ABSTRACT

Meeting Hélène Cixous in New York on her first trip to the United States three years after the 1968 French student uprising was like breathing the heady air of social revolt. I called on her (the appointment was made over the telephone) at the Central Park South hotel where she had elected to stay while en mission to the United States as an envoy of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to the French Cultural Services. I had no clear image of what she looked like or what to expect. I knew of course her reputation as one of the leading French feminist theoreticians, her connection with the newly formed publishing house, Des Femmes, and the fact that she was the youngest scholar in France to have earned the prestigious degree, Doctorat D’Etat, with a dissertation on James Joyce. She was teaching in the Department of English and American Studies of Vincennes, a new campus (now transferred to St. Denis) of the multi-branched Université de Paris, then known as a hotbed of young Communists, Maoists, and all the “ists” and “isms” of revolutionary fervor. Cixous was proud of being a radical, although politically she was mostly involved in redefining femin ism in a series of essays and pamphlets. As a novelist, her style was recherché, influenced by that of the author of Finnegans Wake. Those who did not appreciate her writing defined it as a new form of préciosité. She had not yet tried her hand at writing plays.