“WORLD LOST IN FIRE”: ESSAYS ON THE GRAMMAR OF WOMANHOOD was my 2023 academic research project which concluded ten years of studies in the fields of feminist, political and social theory. Grasping “womanhood” as a perspective through which the concept of a sovereign human soul can be accessed, it strings together feminist, postcolonial and ecopolitical works to craft a loveletter to woman and her plurality. Let’s take the discussion to Instagram: find me on @ferrarsfieldsmag and @snkllr.

“WORLD LOST IN FIRE”: ESSAYS ON THE GRAMMAR OF WOMANHOOD was my 2023 academic research project which concluded ten years of studies in the fields of feminist, political and social theory. Grasping “womanhood” as a perspective through which the concept of a sovereign human soul can be accessed, it strings together feminist, postcolonial and ecopolitical works to craft a loveletter to woman and her plurality. Let’s take the discussion to Instagram: find me on @ferrarsfieldsmag and @snkllr.

The last­ing rep­re­sen­ta­tion of fem­i­nin­i­ty as an intrin­sic defi­cien­cy, a void beneath the tow­er­ing struc­ture of the erect, has result­ed in a pro­found philo­soph­i­cal blind­ness regard­ing woman’s world and its unique gram­mar. 
In con­struct­ing gen­dered iden­ti­ties, the phal­loc­ra­cy not only negates women by jux­ta­pos­ing them against the arche­typ­al Man but also estab­lish­es rea­son and emo­tion as gen­der-spe­cif­ic attrib­ut­es. Con­se­quent­ly, it strug­gles to con­ceive of a spec­trum of expres­sion, per­ceiv­ing rea­son and emo­tion as dichoto­mous forces instead that nul­li­fy one anoth­er with­in the bina­ry con­fines of gen­der.
Trapped with­in these closed phal­lo­cen­tric doc­trines, an imag­in­ing of the empow­ered fem­i­nine is entan­gled in self-ref­er­en­tial­i­ty to the dom­i­nant par­a­digm of the erect. Women, in their pur­suit of eman­ci­pa­tion, chan­nel their efforts into prov­ing their com­pe­tence with­in the estab­lished mas­cu­line frame­work, inad­ver­tent­ly neglect­ing the sig­nif­i­cance of their emo­tion­al capa­bil­i­ties. This approach expos­es women to a dual con­scious­ness, in which they are both pun­ished for devi­at­ing from the patri­ar­chal order while being cri­tiqued by fel­low women, who per­ceive their actions as a betray­al of fem­i­nist prin­ci­ples.

With­in this dual per­spec­tive, woman’s con­cep­tu­al­i­sa­tion of self exists in a com­plex state of affir­ma­tion and nega­tion. How­ev­er, a deep­er com­pre­hen­sion unveils that what may ini­tial­ly appear as a para­dox with­in the phal­lo­crat­ic frame­work can be reimag­ined as a rich mul­ti­plic­i­ty when viewed from the periph­ery. As we progress through this chap­ter, we will gain an under­stand­ing that the struc­ture of woman’s world can be envi­sioned as a weave of a mul­ti­tude of selves, which flow with­out restric­tion. This world’s dynam­ic land­scape nur­tures growth and expan­sion, rid­ding woman of self-imposed lim­i­ta­tions. 
Yet, until we take our prop­er step beyond the world, we remain momen­tar­i­ly con­fined with­in the blind spot, await­ing to learn of the trans­for­ma­tive poten­tial which illu­mi­nates the peripheries.

Grammar of the Dream:
This Sex Which Is Not One (1977)

In 1977, French psy­cholin­guist Luce Iri­garay pub­lish­es This Sex Which Is Not One, a study on the gram­mars of female sex­u­al­i­ty pro­ject­ed against a phal­lo­cen­tric world. In the world sys­tem of the sacred erect, fem­i­nin­i­ty is a non-enti­ty. To Man, it is inher­ent­ly tied to a nar­ra­tive of insuf­fi­cien­cy, eter­nal­ly incom­plete, noto­ri­ous­ly dif­fuse, unable to declare a sys­tem which fix­es it at its core. The fem­i­nine exists in a mode of wait­ing and expect­ing, of pas­siv­i­ty and recep­tion, of servi­tude and rup­ture. Upon want­i­ng to explore and con­quer fem­i­nin­i­ty in pur­suit of his own inter­ests, the dream­er arrives at the real­i­sa­tion that fem­i­nin­i­ty is akin to an elu­sive con­ti­nent con­cealed with­in an impen­e­tra­ble mist. Although lack­ing com­plete fas­ci­na­tion with the truth and momen­tar­i­ly over­come by a metaphor­i­cal blind­ness, the dreamer’s only recourse is to engage in spec­u­la­tion. And for the major­i­ty of the time, the dream­er spec­u­lates into error.
But who is Woman to the Man? Is she the oth­er or the less­er, a trans­ac­tion or a lover, desire or commodity—or some­thing entire­ly unimaginable?

