Hélène Cixous’s Creaturely Poethics

Marta Segarra

doi:10.51865/jlsl.2021.04

Abstract

Drawing on Jacques Derrida’s and Sarah Kofman’s conception of writing, Anat Pick’s notion of the ‘creaturely’ and Kári Driscoll’s ‘zoopoetics’, this article discusses the relationship between textuality and animality in Hélène Cixous’s work. Cixous’s writing has been described as inscribing the body in the text, which may be considered an ethical engagement; her embodied poetics can thus be called a creaturely poethics. The analysis focuses mostly on Cixous’s latest texts: Les Sans Arche d’Adel Abdessemed (2018), Animal amour (2021) – which deal openly with animals – and her recent fictions on the Shoah, 1938, nuits (2019) and Ruines bien rangées (2020). In them, animality not only traverses human and non-human animals, but also beings considered inanimate, such as Osnabrück’s synagogue. Particularly, Ruines bien rangées gives a voice – and, above all, a ‘cry’ – to all beings reduced to silence, and therefore to death, by the Nazis.

Highlights

Y Animals and animality have always been present in Hélène Cixous’s oeuvre, since her first published book, Le Prénom de Dieu (1967), which featured Jonas’s whale – Jonas being one of her mother’s family names
The analysis focuses mostly on Cixous’s latest texts: Les Sans Arche d’Adel Abdessemed (2018), Animal amour (2021) – which deal openly with animals – and her recent fictions on the Shoah, 1938, nuits (2019) and Ruines bien rangées (2020)
This paper will focus, on some of Cixous’s latest works, where the theme of animality permeates writing itself: Animal amour (2021), a lecture addressed to young adults on the theme of animals’ love, and Les Sans Arche d’Adel Abdessemed (2018), which deals openly with animals, along with her recent fictions on the Shoah, such as 1938, nuits (2019) and Ruines bien rangées (2020), where animals appear in a more subdued way

Summary

Marta Segarra

HAL is a multi-disciplinary open access archive for the deposit and dissemination of scientific research documents, whether they are published or not. The documents may come from teaching and research institutions in France or abroad, or from public or private research centers. L’archive ouverte pluridisciplinaire HAL, est destinée au dépôt et à la diffusion de documents scientifiques de niveau recherche, publiés ou non, émanant des établissements d’enseignement et de recherche français ou étrangers, des laboratoires publics ou privés

Writing and Animals

Writing in the Place of the Animal

Hungry Love and Death

Animal Writing