ABSTRACT

Hèléne Cixous -- author, playwright and French feminist theorist -- is a key figure in twentieth-century literary theory. Stigmata brings together her most recent essays for the first time.
Acclaimed for her intricate and challenging writing style, Cixous presents a collection of texts that get away -- escaping the reader, the writers, the book. Cixous's writing pursues authors such as Stendhal, Joyce, Derrida, and Rembrandt, da Vinci, Picasso -- works that share an elusive movement in spite of striking differences. Along the way these essays explore a broad range of poetico-philosophical questions that have become characteristic of Cixous' work:
* love's labours lost and found
* feminine hours
* autobiographies of writing
* the prehistory of the work of art
Stigmata goes beyond theory, becoming an extraordinary writer's testimony to our lives and times.

chapter 1|17 pages

Bathsheba or the interior Bible

Translated by Catherine A.F.MacGillivray

chapter 2|15 pages

Without end, no, State of drawingness, no, rather: The Executioner’s taking off

Translated by Catherine A.F.MacGillivray

chapter 3|15 pages

In October 1991…

Translated by Keith Cohen

chapter 4|7 pages

Hiss of the axe

Translated by Keith Cohen

chapter 5|27 pages

What is it o’clock? or The door (we never enter)

Translated by Catherine A.F.MacGillivray

chapter 6|16 pages

Love of the wolf

Translated by Keith Cohen

chapter 7|31 pages

‘Mamãe, disse ele,’ or Joyce’s second hand

Translated by Eric Prenowitz

chapter 8|8 pages

Unmasked!

Translated by Keith Cohen

chapter 9|14 pages

Writing blind: conversation with the donkey

Conversation with the donkey Translated by Eric Prenowitz

chapter 10|22 pages

My Algeriance, in other words: to depart not to arrive from Algeria

Translated by Eric Prenowitz

chapter 11|6 pages

Shared at dawn

Translated by Keith Cohen

chapter 12|14 pages

Stigmata, or Job the dog

Translated by Eric Prenowitz