Julia Kristeva
Julia Kristeva
One of Kristeva's most important contributions is that signification is composed of two elements, the symbolic
and the semiotic, the latter being distinct from the discipline of semiotics founded by Ferdinand de Saussure.
As explained by Augustine Perumalil, Kristeva's "semiotic is closely related to the infantile pre-Oedipal
referred to in the works of Freud, Otto Rank, Melanie Klein, British Object Relation psychoanalysis, and
Lacan's pre-mirror stage. It is an emotional field, tied to the instincts, which dwells in the fissures and prosody
of language rather than in the denotative meanings of words."[19] Furthermore, according to Birgit Schippers,
the semiotic is a realm associated with the musical, the poetic, the rhythmic, and that which lacks structure and
meaning. It is closely tied to the "feminine", and represents the undifferentiated state of the pre-Mirror Stage
infant.[20]
Upon entering the Mirror Stage, the child learns to distinguish between self and other, and enters the realm of
shared cultural meaning, known as the symbolic. In Desire in Language (1980), Kristeva describes the
symbolic as the space in which the development of language allows the child to become a "speaking subject,"
and to develop a sense of identity separate from the mother. This process of separation is known as abjection,
whereby the child must reject and move away from the mother in order to enter into the world of language,
culture, meaning, and the social. This realm of language is called the symbolic and is contrasted with the
semiotic in that it is associated with the masculine, the law, and structure. Kristeva departs from Lacan in the
idea that even after entering the symbolic, the subject continues to oscillate between the semiotic and the
symbolic. Therefore, rather than arriving at a fixed identity, the subject is permanently "in process". Because
female children continue to identify to some degree with the mother figure, they are especially likely to retain a
close connection to the semiotic. This continued identification with the mother may result in what Kristeva
refers to in Black Sun (1989) as melancholia (depression), given that female children simultaneously reject and
identify with the mother figure.
It has also been suggested (e.g., Creed, 1993) that the degradation of women and women's bodies in popular
culture (and particularly, for example, in slasher films) emerges because of the threat to identity that the
mother's body poses: it is a reminder of time spent in the undifferentiated state of the semiotic, where one has
no concept of self or identity. After abjecting the mother, subjects retain an unconscious fascination with the
semiotic, desiring to reunite with the mother, while at the same time fearing the loss of identity that
accompanies it. Slasher films thus provide a way for audience members to safely reenact the process of
abjection by vicariously expelling and destroying the mother figure.
Kristeva is also known for her adoption of Plato’s idea of the chora, meaning "a nourishing maternal space"
(Schippers, 2011). Kristeva's idea of the chora has been interpreted in several ways: as a reference to the
uterus, as a metaphor for the relationship between the mother and child, and as the temporal period preceding
the Mirror Stage. In her essay Motherhood According to Giovanni Bellini from Desire in Language (1980),
Kristeva refers to the chora as a "non-expressive totality formed by drives and their stases in a motility that is
full of movement as it is regulated." She goes on to suggest that it is the mother's body that mediates between
the chora and the symbolic realm: the mother has access to culture and meaning, yet also forms a totalizing
bond with the child.
Kristeva argues that anthropology and psychology, or the connection between the social and the subject, do
not represent each other, but rather follow the same logic: the survival of the group and the subject.
Furthermore, in her analysis of Oedipus, she claims that the speaking subject cannot exist on his/her own, but
that he/she "stands on the fragile threshold as if stranded on account of an impossible demarcation" (Powers of
Horror, p. 85).
In her comparison between the two disciplines, Kristeva claims that the way in which an individual excludes
the abject mother as a means of forming an identity, is the same way in which societies are constructed. On a
broader scale, cultures exclude the maternal and the feminine, and by this come into being.
Feminism
Kristeva has been regarded as a key proponent of French feminism together with Simone de Beauvoir, Hélène
Cixous, and Luce Irigaray.[21][22] Kristeva has had a remarkable influence on feminism and feminist literary
studies[23][24] in the US and the UK, as well as on readings into contemporary art[25][26] although her relation
to feminist circles and movements in France has been quite controversial. Kristeva made a famous
disambiguation of three types of feminism in "Women's Time" in New Maladies of the Soul (1993); while
rejecting the first two types, including that of Beauvoir, her stands are sometimes considered rejecting
feminism altogether. Kristeva proposed the idea of multiple sexual identities against the joined code of "unified
feminine language".
Novelist
Kristeva wrote a number of novels that resemble detective stories.
