Stigmata

Helene Cixous -- author, playwright and French feminist theorist -- is a key figure in twentieth-century literary theory. Stigmata brings together her most recent essays for the first time.
Acclaimed for her intricate and challenging writing style, Cixous presents a collection of texts that get away -- escaping the reader, the writers, the book. Cixous's writing pursues authors such as Stendhal, Joyce, Derrida, and Rembrandt, da Vinci, Picasso -- works that share an elusive movement in spite of striking differences. Along the way these essays explore a broad range of poetico-philosophical questions that have become characteristic of Cixous' work:
* love's labours lost and found
* feminine hours
* autobiographies of writing
* the prehistory of the work of art
Stigmata goes beyond theory, becoming an extraordinary writer's testimony to our lives and times.

Reading in painting 1 Bathsheba or the interior Bible 2 Without end, no, State of drawingness, no, rather: The Executioner's taking off. Ringing in the feminine hour 3 In October 1991 ... 4 Hiss of the axe 5 What is it o'clock? or The door (we never enter) 6 Love of the wolf 7 'Mamãe, disse ele,' or Joyce's second hand, Going off writing 8 Unmasked! 9 Writing blind: conversation with the donkey 10 My Algeriance, in other words: to depart not to arrive from Algeria. From my menagerie to Philosophy 11 Shared at dawn 12 Stigmata, or Job the dog