Kristeva E-Book

Stacey Keltner

• Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Serie: Key Contemporary Thinkers
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 362

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2013

Beschreibung

Julia Kristeva is one of the most creative and prolific writers to address the personal, social, and political trials of our times. Linguist, psychoanalyst, social and cultural theorist, and novelist, Kristeva's broad interdisciplinary appeal has impacted areas across the humanities and social sciences.

S. K. Keltner's book provides the first comprehensive introduction to the breadth of Kristeva's work. In an original and insightful analysis, Keltner presents Kristeva's thought as the coherent development and elaboration of a complex, multidimensional threshold constitutive of meaning and subjectivity. The ‘threshold' indicates Kristeva's primary sphere of concern, the relationship between the speaking being and its particular social and historical conditions; and Kristeva's interdisciplinary approach. Kristeva's vision, Keltner argues, opens a unique perspective within contemporary discourses attentive to issues of meaning, subjectivity, and social and political life. By emphasizing Kristeva's attention to the permeable borders of psychic and social life, Keltner offers innovative readings of the concepts most widely discussed in Kristeva scholarship: the semiotic and symbolic, abjection, love, and loss. She also provides new interpretations of some of the most controversial issues surrounding Kristeva's work, including Kristeva's conceptions of intimacy, social and cultural difference, and Oedipal subjectivity, by contextualizing them within her methodological approach and oeuvre as a whole.

Julia Kristeva: Thresholds is an engaging and accessible introduction to Kristeva's theoretical and fictional works that will be of interest to both students and scholars across the humanities and social sciences.

Leseprobe

Table of Contents

Cover

Pubilished

Title page

Copyright page

Dedication

Acknowledgments

Abbreviations

Introduction: Thresholds

Kristeva’s Autobiographical Reflections

Chapter Descriptions

1 Kristeva’s Theory of Meaning and Subjectivity

The Semiotic and the Symbolic

From the Symbolic to the Semiotic – The Phenomenological Theory of Meaning

From the Semiotic to the Symbolic – The Psychoanalytic Theory of Meaning

The Dialectic of Semiotic and Symbolic

2 Kristeva’s Psychoanalytic – Abjection, Love, and Loss

Kristeva’s Theory of Subjective Diachrony

Abjection, Love, and Loss in the Wake of Symbolic Collapse

3 The Public Stakes of Intimacy

What is Intimacy?

Intimacy and the Event of Natality

Freud’s Involution of Intimacy

Abjection – Intimate Suffering / Public Horror

“Ravaged Intimacy” and the Event of Death

What’s Love Got to Do with It?

4 Intimate Revolt, Temporality, and the Society of the Spectacle

The Spectacular Horizon of Kristeva’s Concept of Revolt

The Scandal of Timelessness – Kristeva’s Phenomenological-Psychoanalytic Concept of Time

