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The Summary of The Laugh of the Medusa

Le Rire de la Meduse was written by Cixous in 1975 and translated to English as The

laugh of Medusa in 1976. This profound essay, fundementally calling women in order to “bring

them to writing”, is verbalized in an alluring and poetic language to illustrate the idea of the

existence of a feminine writing .

Cixous argues in her essay that the utter history of writing has been one of “phallocentric

tradition” which has contributed to hamper women to think,create and innovate. She urges the

women to shatter the traditional masculine oppressing discourse which goverened literature for

ages and create a new genre of writing called l’ecriture feminine or feminine writing by using

their bodies as ways of commuication and as means to assure themselves into the text, world

and history. In other words, Cixous instigates women to write about their bodily expermentation

which stands for a supplier of sexual urge and drive for creativity. Taking this idea into account,

She believes that a woman will have the ability to destroy the past and its repressing language

only if she explores her own body with a feminine language. For her, women’s bodies are direct

basis for female speaking. She also encourges women to write in “white ink” which is a metaphor

for the good mother’s milk, that is to say, she desires to assert the signifigance of reunion by

referring to the maternal body which stands for the connection and wholeness.

For ages, masculine language has been the predominant and the stronger one. Women had

no right to express themselves in a patriarchal world where, as Cixous points out, they were

considered as dark, dangerous, passive and indeterminate. Under the impact of masculine

ideology, women had the sense of hatred toward other women and themselves. To get rid of this

complex, Cixous asks women to liberate themselves by writing which relates to themselves, but

which can not be defined or theorized by the male-centred language. She goes further by saying
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that women are bisexual due to the disposition of their organs whereas men have no ability to be

so without losing the phallocentric masculine characteristic. What is more, She is utterly

persuaded that writing is bisexual and women should address both sexes.

Like the other poststructuralists, Cixous believes that the women are closer to imagination

and fantasies and far from the stability, fixed meanings and reason. Henceforth, the women

would manifest themselves through poetry rather than the prose which contains ordinary and

coded language. In her point of view, the language of poetry is nearer to the unconscious because

it holds double meanings and accordingly it is closer to the women sexuality.

Derridian deconstruction and psychoanalytical theory has a crucial effect on

Cixous’writing. Hence, she deconstructs all the chains which keep women inactive by

dismanteling gender difference in the language and urging them to establish a new signifying

order which is not limited by binaries of woman and man, passive and active and dark and light.

She also deconstructs the theories of Freud and Lacan by adopting Medusa’s head.

Based on the the Greek myth Madusa was damned by the goddes Minerva, turning her into a

hideous figure with a snake hair like and a gaze which could tranform anyone into a stone. She

was murdered by the warrior Perseus by slaying her head. Cixous explicates this myth of

Medusa’s annihilation as men’s attempt to mute the voice of women and to break off women’s

languages. Furthermore, the Medusa’s metaphor is associated with the modern psychoanalytic

anaylsis of Freud who states that Medusa’s head reminds the male of castration. Cixous takes

Medusa’s head as a proof to demonstrate how the men whose minds are haunted by idea of

castration are unconsciously weak at the sight of women sex to the extent that they have fear of

becoming women. At this point, Cixous clearly debunks the mythology that proposes woman’s

identification is shaped by what she lacks. In the light of French pschologist Lacan’s theory of

Lack, the women desire for the masculin body does not initiate from the body itself but it arises
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from the lacking of the penis. Cixous censors this “phallocratic” interpertation alluding that her

personal desire of the other is for the other and this notion of the lacking is lacking and

inadequate. Additionally, she denounces the women who idolise the masculine sex , referring to

them as “woman of yesterday” who is either perserved in the darkness of the past or fallciously

renovated by naive moral thinking by their counteparts. Addedly, she sheds light on the Lacanian

Symbolic order in which he advocates that male child acquires the spoken language when he

enters the world of patrilinealisim where it is systemized by order and concrete refusing to obtain

the pre-linguistic language of the mother as he notices that the mother lacks the phallus. Whereas

the female child acquires the pre-lingiuistic language of the mother because she finds herself

similar to her mother. As a result her language is a primitive and silent like the mother womb. By

discarding the lacanian theory, Cixous encourges women to write beyond the order of the binary

opposition of the Symbolic Order by utilizing their bodies and demolishing the oppressive

structures of the androcentric world.

To conclude, Medusa laughs at the barriers of the masculine discourse because she has

discovered her own feminine writing in which she represents her body as a way toward thought,

a thought which would query the root of male-centric contemplation, that which would not

silence her voice granting her the chance to illustrate her unconscious latent self and the

erogenous pleasures and thus more political and social accompolishments will be achieved in the

society.