The insistence on dethroning the self, the transition towards literature: The movements of Hélène Cixous's work

Abstract

When outlining the passions from which literature suffers, Jacques Derrida said that “There's no essence nor substance of literature: literature is not, does not exist, does not linger in the identity of a nature”. By reading fragments extracted from Hélène Cixous's work, I will test this proposition in order to establish if by insisting on the self without giving it an identity, she actually dethrones it, stripping it of its attributes, turning it, like her own works, into an “unidentifiable literary object”. As if “language was heard for the first time”, both the self and the writing are figured through overlaps and obliterations of historical and autobiographical features that establish a place of terror and, at the same time, resurrection, what could be called a transition to literature. And isn't this intertwining between the language heard for the first time, event and psychic reality what Derrida named as “fictional hyperrealism”?