In Search of an Experience, or Revolt

Sex and Time – The Interminable Revolt of Female Genius

The Future of Intimate Revolt

5 So Many Oedipuses, So Little Time

Reviving Oedipus

Oedipus is Dead, and We Have Killed Him

The Irony of Antigone, Pariah of the Phallic Sacred

Anti-Oedipus – Beyond Sexual Difference, an Incurable Stranger

6 Kristeva’s Novelistic Approach to Social and Political Life

Homo Spectator

Detective Fiction – A Proper, Specular Inquiry

Inspector Freud; Dr. Delacour

My Own Private Byzantium; or, the Odd Future Anterior of Kristeva’s Hero

Conclusion: Politics at the Margin – Kristeva’s Wager on the Future of Revolt

Further Reading

Bibliography

Index

Pubilished

Jeremy Ahearne, Michel de Certeau

Peter Burke, The French Historical Revolution: The Annales School 1929–1989

Michael Caesar, Umberto Eco

M. J. Cain, Fodor

Filipe Carreira da Silva, G. H. Mead

Rosemary Cowan, Cornel West

George Crowder, Isaiah Berlin

Maximilian de Gaynesford, John McDowell

Reidar Andreas Due, Deleuze

Eric Dunning, Norbert Elias

Matthew Elton, Daniel Dennett

Chris Fleming, Rene Girard

Edward Fullbrook and Kate Fullbrook, Simone de Beauvoir

Andrew Gamble, Hayek

Neil Gascoigne, Richard Rorty

Nigel Gibson, Fanon

Graeme Gilloch, Walter Benjamin

Karen Green, Dummett

Espen Hammer, Stanley Cavell

Christina Howells, Derrida

Fred Inglis, Clifford Geertz

Simon Jarvis, Adorno

Sarah Kay, Žižek

Valerie Kennedy, Edward Said

Chandran Kukathas and Philip Pettit, Rawls

Moya Lloyd, Judith Butler

James McGilvray, Chomsky

Lois McNay, Foucault

Dermot Moran, Edmund Husserl

Michael Moriarty, Roland Barthes

Stephen Morton, Gayatri Spivak

Harold W. Noonan, Frege

James O’Shea, Wilfrid Sellars

William Outhwaite, Habermas, 2nd Edition

Kari Palonen, Quentin Skinner

John Preston, Feyerabend

Chris Rojek, Stuart Hall

William Scheuerman, Morgenthau

Severin Schroeder, Wittgenstein

Susan Sellers, Hélène Cixous

Wes Sharrock and Rupert Read, Kuhn

David Silverman, Harvey Sacks

Dennis Smith, Zygmunt Bauman

James Smith, Terry Eagleton

Nicholas H. Smith, Charles Taylor

Felix Stalder, Manuel Castells

Geoffrey Stokes, Popper

Georgia Warnke, Gadamer

James Williams, Lyotard

Jonathan Wolff, Robert Nozick

Ed Pluth, Badiou

Oliver Davis, Rancière

Gareth Dale, Karl Polanyi

Copyright © S. K. Keltner 2011

The right of S. K. Keltner to be identified as Author of this Work has been asserted in accordance with the UK Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

First published in 2011 by Polity Press

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All rights reserved. Except for the quotation of short passages for the purpose of criticism and review, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher.

ISBN-13: 978-0-7456-3896-6 (hardback)

ISBN-13: 978-0-7456-3897-3 (paperback)

ISBN-13: 978-0-7456-5806-3 (Single-user ebook)

ISBN-13: 978-0-7456-5805-6 (Multi-user ebook)

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for Jay and Brando

Acknowledgments

The present work is indebted to a diverse, yet deeply interrelated, set of communities, philosophical, feminist, and personal, old and new, to which I owe the existence of this book.

I am deeply indebted to several people who, for various reasons, have not been directly involved in the technical writing of this book, but without whom it would not have been written. I owe a special thanks to my mother, Sheryl Allen, who stands at the crossroads of my personal and public life, who taught me to speak, to think, and to love. I am grateful to Anthony Beavers, my first intellectual mentor, whose philosophical spirit, close mentorship, and personal encouragement first shaped my philosophical development. I am indebted to Julia Galbus, my first feminist mentor, for selflessly guiding my initial introduction to feminist thought. I especially thank Tony and Julia for their support and friendship during my earliest years in the academic community.

I owe a profound debt to several people who have stimulated, encouraged, and supported in infinite ways my professional and intellectual development in general and this book in particular. I am indebted to Sara Beardsworth for her intellectual and spiritual generosity. It would not be an exaggeration to say that the fruit of the whole book is indebted to her mentorship, scholarship, and friendship, as one will no doubt note in the endnotes and suggested reading sections for nearly every chapter. Kelly Oliver’s generosity is also responsible for this book. I’ve had the good fortune to experience in concrete and multiple ways Kelly’s commitment to inspire, support, and befriend junior scholars. My thanks to Tina Chanter for pushing me to develop my initial hunches about Kristeva’s Oedipus, but also for modeling unparalleled critical rigor and for supporting my philosophical and professional development more generally. I especially thank Robert Bernasconi for his long-standing support and philosophical inspiration. Robert’s critical questions and keen insight initially inspired my turn to explicate the phenomenological dimension of Kristeva’s thought. I thank Jena Jolissaint for her general irreverence and idealizations as a thinker, an activist, and a friend.

