Kristeva

Stacey Keltner

• Publisher: Polity
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9780745658056
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Philosophy History & Theory

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.

1

Kristeva’s Theory of Meaning and Subjectivity

This chapter clarifies Kristeva’s general approach to and formal account of the dynamics of subjectivity and meaning through attention to one of her earliest foundational works, Revolution in Poetic Language (1974). In Revolution in Poetic Language, Kristeva presents a theory of language, which is also, simultaneously, a theory of subjectivity. The basic distinction that governs this text (and lays the groundwork for subsequent developments) is that between “the semiotic” and “the symbolic.”¹ Roughly, the symbolic is any social, historical sign system of meaning constitutive of a community of speakers; the semiotic is the affective, material dimension of language that contributes to meaning, but does not signify in the same way as signs. Meaning is constituted in the dialectical tension between the semiotic and the symbolic, which Kristeva describes, on the one hand, as a semiotic discharge of energy in the symbolic or, on the other, as the giving of symbolic form and meaning to the semiotic. The semiotic/symbolic relation measures the trials, failures, and accomplishments of meaning and subjectivity – their advent as well as their loss. For Kristeva, artistic and literary encounters illustrate the processes inherent to all meaning and subjectivity. However, Kristeva turns to other, more theoretical discourses to articulate their formal dynamics.

A quick survey of any one of Kristeva’s major works reveals the broad, interdisciplinary scope of her writing. Kristeva draws from and responds to multiple disciplines and figures – e.g., linguistics/semiotics, psychoanalysis, anthropology, philosophy, social theory, religion, art, and aesthetics. However, since at least the late 1960s and early 1970s, psychoanalysis and phenomenology have formed the basis of her general account of subjectivity and meaning. While psychoanalysis is rightly recognized as the most important of Kristeva’s chosen theoretical discourses, unfortunately the influence of phenomenology has been largely overlooked – even though her attraction to it is as longstanding as that of psychoanalysis. Kristeva’s 1968 interview of Jacques Derrida, “Semiology and Grammatology” offers a telling example of her initial interest in phenomenology.² Within the interview, Kristeva asked: “It is said that the concept of ‘meaning’ in semiotics is markedly different from the phenomenological concept of ‘meaning.’ In what ways, however, are they complicit, and to what extent does the semiological project remain intrametaphysical?”³ The question itself may seem insignificant or may simply seem to be the question one would pose to Derrida in the late 1960s when existential phenomenology was widely under criticism (at times by Derrida himself). However, Kristeva’s question was likely motivated by her growing interest in the role phenomenology might play in her own nascent theories of meaning and subjectivity. The discussion that follows concerning Edmund Husserl’s phenomenological account of meaning reappears six years later in Kristeva’s thesis for the doctorat d’état, Revolution in Poetic Language. There, she credits phenomenology for accurately describing the functioning of meaning proper, i.e., the symbolic. Though she finds phenomenology to be ultimately limited in its reach because it depends on a realm of subject and object positions, i.e., a constituted (meaningful) world, it nevertheless remains an essential horizon of what Kristeva calls “the signifying process.” Kristeva turns to psychoanalysis to deepen the phenomenological account and credits it for theorizing meaning’s constitutive conditions, i.e., semiotic processes of meaning production.⁴ Kristeva thus inherits an account of the symbolic from Husserl and of the semiotic from Freud.

The concern in this chapter is not to present an exhaustive analysis of the project of Revolution and Poetic Language, but rather to introduce some of the basic terms, dynamics, and modes of analysis characteristic of the formative years of Kristeva’s development. The first section, “The Semiotic and the Symbolic,” provides a general description of Kristeva’s theory of language and the roles that phenomenology and psychoanalysis play in it. The second section, “From the Symbolic to the Semiotic – The Phenomenological Theory of Meaning,” presents Kristeva’s understanding of Husserlian phenomenology as an account of the modality of signification she calls “symbolic.” Though she criticizes Husserl’s idealism, this very idealism provides the ground for posing the question of the semiotic and the significance of Freudian psychoanalysis. The third section, “From the Semiotic to the Symbolic – The Psychoanalytic Theory of Meaning,” focuses on Kristeva’s use of psychoanalysis as a discourse primarily concerned with theorizing the semiotic. Its diachronic theory of language acquisition, for Kristeva, articulates the semiotic conditions of meaning proper. The fourth and final section, “The Dialectical Threshold of Semiotic and Symbolic,” clarifies the relationship between the semiotic and the symbolic, specifically Kristeva’s use of the term “dialectic” to denote a logic of relation that exceeds both the analytic reason of traditional philosophical analysis and the dialectical reason of G. W. F. Hegel.

