In this exchange the acclaimed and prolific author Hélène Cixous discusses the practice of writing – considering fiction, theatre, the essay and poetry – alongside its relation to painting, music and philosophy. As the dialogue with Adrian Heathfield evolves, writing emerges as a site and instrument for encounters with other voices and otherness, mortality and mystery, the infinite and the ‘not yet thought’.
Recorded in Cixous’ home in Paris, the conversation is punctuated by various interruptions and affinities (animal and familial) that are taken into the movement of her thought. Cixous’ discourse flies between subjects as diverse as the song of the poetic, the temporality of invention, the re-thinking of the tragic, and the word becoming flesh and air in theatre.
This engaging, eloquent and passionate exchange will be of interest to artists, writers, and readers in the fields of theatre and performance, literature and the visual arts.
Hélène Cixous is an eminent French thinker, writer, educator and theatre maker. Her experiments in writing, including the development of ‘l’écriture feminine’ for which she is renowned, have had a wide-ranging influence on the fields of feminism, cultural theory, philosophy, literary criticism and theatre practice. She is Professor Emerita of Literature and Women’s Studies at the Université Paris 8 and Andrew D. White Professor at Large at Cornell University, New York.
Direction, Camera and Editing: Hugo Glendinning
Duration: 58 minutes
DVD Design: David Caines
Writing Not Yet Thought is produced by Performance Matters
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Homepage image: Hugo Glendinning and Adrian Heathfield, Writing Not Yet Thought (video still), 2010. © the artists.
Read an edited transcript of the exchange below