SOURCE: "Hélène Cixous: An Imaginary Utopia," in Sexual/Textual Politics: Feminist Literary Theory, Methuen, 1985, pp. 102-26.

Moi is an American educator and critic who has written extensively about various issues in literature, film, and feminist critical theory. In the essay below, she provides an overview of Cixous's fundamental tenets, stating that despite flaws in her works they "nevertheless [constitute an invigorating utopian evocation of the imaginative powers of women."]

      Do I contradict myself?
      Very well then … I contradict myself;
      I am large … I contain multitudes.
                             (Walt Whitman)

An Excerpt from "the Laugh of the Medusa"

I maintain unequivocally that there is such a thing as marked writing; that, until now, far more extensively and repressively than is ever, suspected or admitted, writing has been run by a libidinal and cultural—hence political, typically masculine—economy; that this is a locus where the repression of women has...