Woman’s Pleasure: An Expanding Universe

Woman’s plea­sure, argues Iri­garay, is for­eign to the dream­er (23). When she flows, for him she over­flows. While her world is abun­dant, he per­ceives it as lack­ing. While she touch­es “her­self in and of her­self, […] for her gen­i­tals are formed of two lips in con­tin­u­ous con­tact,” (24) engag­ing in inti­mate con­nec­tion with her­self and oth­ers, he sep­a­rates and dis­con­nects, from her, her­self to her, and from his sur­round­ings. Iri­garay argues that women pos­sess in the most min­i­mal sense a dual­i­ty, a com­plex­i­ty that can­not be reduced “into one(s),” (24) which exists in har­mo­ny and self-affirms her world.

The phal­loc­ra­cy over­writes the para­me­ters of female desire into a mode of pas­siv­i­ty (26). Iri­garay argues that in a cul­ture which estab­lish­es itself through the quan­tifi­able and defin­able, where­in man­i­fes­ta­tions of pow­er and uni­ty are cod­i­fied through the sub­lime and the erect, the ‘miss­ing’ sex­u­al organ of the woman—the lack of a penis—evokes inse­cu­ri­ty in the Man. We recog­nise this fear from the witch hunts. Lat­er it is titled Freudi­an cas­tra­tion anx­i­ety. The “dark con­ti­nent” (Iri­garay: Specu­lum 19) lies unbe­knownst, ungekan­nt, behind the fog.

“[H]er sexual organ represents the horror of nothing to see. A defect in this systematics of representation and desire. A ‘hole’ in its scoptophilic lens. […] It is already evident in Greek statuary that this nothing-to-see has to be excluded, rejected, from such a scene of representation. Woman’s genitals are simply absent, masked, sewn back up inside their ‘crack.’”

LUCE IRIGARAY, THIS SEX WHICH IS NOT ONE (1977), 26

With­in a cul­ture of the con­crete woman thus becomes the elu­sive, whose exis­tence is utter­ly incon­ceiv­able. She becomes a non-sex, the fleet­ing, an idea. How­ev­er, it is in such elu­sive­ness, in over­flow­ing bor­ders set by man, in her chang­ing tides, that one finds all the pos­si­bil­i­ties of her empire, if one sets out to look for it. She is found, after all, in all the spaces of her realm, in her lust, in her writ­ing, in her love. Women’s plea­sure, Iri­garay con­cludes, dis­rupts lin­ear and sin­gu­lar struc­tures of inti­ma­cy. (Iri­garay: This Sex 29–30) Despite their plu­ral­is­tic nature, women’s world struc­tures remain intact and do not frag­ment into “shards.” (30) Instead, by cre­at­ing space for the var­i­ous aspects of their being, women can flow, per­ceive, and explore, much like an expand­ing uni­verse. It is more accu­rate to view these diverse selves as inter­wo­ven con­nec­tions and sources of abun­dance, rather than assum­ing frag­men­ta­tion based on a phal­lic per­spec­tive. (31)

Becoming Human (Anatomy of the Revolution I)

Fol­low­ing Iri­garay, I have estab­lished that woman’s plea­sure and her empire defy closed def­i­n­i­tions and embrace plu­ral­is­tic expres­sion. Fac­ing her, a patri­archy pul­sates with its phal­lo­cen­tric ide­ol­o­gy. Between these two world struc­tures exists an asym­met­ri­cal rela­tion, with the fem­i­nine being reduced to a com­mod­i­fied and servile posi­tion to the phal­lo­crat­ic order. 
I have fur­ther iden­ti­fied that the phal­lo­crat­ic repres­sion of the fem­i­nine and efforts to deter the fem­i­nine from its empire stem from a deep-seat­ed fear of the unknown, sym­bol­ised by the metaphor of the “dark con­ti­nent.” A release of the fem­i­nine presents a threat to the phal­lo­crat­ic order. In the even­tu­al col­lapse of con­trol, the dream­er is con­front­ed with the rev­e­la­tion of inher­ent equal­i­ty.

Oper­at­ing with­in a cul­ture focused on com­mod­i­fi­ca­tion and con­sump­tion does not bring about lib­er­a­tion for women. The world must die. It rais­es the ques­tion: what is the anato­my of the rev­o­lu­tion? How much of the dam­age inflict­ed is irre­versible, and how much can women reclaim and recon­struct from their empire? This brings us back to a chal­lenge intro­duced ear­li­er in the chap­ter. Often, visions of lib­er­at­ed fem­i­nin­i­ty still oper­ate with­in the frame­work of the phal­lo­cen­tric sys­tem. Can women achieve free­dom with­out being com­pelled to dom­i­nate and con­quer, to speak in the oppres­sor’s lin­gua, or is it nec­es­sary for them to do so? Through­out my the­sis, this ques­tion will fol­low us into the mode of return­ing from afar and arriv­ing with­in, in mov­ing between worlds and to the rela­tion between world and its periphery.

