1. Julia Kristeva (1) General Introduction

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. – context: began her graduate study in Paris in 1966 (Ecrit 1966, Of Grammatology ’67, May 1968) By 1967 her articles were already appearing in the most prestigious reviews, Critique and Tel Quel. Her doctoral thesis, La Revolution du langage poetique, in 1974. Major Influences: 1. Todorov; 2. the Russian Formalists and, more importantly, soviet theorist Mikhail Bakhtin; 3. Roland Barthes (source: 1 http://www.msu.edu/user/vasicekb/980/KBIO.HTM; 2. http://www.columbia.edu/itc/visualarts/r4100/inter.html#sum )http://www.msu.edu/user/vasicekb/980/KBIO.HTM http://www.columbia.edu/itc/visualarts/r4100/inter.html#sum

3. Note: Her Life as a “Stranger” “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. 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 notions of stranger, abjection, maternal body, with examples of some works of art (Cf John Leche 4-6), produces more artistic and autobiographical writings, deals with love and faith

5. 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

6. Questions How is Kristeva related to the theories we’ve discussed so far? (e.g. de Saussure, Levi Strauss, Roland Barthes, Jacque Derrida, etc.) How do we compare differance with the semiotic? How do we use or articulate her views of the semiotic vs. the symbolic (genotext vs phenotext) to literary analysis?

7. Kristeva and Bakhtin “Word, Dialogue, and the Novel” three dimension of the “word” – writing subject, addressee and exterior texts; “Diachrony is transformed into synchrony, and in light of this transformation, linear history appears as abstraction” against which the writer does his/her writing. Dialogue and ambivalence

8. Kristeva vs. Semiotics “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 Different from science, it is self-reflexive. I.Semiotics and Production (Marx and Freud) Marx redefined the concept of ‘work’ and link it to different semiotic systems Freud -- opened up to the internal problematics of communication –the ‘other scene’ of the production of meaning prior to meaning Derrida – produces writing’s alterity III.Semiotics and Literature Irreducible to the level of an object for normative linguistics

9. Kristeva vs. Semiotics 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’ 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)

10. Kriteva and Derrida 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

11. Kriteva and Derrida 1. the Speaking Subject; 2. Rupture “…while Derrida has been at pains to point out that ‘Writing can never be thought under the category of the subject’, Kristeva was concerned to develop a theory of the speaking subject aimed at taking account of the nature of language in all its aspects. (L 98) Rupture vs. Lacuna; Derrida –There is nothing outside of or prior to the text.

12. Kristeva and the Postmodern Ethics Postmodern ethics as a signifying process rather than a foundational basis for morality. Modern philosophical ethics (normative ethics)– based on the moral unified autonomous subject (who promotes a certain set of moral goals) Psychoanalysis– divided subject; and its embodiment in the fields of experience and practice (i.e. 1. experiential embodiment and 2. intertextual embodiment) Kristeva: the second kind; how the subject emerges from the fields of difference and how difference shapes ethics as signifying practice ethics –the “negativizing of narcissism within a practice” (Ref Fisher 93)

13. Kristeva and the Postmodern Ethics (2) -- chora (Ref Fisher 94) The origin of the speaking subject – the heterogeneous processes of the semiotic Chora “the negativizing of narcissism within a practice” –(p. 95) non-teleological positing and dissolving of the meaning and the unity of the subject The chora as the other of signification; the abject maternal body as the ordering principle of the chora

14. Kristeva and the Postmodern Ethics (3) -- practice (Ref Fisher 101 - ) Kristeva – 1) challenges autonomy and principle as the ground for morality; 2) challenges recent Christian themes of narrative closure and atemporal unity (with Christ)  the heterogeneity of the maternal body and chora 3) deconstructs the possibility of identification with the maternal body as much as it challenges identification with the Father’s law. (102)  It is a question of remembering the limitations inherent in any ethical signifying practice...

15. References John Lechte. Julia Kristeva[M]. London and New York: Routledge, 1991. David Fisher. “Kristeva's Chora and the subject of postmodern ethics.” Body/Text in Julia Kristeva: Religion, Women, and Psychoanalysis. Albany: SUNY UP, 1992.