While the books maintain narrative suspense and develop a stylized
surface, her readers also encounter ideas intrinsic to her theoretical
projects. Her characters reveal themselves mainly through
psychological devices, making her type of fiction mostly resemble the Julia Kristeva in Paris in 2008
later work of Dostoevsky. Her fictional oeuvre, which includes The
Old Man and the Wolves, Murder in Byzantium, and Possessions,
while often allegorical, also approaches the autobiographical in some passages, especially with one of the
protagonists of Possessions, Stephanie Delacour—a French journalist—who can be seen as Kristeva's alter
ego. Murder in Byzantium deals with themes from orthodox Christianity and politics; she referred to it as "a
kind of anti-Da Vinci Code".[28]
Honors
For her "innovative explorations of questions on the intersection of language, culture and literature", Kristeva
was awarded the Holberg International Memorial Prize in 2004. She won the 2006 Hannah Arendt Prize for
Political Thought. She has also been awarded Commander of the Legion of Honor, Commander of the Order
of Merit, and the Vaclav Havel Prize.[29] On October 10th, 2019, she received an honoris causa doctorate
from Universidade Católica Portuguesa.
Scholarly reception
Roman Jakobson said that "Both readers and listeners, whether agreeing or in stubborn disagreement with
Julia Kristeva, feel indeed attracted to her contagious voice and to her genuine gift of questioning generally
adopted 'axioms,' and her contrary gift of releasing various 'damned questions' from their traditional question
marks."[30]
Roland Barthes comments that "Julia Kristeva changes the place of things: she always destroys the last
prejudice, the one you thought you could be reassured by, could be take [sic] pride in; what she displaces is the
already-said, the déja-dit, i.e., the instance of the signified, i.e., stupidity; what she subverts is authority -the
authority of monologic science, of filiation."[31]
Ian Almond criticizes Kristeva's ethnocentrism. He cites Gayatri Spivak's conclusion that Kristeva's book
About Chinese Women "belongs to that very eighteenth century [that] Kristeva scorns" after pinpointing "the
brief, expansive, often completely ungrounded way in which she writes about two thousand years of a culture
she is unfamiliar with".[32] Almond notes the absence of sophistication in Kristeva's remarks concerning the
Muslim world and the dismissive terminology she uses to describe its culture and believers.[33] He criticizes
Kristeva's opposition which juxtaposes "Islamic societies" against "democracies where life is still fairly
pleasant" by pointing out that Kristeva displays no awareness of the complex and nuanced debate ongoing
among women theorists in the Muslim world, and that she does not refer to anything other than the Rushdie
fatwa in dismissing the entire Muslim faith as "reactionary and persecutory".[34]
In Intellectual Impostures (1997), physics professors Alan Sokal and Jean Bricmont devote a chapter to
Kristeva's use of mathematics in her writings. They argue that Kristeva fails to show the relevance of the
mathematical concepts she discusses to linguistics and the other fields she studies, and that no such relevance
exists.[35]
Neal Ascherson wrote: "...the recent fuss about Julia Kristeva boils down to nothing much, although it has
suited some to inflate it into a fearful scandal... But the reality shown in her files is trivial. After settling in Paris
in 1965, she was cornered by Bulgarian spooks who pointed out to her that she still had a vulnerable family in
the home country. So she agreed to regular meetings over many years, in the course of which she seems to
have told her handlers nothing more than gossip about Aragon, Bataille & Co. from the Left Bank cafés – stuff
they could have read in Le Canard enchaîné... the combined intelligence value of its product and her reports
was almost zero. The Bulgarian security men seem to have known they were being played. But never mind:
they could impress their boss by showing him a real international celeb on their books..."[47]
Selected writings
Séméiôtiké: recherches pour une sémanalyse, Paris: Edition du Seuil, 1969. (English
translation: Desire in Language: A Semiotic Approach to Literature and Art, Oxford: Blackwell,
1980.)
Le Langage, Cet Inconnu Paris: S.G.P.P., 1969. (Translated in 1981 as "Language. The
Unknown. An Initiation into Linguistics." New York : Columbia University Press, 1989.)
La Révolution Du Langage Poétique: L'avant-Garde À La Fin Du Xixe Siècle, Lautréamont Et
Mallarmé. Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 1974. (Abridged English translation: Revolution in Poetic
Language, New York: Columbia University Press, 1984.)
About Chinese Women. London: Boyars, 1977.
Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection. New York: Columbia University Press, 1982.
The Kristeva Reader. (ed. Toril Moi) Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1986.
In the Beginning Was Love: Psychoanalysis and Faith. New York: Columbia University Press,
1987.
Black Sun: Depression and Melancholia. New York: Columbia University Press, 1989.
Strangers to Ourselves. New York: Columbia University Press,1991.
Nations without Nationalism. New York: Columbia University Press, 1993.
New Maladies of the Soul. New York: Columbia University Press, 1995.
"Experiencing the Phallus as Extraneous." parallax issue 8, 1998.