“When Our Lips Speak Together”

“Erection is no business of ours: we are at home on the flatlands. We have so much space to share. Our horizon will never stop expanding; we are always open. Stretching out, never ceasing to unfold ourselves, we have so many voices to invent in order to express all of us everywhere, even in our gaps, that all the time there is will not be enough. We can never complete the circuit, explore our periphery: we have so many dimensions. If you want to speak “well,” you pull yourself in, you become narrower as you rise. Stretching upward, reaching higher, you pull yourself away from the limitless realm of your body. Don’t make yourself erect, you’ll leave us. The sky isn’t up there: it’s between us.”

LUCE IRIGARAY, “WHEN OUR LIPS SPEAK TOGETHER”,THIS SEX WHICH IS NOT ONE (1977), 213

In “When Our Lips Speak Togeth­er”, Irigaray’s eleventh and final chap­ter of This Sex, she con­structs the fem­i­nine as near­ness and move­ment, as a world con­tain­ing worlds, as inter­sub­jec­tive dual­i­ty. 
The touch of woman’s lips facil­i­tates her return to her­self even from far away, and enables her to artic­u­late her empire beyond the scarce vocab­u­lary offered to her by a for­eign world. 

“How can I touch you if you’re not there?” (205) 

Bound with­in an alien dream, how do we main­tain a dia­logue with our­selves? 
In the absence of home­com­ing, in a state of per­pet­u­al estrange­ment, how do we craft an exis­tence that is true to our authen­tic selves?

“I’m wait­ing for myself. Come back. It’s not so hard,” Iri­garay implores her oth­er self, entan­gled with­in the restric­tive grip of for­eign laws, to redi­rect her focus inward, to recon­nect with the abun­dance of her mul­ti­tudes. 

“[T]o find our­selves once again in that state, we have a lot to take off. So many rep­re­sen­ta­tions, so many appear­ances sep­a­rate us from each oth­er. They have wrapped us for so long in their desires, we have adorned our­selves so often to please them, that we have come to for­get the feel of our own skin. Removed from our skin, we remain dis­tant. You and I, apart.” (218) 

Let the call resound: she must return, reclaim her place, even if she is already far in the dis­tance, almost out of reach. 
“Speak, all the same. […] [Y]our lan­guage […] comes from every­where at once. You touch me all over at the same time. In all sens­es. Why only one song, one speech, one text at a time? To seduce, to sat­is­fy, to fill one of my ‘holes’? With you, I don’t have any. We are not lacks, voids await­ing sus­te­nance, plen­i­tude, ful­fill­ment from the oth­er.” (209)

The oth­er woman must rekin­dle her voice, pierc­ing through the oppres­sive silence that sought to mute her world. Her voice is an instru­ment of lib­er­a­tion, her lin­gua beck­on­ing her to shape a new nar­ra­tive.

“Every­thing is exchanged, yet there are no trans­ac­tions.” (213) 

With­in this for­eign world, where she is com­mod­i­fied and sub­ju­gat­ed to the will of a dom­i­nant sub­ject, her plea­sure becomes sac­ri­ficed, offered up as a trib­ute to the desires of oth­ers. Every inter­ac­tion with­in this world is trans­ac­tion­al. Smile for the Man. Keep my dream alive. Per­haps I will let you live.
Our bod­ies, our desires, our dreams belong to us alone, they are not a cur­ren­cy. We reject the notion that our exis­tence is con­tin­gent upon the approval of anoth­er. In our rev­o­lu­tion, we reclaim authen­tic exchange, premised on a mutu­al inter­est and fuelled by the con­nec­tion between all liv­ing things in our uni­verse. No longer will we sac­ri­fice our plea­sures and aspi­ra­tions at the altar of exploita­tion. 

“Speak,” urges Iri­garay, “Between us, ‘hard­ness’ isn’t nec­es­sary. We know the con­tours of our bod­ies well enough to love flu­id­i­ty. We are not drawn to dead bod­ies.” (215) 
Speak, “so that we can embrace from afar. When I touch myself, I am sure­ly remem­ber­ing you. But so much has been said, and said of us, that sep­a­rates us.” (215) 

Let our exchange be flood­ed by that same near­ness, the capac­i­ty of mov­ing above and beyond what is com­mu­ni­cat­ed. In this exchange, we move as mutu­al sub­jects, nev­er assum­ing the roles of mas­ters over each oth­er. Let our inter­ac­tions be a man­i­festo of flu­id­i­ty, where we flow into one anoth­er with pro­found respect and under­stand­ing. May this be the foun­da­tion of a new era, where exchange is a tes­ta­ment to our shared human­i­ty.

“And what I love in you, in myself, in us no longer takes place: the birth that is nev­er accom­plished, the body nev­er cre­at­ed once and for all, the form nev­er defin­i­tive­ly com­plet­ed, the face always still to be formed. The lips nev­er opened or closed on a truth.” (217) 
Iri­garay asserts that our birth is a per­pet­u­al process, an eter­nal becom­ing. We shall nev­er set­tle into an unchang­ing state of immutabil­i­ty or stag­nant uni­for­mi­ty. We are beings in con­stant flow with­in the bound­less uni­verse that sur­rounds us. Myr­i­ads of con­ver­sa­tions and explo­rations of an indef­i­nite uni­verse can pour into our streams, into our dreams, into our ontolo­gies. 

