Sorties: Lacking Propre Desire

One can no more speak of woman than of man without being trapped within an
ideological theater where the proliferation of representations, images, reflections, myths,
identifications, transform, deform, constantly change everyones Imaginary and invalidate in
advance any conceptualization.
Hlne Cixous

This paper argues that Hlne Cixous rewrites fminine in criture fminine (writing
feminine as opposed to the traditional translation, feminine writing), beyond the
boundaries of cultural representation, and in fact beyond representation into that
which makes all writing possible. For Cixous, Writing makes love other. It is itself
this love. Other-Love is writings first name (Sorties 99) [1]. Other-Love makes
writing possible. For Cixous, this is feminine. criture fminine unveils the illusion of
masculine discourse, which excludes and represses this element of feminine in
writing.
Reading Cixous in translation in fact, the very act of translation brings feminine to
bear. Translation reveals how the oppressive masculine law can be undermined, and
allows for an encounter with Other-ness. Contrary to some readings of Cixous, this
paper argues that Cixous writings do not generate a law of feminine or feminine as
thing/essence that can exist without the masculine discourse. Rather, it argues that the
masculine law is necessary for feminine to be demonstrated in the first place, but in
this very act of demonstration, gives gaps from which we can enter in the between of
any laws at work, thereby re-visioning differences in the relationship
between criture and fminine.
Jacques Lacan, in drawing on Ferdinand de Saussures linguistic theory to account for
his development and revision of Freudian psychoanalysis, emphasizes the importance
of the symbolic language system in the constitution of subjectivity. In beginning with
Lacans formulation of subjectivity in language, we can see how Cixous re-writes the
notions of writing and feminine.
For Lacan, the subject stems from the mirror stage, when the child realizes its
separation from its mother. The child then identifies himself with the
visual Gestalt of his own body... [and to the child,] it represents an ideal unity, a
salutory imago (Lacan Ecrits 19). Lacan calls this a mconnaissance (misrecognition), a fantasy of a unified image which conceals the fragmentary nature of
the childs existence and generates a false sense of wholeness.
What this shows is that it is in the other that the subject is born. Subjectivity is
dependent on the separation of the mother and the external image of itself. The
emergence of the subject is necessarily structured by a lack as it is at once itself and
the other, although the other is rejected in its assertion for self.

For Lacan, the articulation of this identity occurs only in the Symbolic Order. Lacans
Symbolic Order is based on Saussurean linguistics, a referential system that refers to
categories and terms (signs) within its own context and nothing beyond it. A sign is
constituted by two elements, the signifier (e.g. the word cat) and the signified (the
concept of cat). The relationship between these two elements is arbitrary (there is no
physical or necessary relation between signifier and signified), and meaning between
signs are constituted through difference. Thus, we derive the meaning of cat because
the word cat is different from other words, like dog or cow (Saussure 65 70).
An existence in such a language system always implicates the other. As Lacan writes,
The subject is born insofar as the signifier emerges in the field of the Other. But by
that very fact, this subject which was previously nothing if not a subject coming into
being solidifies into a signifier ( The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis 199). This means that the subject takes its form in language as I, which
creates the illusion of stability and unity.
However, this I in language is the least stable of signifiers as its meaning is a
function of the moment of enunciation. Emil Benveniste makes this clear in his
distinction between nonce andnonciation. This means that the I in language is
also split, into the subject of enunciation and the enunciating subject. The example of
the statement I am lying shows that there are two subjects, one lying, one not. Thus,
I is an unstable signifier that shifts its position when the enunciating subject
changes. The split within the I in language mirrors and reflects the split subject in
language (Benveniste 223 30).
Language itself is structured by a lack because it is there to stand in the place of the
thing. According to Lacan, the unity of signification... proves never to be resolved
into pure indication of the real, but always refers back to another signification, and
[no] signification can be sustained other than by reference to another signification...
( Ecrits 126, 150). In other words, the meaning of any signification is derived only
from the absence and exclusion of another. This lack of the signified leads only to a
constant shift along a chain of unstable signifiers without a centre, just as the signifier
is itself without a centre and empty until we invest it with meaning. Lacan goes on to
say that it is the connection between signifier and signified... that permits the elision
in which the signifier installs the lack-of-being in the object relation, using the value
of reference back possessed by signification ... to invest it with desire aimed at the
very lack it supports (164). This means that language is structured by a lack that
creates desire.
Desire is expressed in language and addressed to an other. This implies that the
subject sees the other as a site of knowledge and certainty which appears to hold the
truth of the subject, as well as the site that makes good its loss. However, demand in
itself bears on something other than the satisfactions which it calls for... (Lacan The
Meaning of the Phallus 80). This is because the original object is lost. Lacan
describes this insatiable desire as the shift of the signifier along an endless chain of

