Reviews

Double Oblivion of the Ourang-Outang by Hélène Cixous

katerinasiap's review

4.0

This was a hard read but predictable enough for anyone who has been previously acquainted with Cixous. Throughout its most part I could not understand what I was reading either because it was too difficult for my senses and focal capability or because its very deliberate abstraction served exactly that; to remain abstract. I could say that it was somehow enjoyable nonetheless.

My interpretation is that this book is all about Cixous the philosopher meeting Cixous the private individual. The narrative - if it can even be called that - is highly fragmentary and it witnesses her deep bond and mental connection with important names of the literary world. Perhaps her intention was right from the beginning to provide the reader with a mere glimpse of that and sustain the rest as abstract and therefore unreachable as possible. In any case, I felt charmed by Cixous's perplexed way of thinking as it was unraveled before me within and through this book.

jimmylorunning's review

5.0

Hélène Cixous
Region: Western Philosophy.
School: French feminism.
Main interests: Literary criticism. [...]
"She has published over 70 works; her fiction, dramatic writing and poetry, however, are not often read in English" -- Wikipedia

Oh but people! But but but but... people! Wake up! Don't let your lethargic willingness to give in to the maddening inertia of air conditioned rooms filled with post-structuralist slack-jawed graduate students blind you to the fucking truth, man! For we have here one of the greatest (still living!) writers of fiction/fact/creative nonfiction/poetry/poetic essay (whatever this book happens to be, I don't even know). Maybe her academic theoretical work is great also. I have no idea. I've only read this one book. But whatever your thoughts on that are, don't pigeonhole her as an academic or theoretician, because this book is so much more, it's a writer's book, and everything I look for in the best of my reading experience: warmth, humor, sensuality, language, poetry, philosophy, inventiveness, playfulness, emotion, messiness, unruliness, surprise, craziness.

"The word mum still fascinates us, it's a gem, as if we had kept a milk tooth. This can only be said in all modesty. I myself say mum to my son or daughter and we murmur Rimbaud in amongst the broom flowers between fables and seas."

What is this book about? Well, I don't really know. It's about so many things. But on some very concrete level it's about Hélène Cixous opening up a box that she finds in her cupboard. Which I guess goes to show that a great writer can write about anything and make it great. This was not an easy read, but it was so pleasurable that I didn't mind re-reading many passages over again to understand them. Also, I'm sure my understanding is only partial: she alludes to so many other works, as well as personal things that I feel like I'm not even supposed to know.

There is none more cast out by happiness than he who discovers its doorway. On the one hand the subject surpasses the teller. On the other the teller snuffs out the subject upon which he breathes. And yet how can one not want to be surpassed?

I am not saying this book is poetic. Because even though it is, it is also not. Not in that typical lyrical way. It is very down to earth and personal, I just mean that she has a very particular way of saying things that makes me have to constantly catch my breath.

"For me, theory does not come before, to inspire, it does not precede, does not dictate, but rather it is a consequence of my text, which is at its origin philosophico-poetical, and it is a consequence in the form of compromise or urgent necessity. [...] Never has a theory inspired my poetic texts. It is my poetic text that sits down from time to time on a bench or else at a café table - that's what I am in the process of doing at this moment by the way - to make itself heard in univocal, more immediately audible terms. In other words, it is always a last resort for me." -- an interview

I was not surprised when I read that quote. I get the sense even from this non-theory book that she writes in order to think instead of the other way around. For this reason, even though there are many ideas in this book, I would not lump it in with other idea books. Even novels of ideas (like that excellent [b:Mosley book|147493|Impossible Object|Nicholas Mosley|http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1348227259s/147493.jpg|142346] I just finished) seem more like an explication of an already fully formed vision. Whereas for Cixous, the vision is always formed in the writing. The struggle to say what she means is also the meaning of what she says.

This creates a deeply maddening, sometimes repetitive, highly entertaining and insightful struggle as you're reading it. It doesn't hurt that her style, on the sentence to sentence level, is also messy, full of clauses, sometimes ungrammatical, with made up words or words jammed together in playful ways. It's like one big brainstorm of words. It's wonderful, and it's confusing, but it actually makes sense, it's actually crystal clear and enlightening when you follow her thought.

The Serpent Oblivion devours my lions one after the other. Sated. What's left is the Serpent full of lions. When will the Serpent's Serpent come? At the end of death when the dead are dead, says Poe to Baudelaire, the teeth are left. As soon as you are foolhardy enough to think of them, they rise up and bite.

One last note. Please read/re-read these Poe stories before you read this book, as they are referenced at times in minute detail:

The Gold-Bug
William Wilson
The Murders in the Rue Morgue
The Purloined Letter