Selfaffirmation through loss of meaning. On an aesthetic principle in Clarice Lispector´s work

Abstract

Clarice Lispector is generally considered to be an important modernist writer. Her paradoxical and enigmatic way of writing, however, has induced widely differing interpretations. Hélène Cixous, for instance, recognized in her work a completely new mode of expression, the so-called écriture féminine, a model of 'female difference' in writing. On the other hand Lispector's work has been defined as post-structuralist and deconstructionist according to postmodernist parameters. A contradiction emerges: whereas the theory of difference insists on the importance of the female subject, the postmodernists are no longer concerned with the autonomous and self-identical subject. Can Lispector be both a representative of écriture féminine and of postmodernism, can she be claimed for both the construction and deconstruction of the subject? The following remarks try to show how Lispector develops an aesthetic principle that allows for self-discovery and search for meaning by way of abandoning meaning altogether; meaning as it emerges from logo- and phallocentrism, from the symbolic order and its language.