signifiers. The other becomes the site in which the lack/desire is a created, projected
and sustained because of the lost object that results in symbolization. Desire is
actually the desire of the Other (Lacan Ecrits 264).
Since it is from the Other that everything else takes its relation, we can conclude that
the heart of the Symbolic Order is lack/desire. This lack/desire is the Law of the
Father, the structuring principle of language. However, this Law that structures
language creates only the desire to fill the gap, without fulfillment or pleasure. The
Law of prohibition willfully sustains and desires lack. Desire becomes an endless
process of difference and absence in the movement of signifiers along the chain of
signifiers. For Lacan, it is situated in dependence on demand which, by being
articulated in signifiers, leaves a metonymic remainder that runs under it... an element
necessarily lacking, unsatisfied, impossible, misconstrued... ( The Four Fundamental
Concepts of Psycho-analysis 154, italics mine). The perpetual effect of symbolic
articulation is a desire that is essentially excessive and insatiable, and the fulfillment
of such a lack in this way is an impossibility that will continue as long as language is
used.
Like Freud, it is simply desire for Lacan because he believed that there was no
libido other than the masculine. Thus, any concept of subjectivity, the I, is
necessarily masculine. In this way, writing and subjectivity cannot be separated, and
masculine inscription is possible only in the exclusion of feminine. This is where
many feminist psychoanalytic critics begin in their criticisms of Lacan. Cixous departs
from a similar sortie (exit).
It is important to see Cixous criture fminine as a text that has to be read. This is
because her boundaries between theory and fiction are fluid, making her theory read
like fiction and vice versa. This is how she plays with difference while maintaining
them. In reading Cixous, it is always tous les deux (Cixous Rootprints 25), which
translates as all of the two, or more literally, all the twos.
Thus, accusations by Cixous critics, like Domma Stanton who says that for Cixous,
the devalued term in phallologic becomes the superior value but the system of binary
oppositions remain the same... [and so, reproduces] the dichotomy between male
rationality and female materiality, corporeality and sexuality (167), are misconstrued.
While Cixous uses these binary oppositions, it cannot be said that she plays into the
masculine trap. Cixous begins with traditionally established dichotomies as
springboards to demonstrate criture fminine by first re-valourizing the subjugated
term in binary-systems, before going on to redefining these poles to mean something
altogether, thereby creating a new relationship (exchange) between the two. This is
what she does in rewriting desire.
For Cixous, there is feminine, other desire. Cixous writes that when woman is rejected
to become the other, she is objectified to become the principle of consistency...
everyday and eternal, that makes the I possible. At the same time, she is in the
suspense, in what will soon be, always differed (Sorties 67). What this implies is

that Cixous identifies the metonymic remainder, the excess that shifts from signifier to
signifier as the feminine. Feminine as the metonymic remainder means that it is the
necessary in articulation, but in itself cannot be articulated because the Symbolic
Order functions on grounds of the propre (signifier to signified), and this excess
belongs to the realm of the non- propre (signifier to signifier in an endless chain).
Betsy Wing translates propre in Cixous texts as selfsame which usefully draws
the connection between language (translation) and identity. In translating propre
this way, we can see how problematic it is in constituting an identity in language. It
leaves out connotations of ownership, appropriation and property in propre, and the
economic and political overtones are important in understanding Cixous strategy of
beginning with sexual difference, but aiming at any form of difference. The sexual
and the economical-political come together when we read propre as clean or tidy.
As Wing puts it, women are often expected to care for values of cleanliness and
propriety, deeply involved with what is propre, but is... never quite propre herself
(167).
Thus, feminine desire can only be demonstrated through unveiling of
the propre through play and translation. It is no longer about representation
(the propre) as it moves beyond economy (necessary for representation) into the realm
of the gift/love that is writing. In shifting from the propre to the non- propre, Cixous
opens the field of self-sameness up to otherness ( altrit) that cannot be theorized...
[but] escapes... is elsewhere, outside: absolutely other (Sorties 71). Seen in this
light, feminine is the impossible because it cannot be represented. However, this is an
impossibility that can be demonstrated in translation, the act that unveils the bodyvoice of the other and this must be examined in terms of jouissance.