Crisis of the European Subject. New York: Other Press, 2000.
Reading the Bible. In: David Jobling, Tina Pippin & Ronald Schleifer (eds). The Postmodern
Bible Reader. (pp. 92–101). Oxford: Blackwell, 2001.
Female Genius: Life, Madness, Words: Hannah Arendt, Melanie Klein, Colette: A Trilogy. 3
vols. New York: Columbia University Press, 2001.
Hannah Arendt: Life is a Narrative. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2001.
Hatred and Forgiveness. New York: Columbia University Press, 2010.
The Severed Head: Capital Visions. New York: Columbia University Press, 2011.
Marriage as a Fine Art (with Philippe Sollers). New York: Columbia University Press, 2016.
Irene Ivantcheva-Merjanska, Ecrire dans la langue de l'autre. Assia Djebar et Julia Kristeva.
Paris: L'Harmattan, 2015.
Jennifer Radden, The Nature of Melancholy: From Aristotle to Kristeva, Oxford University
Press, 2000.
Megan Becker-Leckrone, Julia Kristeva And Literary Theory, Palgrave Macmillan, 2005.
Sara Beardsworth, Julia Kristeva, Psychoanalysis and Modernity, Suny Press, 2004. (2006
Goethe Award Psychoanalytic Scholarship, finalist for the best book published in 2004.)
Kelly Ives, Julia Kristeva: Art, Love, Melancholy, Philosophy, Semiotics and Psychoanalysis,
Crescent Moon Publishing Édition, 2010.
Kelly Oliver, Ethics, Politics, and Difference in Julia Kristeva's Writing, Routledge Édition,
1993.
Kelly Oliver, Reading Kristeva: Unraveling the Double-bind, Indiana University Press, 1993.
John Lechte, Maria Margaroni, Julia Kristeva: Live Theory , Continuum International Publishing
Group Ltd, 2005.
Noëlle McAfee, Julia Kristeva, Routledge, 2003.
Griselda Pollock (Guest Editor) Julia Kristeva 1966-1996, Parallax Issue 8, 1998.
Anna Smith, Julia Kristeva: Readings of Exile and Estrangement, Palgrave Macmillan, 1996.
David Crownfield, Body/Text in Julia Kristeva: Religion, Women, and Psychoanalysis, State
University of New York Press, 1992.
Novels
The Samurai: A Novel. New York: Columbia University Press, 1992.
The Old Man and the Wolves. New York: Columbia University Press, 1994.
Possessions: A Novel. New York: Columbia University Press, 1998.
Murder in Byzantium. New York: Columbia University Press, 2006.
Teresa, My Love: An Imagined Life of the Saint of Avila. New York: Columbia University Press,
2015.
See also
Capacity to be alone
Écriture féminine
Khôra
List of thinkers influenced by deconstruction
References
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723?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents) Diacritics, 5(1), Spring 1975, pp. 62-68.
3. Simone de Beauvoir Prize 2009 goes to the One Million Signatures Campaign in Iran (http://ww
w.campaign4equality.info/english/spip.php?article440) Archived (https://web.archive.org/web/2
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19. Perumalil, Augustine. The History of Women in Philosophy. p. 344.
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21. Vanda Zajko and Miriam Leonard (eds.), Laughing with Medusa. Oxford University Press,
2006. ISBN 0-19-927438-X
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Zegher. MIT Press, 1996.
23. Parallax, n. 8, [Vol. 4(3)], 1998.
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26. Humm, Maggie, Feminism and Film. Indiana University press, 1997. ISBN 0-253-33334-2
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s/correcting-her-idea-of-politically-correct.html?pagewanted=all). New York Times. June 14,
2001
28. Sutherland, John (14 March 2006). "The ideas interview: Julia Kristeva; Why is a great critic
ashamed of being fashionable?"
(https://www.theguardian.com/ideas/story/0,,1730437,00.html). The Guardian. Retrieved
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29. http://www.holbergprisen.no/en/julia-kristeva/french-order
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1980 (In Preface)
31. Roland Barthes, The Rustle of language, p 168
32. Ian Almond, The New Orientalists: Postmodern Representations of Islam from Foucault to
Baudrillard, I.B.Tauris, 2007, p. 132
33. Ian Almond, The New Orientalists: Postmodern Representations of Islam from Foucault to
Baudrillard, I.B.Tauris, 2007
34. Ian Almond, The New Orientalists: Postmodern Representations of Islam from Foucault to
Baudrillard, I.B.Tauris, 2007, pp. 154–55
35. Alan Sokal and Jean Bricmont, Intellectual Impostures, Profile Books, 1998, p. 47
36. "Julia Kristeva avait été recrutée par les services secrets communistes bulgares" (https://bibliob
s.nouvelobs.com/actualites/20180328.OBS4308/julia-kristeva-avait-ete-recrutee-par-les-servic
es-secrets-communistes-bulgares.html). Bibliobs.
