SOURCE: "Introduction to Hélène Cixous's 'Castration or Decapitation?'" in Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, Vol. 7, No. 1, Autumn, 1981, pp. 36-40.

Kuhn is an English critic and educator who has written or edited numerous works on feminism, including The Power of the Image: Essays on Representation and Sexuality (1985) and The Feminist Companion Guide to Cinema (1990). In the essay below, she provides background information on Cixous and places her essay "Castration or Decapitation?" in the context of linguistic theory. Kuhn also notes that while Cixous simply attacks male-centered theories of language in this essay, her later works offer an alternative feminist view.

Hélène Cixous is a writer, a professor, and the initiator of the women's studies program at the University of Paris VIII at Vincennes. She is the author of numerous texts—novels, plays, works of criticism, poetry, essays—and has become quite...