A01=Helene Cixous
American
Author_Helene Cixous
avant garde
Category=FBA
critical theory
eq_bestseller
eq_fiction
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_modern-contemporary
eq_nobargain
European
literature
memoir
modernism
modernist
poetry
theory
twentieth century
Product details
- ISBN 9780810123649
- Weight: 180g
- Dimensions: 154 x 227mm
- Publication Date: 29 May 2006
- Publisher: Northwestern University Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Paperback
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In this memoir-novel, a narrator who resembles Helene Cixous obsessively recounts an incident - the premature death of her first-born child, a Down syndrome baby left in the care of the clinic in Algeria where her midwife mother works. She uses this event to probe her family history and her relationship with her mother, a refugee from Nazi Germany; her dead father, after whom the baby is named; and her medical-student brother, who takes on some of the duties of a father figure. Cixous's elusive writing bears all the trademarks of her poetic, provocative style, vivid with word play, intense feeling and a stream-of-consciousness that moves freely over time and place. The narrator's mother claims not to remember what happened, and the brother tries to fill in some gaps in the story. By the end of the book we understand the significance of the title: one day Cixous's mother returned to the clinic to find the baby on the brink of death. Rather than attempt to save him she chose to end his suffering. By closing the door to the imaginary clinic at the end, the narrator at last resolves the feelings of guilt and realizes that each human being has a fate they must endure. Informed by psychoanalytical theory, and always brutally honest, ""The Day I Wasn't There"" is above all an intimate study of a woman's inner landscape.
Helene Cixous is a French writer, feminist philosopher, playwright, critic, and activist who continues to influence writers, scholars, and feminists around the world. Her recent works include Reveries of the Wild Woman (Northwestern, forthcoming), The Third Body (Northwestern, 1999), Veils (with Jacques Derrida) (Stanford, 2001), Portrait of Jacques Derrida as a Young Jewish Saint (Columbia, 2003), and The Writing Notebooks of Helene Cixous (Continuum, 2004). Beverley Bie Brahic is also the translator of Helene Cixous's Reveries of the Wild Woman.
