Women must write through their bodies, they must invent the impregnable language that will wreck partitions, classes, and rhetorics, regulations and codes, they must submerge, cut through, get beyond the ultimate reverse-discourse, including the one that laughs at the very idea of pronouncing the word "silence"...In one another we will never be lacking.
Interpretation
Women should express themselves fully, overcoming societal barriers and traditional narratives.
In this quote, Helene Cixous emphasizes the importance of women's unique voices and experiences in literature and communication. She argues that women have the power to create a language that transcends societal divisions and norms, challenging the silence imposed on them. By writing through their lived experiences, women can connect with one another and find solidarity, suggesting that their collective expression is not only necessary but powerful.
In practice
During a women's literature festival, this quote can be used to highlight the importance of female voices.
By writing her self, woman will return to the body which has been more than confiscated from her, which has been turned into the uncanny stranger on display - the ailing or dead figure, which so often turns out to be the nasty companion, the cause and location of inhibitions. Censor the body and you censor breath and speech at the same time. _x000D_ Write your self. Your body must be heard. Only then will the immense resources of the unconscious spring forth.
Writing is the delicate, difficult, and dangerous means of succeeding in avowing the unavowable.
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.
Only when you are lost can love find itself in you without losing its way.
We must kill the false woman who is preventing the live one from breathing.
If my desire is possible, it means the system is already letting something else through.
Every human life contains a potential, if that potential is not fulfilled, then that life was wasted.
The whole underside of our society has always been violence and still is. Churches, laws - everybody seems to think that man is a noble savage. But he's only an animal. A meat-eating, talking animal. Recognize it. He also has grace and love and beauty. But don't say to me we're not violent.
You find in the Koran hundreds of verses to support women's rights, and perhaps four or five that do not.
When one begins to reflect on philosophy—then philosophy seems to us to be everything, like God, and love. It is a mystical, highly potent, penetrating idea—which ceaselessly drives us inward in all directions. The decision to do philosophy—to seek philosophy is the act of self-liberation—the thrust toward ourselves.
My dad said, 'In school, be a Catholic. At home, be a Hindu.' So we did both.
Those who remain silent are responsible.
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