First Names of No One

Prénoms de personne—“First Names of No One”—published in 1974, is a collection of readings of works by Freud, Hoffman, Kleist, Poe and Joyce. The “Prédit”—translated as “Prediction”—published here in its entirety, offers an introduction not only to the readings that follow but also to Cixous’ view of literature and practice as a literary critic. Writing is equated here with the desire that can propel personne beyond the rule of “opposition, aggression (and) enslavement” currently in force, beyond lack, castration, the Law and death. Texts are valued according to their ability to bring the subject into play and give “life without limits”; it is in literature, Cixous stresses, that the logic of “repression” and “negativity” may be circumvented, leaving the subject free to “evolve.” Above all, writing proffers an “elsewhere” with the potential to reinvent the “homogenising, reductive, unifying reason” that has led to the socio-political and intellectual impasse in the West. The reader’s role— as distinct from the critic’s application of theory to a text—is viewed as intrinsic to this invention process.