37. Sofia, Reuters in (March 28, 2018). "Julia Kristeva was communist secret agent, Bulgaria
claims" (https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/mar/28/julia-kristeva-communist-secret-agent
-bulgaria-claims). the Guardian.
38. Ghodsee, Kristen Rogheh (November 2005). The Red Riviera: Gender, tourism, and
postsocialism on the Black Sea (https://archive.org/details/redriviera01ghod). Duke University
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39. "Julia Kristeva Denies Being Bulgarian Security Agent" (https://balkaninsight.com/2018/03/29/j
ulia-kristeva-denies-being-communist-state-security-spy-03-29-2018/). March 29, 2018.
40. ″Bulgaria’s Dossier Commission posts Julia Kristeva files online″ (https://sofiaglobe.com/2018/
03/30/bulgarias-dossier-commission-posts-julia-kristeva-files-online/), The Sofia Globe, 30
March 2018. Retrieved 30 March 2018..
41. ″Unprecedented - The Dossier Commission Published the Dossier of Julia Kristeva AKA Agent
"Sabina" (http://www.novinite.com/articles/189165/Unprecedented+-+The+Dossier+Commissio
n+Published+the+Dossier+of+Julia+Kristeva+AKA+Agent+%22Sabina%22), novinite.com, 30
March 2018. Retrieved 30 March 2018.
42. Documents on the Dossier Commission’s website (in Bulgarian) (https://www.comdos.bg/%D
0%9D%D0%B0%D1%87%D0%B0%D0%BB%D0%BE/%D0%9F%D1%80%D0%BE%D0%B
2%D0%B5%D1%80%D0%B5%D0%BD%D0%B8_%D0%BB%D0%B8%D1%86%D0%B0/p/s
earch/?ApprovedPersonFirstName=%D0%AE%D0%BB%D0%B8%D1%8F&ApprovedPerson
MidName=%D0%A1%D1%82%D0%BE%D1%8F%D0%BD%D0%BE%D0%B2%D0%B0&Ap
provedPersonLastName=%D0%9A%D1%80%D1%8A%D1%81%D1%82%D0%B5%D0%B
2%D0%B0&ApprovedPersonBirthDate=&ApprovedPersonBirthLocation=&ExaminationPerson
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43. Христо Христов, ″Онлайн: Първите документи за Юлия Кръстева в Държавна сигурност″
(http://desebg.com/medii/3528-2018-03-29-12-23-51), desebg.com, 29 March 2018 (Dossier of
″Sabina″, in Bulgarian). Retrieved 31 March 2018.
44. Христо Христов, ″Само на desebg.com: Цялото досие на Юлия Кръстева онлайн (лично и
работно дело)″ (http://desebg.com/ucheni/3529-2018-03-30-05-01-16), desebg.com, 30 March
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45. Jennifer Schuessler and Boryana Dzhambazova, ″Bulgaria Says French Thinker Was a Secret
Agent. She Calls It a ‘Barefaced Lie.’″ (https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/01/arts/julia-kristeva-b
ulgaria-communist-spy.html), ″The New York Times″, 1 April 2018. Retrieved 2 April 2018.
46. Schuessler, Jennifer; Dzhambazova, Boryana (2018-04-01). "Bulgaria Says French Thinker
Was a Secret Agent. She Calls It a 'Barefaced Lie.' " (https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/01/arts/j
ulia-kristeva-bulgaria-communist-spy.html). The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331 (https://ww
w.worldcat.org/issn/0362-4331). Retrieved 2018-04-02.
47. Neal Ascherson, "Don’t imagine you’re smarter" (https://www.lrb.co.uk/v40/n14/neal-ascherson/
dont-imagine-youre-smarter), London Review of Books, 19 July 2018.
External links
Official website (http://kristeva.fr/)
Holberg Prize (https://web.archive.org/web/20170801171230/http://www.holbergprisen.no/julia-
kristeva/holbergprisens-symposium-2004-julia-kristeva.html)
Interview with Julia Kristeva in Exberliner Magazine (http://www.exberliner.com/articles/%22on
e-needs-to-believe%2C-but-what%27s-more-important-is-to-question-what-we-believe%22/ind
ex.html)
Julia Kristeva: A Bibliography (http://hvolat.com/Kristeva/kristeva.htm) by Hélène Volat
Goodnow, Katherine J.(2015). Kristeva in Focus: From Theory to Film Analysis (http://www.ber
ghahnbooks.com/title.php?rowtag=GoodnowKristeva) Berghahn Books.
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