“No sur­face holds. No fig­ure, line, or point remains. No ground sub­sists. But no abyss, either. Depth, for us, is not a chasm. With­out a sol­id crust, there is no precipice. Our depth is the thick­ness of our body, our all touch­ing itself. Where top and bot­tom, inside and out­side, in front and behind, above and below are not sep­a­rat­ed, remote, out of touch. Our all inter­min­gled. With­out breaks or gaps.” (213) 
In the radi­ant world which emerges from the rev­o­lu­tion, bound­aries van­ish and the rigid struc­tures that once defined us dis­solve. We tran­scend the lim­i­ta­tions of form and shape, no longer bound by the dic­tates of up or down, past or future. 
We defy frag­men­ta­tion. We are irre­ducible, no gaps divide us, no blind spots hin­der our per­cep­tion. No sev­er­ance dis­rupts our streams, and no fis­sures mar our con­nec­tion. Where Man, enslaved to his fears, recoils from the enig­mat­ic depths of what is absent, we bold­ly ven­ture inward towards the rivers.

Woman in the Dream:
The Laugh of the Medusa (1975)

31 years after women in France were grant­ed the right to vote, in 1975, French lit­er­ary crit­ic Hélène Cixous releas­es The Laugh of the Medusa (Le Rire de la Méduse). Her sem­i­nal work lays the ground­work for a French lit­er­ary move­ment known as l’écriture fémi­nine. This move­ment emerges as part of the broad­er con­text of women’s lib­er­a­tion in art and writ­ing, sub­vert­ing both artis­tic expres­sions and the fun­da­men­tal struc­ture of life itself. 

In response to per­sis­tent patri­ar­chal efforts in sup­press­ing women’s plu­ral­i­ty, their lan­guages, bod­ies, plea­sures, and expe­ri­ences, Cixous advo­cates for writ­ing as a means of redis­cov­ery and self-affir­ma­tion. Suf­fus­ing woman’s writ­ing with her own struc­ture thus rep­re­sents a return from a stag­nant and sin­gu­lar world and sig­ni­fies an arrival at the shores of poly­chro­mat­ic self-expres­sion and agency.

Returning

A suf­fo­cat­ing, phal­lo­cen­tric struc­ture ruth­less­ly sev­ers women from their own bod­ies and their worlds. With­in this sys­tem, they are dri­ven to react and con­form, per­pet­u­al­ly tear­ing them­selves apart and recon­struct­ing their iden­ti­ties to appease a logo­cen­tric God.

In Medusa, Hélène Cixous mourns with raw anguish as the reign of a patri­archy inflicts ven­om upon women’s cre­ative expres­sion in the 1970s in France, stain­ing it with shame. Always a clan­des­tine long­ing con­cealed with­in their souls, eter­nal­ly held at arm’s length, nev­er allowed to soar to the heights it deserves. Just like a woman’s inti­mate self-plea­sure grants her a tran­sient refuge, to which she tends in the hours between hours, her clos­et­ed writ­ing pro­vides hard­ly more than a fleet­ing sanc­tu­ary, a brief inter­lude from sin­gu­lar­i­ty.
“Just enough to take the edge off,” Cixous writes (877).

In the after­math of ecsta­sy, of inti­mate self-con­nec­tion, Cixous mourns that women descend into self-inflict­ed guilt, by seek­ing abso­lu­tion for doing the unthink­able and bury­ing their shame until the inevitable next time (877).
In Iri­garay, women’s bod­ies have become a ves­sel of com­mu­ni­ca­tion, a chan­nel to touch, nur­ture, and affirm their exis­tence. In reaf­firm­ing her­self through her body’s inher­ent polypho­ny, woman sev­ers the ties of the andro-ref­er­en­tial loop in her nar­ra­tive. Sim­i­lar­ly, Cixous empha­sis­es the impact of l’écriture fémi­nine, of fem­i­nine writ­ing, which has the abil­i­ty to revive woman’s dor­mant selves. In this type of fem­i­nine writ­ing space, woman places her­self at the cen­tre and relates to the expe­ri­ences of oth­er women. (Cixous 875) Her syn­tax is suf­fused with her self-ref­er­en­tial gram­mar. Her wor(l)d struc­ture is her own. 
Iri­garay and Cixous both stress the sig­nif­i­cance of flu­id­i­ty, capac­i­ty, and non-trans­ac­tion­al exchange in imag­in­ing woman’s uni­verse. This nur­tur­ing atmos­phere sat­u­rates every aspect of that uni­verse: its lan­guage, sex­u­al­i­ty, body, art, pol­i­tics, and phi­los­o­phy. I am using a fine­ly nuanced choice of words. We can­not imag­ine fixed pil­lars or alle­gorise using phal­lic sym­bols, nor can we depend on laws or struc­tures. Instead of defin­ing, we per­ceive and sense. We encounter an entire­ly dif­fer­ent world moved by shift­ing physics. Mere­ly dis­cussing it push­es the bound­aries of our lan­guage and neces­si­tates a reeval­u­a­tion. In talk­ing about it, we begin to embody and under­stand this world.

