The Day I Wasn't There

Erscheinungsjahr 2006
ISBN: 978-0-8101-2364-9
Verlag: Northwestern University Press

Buch, Englisch, 112 Seiten, Paperback, Format (B × H): 154 mm x 227 mm, Gewicht: 191 g

Reihe: Avant-garde and Modernism Studies

In this memoir-novel, a narrator who resembles Helene Cixous obsessively recounts an incident - the premature death of her first-born child, a Down syndrome baby left in the care of the clinic in Algeria where her midwife mother works. She uses this event to probe her family history and her relationship with her mother, a refugee from Nazi Germany; her dead father, after whom the baby is named; and her medical-student brother, who takes on some of the duties of a father figure. Cixous's elusive writing bears all the trademarks of her poetic, provocative style, vivid with word play, intense feeling and a stream-of-consciousness that moves freely over time and place. The narrator's mother claims not to remember what happened, and the brother tries to fill in some gaps in the story. By the end of the book we understand the significance of the title: one day Cixous's mother returned to the clinic to find the baby on the brink of death. Rather than attempt to save him she chose to end his suffering. By closing the door to the imaginary clinic at the end, the narrator at last resolves the feelings of guilt and realizes that each human being has a fate they must endure. Informed by psychoanalytical theory, and always brutally honest, ""The Day I Wasn't There"" is above all an intimate study of a woman's inner landscape.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Cixous, Helene

Weitere Mitwirkende

Brahic, Beverley Bie

Über Autor(innen)

Helene Cixous is a French writer, feminist philosopher, playwright, critic, and activist who continues to influence writers, scholars, and feminists around the world. Her recent works include Reveries of the Wild Woman (Northwestern, forthcoming), The Third Body (Northwestern, 1999), Veils (with Jacques Derrida) (Stanford, 2001), Portrait of Jacques Derrida as a Young Jewish Saint (Columbia, 2003), and The Writing Notebooks of Helene Cixous (Continuum, 2004). Beverley Bie Brahic is also the translator of Helene Cixous's Reveries of the Wild Woman.