H E L E N E C I X O U S I LOVE YOU: THE JOUISSANCE OF WRITING Helene Cixous is a challenging and lyrical French feminist and writer, author of the influential essay "The Laugh of the Medusa" and (with Catherine Clement) The Newly-Born Woman. Cixous is immensely productive, writing novels, plays, essays and poetic prose. Her ideas have provoked much debate in feminism: on the body, orgasmic writing, "feminine" texts ("ecriture feminine"), essentialism and the Nietzschean "gift". Helene Cixous was born in Oran, Algeria, on June 5, 1937. She described her father"s background as "Sephardic - Spain - Morocco - Algeria" and her mother"s as "Ashkenazy - Austria - Hungary - Czechoslavakia (her father) and Spain (her mother)". She studied at the Universite de Bordeaux, the Sorbonne, and the new, experimental post-1968 Universite de Paris VIII-Vincennes. Her doctoral thesis, L"Exil de James Joyce ou l"art du remplacement was published in 1968 (as The Exile of James Joyce in 1972)....