Standing apart/being a part

Hélène Cixous defines her Jewish identity in relation to her French and Algerian identities as well as to her German affiliation. The key question Cixous's work seeks to answer is how to appropriate an identity that is not clearly defined for her. Jewishness creates a form of lack within identity, something that cannot be said or thought directly. This is why Cixous needs to play with words that evoke Jewishness, to generate a linguistic disorder designed to write something for which there are no words. Cixous's true belonging is thus ultimately built only on literature.Keywords: Hélène CixousJewishnessneuterbelongingidentity Notes1. Hélène Cixous, So Close, trans. Peggy Kamuf (Malden, USA: Polity Press, 2009), 19.2. See Jacques Derrida, Psyché. Inventions de l'autre II (Paris: Galilée, 2003), 255.3. Hélène Cixous, Firstdays of the Year, trans. Catherine A.F. MacGillivray (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1998), 80.4. Hélène Cixous, Le Rire de la Méduse et autres ironies (Paris: Galilée, 2010).5. Hélène Cixous, Neuter, trans. Lorene M. Birden (Cranbury, NJ: Rosemont Publishing, 2004), 40.6. Cixous, So Close, 75.7. Daniel Sibony, Les Trois Monothéismes. Juifs, Chrétiens, Musulmans, entre leurs sources et leurs destins (Paris: Seuil, 'Points', 1997), 89.8. See Maurice Blanchot, L'Entretien infini (Paris: Gallimard, 1969).9. Hélène Cixous, Manhattan: Letters from Prehistory, trans. Beverly Bie (New York: Fordham University Press, 2007), 5.10. Cixous, So Close, 89.11. Ibid.12. Ibid., 72–3.13. Ibid., 73.14. Ibid.15. Ibid.16. See for example Marthe Robert, Seul, comme Franz Kafka (Paris: Calmann-Lévy, 1979).17. Cixous, Manhattan, 214.18. Cixous, Neuter, 69.19. Ibid., 79.20. See Jacques Derrida, Spectres de Marx (Paris: Galilée, 1993) Here he evokes a 'faire-tenir-ensemble'.21. See Jean-Loup Amselle, Branchements. Anthropologie de l'universalité des cultures (Paris: Flammarion, 2001), 89. This origin's patchwork is indeed linked by Amselle to Derrida's deconstruction.22. Cixous, Firstdays, 134.23. Ibid., 55, 56.24. See Jacques Derrida, La Voix et le Phénomène (Paris: PUF, 'Quadrige', 1998).25. See Shmuel Trigano, Philosophie de la loi. L'origine politique de la Tora (Paris: éditions du Cerf, 'Passages', 1991), 173.26. Cixous, So Close, 148.27. Jacques Derrida, Le Monolinguisme de l'autre (Paris: Galilée, 1996).28. See Jacques Derrida, La Voix et le Phénomène, 75–7.29. Cixous, Firstdays, 80.30. Ibid., 56.31. Cixous, So Close, 72.32. Cixous, Firstdays, 3, 141.33. Ibid., 136, 137

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