68 Feminist Philosophy: Julia Kristeva (b. 1941)

JULIA KRISTEVA (1941- )

Bulgarian-French literary critic and psychoanalyst influenced by the deconstructive methods of Derrida.
In La REvolution du language poetique (The Revolution in Poetic Language) (1974) and Semeiotiche: Recherches pour une Semanalyse (Desire in Language: A Semiotic Approach to Literature and Art) (1980), she distinguishes between the pre-linguistic (feminine) semiotic of subjectivity on the one hand and the (masculine) symbolic representation of logic and language on the other.
Kristeva describes ways in which literature (especially “feminine writing”) can combine both in a joyful symbolic representation of the more fundamental semiotic reality.
Powers of Horror (1981), Histoires d’amour (Tales of Love) (1983), and Soleil Noir (Black Sun) (1987) offer thorough analyses of horror, romantic love, melancholy, and depression.
Kristeva’s application of her central themes to political thought may be found in Etrangers A nous-mEme (Strangers to Ourselves) (1988).

Recommended Reading: Catherine Clement and Julia Kristeva, The Feminine and the Sacred (Columbia, 2001); The Portable Kristeva, ed. by Kelly Oliver (Columbia, 1997); The Kristeva Reader, ed. by Toril Moi (Columbia, 1986); Kelly Oliver, Reading Kristeva: Unraveling the Double-Bind (Indiana, 1993); John Lechte, Julia Kristeva (Routledge, 1990); Martha J. Reineke, Sacrificed Lives: Kristeva on Women and Violence (Indiana, 1997); and Michael Payne, Reading Theory: An Introduction to Lacan, Derrida and Kristeva (Blackwell, 1993).

 

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