.

[vii] Cixous,1999, (10.04)

[viii] Cixous, 1999, (6.57).

[ix] Cixous, 1999, (7.17).

[x] Cixous,1999, (8.02).

[xi] Cixous, 1999, (7.54).

[xii] Zoë Brigley Thompson, ‘Écriture Féminine’, in The Edinburgh Companion to Poststructuralism, ed.Benoît Dillet, Iain MacKenzie and Robert Porter (Edinburgh University Press) <https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.3366/j.ctt1g09v6s.13>  [accessed, 21/10/2025] p.152.

[xiii] Cixous, 1999, (13.39).

[xiv] Kari Weil, ‘French feminism’s écriture féminine‘ in Ellen Rooney, ed.,

The Cambridge Companion to Feminist Literary Theory (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006) p.153.

[xv] Cixous, 1999, (14.53).

[xvi] Cixous, Le Rire de la Méduse, p.52.

[xvii] Cixous, 1999, (21.15).

[xviii] Weil, ‘French feminism’s écriture féminine’, p.153.

[xix] Cixous, 1999, (20.34).

[xx] Cixous, 1999, (20.27).

Further Reading

---

Andermatt Conley, Verena, Hélène Cixous: Writing the Feminine (Nebraska: University of Nebraska Press, 1991)

Blyth, Ian and Susan Sellers, Hélène Cixous: Live Theory (London: Continuum, 2004)

Brigley Thompson, Zoë, ‘Écriture Féminine’, in The Edinburgh Companion to Poststructuralism, ed.Benoît Dillet, Iain MacKenzie and Robert Porter (Edinburgh University Press) <https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.3366/j.ctt1g09v6s.13> [accessed, 21/10/2025]

Cixous, Hélène, Le Rire de la Méduse (Galilée, 1974)

Hanrahan, Mairéad, Cixous’s semi-fictions: thinking at the borders of fiction (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2014)

Hiddleston, Jane, ‘In or Out? The Dislocations of Hélène Cixous’, in Poststructuralism and Postcoloniality: The Anxiety of Theory (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2013)

Jacobus, Lee A. and Regina Barreca, eds., Hélène Cixous: Critical Impressions (Hoboken: Gordon and Breach, 1999)

Navarro, Marie-Christine, and Hélène Cixous, ‘Hélène Cixous, l’écriture de l’exil’, A voix nue, (1999) <https://www.radiofrance.fr/franceculture/podcasts/les-nuits-de-france-culture/a-voix-nue-helene-cixous-3-5-1ere-diffusion-21-07-1999-5699738 > [accessed 17/10/2025]

Sellers, Susan, ed., The Hélène Cixous Reader (London: Routledge, 1994)

—        Hélène Cixous: authorship, autobiography, and love (Cambridge: Polity, 1996)

Skoog, Kristin and Alexander Badenoch, ‘Women and Radio: sounding out new paths in women’s history’, in Women’s History Review, 29.2 (2019), 177-182, doi:10.1080/09612025.2019.1600648

Weil, Kari, ‘French feminism’s écriture féminine‘ in Ellen Rooney, ed.,

The Cambridge Companion to Feminist Literary Theory (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006)