Julia Kristeva

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Julia Kristeva
Юлия Кръстева
French feminism[1]
Main interests
  • Philosophy of language
  • Philosophy of literature
  • Feminism
Notable ideas
Websitekristeva.fr

Julia Kristeva (French:

Holberg International Memorial Prize, the Hannah Arendt Prize
, and the Vision 97 Foundation Prize, awarded by the Havel Foundation.

Kristeva became influential in international critical analysis,

poststructuralist
thought.

Kristeva is also the founder of the Simone de Beauvoir Prize committee.[6]

Life

Born in

University of Sofia, and while a postgraduate there obtained a research fellowship that enabled her to move to France in December 1965, when she was 24.[8] She continued her education at several French universities, studying under Lucien Goldmann and Roland Barthes, among other scholars.[9][10] On August 2, 1967, Kristeva married the novelist Philippe Sollers,[11]
born Philippe Joyaux.

Kristeva taught at Columbia University in the early 1970s, and remains a Visiting Professor.[12] She has also published under the married name Julia Joyaux.[13][14][15]

Work

After joining the '

Lacan. However, Kristeva rejects any understanding of the subject in a structuralist sense; instead, she favors a subject always "in process" or "on trial".[16] In this way, she contributes to the poststructuralist critique of essentialized structures, whilst preserving the teachings of psychoanalysis. She travelled to China in the 1970s and later wrote About Chinese Women (1977).[17][18][19][20][21][22]

The "semiotic" and the "symbolic"

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

denotative meanings of words."[23] 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.[24]

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
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 as 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 is also noted for her work on the concept of intertextuality.

Anthropology and psychology

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).

Julia Kristeva in 2005

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.[clarification needed]

Feminism

Kristeva has been regarded as a key proponent of

French feminism together with Simone de Beauvoir, Hélène Cixous, and Luce Irigaray.[25][26] Kristeva has had a remarkable influence on feminism and feminist literary studies[27][28] in the US and the UK, as well as on readings into contemporary art[29][30] 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[clarification needed
] of "unified feminine language".

Denunciation of identity politics

Kristeva argues her writings have been misunderstood by American feminist academics. In Kristeva's view, it was not enough simply to dissect the structure of language in order to find its hidden meaning. Language should also be viewed through the prisms of history and of individual psychic and sexual experiences. This post-structuralist approach enabled specific social groups to trace the source of their oppression to the very language they used. However, Kristeva believes that it is harmful to posit collective identity above individual identity, and that this political assertion of sexual, ethnic, and religious identities is ultimately totalitarian.[31]

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 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".[32]

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.[33] On October 10, 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."[34]

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."[35]

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".[36] 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.[37] 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".[38]

In

Impostures intellectuelles (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.[39]

Alleged collaboration with the Communist Regime in Bulgaria

In 2018, Bulgaria's state Dossier Commission announced that Kristeva had been an agent for the Committee for State Security under the code name "Sabina". She was supposedly recruited in June 1971.[40][41] Five years earlier she left Bulgaria to study in France. Under the People's Republic of Bulgaria, any Bulgarian who wanted to travel abroad had to apply for an exit visa and get an approval from the Ministry of Interior. The process was long and difficult because anyone who made it to the west could declare political asylum.[42] Kristeva has called the allegations "grotesque and false".[43] On 30 March, the state Dossier Commission began publishing online the entire set of documents reflecting Kristeva's activity as an informant of the former Committee for State Security.[44][45][46][47][48][49] She vigorously denies the charges.[50] However, anyone even remotely familiar with the practices of the former communist regimes in Eastern and Central Europe would know that the state would never issue anyone an international passport – particularly for travel behind the “iron curtain” – unless they collaborated with the authorities (most typically by becoming a State Security operative).

