Of Force and the Future — Hélène Cixous's Poematic ‘might’

Abstract

This essay reads Hélène Cixous's Le jour où je n’étais pas là as both an experience of, and experiment in, the writing of a certain poematic ‘might’. Following Jacques Derrida's reading of Cixous's work in H. C. pour la vie, c'est à dire …, it suggests that such a ‘might’ allows us to hear and understand what nevertheless remains to be heard and understood. It argues, then, that at both a performative and narrative level, reading Cixous's text allows us to listen to the sound of what remains to-come.