So women return to their bod­ies and them­selves. They are reject­ing the ‘anti-love,’ the anti­nar­cis­sism which teach­es women to love only what the erect wor­ships. They no longer allow the phal­lus to cre­ate divi­sions among them. They refuse to sup­press their own truths in guilt and shame while try­ing to nav­i­gate an unfa­mil­iar world. In this process of “return­ing,” women reclaim pow­er from the andro­cen­tric and rec­og­nize that there is anoth­er world call­ing out to them, which nei­ther affirms phal­lic lan­guage nor oppos­es it direct­ly. Instead, it cen­tres its own.
Cixous man­i­fests that when the repressed ele­ments of women’s cul­ture resur­face, it is a pow­er­ful and force­ful return (886). Through­out his­to­ry, women have exist­ed in mut­ed bod­ies, in dreams, in silences, and in voice­less revolts. In the dreams and the silences, woman has already dared to look with­in her­self, and she has seen her dor­mant world tem­plate. Woman hence returns in two ways: to her­self and to oth­er women, dis­si­pat­ing the same hatred, the same “dark­ness” which alien­at­ed her from her­self and from the oth­er woman alike. She reunites, merg­ing the capac­i­ties of her body with those of her imag­i­na­tion, merg­ing with oth­er women into a col­lec­tive con­scious­ness. “There is hid­den and always ready in woman the source; the locus for the oth­er,” writes Cixous (881).

Arriving

In “When Our Lips Speak Togeth­er,” Luce Iri­garay implores her coun­ter­part to return to her, urg­ing that the task is not too hard. 
Since the 1970s, with the res­onat­ing impact of French fem­i­nist works, women have start­ed to return. How­ev­er, the modal­i­ties between the act of return­ing and the sub­se­quent arrival give rise to dis­tinct chal­lenges. 
Return­ing emerges as a choice, aimed at the recon­nec­tion with an authen­tic self. We must find with­in our own lands a place to live, to fill out with all of our­selves. To return home to one­self requires to open up the seams stitched blood­i­ly in the war and to become mul­ti­ple again. Woman now trav­els. 

In con­trast, arrival assumes a more intri­cate and nuanced dimen­sion, sig­ni­fy­ing the accep­tance and man­i­fes­ta­tion of woman’s world. Women are con­front­ed with the for­mi­da­ble task of fac­ing their unpre­pared shores and brav­ing unfa­mil­iar tex­tures. To learn how to flow is arriv­ing. To unlearn our for­bid­den bod­ies, our for­bid­den souls. To learn how to exist every­where at once and nowhere at all means to arrive. To touch every­thing. To return to the oth­er women means to arrive. To learn how to love women again. Embed­ded in the larg­er fem­i­nine col­lec­tive con­scious­ness, Cixous now urges woman to write (880), to cre­ate fem­i­nine scrip­tive space tai­lored to her lan­guage and her world tem­plate. Slow­ly, a world is grow­ing but it is not with­in the phal­loc­ra­cy. It is a world grav­i­tat­ing next to it.
Woman’s unceas­ing arrival, which Iri­garay likened to an eter­nal birth, for­ev­er eludes com­ple­tion. It does not remain stag­nant; it per­me­ates her every cor­ner (Cixous 893). L’éctriture fémi­nine does not make the mis­take of falling back into a closed def­i­n­i­tion. It cen­tres move­ment through fly­ing and streaming:

“[I]t will always surpass the discourse that regulates the phallocentric system; it does and will take place in areas other than those subordinated to philosophico-theoretical domination. It will be conceived of only by subjects who are breakers of automatisms, by peripheral figures that no authority can ever subjugate.”

