Hélène Cixous’s Écriture féminine, from Illusion to Reality:A Critical Examination of the Reception of Her Theory in Selected Persian Theoretical Studies

As feminist movements gained momentum in the second half of the twentieth century, many literary theorists set out to address the possibility and quality of feminine writing. One of them was Hélène Cixous, the French critic who introduced the theory of écriture féminine in her classic paper “The Laugh of the Medusa,” causing a lot of controversy in Western academic circles. In Iran, too, many researchers have dealt with écriture féminine to analyze it from literary and socio-moral perspectives. Nonetheless, for certain reasons, including the absence of a complete Persian translation of “The Laugh of the Medusa,” many studies conducted by Iranian researchers suffer from ideologically-laden or inaccurate readings of Cixous’s theory. The present study launches a critical examination of one of the most frequently read Persian articles on écriture féminine to identify certain established stereotypes in related theoretical Persian studies. The paper, then, attempts to resolve the ambiguities about écriture féminine within the context of Poststructuralist Feminism and by citing Cixous’s own words. Thus, the questions tackled by the present study are how écriture féminine has been received in theoretical Persian studies and whether these receptions have been accurate. In so doing, the study first provides a brief explanation of the main themes of Cixous’s paper and, then, the selected theoretical Persian studies are critiqued. The findings demonstrate that, contrary to conventional suppositions, not only is écriture féminine not limited to the writings of female authors, but it does not necessarily reject any such socio-moral institutions as marriage, pregnancy, and motherhood, either.