1. Julia Kristeva (1) Her Views of the Semiotics

2. Her Life and Works Raised in communist Bulgaria.Bulgaria At the age of 25 she left for Paris with a doctoral research fellowship in hand. By1967 her articles were already appearing in the most prestigious reviews, Critique and Tel Quel. Her doctoral thesis, La Revolution du langage poetique, in 1974. Eastern European training with a solid background in Marxist theory and fluent Russian enabled her to acquire first-hand knowledge of the Russian Formalists and, more importantly, societ theorist Mikhail Bakhtin, whose work she was instrumental in introducing to the Western world. (source: http://www.msu.edu/user/vasicekb/980/KBIO.HTM )http://www.msu.edu/user/vasicekb/980/KBIO.HTM

3. Note: Her Life and Works “To put it bluntly, I speak in French and about literature because of Yelta. I mean that because of Yelta, I was obliged to marry in order to have a French passport and to work in France; moreover, because of Yelta, I wanted to ‘marry’ the violence that has tormented me ever since, has dissolve identity and cells, coveted recognition and haunted me nights... I have no ‘I’ any more,...” (source: Lecht 93 ) note: 1945 - End of Bulgarian monarchy. Yalta treaty makes Bulgaria a USSR satellite state.

4. Major Concepts 1. Her attempt to bring the body back into discourses in the human sciences; 2. Her focus on the significance of the maternal and preoedipal in the constitution of subjectivity; 3. Her revision of contemporary linguistics which focused on the communicative function of language (e.g. generative grammar, speech acts).  genotext, as semiotic disposition (The genotext exists within the phenotext, which is the perceivable signifying system.) (Her notion of abjection as an explanation for oppression and discrimination. source)source

5. Three Periods 1960s – early 1970s: discusses and modifies linguistics in order to develop “a theory of the dynamic and unrepresentable poetic dimension of language: its rhymes, rhythms, intonations, alliteration,... music.” 1970s – the refinement of the concept of le semiotique. K shows more debt to pyschoanalysis 1980s – the notion of abjection, with examples of some works of art (Cf John Leche 4-6)

6. Her Life and Works Her semiotic theory "demonstrates precisely her radical attack on the rigid, scientistic pretensions of a certain kind of structuralism, as well as on the subjectivist and empiricist categories of the traditional humanism." (source: http://www.msu.edu/user/vasicekb/980/KBI O.HTM ) http://www.msu.edu/user/vasicekb/980/KBI O.HTM

7. Questions How is Kristeva related to the theories we’ve discussed so far? (e.g. de Saussure, Levi Strauss) How is she related to Louis Marin’s views of Disneyland? How do we practice her views of semiotics (a production of models that simultaneously offers a critique of itself)?

8. “Semiotics: A Critical Science and/or a Critique of Science” (1968) 0. semiotics – resisted by some other schools as being ‘obscure’, ‘gratuitous,’ ‘schematic’ or impoverishing’ (274). We need to formulate a theory of its evolution and link it with Marxism. I.Semiotics as the Making of Models II.Semiotics and Production (Marx and Freud) III.Semiotics and Literature

9. Semiotics as the Making of Models 1.What’s wrong with existing scientific approaches? Sees semiology as part of linguistics 2.Semiotics: a formalization or production of models. (275) 3.How semiotics is different from the exact sciences: (p. 275) Theory + model: semiotics cannot be separated from the theory constituting it; a theory of the science constituting it. Self-reflexive: a critique of both its models and itself, or a critique of semiotics (276), a crique which opens onto something other than semiotics, that is, ideology Science (e.g. mathmatics, logic, linguistics) – develops into a system; Semiotics – self-questioning; reveals how science is born of ideology (277) Introduces new terms or alterity in terms

10. Some Terms: 1) formalization & the Axiomatic The characteristics of formalization in mathematics 1. The axiomatic method: an existing set of proven axioms ( 公理 ) are the point of departure for the development of new axioms; Existence– free from contradiction so that the law of identity holds, i.e. a =a The law of the excluded middle: a =b, or a ≠b, there is no third way; The decidability of every mathmatical or logical problem. (Lecht 94)

11. Semiotics and Production (three kinds of work) Allied semiotics to Marx’s strategy –a classical semiotics of work (which presents an economy or society –signified—as a permutation of elements—signifier p. 277) Marx redefined the concept of ‘work’ and link it to different semiotic systems 1.Work (‘a supernatural creative power’) redefined  a work process with some social relations of production as its own specific logic (278) 2.Value redefined – crystallization of social work 3.1) Work as value in the field of production (exchange value and use value – p. 278) 4.2) circulation of money as arbitrary signs: Marx critiques the circulation of money – measurable communication in and after production. (money as signs//writing as exchange of money)  work means ‘nothing’

12. Some Terms: 2) gramma and grammé And Derrida’s Grammatology (published in 1967) –the major argument: writing is a kind of totality which is not identical with itself qua totality, because writing contains an inside and outside within itself. Writing is—as a fusion of grammé and gramma – fundamentally an inscription. Grammé (the Greek for a line)– the mark of writing, trace, the other of this mark; Gramma – letter

13. Semiotics and Production (three kinds of work 2) 3) dream-work (manifest content— hieroglyph + dream thought )  pre- representative production or the unconscious; Problems of Semiotics re-defined: Either formalized from the point of view of communication Or opened up to the internal problematics of communication –the ‘other scene’ of the production of meaning prior to meaning Another example – 1968 demands to change the model.

14. Semiotics and Production conclusion Semiotics of production will accentuate the alterity of its object in its relation with the representable and representative object of exchange examined by the exact sciences (280) Examines a plurality of productions

15. Semiotics and Literature Literature: A particular semiotic practice which has the advantage of making more accessible than others the problematic of the production of meaning posed by a new semiotics. Irreducible to the level of an object for normative linguistics Production not reduced to representation

16. Some Terms: 3) semananalysis This project moves the orientation of semiotics away from the study of meaning as a static sign-system, and towards the analysis of meaning as a ‘signifying process’ ‘the critical analysis of the notion of the sign,’ a ‘science constructed as a critique of meaning, of its elements and its laws... ‘ It goes beyond the sign (which is fixed, static and objective) in order to analyse ‘what cannot be thought by the whole conceptual system which is currently the foundation of intelligence”...paves the way for ‘la sémiotique’ to give way to ‘le sémiotique’ (the presymbolic) (L. 98-99)