Julia Kristeva

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Julia Kristeva

Julia Kristeva in Paris, 2008

Born

24 June 1941 (age 74)
Sliven, Bulgaria

Residence

France

Nationality

French / Bulgarian

Alma mater

University of Sofia
(and others)

Awards

Holberg International Memorial Prize

Hannah Arendt Award for Political
Thought

VIZE 97 Prize
Website

kristeva.fr

Era

Contemporary philosophy

Region

Western philosophy

School
Psychoanalysis
Structuralism
Poststructuralism
Main interests
Philosophy of language

Semiotics
Literary criticism
Philosophy of literature

Psychoanalysis
Feminism
Notable ideas
The "semiotic" of the pre-mirror stage
Nature of abjection
Influences[show]
Part of a series of articles on

Psychoanalysis

Concepts[show]

Important figures[show]

Important works[show]

Schools of thought[show]

Training[show]

Psychology portal

Julia Kristeva (French: [kisteva]; Bulgarian: ; born 24 June 1941) is a BulgarianFrench philosopher, literary critic, psychoanalyst, feminist, and, most recently, novelist, who has lived
in France since the mid-1960s. She is now a professor at the University Paris Diderot.
Kristeva became influential in international critical analysis, cultural theory and feminism after
publishing her first book, Semeiotik, in 1969. Her sizable body of work includes books and essays
which addressintertextuality, the semiotic, and abjection, in the fields of linguistics, literary theory
and criticism, psychoanalysis, biography and autobiography, political and cultural analysis, art and
art history. She is among the prominent figures in structuralist thought, while her works have also
been recognized as having an important place in post-structuralism.
She is also the founder and head of the Simone de Beauvoir Prize committee.[1]
Contents
[hide]

1Life

2Work
o

2.1The "semiotic"

2.2Anthropology and psychology

3Feminist
o

3.1Denunciation of identity politics

4Novelist

5Honors

6Scholarly reception

7Selected writings
o

7.1Novels

8See also

9Notes

10External links

Life[edit]
Born in Sliven, Bulgaria, to Christian parents, Kristeva is the daughter of a church accountant.
Kristeva and her sister were enrolled in a Francophone school run by Dominican nuns. Kristeva
became acquainted with the work of Mikhail Bakhtin at this time in Bulgaria. Kristeva went on to
study at the 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.[2] She continued her education
at several French universities, studying under Goldmann and Barthes, among other scholars. [3] On
August 2, 1967, Kristeva married the novelist Philippe Sollers,[4] nPhilippe Joyaux.
Kristeva taught at Columbia University in the early 1970s, and remains a Visiting Professor.[5] She
has also published under the married name Julia Joyaux. [6][7][8]

Work[edit]
After joining the 'Tel Quel group' founded by Sollers, Kristeva focused on the politics of language and
became an active member of the group. She trained in psychoanalysis, and earned her degree in
1979. In some ways, her work can be seen as trying to adapt a psychoanalytic approach to
the poststructuralist criticism. For example, her view of the subject, and its construction, shares
similarities with Sigmund Freud and Lacan. However, Kristeva rejects any understanding of the
subject in a structuralist sense; instead, she favors a subject always "in process" or "on trial".[9] 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).[10][11][12][13][14][15]

The "semiotic"[edit]
One of Kristeva's most important propositions is the semiotic, as distinct from the discipline
of semiotics founded by Ferdinand de Saussure. As explained in The History of Women in
Philosophy by Augustine Perumalil, Kristeva's "semiotic is closely related to the infantile preOedipal 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." Furthermore, according to Birgit Schippers' 2011 book Julia Kristeva and Feminist Thought,
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.
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 unconsciousfascination with the
semiotic, desiring to reunite with the mother, while at the same time fearing the loss of identity that
accompanies it. Slasher film 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 Platos idea of the chora, meaning a nourishing maternal
space (Schippers, 2011). Kristevas 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 is also noted for her work on the concept of intertextuality.

Anthropology and psychology[edit]

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.[clarification needed]

Feminist[edit]
Kristeva was regarded as a key proponent of French feminism together with Simone de
Beauvoir, Hlne Cixous, and Luce Irigaray.[16][17] Kristeva had a remarkable influence on feminism

and feminist literary studies[18][19] in the US and the UK, as well as on readings into contemporary art [20]
[21]
although her relation to feminist circles and movements in France was 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 to reject feminism altogether. Kristeva proposed the idea of multiple
sexual identities against the joined code [clarification needed] of "unified feminine language".

Denunciation of identity politics[edit]

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-structuralism approach enabled specific social groups to
trace the source of their oppression to the very language they used. She believes that it is harmful to
posit collective identity above individual identity, and this political assertion of sexual, ethnic, and
religious identities is "totalitarian".[22]

Novelist[edit]
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 Delacoura French journalistwho 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".[23]

Honors[edit]
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.