I am greatly indebted to the invitations of several people who provided the opportunities to develop and revise the central insights of the present study, including those thanked above, but also Sean Kirkland, Maria Margaroni, Hugh Silverman, Rochelle Green, and the WIPsters (Women in Philosophy) at Goucher College. The greatest thanks to Kelly Oliver, Ewa Ziarek, my ever patient editor Emma Hutchinson, and Matthew Stewart for reading and commenting on the full manuscript of Kristeva: Thresholds during the final months of its development. Their critical insight provided the final push and confidence to finish it. Special thanks to Matthew for preparing the index.

Finally, I am most profoundly indebted to the loves of my life, Jay and Brando, to whom I dedicate this book. – To Jay for listening to my love–hate diatribes on Kristeva for over a decade, for commenting on the various ideas and papers from which this book began, and for supporting me emotionally and intellectually through all of the trials of its development and beyond. – To Brando for teaching me the patience and love of motherhood (which I discovered to be essence of thought and writing) and for returning me to the joyful novelty of the world in all of its risks. They are the real authors of the present work.

Abbreviations

AR   L’avenir d’une révolte B   “Beauvoir aux risques de la liberté” BRF   “Beauvoir and the Risks of Freedom” BS   Black Sun: Depression and Melancholia C   Crisis of the European Subject CDN   Contra la depression nationale D   “Dialogue with Julia Kristeva” DL   Desire in Language: A Semiotic Approach to Literature and Art ENM   Étrangers à nous-mêmes FeS   Le féminin et le sacré FGA   Hannah Arendt (volume 1 of Female Genius – Life, Madness, Words) FGC   Colette (volume 2 of Female Genius – Life, Madness, Words) FGK   Melanie Klein (volume 3 of Female Genius – Life, Madness, Words) FS   The Feminine and the Sacred GFA   Le génie féminin: Hannah Arendt GFC   Le génie féminin: Colette GFK   Le génie féminin: Melanie Klein HA   Histoires d’amour HP   La haine et le pardon: pouvoirs et limites de la psychanalyse III I   ‘Intimité voilée, intimité violée’ IR   Intimate Revolt: The Powers and Limits of Psychoanalysis JKI   Julia Kristeva Interviews LI   Le langage, cet inconnu LU   Language, the Unknown: An Initiation into Linguistics M   “Mémoires” MB   Murder in Byzantium MBR   Meurtre à Byzance: Roman MH   “My Memory’s Hyperbole” ND   “ ‘Nous Deux’ or a (Hi)story of Intertextuality” NMA   Les nouvelles maladies de l’âme NMS   New Maladies of the Soul NN   Nations without Nationalism NV   “La Nation et le Verbe” OMW   The Old Man and the Wolves P   Possessions Ps   Possessions (French) PH   Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection PdH   Pouvoirs de l’horreur: essai sur l’abjection PST   Proust and the Sense of Time RI   La révolte intime: pouvoirs et limites de la psychanalyse II RLP   La revolution du language poétique RPL   Revolution in Poetic Language SeNS   Sens et non-sens de la révolte: pouvoirs et limites de la psychanalyse I SN   Soleil noir, depression et mélancolie SNS   The Sense and Non-Sense of Revolt: The Powers and Limits of Psychoanalysis SO   Strangers to Ourselves TL   Tales of Love TS   Time and Sense: Proust and the Experience of Literature TSe   Le temps sensible: Proust et l’expérience littéraire VHL   Le vieil homme et les loups 

Introduction: Thresholds

A quick tour through the themes of Julia Kristeva’s works reveals an overarching intention to interrogate the personal trials of singular psychic life. Experiences of horror, fear, rejection, crime, love, loss, despair, grief, suffering, violence, alienation, banality, strangeness, foreignness, migrancy, and intimacy, for example, fill the titles and pages of her corpus. Her style of approach may be heard as equally intimate, drawing as she does from her experiences as an analyst, a reader of literature, a writer, a foreigner, a woman, a mother, a daughter. Descriptions of personal experience, autobiographical reflections, the personal stories of her patients, and biographical accounts of philosophers, artists, writers, saints, and psychoanalysts all punctuate Kristeva’s critical, as well as her fictional works. Even her descriptions of psychoanalytic structures and dynamics are overwhelmed by the narrative of a personal “I.” Kristeva’s works are intent on returning her reader to the animating experiences of everyday life, in all of its joys and failures.