HÉLÈNE CIXOUS, THE LAUGH OF THE MEDUSA (1975), 883

On the oppo­site end of eter­nal trans­for­ma­tion looms suf­fo­ca­tion, as Cixous con­tem­plates the over­whelm­ing urge to “burst,” to be con­sumed by “lumi­nous tor­rents” (876) that sur­pass the con­fines of the phys­i­cal form.
How­ev­er, the phal­lus, rep­re­sent­ing val­ues of dom­i­nance, dis­ci­pline, and con­trol, vehe­ment­ly con­demns the inabil­i­ty or unwill­ing­ness to with­stand such over­whelm­ing floods. This com­pul­sion to con­trol may stem from a fear of sur­ren­der­ing to the unknown cur­rents, the unchart­ed ter­ri­to­ries, and the unpre­dictable out­comes they bring—the obscu­ri­ty of the dark con­ti­nent, the enig­mat­ic “for­est.” (878) By exert­ing con­trol, Man seeks to pre­dict and fore­tell. Yet, woman’s dual sta­tus jeop­ar­dis­es the suc­cess of such prog­nos­ti­ca­tions, chal­leng­ing the estab­lished order and unset­tling the foun­da­tions of this con­trol-ori­ent­ed par­a­digm.
Undoubt­ed­ly, woman is sub­ject­ed to com­mod­i­fi­ca­tion. She is assigned a mar­ket val­ue and is trad­ed in the phal­lo­cen­tric eco­nom­ic sys­tem, her worth fluc­tu­at­ing with the ebb and flow of sup­ply and demand. How­ev­er, with­in her resides a rev­o­lu­tion of cos­mic pro­por­tions. As a trav­eller between two worlds, she embod­ies an intrin­sic force that inher­ent­ly coun­ters com­mod­i­fi­ca­tion. 
There­fore, woman is not a com­mod­i­ty like oth­er com­modi­ties. As she embraces the fero­cious rip­tides and dis­man­tles the bar­ri­ers that bind her, let­ting the tumul­tuous flood­wa­ters surge through her very being, Man shies away from her sur­ren­der to the infi­nite sea.
Man has deplet­ed his own waters, parch­ing the river­banks of his world and exil­ing him­self to a state of per­ma­nent sta­sis, where change unfolds slow­ly, if at all, with­in the bound­aries of the com­putable. He expects all liv­ing beings in his world to abide by that same exile. When woman dares to exclaim, “I too over­flow,” (876) she is prepar­ing to arrive in a world that embraces the flood­wa­ter, its inten­si­ty, the small worlds and capac­i­ties that spill from it. The cur­rents are not to be feared. They bring life to the atmosphere.

Choosing the Medusa

In The Laugh of the Medusa, Hélène Cixous appeals to women to recon­nect with their authen­tic selves through the pow­er of lan­guage, which “does not con­tain, it car­ries; it does not hold back, it makes pos­si­ble.” (889) She urges women to move away from the con­fines of anti-love. This entails not only return­ing to one­self but also to one anoth­er, unlearn­ing the deep-root­ed ani­mos­i­ty towards fel­low women. To tru­ly arrive in their own worlds, women must reclaim their plea­sure and embrace their inher­ent plu­ral­i­ty, ulti­mate­ly affirm­ing a uni­verse infused with a new under­stand­ing of physics and exis­tence.
Cixous employs the fig­ure of Medusa as the embod­i­ment of the “New Woman” she seeks to evoke (878), whose love “dares for the oth­er, wants the oth­er, makes dizzy­ing, pre­cip­i­tous flights between knowl­edge and inven­tion.” (893) 
The choice of Medusa as a sym­bol­ic fig­ure holds a sig­nif­i­cance, serv­ing as a response to attacks on the fem­i­nine. First­ly, it direct­ly chal­lenges Sig­mund Freud’s essay Medusa’s Head (1922), where he equates the hor­ror of Medusa with the cas­tra­tion anx­i­ety induced by the female sex­u­al organ. Sec­ond­ly, it acts as an antithe­sis to the demo­niza­tion and vil­i­fi­ca­tion of female bod­ies and iden­ti­ties per­pet­u­at­ed by the log­ic of anti-love. Last­ly, this act of rewrit­ing and reimag­in­ing Medusa aligns with the prin­ci­ples of l’écriture fémi­nine, where the sub­ver­sion and reap­pro­pri­a­tion of tra­di­tion­al sym­bols and nar­ra­tives become potent tools for fem­i­nist expression.

The Myth of the Medusa

To ful­ly com­pre­hend the cul­tur­al and philo­soph­i­cal sig­nif­i­cance sur­round­ing the fig­ure of Medusa, it is nec­es­sary to delve into the mytho­log­i­cal nar­ra­tive from which she derives. Medusa, one of the three Gor­gon sis­ters, was the sole mor­tal among them and often described as remark­ably beau­ti­ful. She held the posi­tion of a priest­ess devot­ed to Athena, the vir­gin god­dess asso­ci­at­ed with war­fare and wis­dom. As a priest­ess of Athena, Medusa had tak­en a vow of celiba­cy. How­ev­er, her vow was trag­i­cal­ly bro­ken when she was sex­u­al­ly vio­lat­ed by the sea god Posei­don, an act that occurred even with­in the sacred con­fines of Athena’s tem­ple. In response, Athena pun­ished Medusa by trans­form­ing her beau­ti­ful hair into hiss­ing snakes and grant­i­ng her a dead­ly gaze capa­ble of turn­ing onlook­ers into stone.
It was Perseus, the son of Jupiter and Danaë, who ulti­mate­ly behead­ed Medusa. Employ­ing a clever strat­e­gy, he avoid­ed direct eye con­tact with her by using the reflec­tion in his shield to guide his strike. From the blood­shed, two sons emerged: Chrysaor and the winged horse Pega­sus. Perseus utilised Medusa’s sev­ered head as a potent weapon, turn­ing his ene­mies to stone by its mere gaze. Even­tu­al­ly, he pre­sent­ed the head to Athena, who incor­po­rat­ed it into her armour as a pro­tec­tive sym­bol.
Indeed, the myth of Medusa has been sub­ject to var­i­ous inter­pre­ta­tions and adap­ta­tions through­out his­to­ry, begin­ning with the Greek poet Hesiod’s account in his didac­tic poem Theogony (8th-cen­tu­ry BCE). It is com­mon­ly accept­ed that the alter­ations inflict­ed upon Medusa were a form of pun­ish­ment by Athena. They could also be seen as a divine gift of pro­tec­tion. To the Man, the sight of Medusa, both dead­ly and aes­thet­i­cal­ly repul­sive, leads to her being cast as a mon­strous fig­ure. This por­tray­al stems from a fear of los­ing access to her, as she no longer holds mar­ket val­ue in terms of her desir­abil­i­ty. Accord­ing to Sig­mund Freud, the head of Medusa car­ries a sym­bol­ic sig­nif­i­cance rep­re­sent­ing the ter­ror asso­ci­at­ed with a woman’s con­cealed sex­u­al organ.