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..."[51]

Selected writings

Linguistic and literature

  • Séméiôtiké: recherches pour une sémanalyse, Paris, Seuil, 1969 (trans. in Desire in Language: A Semiotic Approach to Literature and Art, New York, Columbia University Press, Blackwell, London, 1980)
  • Le langage, cet inconnu: Une initiation à la linguistique, S.G.P.P., 1969; new ed., coll. Points, Seuil, 1981 (trans. in 1981 as Language. The Unknown: an Initiation into Linguistics, Columbia University Press, Harvester Wheatsheaf, London, 1989)
  • La révolution du langage poétique: L'avant-garde à la fin du 19e siècle: Lautréamont et Mallarmé, Seuil, Paris, 1974 (abridged trans. containing only the first third of the original French edition, Revolution in Poetic Language, Columbia University Press, New York, 1984)
  • Polylogue, Seuil, Paris, 1977 (trans. in Desire in Language: A Semiotic Approach to Literature and Art, New York, Columbia University Press, Blackwell, London, 1980)
  • Histoires d’amour, Denoël, Paris, 1983 (trans. Tales of Love, Columbia University Press, New York, 1987)
  • Le temps sensible. Proust et l’expérience littéraire, Gallimard, Paris, 1994 (trans. Time and Sense: Proust and the experience of literature, Columbia University Press, New York, 1996)
  • Dostoïevski, Buchet-Chastel, Paris, 2020

Psychoanalysis and philosophy

  • Pouvoirs de l’horreur. Essai sur l’abjection (trans. Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection, Columbia University Press, New York, 1982)
  • Au commencement était l’amour. Psychanalyse et foi, Hachette, Paris, 1985 (trans. In the Beginning Was Love. Psychoanalysis and Faith, Columbia University Press, New York, 1987)
  • Soleil Noir. Dépression et mélancolie, Gallimard, Paris, 1987 (trans. The Black Sun: Depression and Melancholia, Columbia University Press, New York, 1989)
  • Etrangers à nous-mêmes, Fayard, Paris, 1988 (Strangers to Ourselves, Columbia University Press, New York, 1991)
  • Lettre ouverte à Harlem Désir, Rivages, Paris, 1990, (trans. Nations without Nationalism. Columbia University Press, New York, 1993
  • Les Nouvelles maladies de l’âme, Fayard, Paris, 1993 (trans. New Maladies of the Soul. Columbia University Press, New York, 1995)
  • Sens et non sens de la révolte, Fayard, Paris, 1996 (trans. The Sense of Revolt, Columbia University Press, 2000)
  • La Révolte intime, Fayard, 1997 (trans. Intimate Revolt, Columbia University Press, 2002)
  • Le Génie féminin: la vie, la folie, les mots, Fayard, Paris, 1999- (trans. Female Genius: Life, Madness, Words, Columbia University Press, New York, 2001–2004):
    • 1. Hannah Arendt ou l’action comme naissance et comme étrangeté, vol. 1, Fayard, Paris, 1999
    • 2. Melanie Klein ou le matricide comme douleur et comme créativité: la folie, vol. 2, Fayard, Paris, 2000
    • 3. Colette ou la chair du monde, vol. 3, Fayard, Paris, 2002
  • Vision capitales, Réunion des musées nationaux, 1998 (trans. The Severed Head: capital visions, Columbia University Press, New York, 2012)

Autobiographical essays

  • Des Chinoises, édition des Femmes, Paris, 1974 (About Chinese Women, Marion Boyars, London, 1977
  • Du mariage considéré comme un des Beaux-Arts, Fayard, Paris, 2015 (Marriage as a Fine Art (with Philippe Sollers) Columbia University Press, New York 2016
  • Je me voyage. Mémoires. Entretien avec Samuel Dock, Fayard, Paris, 2016 (A Journey Across Borders and Through Identities. Conversations with Samuel Dock, in The Philosophy of Julia Kristeva, ed. Sara Beardsworth, The Library of Living Philosophers, vo. 36, Open Cort, Chicago, 2020)

Collection of essays

  • The Kristeva Reader, ed. Toril Moi, Columbia University Press, New York, 1986
  • The Portable Kristeva, ed. Kelly Oliver, Columbia University Press, New York, 1997
  • Crisis of the European Subject, Other Press, New York, 2000
  • La Haine et le pardon, ed. with a foreword by Pierre-Louis Fort, Fayard, Paris, 2005 (trans. Hatred and forgiveness, Columbia University Press, New York, 2010)
  • Pulsions du temps, foreword, edition and notes by David Uhrig, Fayard, Paris, 2013 (trans. Passions of Our Time, ed. with a foreword by Lawrence D. Kritzman, Columbia University Press, New York, 2019)

