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At the beginning o f this chapter I have written in detail about the problematic representation o f Cixous in Anglo-America as a ‘feminist’ and ‘theoretician’ exclusively. This was despite the multifaceted nature o f her writings. In fact, similar to the criticisms Barthes has received in many parts o f the world, Cixous’s diversity was

not always taken as a positive thing either. In her widely read book Sexual/Textual

Politics, Toril Moi starts her highly critical chapter on Cixous - conspicuously titled “Hélène Cixous; an Imaginary Utopia” - with a quotation from Walt Whitman: “Do I contradict myself?/ Very well then... I contradict myself; / I am large... I contain multitudes” (1985:102). Cixous was “constantly shifting and realigning herself’ (Conley 1992:129) and this probably only intensified the efforts to canonise and categorise her.

Yet this was not a very easy thing to do. There seems to be a general consensus among those who write about Cixous that her work is difficult to classify according to

the established genre divisions: “It is quite clear that for Cixous there is as much

‘theory’ in a text marked clearly by the word ‘novel’ on its title page as there is ‘fiction’ or ‘novel’ or ‘autobiography’ in a text that would seem to advertise itself as ‘theory’” (Penrod 1996:xii). Her ‘theoretical’ texts or ‘essays’ are “as much prose poems as critical or theoretical statements” (Suleiman 1991 :xi). These texts are “written creatively”, while her plays and fiction “work on theory” (Ward Jouve 1991:49). Despite this difficulty in classification, the name ‘Hélène Cixous’ symbolised French

feminist critics. As long as they needed ‘Cixous the feminist theoretician’, her critical texts on women’s issues were chosen for translation.

As in the case o f Barthes, however, this earlier image o f Cixous did not stay the same, and was modified and accompanied by another - Cixous the writer and playwright. As we have seen in 4.2.3., until about 1986 her plays, novels, novellas, and short story collections were often represented mainly in excerpt form. The few available

fictions in English, like Angst, were “solidified into a false representativeness” (Ward

Jouve 1991:49). As for her plays. Portrait de Dora remained the best known: “Among

her theatrical works it holds the same position as ‘The Laugh o f the M edusa’” says Penrod (1996:139). Ironically, since this play was based on Freud’s famous ‘case study o f hysteria’, such a limited representation might have created further alienation on the part o f American feminist readers, who were then either totally against or, at best, very cautious about psychoanalysis (2.2.2.).

After 1986, more o f Cixous’s works o f fiction and plays were translated, either in excerpt form or as a whole (see the bibliography). Several o f these translations were undertaken by her group 4 translators^^"^. This might be both due to the influence o f

Cixous’s personal network in the Centre, which must have provided the opportunity to

introduce diverse texts to the Anglophone readers, as well as to the increasing internal diversity o f the Anglo-American market, which allowed her fiction and plays to address new audiences apart from the feminist critics. As a sign o f this changing image, several books exclusively on Cixous appeared in English in the 1990s (e.g. Shiach 1991; Conley 1992; Penrod 1996; Sellers 1996). These books focus more on Cixous’s ‘creative w riting’: novels, short stories and plays. They all start with prefaces where the writers express their wish to introduce a long-neglected aspect o f Cixous’s work. For example:

M y aim in this introductory study [...] is to explore the development o f her

fictional and dramatic writing in the context o f her theory o f écriture féminine.

Although Cixous is primarily known in the English-speaking world for her work as a feminist and literary critic, this in fact constitutes only a small

E.g. The Conquest o f the School at Madhubai, trans. Deborah Carpenter. 1986; “The Last Word”, excerpt from Le livre de Promethea, trans. Susan Sellers and Ann Liddle. 1986; Five excerpts from Le livre de Promethea, trans. Deborah Carpenter. 1987; 1989 “Writings on the Theater”, trans. Catherine Franke. 1989. [Excerpts from L ’Indiade, on l 'Inde de leur rêves, et quelques écrits sur le théâtre]’, “Dedication to the Ostrich”, trans. Catherine Franke. 1989 [Excerpt fiomManne aux Mandelstams aux Mandelas]-, “The Day of Condemnation”, trans. Catherine A.F. MacGillavray. 1992 [Excerpt from Manne aux Mandelstams aux Mandelas]’, Manna, fo r the Mandelstams fo r the Mandelas, trans. Catherine A.F. MacGillavray. 1994.

proportion o f her œuvre. [...] In choosing to focus here on her literary texts, I am hoping, therefore, to redress this imbalance (Sellers 1996:xi)'^^.

