In Language and Politics in Julia Kristeva, Carol Mastrangelo Bové explores how Kristeva's theoretical and fictional writings contribute to an understanding of contemporary personal and international conflicts. In addition to examining Kristeva's turn to Eastern models—both Russian and Chinese—in thinking through a critique of symbolic language in Western patriarchal psychic formations, Bové also contributes to the debate over essentialism through innovative interpretations of such major works of twentieth-century French culture as Marcel Proust's Remembrance of Things Past, Simone de Beauvoir's She Came to Stay, François Truffaut's Jules and Jim, and Jean Renoir's Rules of the Game. Bové argues that the links between the body and the female, on the one hand, and authority and the male, on the other, are psychologically constructed, and are not necessarily or exclusively biological. The book concludes with an examination of Kristeva's Colette.
The social and political relevance of Julia Kristeva's work is perhaps the central question in Kristeva studies, and the essays in this collection provide a sustained interrogation of this complicated problematic from a variety of perspectives and across the various contexts and moments of Kristeva's forty-year writing career. Presenting Kristeva's thought as the sustained interrogation of a political problematic, the contributors argue that her use of psychoanalysis and aesthetics offers significant insight into social and political issues that would otherwise remain concealed. The collection addresses the entirety of Kristeva's oeuvre, from her earliest work on poetic language to her most recent work on female genius, and it includes two previously untranslated essays by Kristeva, as well as original contributions from scholars working in several countries and a variety of disciplines.
In Revolution in Poetic Language, Julia Kristeva explicates her foundational distinction between the semiotic and the symbolic and explores their interrelationships. Linking the psychosomatic to the literary and the literary to a larger political horizon, she questions the premises of linguistic, psychoanalytic, philosophical, and literary theories.
A valuable intervention in Kristevan scholarship and a significant and exciting contribution in its own right to post-structuralist discussions of ethical and political agency and practice. Contributors: Judith Butler, Tina Chanter, Marilyn Edelstein, Jean Graybeal, Suzanne Guerlac, Alice Jardine, Lisa Lowe, Noelle McAfee, Norma Claire Moruzzi, Kelly Oliver, Tilottma Rajan, Jacqueline Rose, Allison Weir, Mary Bittner Wiseman, Ewa Ziarek
Desire in Language traces the path of an investigation into the semiotics of literature and the arts. Julia Kristeva proposes and tests theories centered on the nature and development of the novel.
An easily accessible introduction to Kristeva's work in English. The essays have been selected as representative of the three main areas of Kristeva's writing--semiotics, psychoanalysis, and political theory--and are each prefaced by a clear, instructive introduction. For beginners or those familiar with Kristeva's work this is a good complement to The Portable Kristeva with a convenient selection of articles from Kristeva's earlier work some of which are otherwise hard to come by.
Honorable Mention, 2006 Goethe Award for Psychoanalytic Scholarship presented by the Section on Psychoanalysis of the Canadian Psychological Association This is the first systematic overview of Julia Kristeva's vision and work in relation to philosophical modernity. It provides a clear, comprehensive, and interdisciplinary analysis of her thought on psychoanalysis, art, ethics, politics, and feminism in the secular aftermath of religion. Sara Beardsworth shows that Kristeva's multiple perspectives explore the powers and limits of different discourses as responses to the historical failures of Western cultures, failures that are undergone and disclosed in psychoanalysis.
In Powers of Horror, Julia Kristeva offers an extensive and profound consideration of the nature of abjection. Drawing on Freud and Lacan, she analyzes the nature of attitudes toward repulsive subjects and examines the function of these topics in the writings of Louis-Ferdinand Céline, Marcel Proust, James Joyce, and other authors. Kristeva identifies the abject with the eruption of the real and the presence of death. She explores how art and religion each offer ways of purifying the abject, arguing that amid abjection, boundaries between subject and object break down.
This book is concerned with the notion of the stranger—the foreigner, outsider, or alien in a country and society not their own—as well as the notion of strangeness within the self, a person’s deep sense of being, as distinct from outside appearance and their conscious idea of self. Julia Kristeva begins with the personal and moves outward by examining world literature and philosophy. She discusses the foreigner in Greek tragedy, in the Bible, and in the literature of the Middle Ages, Renaissance, Enlightenment, and the twentieth century. By considering the legal status of foreigners throughout history, Kristeva offers a different perspective on our own civilization.
The Philosophy of Julia Kristeva is the latest addition to the highly acclaimed series, The Library of Living Philosophers. The book epitomizes the objectives of this acclaimed series; it contains critical interpretation of one of the greatest philosophers of our time, and pursues more creative regional and world dialogue on philosophical questions. The format provides a detailed interaction between those who interpret and critique Kristeva’s work and the seminal thinker herself, giving broad coverage, from diverse viewpoints, of all the major topics establishing her reputation. With questions directed to the philosopher while they are alive, the volumes in The Library of Living Philosophers have come to occupy a uniquely significant place in the realm of philosophy. The inclusion of Julia Kristeva constitutes a vital addition to an already robust list of thinkers. The Philosophy of Julia Kristeva exemplifies world-class intellectual work closely connected to the public sphere. Kristeva has been said to have “inherited the intellectual throne left vacant by Simone de Beauvoir,” and has won many awards, including the Hannah Arendt Prize for Political Thought. Julia Kristeva’s autobiography provides an excellent introduction to her work, situating it in relation to major political, intellectual, and cultural movements of the time. Her upbringing in Soviet-dominated Bulgaria, her move to the French intellectual landscape of the 1960s, her visit to Mao’s China, her response to the fall of the Berlin Wall, her participation in a papal summit on humanism, her appointment by President Chirac as President of the National Council on Disability, and her setting up of the Simone de Beauvoir prize, honoring women in active and creative fields, are all major moments of this fascinating life. The major part of the book is comprised of thirty-six essays by Kristeva’s foremost interpreters and critics, together with her replies to the essays. These encounters cover an exceptionally wide range of theoretical and literary writing. The strong international and multidisciplinary focus includes authors from over ten countries, and spans the fields of philosophy, semiotics, literature, psychoanalysis, feminist thought, political theory, art, and religion. The comprehensive bibliography provides further access to Kristeva’s writings and thought. The preparation of this volume, the thirty-sixth in the series, was supported by a major grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities.
