Hélène Cixous, one of France’s foremost intellectuals, talks to writer and literary critic Nicholas Royle. They will consider “Judeities”, a word and notion in the plural, favoured by Jacques Derrida over the more conventional terms “Judaism” and “Jewishness”. Together, they will reflect on the multiple political and poetical stakes of this neologism.
The discussion will be informed by Hélène Cixous’s recently translated novels, Love Itself and Hyperdream, as well as by her current work as playwright with Théâtre du Soleil. These works all stage in the most pressing manner the confrontation of writing with death, time and history.
Hélène Cixous the french writer and academic, was born in Algeria and is a notable founder of poststructuralist feminist theory. Her writing transcends the apparent boundaries between fiction, criticism, poetry and memoir and other genres.
Nicholas Royle is Professor of English at the University of Sussex, the author of How to Read Shakespeare, Criticism and Theory and Jacques Derrida. His particular interests are literary theory, deconstruction, psychoanalysis and the uncanny.
