The Terrible but Unfinished Story of Norodom Sihanouk, King of Cambodia (European Women Writers)
by Helene Cixous
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No contemporary French feminist has made a bigger impact in America than Hélène Cixous. Brilliant, bold, and combative, author of numerous novels and a gargantuan study of James Joyce, and sponsor of a series of notorious seminars at the Universitynbsp;of Paris about women's writing, she has exploited the roles of femme fatale and maitresse d'education in a career that has been spectacularly defiant and productive. Sihanouk is one of Cixous's most ambitious projects: the dramatic portrayal show more of the conflicts between old and new, East and West, North and South, religion and politics. At its center is the figure of Norodom Sihanouk. Vain when a prince, as king Sihanouk discovered his responsibility to his country and came to embody Cambodia. He used every means to keep his country growing, healthy, and out of the wars of Southeast Asia that consumed Laos and Vietnam. Cixous recognized in Sihanouk a historical figure as fascinating as a tragic king in Shakespeare: a man of uncommon intelligence on whom his country's history pivoted, a man placed by fate into a world of bad choices and surrounded by powerful and relentless antagonists. But Sihanouk gave Cixous something more: a king who is indisputably modern, who has read and loved Shakespeare, and whose story continues. First published in 1985, the play begins with Sihanouk's abdication in 1955 and ends with his arrest by the Khmer Rouge two decades later. The destiny of an entire country unfolds through the fifty characters who appear on stage. show lessTags
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I hate them all, those who haven't the noble courage to hate,
And those who are mere dilettantes in hatred, paying it lip-service on tiptoe.
O hatred, I shall do you justice.
Hatred, you are power, you are intelligence.
And I dare proclaim you
The true Sun of my destiny.
So espouses an aspiring Pol Pot (Saloth Sar) rather early in this epic, amazing play. Cixous's triumph sprawls across 20 years of tumultuous history in Cambodia as the titular monarch Sihanouk juggles the interests of East and West while the Khmer Rouge wait in the wings for Kissinger's airborne disaster (clandestine bombing) to completely alienate the countryside, thus clearing the way to Year Zero. There is a tension in the play between Tradition and Modernity. Progress show more appears suspicious in such light. Ideology clears away the gray areas where Nixon and Pol Pot see only purity as a goal.
Chew on that notion for a while. (Cixous accomplishes a retelling of Hamlet, albeit with a folder of mixed messages)
This is an astonishing view on history. I highly recommend such. show less
And those who are mere dilettantes in hatred, paying it lip-service on tiptoe.
O hatred, I shall do you justice.
Hatred, you are power, you are intelligence.
And I dare proclaim you
The true Sun of my destiny.
So espouses an aspiring Pol Pot (Saloth Sar) rather early in this epic, amazing play. Cixous's triumph sprawls across 20 years of tumultuous history in Cambodia as the titular monarch Sihanouk juggles the interests of East and West while the Khmer Rouge wait in the wings for Kissinger's airborne disaster (clandestine bombing) to completely alienate the countryside, thus clearing the way to Year Zero. There is a tension in the play between Tradition and Modernity. Progress show more appears suspicious in such light. Ideology clears away the gray areas where Nixon and Pol Pot see only purity as a goal.
Chew on that notion for a while. (Cixous accomplishes a retelling of Hamlet, albeit with a folder of mixed messages)
This is an astonishing view on history. I highly recommend such. show less
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140+ Works 2,419 Members
Born in 1937 in Algeria, Helene Cixous came to Paris, where she is currently professor of English, in 1955. After a dissertation on James Joyce, The Exile of James Joyce (1968), she began to publish novels, critical essays, and plays, most notably Le Portrait de Dora (1976), a feminist retelling of a Freudian case history. Jacques Derrida has show more named Helene Cixous the greatest contemporary French writer. Cixous has been an active participant in the development of literary criticism after structuralism and has been a leading figure in the French feminist movement. (Bowker Author Biography) show less
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