Scholarly reception[edit]
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."[24]
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 pride in; what she
displaces is the already-said, the dja-dit, i.e., the instance of the signified, i.e., stupidity; what she
subverts is authority -the authority of monologic science, of filiation."[25]
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". [26] Ian 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. 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".[27]
In Intellectual Impostures (1997), physics professors Alan Sokal and Jean Bricmont devote a chapter
to Kristeva's use of mathematics in her writings. They conclude "the main problem summarized by
these texts is that she makes no effort to justify the reference of these mathematical concepts to the
fields she is purporting to study - linguistics, literary criticism, political philosophy, psychoanalysis and this in our opinion, is for the very good reason that there is none. Her sentences are more
meaningful than those of Lacan, but she surpasses even him for the superficiality of her erudition." [28]
A feminist criticism is directed toward Kristeva's idea that the mother of early childhood must be
abjected and rejected (footnote 12).

Selected writings[edit]

Smitik: recherches pour une smanalyse, Paris: Edition du

Seuil, 1969. (English translation: Desire in Language: A Semiotic
Approach to Literature and Art, Oxford: Blackwell, 1980.)

La Rvolution Du Langage Potique: L'avant-Garde La Fin Du

Xixe Sicle, Lautramont Et Mallarm. Paris: ditions 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. 92101). 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.

Other books on Julia Kristeva:

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 dition,
2010.

Kelly Oliver, Ethics, Politics, and Difference in Julia Kristeva's

Writing, Routledge dition, 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.

Nolle McAfee, Julia Kristeva, Routledge, 2003.

Griselda Pollock (Guest Editor) Julia Kristeva 19661996, 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.

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.

Capacity to be alone

criture fminine

Khra

List of thinkers influenced by deconstruction

Novels[edit]

See also[edit]

Notes[edit]
1.

Jump up^ Simone de Beauvoir Prize 2009 goes to the One Million
Signatures Campaign in Iran, Change for Equality

2.

Jump up^ Siobhan Chapman, Christopher Routledge, Key thinkers in

linguistics and the philosophy of language, Oxford University Press
US, 2005,ISBN 0-19-518767-9, Google Print, p. 166

3.

Jump up^ Nilo Kauppi, Radicalism in French Culture: A Sociology of

French Theory in the 1960s, Burlington, VT, 2010, p. 25.

4.

Jump up^ Benot Peeters, Derrida: A Biography, Cambridge: Polity

Press, 2013, pp. 176-77.

5.

Jump up^ Riding, Alan, Correcting Her Idea of Politically Correct. New
York Times. 14 June 2001.

6.

Jump up^ Library of Congress authority record for Julia

Kristeva, Library of Congress

7.

Jump up^ BNF data page, Bibliothque nationale de France

8.

Jump up^ Hlne Volat, Julia Kristeva: A Bibliography (bibliography

page for Le Langage, cet inconnu (1969), published under the name
Julia Joyaux).

9.

Jump up^ McAfee, Nolle (2004). Julia Kristeva. London: Routledge.

p. 38. ISBN 0-203-63434-9.

10. Jump up^ State University of New York at Stony Brook

11. Jump up^ Tate Britain Online Event: Julia Kristeva
12. Jump up^ Who's who in Les samouras by Kathleen O'Grady
13. Jump up^ An Interview with Josefina Ayerza - Flash Art Magazine
14. Jump up^ Guardian article: March 14, 2006
15. Jump up^ Julia Kristeva - site officiel
16. Jump up^ Vanda Zajko and Miriam Leonard (eds.), Laughing with
Medusa. Oxford University Press, 2006. ISBN 0-19-927438-X
17. Jump up^ Griselda Pollock, Inscriptions in the feminine. In: Inside the
Visible edited by Catherine de Zegher. MIT Press, 1996.
18. Jump up^ Parallax, n. 8, [Vol. 4(3)], 1998.
19. Jump up^ Humm, Maggie, Modernist Women and Visual Cultures.
Rutgers University Press, 2003. ISBN 0-8135-3266-3
20. Jump up^ Griselda Pollock, Encounters in the Virtual Feminist
Museum. Routledge, 2007.
21. Jump up^ Humm, Maggie, Feminism and Film. Indiana University
press, 1997. ISBN 0-253-33334-2
22. Jump up^ Riding, Alan, Correcting Her Idea of Politically
Correct. New York Times. June 14, 2001
23. Jump up^ 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.
24. Jump up^ Desire in Language: A Semiotic Approach to Literature and
Art, Columbia University Press, 1980 (In Preface)
25. Jump up^ Roland Barthes, "The Rustle of language" p 168,
26. Jump up^ Ian Almond, The New Orientalists: Postmodern
Representations of Islam from Foucault to Baudrillard, I.B.Tauris, 2007
p.132

27. Jump up^ Ian Almond, The New Orientalists: Postmodern

Representations of Islam from Foucault to Baudrillard, I.B.Tauris, 2007
pp. 154-5
28. Jump up^ Sokal and Bricmont, Intellectual Impostures, Profile Books,
1998 p.47

External links[edit]

Julia Kristeva (Official Site)

Holberg Prize

Interview with Julia Kristeva in Exberliner Magazine

Julia Kristeva: A Bibliography by Hlne Volat

Goodnow, Katherine J.(2015). Kristeva in Focus: From Theory to

Film Analysis Berghahn Books.

[sho

Feminist

[sho

The VIZE 97 P
WorldCat
VIAF: 108172648
LCCN: n50045983
ISNI: 0000 0001 2283 9200
Authority control

GND: 118778056
SUDOC: 026954192
BNF: cb11910116q (data)
NDL: 00446365
NKC: jn20010309077

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