“Medusa’s Head” (1922)

In 1922, a short essay by Sig­mund Freud is pub­lished posthu­mous­ly, titled Medusa’s Head. With­in its con­cise two pages, Freud encap­su­lates the hor­ror of cas­tra­tion anx­i­ety, trans­fer­ring it to the cul­tur­al sphere as an exam­ple of phal­lo­cen­tric psy­cho­analy­sis. He posits that decap­i­tat­ing Medusa’s head is syn­ony­mous with cas­tra­tion (33), assert­ing that by gaz­ing upon the sev­ered head with its dead­ly stare, one expe­ri­ences the same anx­i­ety that young boys feel when con­front­ed with the sight of female gen­i­tals for the first time in their lives. This anx­i­ety is root­ed in the “hor­ror of noth­ing to see,” as expressed by Iri­garay, and the con­cern that they might be cas­trat­ed by their own moth­er or oth­er women. (33) In response to this fear, the boy child’s penis becomes erect, serv­ing as a reaf­fir­ma­tion of his pos­ses­sion of it. (34)
Freud fur­ther sug­gests that by incor­po­rat­ing Medusa’s head into her armour, Athena sym­bol­is­es the hor­ror of the Mother—being both cas­trat­ed while also cas­trat­ing oth­ers. (34) Dis­play­ing the genitals—in this case, Medusa’s head rep­re­sent­ing the female genitals—serves as an apotropa­ic act, a means of ward­ing off evil. (34) 
Freud’s psy­cho­an­a­lyt­ic per­spec­tive sug­gests that the expe­ri­ence of hor­ror with­in one­self man­i­fests sim­i­lar­ly in the per­ceived ene­my when defend­ing against exter­nal threats. With­in this frame­work, Freud con­tends that gaz­ing upon the vagi­na, which he con­cep­tu­alis­es as a cas­trat­ed and negat­ed form of the penis, elic­its repul­sion due to its asso­ci­a­tion with unset­tling ele­ments such as dark­ness, obscu­ri­ty, and the sym­bol­ic imagery of a dark for­est. On the con­trary, “[t]o dis­play the penis (or any of its sur­ro­gates) is to say: ‘I am not afraid of you. I defy you. I have a penis.’” (34) These evoca­tive qual­i­ties con­tribute to the per­cep­tion of the vagi­na as a source of fear and unease, align­ing with the cen­tral role of the phal­lus in Freud’s analy­sis of the female body.

Rewriting the Medusa:
L’éctriture féminine in practice

When Cixous advo­cates for the emer­gence of fem­i­nine script, she acknowl­edges the inher­ent impos­si­bil­i­ty of defin­ing such a prac­tice of writ­ing. This impos­si­bil­i­ty, she sug­gests, will per­sist, for this form of writ­ing resists the­o­ret­i­cal con­fine­ment, cod­i­fi­ca­tion, or strict def­i­n­i­tion. Nev­er­the­less, this does not negate its exis­tence (883). Much like fem­i­nin­i­ty and wom­an­hood them­selves, fem­i­nine script remains in a con­stant state of flux—dynamic, expan­sive, inquis­i­tive, recep­tive, and engaged in rec­i­p­ro­cal exchange. It defies con­fine­ment with­in closed and mea­sur­able bound­aries that dic­tate its pre­cise ori­gins and end­points. As you engage with fem­i­nine script, how­ev­er, you will sense its presence—an inef­fa­ble yet famil­iar feel­ing akin to encoun­ter­ing the returned woman, who has redis­cov­ered her­self and now stands along­side you.
Cixous, through her rewrit­ing of Medusa, accom­plish­es the cre­ation of a fem­i­nine script with­in her essay. She dis­rupts the pre­vail­ing patri­ar­chal nar­ra­tive that per­pet­u­ates notions of lack, envy, defect, and nega­tion. By pre­sent­ing Medusa as a lov­ing woman, Cixous chal­lenges the phal­lo­cen­tric fix­a­tion on cas­tra­tion. This fix­a­tion is root­ed in the belief that women and their bod­ies are mere­ly flawed reflec­tions of the ide­al phal­lic form, stripped of pow­er and sub­stance. Freud’s accounts tes­ti­fy to the fear expe­ri­enced by men of being trans­formed into women, of being deprived of what they per­ceive as the foun­da­tion of their exis­tence. How­ev­er, it is essen­tial to under­stand that being a woman is not a cas­trat­ed ver­sion of being a man. As explored in “When Our Lips Speak Togeth­er” and in the con­cept of Cixou­sian returning/arriving, being a woman con­sti­tutes an inde­pen­dent and dis­tinct world that exists along­side the phal­lus. It is an entire­ly dif­fer­ent realm with its own rich­ness and mul­ti­plic­i­ty.

