The Laugh of the Medusa by Helene Cixous -- Excerpt Summary

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 * Note: I am not sure where the excerpt is from.

Women must write about themselves. Detachment from the past is necessary and women must look toward the future. The past must be destroyed and a new future projected. 

Women struggle against men. Women have been oppressed for ages. 

There is no one type of woman. They are individuals with diverse traits. 

Cixous spoke with a woman who revealed to her a rich inner life of sexual and personal exploration. Such experiences are beautiful. Cixous wished that women would write of this so other women would be exposed to this. She herself didn't share her experiences, urges, and emotions because she was ashamed. Due to societal "phallocentrism", she felt ashamed of her own self-expressive urges. 

She encourages women to write and to overcome feelings of embarrassment about attempting to participate in a male-dominated profession. There is the same embarrassment as masturbation. Writing and masturbation should be in the open and not done shamefully in secret. By writing, women will be released from the corner they have been pushed into. 

Women personalize writing and speeches with their selves. They inject their body and personality into these and it is evident. Women aren't as repressed as men are and are able to let more of their drives shine through, and their innate femininity. 

Feminine discourse will break past its current bounds, by those writers who are not subservient to its present form. 

Feminine discourse spans everything. The female is mutable, ever-transforming and women need to embrace this. 



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