My blog - the best bits, 2016. (Working-class) woman must write herself

At one point in my blog I quoted the wonderful French Feminist, Helene Cixous. Her words have become even more poignant since I started to write myself:

‘Woman must write herself: must write about women and bring women to writing, from which they have been driven away as violently as from their bodies - for the same reasons, by the same laws, with the same fatal goal. Woman must put herself into the text - as into the world and into history.’

‘And I was afraid. She frightens me because she can knock me down with a word. Because she does not know that writing is walking on a dizzying silence setting one word on another on emptiness. Writing is miraculous and terrifying like the flight of a bird who has no wings but flings itself out and only gets wings by flying.’

Helene Cixous

btw I once had the privilege of attending a conference given by the equally wonderful Luce Irigaray, another of the French Feminists. Afterwards, they were selling a selection of her texts books. For a small extra fee (a few quid as far as I remember)Irigaray would sign it for you (fair dues, fair dues). I have my signed text book in my bookcase at home.