LightningBolt, Cixous

“Through dual, hierarchical oppositions. Superior/ Inferior” (157).

Cixous starts off by claiming that every word has an opposition and in that opposition one word is superior and the other inferior. This instantly reminded me of Derrida and his concept of alterity. I am having similar problems understanding Cixous concept as I did understanding alterity. My main struggle is that I do not necessarily see one word to be superior to the other. An example Cixous provides is “Day/Night.” I like certain aspects about day and others about night, so to me one word is not superior. If I understand the reading correctly, Cixous is claiming that the word on the left is associated with masculinity and the word on the right is associated with femininity. I drew this conclusion based on the fact that she later states, “Male privilege, shown in the opposition between activity and passivity, which he uses to sustain himself” (158). She also puts man before women in the last opposition and it appears to me that she is a feminist writer.
Assuming this to be true, her oppositions appear to be what a feminist would claim in the 80’s. Men are thought to follow their heads while women are assumed to follow their hearts. Men are considered intelligible while women are considered palpable.

“There are repercussions…one notices that it is marked by an absolute constant which orders values and which is precisely this opposition, activity/passivity” (158).
It is my impression that Cixous is saying by believing these oppositions our thought is changed. By our thought being changed out language will change. Ultimately, our culture exposing us to these oppositions changes our language. If this assumption is true, which I suppose I will find out in class tomorrow, Cixous provided answers to some questions Derrida left me with. I understood that Derrida felt that cultures valued oppositions in different ways, but I didn’t understand the purpose of studying that, or how it affects our lives. After reading Cixous I think that the reason for studying oppositions is because they change our process of thought and language.