Cixous’s shifting image - and the co-existence o f her different images - can be observed in several articles and books written about her in the 1990s. Cixous is “a contemporary French writer, critic, and theorist”, says Morag Shiach (1991:1). Verena Andermatt Conley observes that “[Cixous] addresses broad issues o f cultural exchange

through the medium o f writing^' and “remains foremost a writer who blurs the accepted

lines between styles, modes and genres; between reading and writing; and, especially, between the cultural roles traditionally assigned to poetry, psychoanalysis and philosophy” (1992:xiii-xiv) [Emphases in the original]. “ [Cixous] calls for a different style o f reading,” notes Gayatri Spivak, “because she writes as a writer, not as a philosopher, although she is deeply marked by her own version o f the philosophies of writing and o f the Other” (1993:154). It is worth noting that translators from group 4, such as Susan Sellers and Verena Andermatt Conley, are also among those who tried to “redress the imbalance” in recent years. Thanks to these concentrated efforts to do ‘better justice’ to Cixous’s oeuvre - if not exactly due to a more representative selection o f texts to be translated - a greater number o f people in the Anglophone world came to recognise the name Hélène Cixous as a playwright and fiction writer as well as a ‘feminist theoretician’.

4.5. Conclusions

In this chapter I have tried to demonstrate how translation and translator patterns influenced - and were in turn influenced by - the particularities o f the reception o f Barthes in Turkey and Cixous in Anglo-America; how these patterns helped to create, sustain and transform the images o f these two writers; and, how they strengthened or challenged the prevailing attitudes towards the importation o f certain (literary) (theoretical) texts. I have also shown how a writer’s persistent or shifting images affect the distribution o f source texts among the translators and across time.

The translation patterns, i.e. the choice o f texts (not) to be translated and when (not) to translate them, reflect the needs, expectations, and self-perception o f the receiving

Nevertheless, even such good-willed projects prove to be problematic because o f the absence of translations: “[...] I have focused on a relatively small number o f her fictional texts which seem to illuminate her writing project as it develops. The non-availability o f most o f these texts in translation raises particular problems for the discussion o f a writer who is so committed to the materiality o f the signifier, and whose writing firequently plays on rhythms, verbal echoes, and puns, which are hard to render into English” (Shiach 19914).

systems. As perceived representatives o f structuralism and semiotics and o f French feminism, respectively, both Barthes and Cixous were welcomed against the background o f the debates discussed in Chapter 2. Their texts were chosen for translation according to the local interests and agendas. The anachronistic and partial selection defined the initial and most durable images o f these two writers in the relevant receiving systems. Their work was thus “rehistoricised” and “recontextualised” (cf. Robinson 1995:47-48). Furthermore, the translations arrived with delays despite the apparent popularity o f the writers. Their representativeness, as well as much o f the criticism directed at them, was based on a limited number o f translations arriving in the wrong sequential order. All o f these points attest to the domesticating power o f translation regardless o f the power differentials involved between the source and receiving systems. Whatever attitude is taken towards importation, whatever trope o f

translation is adhered to, the imported discursive elements were transformed in these

two cases.

Similarly, in both cases translator patterns had an impact on the reception o f the writers in question. The professional profiles o f the translators and their intellectual affiliations played a role in the formation o f the images and in their gradual transformation. Conversely, attitudes towards the importation o f the theories in question influenced the selection o f translators (in cases where the commissioner and the translator is not the one and the same person) and the translators’ choice o f texts (in cases where the translators themselves determined which texts would be translated and pubhshed).

In both o f the cases I have examined one writer symbolised a much wider and variegated field. Such a personification, where diverse and heterogeneous movements, schools o f thought - and, in today’s international politics, whole nations and cultures - are reduced to a single person, makes it easier to present these persons as the culprits and to attack or dismiss the imaginary totality they ostensibly represent'

A similar attitude can be seen in the representation o f deconstruction mainly through the works o f Jacques Derrida.

CHAPTER 5