Ecriture Féminine as Metaphor

A comparison of the works of two French feminist writers of the nineteenth century -- Claire Demar & Helene Cixous. Two contradictions that underlie their ecriture feminine are explored: (1) their simultaneous rejection & imitation of the leading masculine discourses of the time -- deconstruction & Lacanian psychoanalysis for Cixous, & Romanticism & Saint Simonian socialist/feminist mysticism for Demar; & (2) the radical cleavage that their works create between the practice of writing & of sociopolitics. Ways that these contradictions are expressed through a maternal metaphor are explored, along with how they attempted, through rhetoric, to escape the traditionally paternal structures of Western language that excluded women & their sexuality. K. Hyatt