"Within her preface to Le Rire de la Méduse et autres ironies (2010), a republication of 'Le Rire' and some of her other essays, Cixous transcribes a conversation with her Medusa that conveys this sentiment:
Elle pose sa couronne, s’assied, rose, et puis : où sont les femmes aujourd’hui ? dis-je. – En 2003, je suis née et j’ai vécu en Corée, on arrivait en 1970, dit la couronnée. Tout de suite après, ce sont des latinas qui m’ont appelée, et ces jours-ci je vis en Californie. C’est l’Heure de la Méduse entre les Amériques. Je n’arrête pas de galoper les airs d’Asie. Et en France, c’est comment ? – Je crains qu’il faille que tu reviennes voler devant ma fenêtre, dis-je. Ce temps-ci l’air est plein d’algues, on étouffe et ne rit pas beaucoup.
('Un effet d’épine rose' 33)
She settles her crown, sits, pink, and then: where are the women today? I said. – In 2003, I was born and lived in Korea, we got there in 1970, said the crowned. Right after, the Latinas called me, and these days I live in California. It is the Hour of the Medusa in the Americas. I never stop galloping the airs of Asia. And in France, how is it? – I fear that you need to come back and fly by my window, I say. Right now the air is full of algae, we are stifled and do not laugh very much.
(my translation)
If there is a lack of the 'laughter' once inspired by the Cixousian Medusa, in France and elsewhere, does this suggest a return to the repression of the body that Cixous had worked to rehabilitate through the rewriting of the Medusa? Is the femme fatale in popular culture being reclaimed as an empowering form of female sexuality? A glance at some fairly recent film releases, (the dangerous female is a particularly scopic fetish) in France and the United States seem to confirm the fabrication of female bodies as a locus of danger and desire (Elle, 2016; Teeth, 2007; La Forêt de Quinconces, 2016). Is it still desirable to depict women as devilish, femme fatale endowed with an uncontrollable sexuality that endows women with power over men? Is this a real (feminist) answer to sexual inequality? These are the 'dangerous' questions that we must continue to ask as we reflect on Cixous’s essay and its continuing relevance today."
~ Raquelle K. Bostow
