Medusas tusind tunger: Cixous, écriture féminine og kvinden uden mangel

Hélène Cixous’s famous essay “The Laugh of Medusa” (1975) is at once a wonderful and joyful call to write, and a significant theoretical intervention that, since its publication fifty years ago, has paved the way for an affirmative approach to thinking about sex, writing, and literary criticism. This article introduces écriture féminine as a political poetic and situates this core methodological text within its intellectual-historical context as a response to the negative-critical conceptualisation of sex represented by Simone de Beauvoir. It argues that this confrontation marks a lasting divide in feminist thought between dialectics and affirmation, that is still effective today. Central to this reading is the thesis that woman lacks nothing. The article explores how “feminine writing” is to be understood through i) its emphasis on difference over binary opposition, ii) generosity as key in relating to the other, and finally iii) the inscription of the body in and as text.