SOURCE: "Discourses That Enact Their Subjects," in The American Book Review, Vol. 14, No. 2, June-July, 1992, p. 16.

In the following excerpt, Baker offers a positive review of "Coming to Writing," and Other Essays. He states that while Cixous's works can be difficult and that readers must come to her writing with "a certain openness," she "may be the theorist who most clearly opens the way for a writerly kind of feminist thinking."

That a discourse can or even should enact what it describes, or be like what it is about, is one of the discoveries claimed (and, of course, immediately therefore disputed) by various feminisms. I am one who thinks a certain credit should be given to feminist writers, and feminist theorists in particular, for breaking down the monological discourse of correctness and objectivity that represents one aspect of the patriarchy. Hélène Cixous … [constructs a discourse] responsive to...