The Mother in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction: Psychoanalysis, Photography, Deconstruction

Eleven Birthmarks (Given Names)

214 Birthmarks: Primal Passion Hélène Cixous’s writings are, to some degree, radically untranslatable. Not so much because they are written in French, but because they are not. If Hélène Cixous’s texts resist translation it is because, as we shall see, they are originally written in a foreign tongue and hence are always already marked by something like a prior, primordial “translation.” One might even say that this “original translation” is not a translation from French, but within and into French. Born from the French language, this foreign tongue inhabits it the way, say, a tapeworm inhabits its host. From French it borrows many (but not all) of its constituent parts—its seminal sounds, letters, grammar, syntax, and even to some degree its lexicon, but this inner tongue remains estranged from French. In its intimate proximity to French, it is infinitely removed from French. Cixous’s texts invent, discover, and uncover a forgotten language that lies embedded within French’s inner e l e v e n Birthmarks (Given Names) Songez que je vous parle une langue étrangère. — r a c i n e Marder-Ch11.indd 214 Marder-Ch11.indd 214 11/10/2011 4:21:21 PM 11/10/2011 4:21:21 PM Birthmarks (Given Names) 215 reaches and untold depths—in the secret passages that it never knew it had and therefore never knew it lost. She mines the French language for its hidden treasures, extracting “gold” (or) from its seminal sounds. All of Hélène Cixous’s writings (albeit each uniquely and in its own singular idiom) bear the mark of this “original translation” and are born from it. All of Hélène Cixous’s texts are signed with this primal “Birthmark.” “Il faut que sonne une étrangère langue dès les premiers mots.”1 Eric Prenowitz (whom I thank here for the courage, sensitivity, and precision of his translations ) translates this sentence thus: “A foreign tongue must ring from the first words.” The translation is accurate, and I can suggest no better alternative. But if I here insist upon the miniscule breach that separates the Cixous sentence from its translation, it is certainly not to find fault in the translator, but rather to invite us to hear the strange resonances in the original phrase. This sentence is an invocation, an incantation, and an invitation . We should receive its first three words, “il faut que,” as a kind of primordial commandment. The commandment entreats us to open our ears to the strange relations that inhabit language before it is claimed by the familiar laws of culture.2 By placing the word “étrangère” (foreign) before the word “langue” (tongue), Hélène Cixous entreats us to hear the savage sounds, pulsions, and passions that pulsate in the tongue before it is domesticated and regulated by the law of the language. Inside both the word “étrangère” (foreign) and the word “langue” (tongue), we can find the scattered letters of the word “ange” (angel). As she affirms throughout her texts, this angel lies within—the “ange” is “en je.” The “étrangère langue” is doubly inhabited by angels or perhaps inhabited by two angels as the angel within me is not the same me but another me. By opening our ears to the secret angel dispersed within the tongue, we open ourselves to it. We become porous. By lending and bending our inner ear to the secret angel tongue within, we uncover new and ancient foreign relations. These relations are familiarly unfamiliar. They are given to us and call to us through our first names. The names given to us though our first names recall the manifold and multiplying potential beings that inhabit us before we are subjected to the laws of the proper name. She writes: Je note, je veux écrire, avant, au temps encore en fusion d’avant le temps refroidi du récit. Quand nous sentons et ça ne s’appelle pas encore. La scène est dans les entrailles avec tumulte, élans. Les genoux s’entrechoquent, le coeur prend feu, une grande répulsion, une grande attraction, plus tard ça s’apaisera Marder-Ch11.indd 215 Marder-Ch11.indd 215 11/10/2011 4:21:21 PM 11/10/2011 4:21:21 PM 216 Photo-Readings and the Possible Impossibilities of Literature en nom. Mais d’abord c...