There­fore, the anx­i­ety of cas­tra­tion that the boy child expe­ri­ences is not root­ed in fear of the world of woman, for that world is abun­dant­ly diverse and mul­ti­fac­eted. Rather, it is a fear that his own soci­etal sys­tem will turn against him, sub­ject­ing him to dis­gust, ridicule, mea­sure­ment, and denounce­ment, as it does with all liv­ing enti­ties that do not con­form to its pre­scribed norms. This includes not only those who are fem­i­nine, but also those who iden­ti­fy as queer, inter­sex, non-bina­ry, or of diverse racial and eth­nic back­grounds. In the Freudi­an view of women and their bod­ies, women always rep­re­sent the dark realm, the blur­ry periph­ery. The Medusa which can­not be direct­ly looked at and there­fore not be mea­sured, not be pre­dict­ed. But the Medusa is nei­ther blur­ry nor a periphery.

“But isn’t this fear convenient for them? Wouldn’t the worst be, isn’t the worst, in truth, that women aren’t castrated, that they have only to stop listening to the Sirens (for the Sirens were men) for history to change its meaning? You only have to look at the Medusa straight on to see her. And she’s not deadly. She’s beautiful and she’s laughing.”

HÉLÈNE CIXOUS, THE LAUGH OF THE MEDUSA (1975), 885

In woman’s empire, coat­ed with move­ment and curios­i­ty, the fear of cas­tra­tion dis­si­pates. To us, the Medusa is not a hor­ror. She is bright and beau­ti­ful, and there is so much to see: She is the oth­er woman, the oth­er you.

Oth­er chap­ters in this series:

Imag­in­ing Dark Con­ti­nents

Birth of the Dream: Friedrich Engels’ “The Ori­gin of the Fam­i­ly, Pri­vate Prop­er­ty and the State” (1884)

Man­i­fes­ta­tion of the Dream: Sil­via Federici’s “Cal­iban and the Witch” (2004)


BIBLIOGRAPHY

CEC. “Helene Cixous in Per­spec­tive : ‘the Laugh of the Medusa.’” YouTube, 8 Apr.
2022, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z5i2u-cPemY

Cixous, Hélène. “The Laugh of the Medusa.” Signs: Jour­nal of Women in Cul­ture and
Soci­ety, trans­lat­ed by Kei­th Cohen and Paula Cohen, vol. 1, no. 4, Sum­mer
1976, pp. 875–93. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/3173239. Orig­i­nal­ly pub­lished
in French under the title Le Rire de la Méduse, 1975.

Freud, Sig­mund. “Medusa’s Head.” The Medusa Read­er, edit­ed by Gar­ber, Mar­jorie,
and Nan­cy J. Vick­ers, 2013, pp. 84–85.
http://www.academia.edu/5529861/101335539_Freud_Medusa_s_Head. Orig­i­nal­ly
pub­lished in Ger­man under the title Das Medusen­haupt, 1922.

Iri­garay, Luce. This Sex Which Is Not One, trans­lat­ed by Cather­ine Porter and Car­olyn
Burke, Cor­nell Uni­ver­si­ty Press, 1985. Orig­i­nal­ly pub­lished in French under
the title Ce Sexe qui n’en est pas un, Les Edi­tions de Minu­it, 1977.

Iri­garay, Luce. “When Our Lips Speak Togeth­er.” This Sex Which Is Not One,
trans­lat­ed by Cather­ine Porter and Car­olyn Burke, Cor­nell Uni­ver­si­ty Press,
1985, pp 205–218. Orig­i­nal­ly pub­lished in French under the title Ce Sexe qui
n’en est pas un, Les Edi­tions de Minu­it, 1977.

Iri­garay, Luce. “Woman, Science’s Unknown.” Specu­lum of the Oth­er Woman,
trans­lat­ed by Gillian C. Gill, Cor­nell Uni­ver­si­ty Press, 1985, pp. 13–25.
Orig­i­nal­ly pub­lished in French under the title Specu­lum de I’autre femme, Les
Edi­tions de Minu­it, 1974.

Mer­cy Fer­rars is a philoso­pher and writer based in Berlin.
http://www.mercyferrars.de