The Semiotic and the Symbolic

The opening paragraphs of Kristeva’s 1974 Revolution in Poetic Language succinctly and powerfully summarize her indictment of contemporary philosophies of language and subjectivity for suppressing the bodily, material, socio-economic, and historical forces constitutive of meaning.⁵ She describes contemporary philosophies of language as “the thoughts of archivists, archaeologists, and necrophiliacs,” which substitute the abstract “remains” of the signifying process for the concrete process of meaning production (RPL 15; RLP 11). Contemporary philosophies of language have reduced language to a realm of distinct, static, disembodied objects, removed from the concrete experiences of embodied subjects. Likewise, they have reduced subjectivity to an epistemic position withdrawn from its material, socio-historical situation. The truth of subjectivity and language, in sum, are sought in abstraction from their meaningful production.

Kristeva’s charge also points to her own critical reformulation of the dynamics of subjectivity and meaning, which she continues to develop not only throughout Revolution in Poetic Language, but throughout her entire writing career. The most foundational thesis of Kristeva’s thought is that subjectivity and language are co-extensive, which means that it is impossible to speak of one without simultaneously speaking of the other. The subject, she insists, is a speaking being; a being who means; a being who always intends something and speaks to another in a social and historical context. As speaking beings, subjects are constituted through language. Conversely, language is not simply denotative. Words do not simply refer to ready made objects; nor are they simply used by separate, detached pre-linguistic subjects. Kristeva’s theory of the signifying process abandons received conceptions of subjectivity and language that treat them as passive, disembodied, asocial, ahistorical things and instead examines the material, social, and historical conditions and dynamics of meaning production.

Kristeva theorizes the conditions of meaning production in terms of a theoretical distinction between “the semiotic” and “the symbolic.” The semiotic and the symbolic are two modalities of the signifying process that are never experienced as separate, but are theoretically separable as two tendencies within signification. The term semiotic (Gr. semeion) is employed in its original etymological sense as a “distinctive mark, trace, index, precursory sign, proof, engraved or written sign, imprint, trace, figuration” (RPL 25; RLP 22). The identification of the semiotic as such, i.e., a mark, trace, etc., signals its presence to the symbolic; yet, it cannot be reduced to it. The semiotic appears within but simultaneously withdraws from fixed meaning. It is the heterogeneous, affective, material dimension of language that contributes to meaning, but does not intend or signify in the way that symbols do. One may think of the rhythms and tones of poetry or music – the affective dimension of meaning that is part of but remains heterogeneous to the symbol. The semiotic may thus be understood as “outside of” or “prior to” meaning proper insofar as it represents the excessive demand of affective, corporeal existence to accomplish expression. However, this demand must be qualified by social and historical conditions of symbolic meaning. The symbolic organizes subjects, objects, and others into a coherent unity. Hence, the symbolic may be further specified as the social-symbolic. Significantly, the semiotic and the symbolic are interwoven in all discourse, and their relation makes signification possible – even when one is emphasized at the expense of the other, as in “purely” formalistic enterprises of thinking like math and logic or in “purely” expressive music.

Because Kristeva’s theory of language is also a theory of the subject, like signifying systems, the subject is “always both semiotic and symbolic” (RPL 24; RLP 22). Within the signifying process itself, Kristeva distinguishes between “the subject” as an “ego” or an “I,” on the one hand, and “subjectivity” as a larger process she calls “le sujet-en-procès,” on the other. The French “le procès” means “process,” “progression” or “development,” but also “legal proceedings” or “trial.” To be en procès is, thus, to be “in development” or “in legal proceedings against someone.” “Le sujet-en-procès” is commonly translated as “the subject-in-process / on-trial.” For Kristeva, the subject as an “ego” or “I” is a moment or (linguistic) position conditioned by larger bodily and relational processes, and not a substantive (e.g., Man). Insofar as meaning and subjectivity are co-extensive, the speaking being is a being who means, i.e., a being incessantly engaged in the activity of expressing or signifying; and language is a process inherent to subjectivity, rather than an “object” distinguishable from the subject. The “subject-in-process / on trial” represents a material dialectic of semiotic and symbolic, in which the tension between the two is productive of meaning and the subject’s position within language.

