num_pages: 20
description: Cixous is issuing her female readers an ultimatum of sorts: either they can read it and choose to stay trapped in their own bodies by a language that does not allow them to express themselves or they can use their bodies as a way to communicate.The Laugh of the Medusa is an extremely literary essay and well-known as an exhortation to a feminine mode of writing; the phrases white ink and criture fminine are often cited referring to this desired new way of writing. It is a strident critique of logocentrism and phallogocentrism having much in common with Jacques Derrida's earlier thought. The essay also calls for an acknowledgment of universal bisexuality or polymorphous perversity a precursor of queer theory's later emphases and swiftly rejects many kinds of essentialism which were still common in Anglo-American feminism at the time. The essay also exemplifies Cixous's style of writing in that it is richly intertextual making a wide range of literary allusions.(From Wikipedia)
language: English
title: The Laugh of the Medusa
publisher: The University of Chicago Press