%0 Journal Article %T ¡®Killing romance¡¯ by ¡®giving birth to love¡¯: H¨¦l¨¨ne Cixous, Jane Campion and the language of In the Cut (2003) %A Alexia L. Bowler %J Feminist Theory %@ 1741-2773 %D 2019 %R 10.1177/1464700118804445 %X Jane Campion¡¯s work regularly revolves around women¡¯s often complex relationship with socio-cultural discourses and their articulation in language, whether in familial and institutional structures or in cultural and creative practice. In this sense, Campion¡¯s filmmaking continues a feminist tradition of exploration regarding female subjectivity, identity and desire as it is represented in language (cinematic or otherwise). In the Cut (2003), adapted from Susanna Moore¡¯s novel of the same name, again places language and the (dis)articulation of the female voice at its heart: the renewal of which is positioned within the film as crucial to women¡¯s survival. In taking its cue from H¨¦l¨¨ne Cixous¡¯s ¡®The Laugh of the Medusa¡¯ (1976) and later writings such as ¡®Castration or Decapitation?' (1981) and ¡®Coming to Writing' (1991), this article frames its discussion of Campion¡¯s interrogation of ¡®Woman¡¯s¡¯ attempts at the articulation of the self as an exemplar (in both theme and form) of Cixousian strategies. The article will argue that techniques such as a cinematic ¨¦criture feminine, and the appropriation and adaptation of the language of Hollywood genre film, form part of Campion¡¯s feminist inquiry into the discourses and legacies of a phallogocentric patriarchal culture which traditionally delimit Woman as a ¡®speaking¡¯ subject. In this way, In the Cut exposes the tensions between what Cixous calls the ¡®Absolute Woman¡¯ of culture (the aphonic hysteric) and attempts towards agency, thus challenging phallogocentric representations of women. In using these strategies, Campion¡¯s adaptation creates a polyphonic artefact which not only revises Moore¡¯s novel but also re-visits (in order to reclaim) female articulation; re-writing phallogocentric claims to agency and subjectivity, imagining women's ¡®survival¡¯ through language. In this sense, then, adaptation itself can be thought of as a feminist act of subversion %K Adaptation %K aphonia %K cinema %K ¨¦criture feminine %K phallogocentric %K polyphony %U https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/1464700118804445