Overview

Hélène Cixous is well-known as a reader of ‘modernist’ writers: Joyce, Beckett, Kafka, Faulkner, Bachmann and others, while her own fiction writing forges many new directions in literature. Foremost readers of the work of Hélène Cixous consider new interpretations of her vast literary and theoretical work, examining its relation and non-relation to modernism. Understanding Cixous, Understanding Modernism features an extended new interview with Cixous, conducted for the volume, in which she reflects on her relation to the critical category of 'modernism,' alongside a previously untranslated piece by the author. As with other volumes in the series, Understanding Cixous, Understanding Modernism follows a three-part structure. Essays in the first section examine individual works by Cixous and the varied approaches her work has taken towards literature and art. The second section examines critical and aesthetic parameters of her writing practices. The final section contains a glossary of key terms and Cixous's neologisms recurrent throughout her work.

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Reviews

An icon of French feminism, Hélène Cixous posed a major challenge to philosophy: Could it be anti-phallocentric, anti-patriarchal, and still be called philosophy? Cixous changed the terms of philosophical discourse by gendering and writing it differently, crafting an idiom of language-in-translation marked by displacements, hauntings, and scars of loss. This comprehensive volume, with its distinguished line-up of Cixous readers, conveys the historic importance of a major figure of modernist thought; one who stands with the great authors of literary modernism (Joyce, Kafka, Bachmann, Lispector) on whom Cixous draws for her own experimental forays in transgenre. * Emily Apter, Julius Silver Professor of Comparative Literature and French Literature, Thought, and Culture, New York University, USA * Understanding Cixous, Understanding Modernism is clever in its composition, at once profound and playful, bringing novelty to analyses that highlight the breadth and the brilliance of Hélène Cixous’s immense corpus. * Alison Rice, Dr. William M. Scholl Professor of French and Francophone Studies, University of Notre Dame, USA *

Author Information

Peggy Kamuf is Professor Emerita of French and Comparative Literature at the University of Southern California, USA. She is a principal translator of the work of Jacques Derrida and has edited a number of his seminars. She has also translated several texts by Cixous. Her published work includes six monographs, and numerous essays and anthologies.

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