Theorist, novelist, playwright, and educational innovator Hélène Cixous is one of the best-known of the late-20th-century “French feminists.” Her work, often considered deconstructive, is known for its experimental writing that crosses the traditional limits of academic discourse into poetic language. In addition to studies of Derrida and Joyce, she has written on the work of the Brazilian writer Clarice Lispector, Maurice Blanchot, Franz Kafka, Heinrich von Kleist, Michel de Montaigne, Ingeborg Bachmann, Thomas Bernhard, and the Russian poet Maria Tsvetayeva.

Professor and co-founder of University of Paris-VIII, Cixous is recognized in the United States primarily for developing écriture féminine, a method of dealing with subjective difference in writing and social theory, and overcoming the limits of Western logocentrism. Écriture féminine is a practice that addresses Cixous’ ongoing concern with the effects of difference, exclusion, and the struggle for identity.