Cixous: The element that retains the power to move us is the song

"Laugh of the Medusa" is very much an essay of its time. And yet, it retains certain paradigmatic assertions, not only for thinking about the feminine, but for reflecting on the place of poetry in this configuration. 

"The element that retains the power to move us is the song" (Cixous 1979: 881). Poetry ("only the poets") is assigned a specific role within what Cixous terms "writing." For C. poetry is not just a question of verbal form, but rather a modality of relation with language, namely the body. How does poetry come to occupy this space ? What is the value, and thus the expectation, the desire of and for poetry that is embodied in her text? What is it that "moves" us in writing/poetry? what is song?

Beyond Cixous's own answers --feminine orgasms, anti-logos weapons, her story becoming history, and above all writing: all strategies against phallologocentrism/representationalism-- 
these questions are an ongoing interrogation on the potentiality of poetry, but also highlight the task with which poetry itself is endowed: the task of the real, the task of presence, the task of embodiment, the task of writing desire, the task of "moving" people and things. 

Only by unpacking these tasks by acts of profanation we can reactivate the micro epiphanies that songs continue to afford our bodies.

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