Novels

  • Les Samouraïs, Fayard, Paris, 1990 (trans. The Samurai: A Novel, Columbia University Press, New York, 1992)
  • Le Vieil homme et les loups, Fayard, Paris, 1991(trans. The Old Man and the Wolves, Columbia University Press, New York, 1994)
  • Possessions, Fayard, Paris, 1996 (trans. Possessions: A Novel, Columbia University Press, New York, 1998)
  • Meurtre à Byzance, Fayard, Paris, 2004 (trans. Murder in Byzantium, Columbia University Press, New York, 2006)
  • Thérèse mon amour : récit. Sainte Thérèse d’Avila, Fayard, 2008 (trans. Teresa, my love. An Imagined Life of the Saint of Avila, Columbia University Press, New York, 2015)
  • L’Horloge enchantée, Fayard, Paris, 2015 (trans. The Enchanted Clock, Columbia University Press, 2017)

See also

References

  1. ^ Kelly Ives, Cixous, Irigaray, Kristeva: The Jouissance of French Feminism, Crescent Moon Publishing, 2016.
  2. ^ a b "The transfinite is a concept originating in set theory, and was developed for linguistics by Julia Kristeva." Nihilism in Postmodernity: Lyotard, Baudrillard, Vattimo. Ashley Woodward (2009). ISBN 978-1-934542-08-8. The Davies Group, Publishers
  3. ^ https://physics.nyu.edu/sokal/tallis.html https://web.archive.org/web/20220630015623/https://physics.nyu.edu/sokal/tallis.html Raymond Tallis
  4. ^
    S2CID 198524720
    . Retrieved 2022-11-01. Braconnier: Who are the great figures in psychoanalysis who have influenced you the most?
    Julia Kristeva: After Freud, Melanie Klein, Winnicott, and Lacan, of course. And I learned a great deal from my supervision with André Green.
  5. ^ Creech, James, "Julia Kristeva's Bataille: reading as triumph," Diacritics, 5(1), Spring 1975, pp. 62-68.
  6. ^ Simone de Beauvoir Prize 2009 goes to the One Million Signatures Campaign in Iran Archived 2009-02-01 at the Wayback Machine, Change for Equality
  7. ^ York, The New School 66 West 12th Street New; Ny 10011 (2018-12-20). "Fieldnotes from Europe: Today's Fascists accuse Julia Kristeva". Transregional Center for Democratic Studies. Retrieved 2024-03-06.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)
  8. ^ Nilo Kauppi, Radicalism in French Culture: A Sociology of French Theory in the 1960s, Burlington, VT, 2010, p. 25.
  9. .
  10. ^ Benoît Peeters, Derrida: A Biography, Cambridge: Polity Press, 2013, pp. 176-77.
  11. ^ Riding, Alan, Correcting Her Idea of Politically Correct. The New York Times. 14 June 2001.
  12. ^ Library of Congress authority record for Julia Kristeva, Library of Congress
  13. ^ BNF data page, Bibliothèque nationale de France
  14. ^ Hélène Volat, Julia Kristeva: A Bibliography, archived from the original on 2016-05-10, retrieved 2014-08-24 (bibliography page for Le Langage, cet inconnu (1969), published under the name Julia Joyaux).
  15. .
  16. ^ "State University of New York at Stony Brook". Archived from the original on 2004-11-20. Retrieved 2004-11-23.
  17. ^ "Tate Britain Online Event: Julia Kristeva". Archived from the original on 2018-04-03. Retrieved 2014-07-31.
  18. ^ "Who's who in Les Samouraïs - Philippe Sollers/Pileface". www.pileface.com. Archived from the original on 2018-12-15. Retrieved 2006-02-20.
  19. ^ "Julia Kristeva/Josefina Ayerza/Flash Art". www.lacan.com.
  20. ^ "The ideas interview: Julia Kristeva". the Guardian. March 14, 2006.
  21. ^ "Julia Kristeva - site officiel". www.kristeva.fr.
  22. ^ Perumalil, Augustine. The History of Women in Philosophy. p. 344.
  23. ^ Schippers, Birgit (2011). Julia Kristeva and Feminist Thought.
  24. ^ Griselda Pollock, Inscriptions in the feminine. In: Inside the Visible edited by Catherine de Zegher. MIT Press, 1996.
  25. ^ Parallax, n. 8, [Vol. 4(3)], 1998.
  26. ^ Griselda Pollock, Encounters in the Virtual Feminist Museum. Routledge, 2007.
  27. ^ Riding, Alan, Correcting Her Idea of Politically Correct. 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?". The Guardian. Retrieved 23 November 2014.
  29. ^ http://www.holbergprisen.no/en/julia-kristeva/french-order[permanent dead link]
  30. ^ Desire in Language: A Semiotic Approach to Literature and Art, Columbia University Press, 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". Bibliobs. 28 March 2018.
  37. ^ Sofia, Reuters in (March 28, 2018). "Julia Kristeva was communist secret agent, Bulgaria claims". the Guardian. {{cite web}}: |first= has generic name (help)
  38. ^ Ghodsee, Kristen Rogheh (November 2005). The Red Riviera: Gender, tourism, and postsocialism on the Black Sea. Duke University Press. declare political asylum.
  39. ^ "Julia Kristeva Denies Being Bulgarian Security Agent". March 29, 2018.
  40. ^ ″Bulgaria’s 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", novinite.com, 30 March 2018. Retrieved 30 March 2018.
  42. ^ Documents on the Dossier Commission’s website (in Bulgarian). Retrieved 30 March 2018.
  43. ^ Христо Христов, ″Онлайн: Първите документи за Юлия Кръстева в Държавна сигурност″, 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)″, desebg.com, 30 March 2018 (Dossier of ″Sabina″, in Bulgarian). Retrieved 31 March 2018.
  45. ^ Jennifer Schuessler and Boryana Dzhambazova, ″Bulgaria Says French Thinker Was a Secret Agent. She Calls It a ‘Barefaced Lie.’″, ″The New York Times″, 1 April 2018. Retrieved 2 April 2018.
  46. ISSN 0362-4331
    . Retrieved 2018-04-02.
  47. ^ Neal Ascherson, "Don’t imagine you’re smarter", London Review of Books, 19 July 2018.