Kristeva presents her theories of meaning and the speaking subject via contemporary philosophies of language and subjectivity, which, she says, have tended to follow one of two trends. The first trend is characterized by formal theories of language inspired by Edmund Husserl and Emile Benveniste. For these theorists, language is assumed by a subject of enunciation – a subject who means and is thereby structured according to various, categorical relations, e.g., semantic, logical, intersubjective, historical, and/or ideological. The subject of enunciation, Kristeva says, “always proves to be the phenomenological subject” (RPL 23; RLP 20-1) – the transcendental subject of Husserlian phenomenology (RPL 21; RLP 21). She describes this subject as the “expansion of the Cartesian cogito” (RPL 237; RLP 18) and as the “synthesizing unity” and “sole guarantor of Being” (RPL 237; RLP 18).⁶ The other trend in contemporary philosophies of language ties language to the Freudian notion of the unconscious. The drives and primary processes theorized by Freud articulate the link between the psychosomatic realm and that of the sign. Rather than positing a (unified and unifying) transcendental subject of enunciation, these theorists ground signification in psychosomatic processes and a fragmented body. This trend is primarily indebted to the psychoanalytic school of London and Melanie Klein. For Kristeva, these two theories of meaning (phenomenological and psychoanalytic) both fail to account for what she takes to be the signifying process as a whole. The phenomenological theory of meaning neglects the role of bodily, psychosomatic processes (as exhibited in, for example, the speech of analysands or poetic language); the psychoanalytic theory of meaning neglects the link between the psychosomatic realm (which it presents) and the syntactical, semantic language of the social, symbolic subject. Nevertheless, Kristeva does not reject either of these theories. Instead, while both are incomplete, they “designate two modalities” of “the same signifying process” (RPL 23-4; RLP 22). The phenomenological theory of meaning denotes what Kristeva calls “the symbolic”; the psychoanalytic theory of meaning denotes what she calls “the semiotic” – both of which “are inseparable within the signifying process” (RPL 24; RLP 22). The confrontation between the phenomenological and psychoanalytic theories of meaning thus provides the critical space in which Kristeva formulates her own theories of meaning and subjectivity.

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

The “symbolic” is a term that resonates within the register of Jacques Lacan’s tripartite schema of language: the orders of the real, the imaginary, and the symbolic.⁷ The order of the real is an order of being that is outside of and inaccessible to language. The real resists all symbolization and is related to a material order outside the imaginary and the symbolic. The imaginary is primarily based on the formation of the ego. Within childhood development, the preverbal infant (infans) (mis)identifies with or (mis)recognizes (méconnaissance) an image of itself as an autonomous, whole being, though s/he is fully dependent on the support of others. The imaginary is not simply pre-symbolic, in the sense that it temporally or structurally precedes the symbolic order; rather, it is structured by the symbolic and remains an essential order of language insofar as it is the primary relation of the subject’s relation to itself. The symbolic order refers primarily to the social and linguistic realm of law that legislates the subject’s relations to itself, others, and the socio-historical world. All three orders are essential to Lacan’s theory of language. Kristeva’s use of the terms semiotic and symbolic play on Lacan’s three orders of language, with essential differences. For example, the semiotic shares certain characteristics of both the real and the imaginary. It is excessive to language (like the real) and yet structured by it (like the imaginary). However, the semiotic is not characterized as inaccessible or as (completely) unsymbolizable. Nevertheless, in her formulation of the semiotic/symbolic distinction and her sense of the symbolic in particular, Kristeva initially draws not from the work of Lacan, but from that of Husserl. This is not to say that Kristeva’s terms cannot or should not be understood within the context of Lacan’s theory of meaning. Indeed, Kristeva appropriates the category of the symbolic order from Lacan. However, the significance of Lacanian, as well as Freudian, thought must first be understood within the context of her encounter with phenomenology and her insistence that the phenomenological theory of meaning designates the symbolic modality of the signifying process. Two essential moments within the Husserlian text preoccupy Kristeva in her initial formulation of the symbolic: first, what Husserl calls “the thetic phase” of signification, which is structurally constitutive of meaning; and, second, Husserl’s treatment of hyle (Gr. “matter”) within signification.

Husserl’s general theory of meaning is based on his conception of “intentionality.”⁸ Husserl introduces the notion of intentionality in order to elucidate the way in which meaning is constitutive of the subject/object relation. Intentionality describes consciousness as uniquely directed toward its objects: all consciousness is consciousness of something. As such, Husserl conceives of the consciousness/object relation as “intentional experience” insofar as consciousness always tends toward an object. For intentional experience, every intending (which Husserl denotes with the Greek term “noesis”) will be accompanied by a corresponding intended object (which Husserl denotes with the Greek term “noema”). Through meaning, there is established a certain way of being directed toward the object of consciousness. However, this object cannot be conceived as something out there in the world that impresses itself upon consciousness. Rather, what Husserl means is that the “object” of consciousness is always linked to the way in which it is intended. The phenomenological “object” is the meaningful object. Though the intending of an act of meaning and what is intend...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Pubilished
• Title page
• Copyright page
• Dedication
• Acknowledgments
• Abbreviations
• Introduction: Thresholds
• 1 Kristeva’s Theory of Meaning and Subjectivity
• 2 Kristeva’s Psychoanalytic – Abjection, Love, and Loss
• 3 The Public Stakes of Intimacy
• 4 Intimate Revolt, Temporality, and the Society of the Spectacle
• 5 So Many Oedipuses, So Little Time
• 6 Kristeva’s Novelistic Approach to Social and Political Life
• Conclusion: Politics at the Margin – Kristeva’s Wager on the Future of Revolt
• Further Reading
• Bibliography
• Index