Three Steps on the Ladder of Writing

Three Steps on the Ladder of Writing, published in 1993, is Cixous’ revised presentation of three lectures given in English at the University of California, Irvine, in May 1990, as part of their Wellek Library Lectures on Critical Theory. In the first of three extracts reprinted here, Cixous explains her frustration with the debate on sexual difference as this is currently conceived. Evoking her insistence in “Extreme Fidelity” that masculine and feminine modes of behavior are not tied to anatomy but derive from our response to life, she argues here for the complexity of gender. Only writing, Cixous suggests, can at present convey the truth about identity.