Overview

Examines Jewish-German “tropes” in Hélène Cixous’s oeuvre and life and their impact on her work as a feminist, poet, and playwright. Hélène Cixous is a poet, philosopher, and activist known worldwide for her manifesto on Écriture feminine (feminine writing) and for her influential literary texts, plays, and essays. While the themes were rarely present in her earlier writings, Germany and Jewish-German family figures and topics have significantly informed most of Cixous’s late works. Born in Algeria in June 1937, she grew up with a mother who had escaped Germany after the rise of Nazism and a grandmother who fled the racial laws of the Third Reich in 1938. In her writing, Cixous refines the primitive scene of a “German” upbringing in French-occupied colonial, antisemitic Algeria. Scholar and filmmaker Olivier Morel delves into the signs and influences that “Germany,” “German,” and “Osnabrück” have exerted over Cixous’s work. Featuring an exclusive interview with Hélène Cixous and stills from their travel together to Osnabrück in Morel’s 2018 documentary, Ever, Rêve, Hélène Cixous, Morel’s The “German Illusion” examines the unique literary meditation on the Holocaust sustained throughout her later texts. Morel helps us to understand an uncannily original oeuvre that embodies the complexities of modernity’s genocidal history in a new way.

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Reviews

"""The Algerian-born French writer and philosopher H�l�ne Cixous, whose mother was German, has, since the mid-1990s, repeatedly addressed the fate of her German-Jewish family in Nazi Germany. In recent years, she has created in several of her works a harrowing memorial to the German-Jewish world. Olivier Morel's remarkable book is now the first study of this important subject. In a reading of great intensity, he succeeds in deciphering the dense web of motifs that structures the cycle and at the same time links it closely to the author's overall oeuvre. Convincingly, he argues that the cycle culminates in the concept of the 'German illusion, ' which Cixous uses to describe the Jewish population's mistaken belief that they had found a home in Germany."" --Andrea Grewe, Professor of Romance Literatures, University of Osnabr�ck, Germany ""What Olivier Morel's fascinating book reveals is not just a missing piece of H�l�ne Cixous's biography but a nuanced reconstruction, at once historical and poetic, of the 'German malady' (that will never be fully worked through), and an intersectional postcolonial story that fits no readily available historical category. A story of exile within exile, this book offers a searing investigation of 'GermanAlgeria' (or 'Osnabr�ck-Oran') in the crucible of irrecuperable origins. It describes a singular Franco-Algerian, German-Jewish case of diaspora, self-dispossession, and untranslatability but its audience is anyone and everyone who can identify with the experience of surviving within outsider lifeworlds."" --Emily Apter, Julius Silver Professor and Chair, French Literature, Thought and Culture, New York University, USA"

The Algerian-born French writer and philosopher Hélène Cixous, whose mother was German, has, since the mid-1990s, repeatedly addressed the fate of her German-Jewish family in Nazi Germany. In recent years, she has created in several of her works a harrowing memorial to the German-Jewish world. Olivier Morel’s remarkable book is now the first study of this important subject. In a reading of great intensity, he succeeds in deciphering the dense web of motifs that structures the cycle and at the same time links it closely to the author’s overall œuvre. Convincingly, he argues that the cycle culminates in the concept of the ‘German illusion,’ which Cixous uses to describe the Jewish population’s mistaken belief that they had found a home in Germany. * Andrea Grewe, Professor of Romance Literatures, University of Osnabrück, Germany * What Olivier Morel’s fascinating book reveals is not just a missing piece of Hélène Cixous’s biography but a nuanced reconstruction, at once historical and poetic, of the 'German malady' (that will never be fully worked through), and an intersectional postcolonial story that fits no readily available historical category. A story of exile within exile, this book offers a searing investigation of 'GermanAlgeria' (or 'Osnabrück-Oran') in the crucible of irrecuperable origins. It describes a singular Franco-Algerian, German-Jewish case of diaspora, self-dispossession, and untranslatability but its audience is anyone and everyone who can identify with the experience of surviving within outsider lifeworlds. * Emily Apter, Julius Silver Professor and Chair, French Literature, Thought and Culture, New York University, USA *

Author Information

Olivier Morel is Associate Professor in the Department of Film, Television, and Theatre at the University of Notre Dame, USA. He is also a filmmaker, with cinematic work receiving prizes in international film festivals, and author of three books including Berlin légendes ou la mémoire des décombres (2013) and a graphic novel, Walking Wounded: Uncut stories from Iraq (2015).

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