Further reading

Books about Julia Kristeva

  • Beardsworth, Sara, The Philosophy of Julia Kristeva, The Library of Living Philosophers, vol. 36, Southern Illinois University Carbondale, Open Court, Chicago, 2020
  • Jardine, Alice, At the Risk of Thinking. An Intellectual Biography of Julia Kristeva, Bloomsbury, New York, 2020
  • Ivantcheva-Merjanska, Irene, Ecrire dans la langue de l'autre. Assia Djebar et Julia Kristeva, L'Harmattan, Paris, 2015.
  • Kelly Ives, Julia Kristeva: art, love, melancholy, philosophy, semiotics and psychoanalysis, Crescent Moon, Maidstone, 2013
  • Becker-Leckrone, Megan, Julia Kristeva And Literary Theory, Palgrave Macmillan, 2005
  • Beardsworth, Sara, Psychoanalysis and Modernity, Suny Press, Albany, 2004
  • Radden, Jennifer, The Nature of Melancholy: From Aristotle to Kristeva, Oxford University Press, 2000
  • Lechte, John, and Margaroni, Maria, Julia Kristeva: Live Theory, Continuum, 2004
  • McAfee, Noëlle, Julia Kristeva, Routledge, London, 2004
  • Smith, Anna, Julia Kristeva: Readings of Exile and Estrangement, St. Martin's Press, New york, 1996.
  • Oliver, Kelly, Ethics, Politics, and Difference in Julia Kristeva's Writing, Routledge Édition, New York, 1993
  • Crownfield, David, Body/Text in Julia Kristeva: Religion, Women, and Psychoanalysis, State University of New York Press, 1992
  • Oliver, Kelly, Reading Kristeva. Unraveling the Double-bind, Indiana University Press, Bloomington, 1983

External links