Stigmata

Hèléne Cixous -- author, playwright and French feminist theorist -- is a key figure in twentieth-century literary theory. Stigmata brings together her most recent essays for the first time. Acclaimed for her intricate and challenging writing style, Cixous presents a collection of texts that get away -- escaping the reader, the writers, the book. Cixous's writing pursues authors such as Stendhal, Joyce, Derrida, and Rembrandt, da Vinci, Picasso -- works that share an elusive movement in spite of striking differences. Along the way these essays explore a broad range of poetico-philosophical questions that have become characteristic of Cixous' work: * love's labours lost and found * feminine hours * autobiographies of writing * the prehistory of the work of art Stigmata goes beyond theory, becoming an extraordinary writer's testimony to our lives and times.

Hélène Cixous Centre de Recherches en etudes Feminines at Paris VIII University, France)

Reading in painting 1 Bathsheba or the interior Bible 2 Without end, no, State of drawingness, no, rather: The Executioner's taking off. Ringing in the feminine hour 3 In October 1991 ... 4 Hiss of the axe 5 What is it o'clock? or The door (we never enter) 6 Love of the wolf 7 'Mamãe, disse ele,' or Joyce's second hand, Going off writing 8 Unmasked! 9 Writing blind: conversation with the donkey 10 My Algeriance, in other words: to depart not to arrive from Algeria. From my menagerie to Philosophy 11 Shared at dawn 12 Stigmata, or Job the dog