Julia Kristeva
Beneath the orderly structure of language works a bodily rhythm of drives, and the self forms by expelling what disgusts it.
Placement
Bulgarian-French theorist and psychoanalyst: beneath the symbolic order of language works the “semiotic”, the bodily rhythm of the drives; the abject marks what the self expels in order to become a self.
Key ideas
- Semiotic and symbolic
- Intertextuality
- Abjection
Teachers: Roland Barthes
Influence
Influenced by 7
Teresa of Ávila
influenced by
Kristeva devoted the narrative study Thérèse mon amour (2008) to Teresa of Ávila, reading her ecstasies and writing as an experience of love and belief open to psychoanalysis. J. Kristeva, Thérèse mon amour. Sainte Thérèse d’Avila (2008)
Evidence: AI draft
Teresa of Ávila › 1515–1582
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
influenced by
Kristeva reinterpreted Hegel’s negativity as the movement of the drives, which she called rejection and found at work in poetic language (La révolution du langage poétique, 1974). J. Kristeva, La révolution du langage poétique (1974)
Evidence: AI draft
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel › 1770–1831
Sigmund Freud
influenced by ✓
Kristeva grounded her distinction between the semiotic and the symbolic in Freud’s theory of the drives (La révolution du langage poétique, 1974) and practised as a psychoanalyst. J. Kristeva, La révolution du langage poétique (1974); Pouvoirs de l’horreur (1980)
Evidence: also in Wikidata · Wikidata
Sigmund Freud › 1856–1939
Mikhail Bakhtin
influenced by ✓
In ‘Le mot, le dialogue et le roman’ (1967) Kristeva derived intertextuality from Bakhtin’s dialogism: every text absorbs and transforms other texts. J. Kristeva, “Le mot, le dialogue et le roman”, Critique (1967), in Sēmeiōtikē. Recherches pour une sémanalyse (1969)
Evidence: also in Wikidata · Wikidata
Mikhail Bakhtin › 1895–1975
Jacques Lacan
influenced by ✓
Kristeva took up Lacan’s symbolic order and mirror stage but placed before them a ‘semiotic’ level of drives and rhythms (La révolution du langage poétique, 1974). J. Kristeva, La révolution du langage poétique (1974); J. Lacan, “Le stade du miroir” (1949), in Écrits (1966); SEP “Jacques Lacan”
Jacques Lacan › 1901–1981
Roland Barthes studied with
studied with ✓
Kristeva came to Paris at the end of 1965 on a French government scholarship and attended Barthes’s seminar at the École pratique des hautes études; her doctoral thesis (1969, Le texte du roman) was supervised by Lucien Goldmann. Barthes reviewed her Sèméiôtikè as ‘L’étrangère’ (1970). J. Kristeva, “My Memory’s Hyperbole” (1984); R. Barthes, “L’étrangère”, La Quinzaine littéraire (1970)
Evidence: also in Wikidata · Wikidata
Roland Barthes › 1915–1980
Mary Douglas
influenced by
Kristeva built her theory of the abject on Douglas’s analysis of dirt as matter out of place that threatens order, adding a psychoanalytic account (Pouvoirs de l’horreur, 1980). J. Kristeva, Pouvoirs de l’horreur (1980); M. Douglas, Purity and Danger (1966)
Evidence: AI draft
Mary Douglas › 1921–2007
Criticism
Criticized by 1
Judith Butler
criticised by
Butler objected that Kristeva’s semiotic, rooted in a pre-paternal maternal body, naturalises maternity and remains subordinate to the paternal law it contests (Gender Trouble, 1990, ch. 3). J. Butler, Gender Trouble (1990), ch. 3.1 “The Body Politics of Julia Kristeva”
Evidence: AI draft
Judith Butler › b. 1956
Works
The semiotic chora beneath symbolic language, read through Mallarmé and Lautréamont.
- 1980Powers of Horror
Abjection: what the subject expels – filth, the corpse, the maternal – in order to be a subject at all.
Position
Kristeva distinguishes two modes of signification. The symbolic is the order of grammar, logic and the law; the semiotic is the pre-verbal flow of drives and rhythms, bound to the maternal body, which persists within language as its music, its breaks and its excesses. Poetic language – Mallarmé, Lautréamont, Céline – lets the semiotic erupt and so revolutionises the subject; this is why she treats literature as a political matter. “Powers of Horror” introduces the abject: not an object but what the subject must expel – filth, waste, the corpse, the maternal – in order to have a boundary at all. Her later studies treat melancholia, love and the foreigner within each of us.
Life & context
Julia Kristeva (born 1941 in Sliven, Bulgaria) came to Paris on a scholarship in 1965, joined Roland Barthes’s seminar and the group around the journal Tel Quel, and married the writer Philippe Sollers. She introduced the work of Mikhail Bakhtin to French readers, trained as a psychoanalyst and taught at the University of Paris VII. She has also written novels and studies of Arendt, Klein and Colette. Her 1970s support for Maoism has been criticised.
Further main works
- Black Sun: Depression and Melancholia (1987)
- Strangers to Ourselves (1988)
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