Cirrus@Austlit

Can women have some other way of writing? If so, what is it? Such questions have been asked in literary theory for a long time, and now, as a writer, I tried to gain my own understanding of the creative process. French theorists Hélène Cixous and Luce Irigaray answered with a resounding yes, but the écriture féminine they posited still seemed constrained by the binaries they fought so hard against. Even though I knew that feminine meant much more than anatomical sex or performed gender in this context, when Cixous spoke of a “universal woman subject to emerge and bring women to their senses” (880), I couldn’t imagine what this universal woman might look like. What colour would she be? What characteristics would she have? Would she be she at all? 'Informed by the corporeal philosophies of Elisabeth Grosz and Karina Quinn (Eades), and the creative texts of Marguerite Duras, Clarice Lispector and Lidia Yuknavitch, I began to explore the idea of a corporeal writing. Writing of and through bodies, writing that seeks to increase diversity by representing body in all its complexities. The association of masculine texts with universality and feminine texts with particularity has been well documented and critiqued. Corporeal writing provides a platform and a counterpoint to the conception of universal experience, not only for women, but for all. Presented here is not a roadmap. I am not advocating a set of rules to be followed. Instead, this body offers reflections — one writer’s experiences — the sensations related to being one of a multitude.' (Introduction)