Julia Kristeva
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Julia Kristeva (; ; born Yuliya Stoyanova Krasteva, ; on 24 June 1941) is a Bulgarian-French
philosopher Philosophy ('love of wisdom' in Ancient Greek) is a systematic study of general and fundamental questions concerning topics like existence, reason, knowledge, Value (ethics and social sciences), value, mind, and language. It is a rational an ...
,
literary critic A genre of arts criticism, literary criticism or literary studies is the study, evaluation, and interpretation of literature. Modern literary criticism is often influenced by literary theory, which is the philosophical analysis of literature' ...
,
semiotician Semiotics ( ) is the systematic study of sign processes and the communication of meaning. In semiotics, a sign is defined as anything that communicates intentional and unintentional meaning or feelings to the sign's interpreter. Semiosis is an ...
,
psychoanalyst PsychoanalysisFrom Greek: and is a set of theories and techniques of research to discover unconscious processes and their influence on conscious thought, emotion and behaviour. Based on dream interpretation, psychoanalysis is also a talk th ...
,
feminist Feminism is a range of socio-political movements and ideology, ideologies that aim to define and establish the political, economic, personal, and social gender equality, equality of the sexes. Feminism holds the position that modern soci ...
, and
novelist A novelist is an author or writer of novels, though often novelists also write in other genres of both fiction and non-fiction. Some novelists are professional novelists, thus make a living wage, living writing novels and other fiction, while other ...
who has lived in France since the mid-1960s. She has taught at
Columbia University Columbia University in the City of New York, commonly referred to as Columbia University, is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in New York City. Established in 1754 as King's College on the grounds of Trinity Churc ...
, and is now a professor emerita at Université Paris Cité. The author of more than 30 books, including '' Powers of Horror'', ''Tales of Love'', ''Black Sun: Depression and Melancholia'', ''Proust and the Sense of Time'', and the trilogy ''Female Genius'', she has been awarded Commander of the Legion of Honor, Commander of the Order of Merit, the Holberg International Memorial Prize, the Hannah Arendt Prize, and the Vision 97 Foundation Prize, awarded by the Havel Foundation. Kristeva became influential in international critical analysis,
cultural studies Cultural studies is an academic field that explores the dynamics of contemporary culture (including the politics of popular culture) and its social and historical foundations. Cultural studies researchers investigate how cultural practices rel ...
and
feminism Feminism is a range of socio-political movements and ideology, ideologies that aim to define and establish the political, economic, personal, and social gender equality, equality of the sexes. Feminism holds the position that modern soci ...
after publishing her first book, ''Semeiotikè'', in 1969. Her sizeable body of work includes books and essays that address
intertextuality Intertextuality is the shaping of a text's meaning by another text, either through deliberate compositional strategies such as quotation, allusion, calque, plagiarism, translation, pastiche or parody, Gerard Genette (1997) ''Paratexts'p.18/ref ...
, the
semiotic Semiotics ( ) is the systematic study of semiosis, sign processes and the communication of Meaning (semiotics), meaning. In semiotics, a Sign (semiotics), sign is defined as anything that communicates intentional and unintentional meaning or feel ...
, and abjection, in the fields of
linguistics Linguistics is the scientific study of language. The areas of linguistic analysis are syntax (rules governing the structure of sentences), semantics (meaning), Morphology (linguistics), morphology (structure of words), phonetics (speech sounds ...
, literary theory and criticism,
psychoanalysis PsychoanalysisFrom Greek language, Greek: and is a set of theories and techniques of research to discover unconscious mind, unconscious processes and their influence on conscious mind, conscious thought, emotion and behaviour. Based on The Inte ...
, biography and autobiography, political and cultural analysis, art and
art history Art history is the study of Work of art, artistic works made throughout human history. Among other topics, it studies art’s formal qualities, its impact on societies and cultures, and how artistic styles have changed throughout history. Tradit ...
. She is prominent in structuralist and
poststructuralist Post-structuralism is a philosophical movement that questions the objectivity or stability of the various interpretive structures that are posited by structuralism and considers them to be constituted by broader systems of Power (social and poli ...
thought. Kristeva is also the founder of the Simone de Beauvoir Prize committee.


Life

Born in Sliven,
Bulgaria Bulgaria, officially the Republic of Bulgaria, is a country in Southeast Europe. It is situated on the eastern portion of the Balkans directly south of the Danube river and west of the Black Sea. Bulgaria is bordered by Greece and Turkey t ...
to Christian parents, Kristeva is the daughter of a church accountant. On her mother's side, she has distant
Jewish Jews (, , ), or the Jewish people, are an ethnoreligious group and nation, originating from the Israelites of History of ancient Israel and Judah, ancient Israel and Judah. They also traditionally adhere to Judaism. Jewish ethnicity, rel ...
ancestry. Kristeva and her sister attended a Francophone school run by Dominican nuns. Kristeva became acquainted with the work of
Mikhail Bakhtin Mikhail Mikhailovich Bakhtin (; rus, Михаи́л Миха́йлович Бахти́н, , mʲɪxɐˈil mʲɪˈxajləvʲɪdʑ bɐxˈtʲin; – 7 March 1975) was a Russian people, Russian philosopher and literary critic who worked on the phi ...
at this time in Bulgaria. Kristeva went on to study at the University of Sofia, and while a postgraduate there obtained a research fellowship that enabled her to move to France in December 1965, when she was 24.Siobhan Chapman, Christopher Routledge, ''Key thinkers in linguistics and the philosophy of language'', Oxford University Press US, 2005,
Google Print, p. 166
She continued her education at several French universities, studying under
Lucien Goldmann Lucien Goldmann (; 20 July 1913 – 8 October 1970) was a French philosopher and sociologist of Jewish-Romanian origin. A professor at the EHESS in Paris, he was a Marxist theorist. His wife was sociologist Annie Goldmann. Biography Goldmann w ...
and
Roland Barthes Roland Gérard Barthes (; ; 12 November 1915 – 25 March 1980) was a French literary theorist, essayist, philosopher, critic, and semiotician. His work engaged in the analysis of a variety of sign systems, mainly derived from Western popu ...
, among other scholars. On August 2, 1967, Kristeva married the novelist Philippe Sollers, born Philippe Joyaux. Kristeva taught at
Columbia University Columbia University in the City of New York, commonly referred to as Columbia University, is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in New York City. Established in 1754 as King's College on the grounds of Trinity Churc ...
in the early 1970s, and remains a visiting professor. She has also published under the married name Julia Joyaux.


Work

After joining the ' Tel Quel group' founded by Sollers, Kristeva focused on the politics of language and became an active member of the group. She trained in psychoanalysis, and earned her degree in 1979. In some ways, her work can be seen as trying to adapt a
psychoanalytic PsychoanalysisFrom Greek: and is a set of theories and techniques of research to discover unconscious processes and their influence on conscious thought, emotion and behaviour. Based on dream interpretation, psychoanalysis is also a talk the ...
approach to the
poststructuralist Post-structuralism is a philosophical movement that questions the objectivity or stability of the various interpretive structures that are posited by structuralism and considers them to be constituted by broader systems of Power (social and poli ...
criticism. For example, her view of the subject, and its construction, shares similarities with
Sigmund Freud Sigmund Freud ( ; ; born Sigismund Schlomo Freud; 6 May 1856 – 23 September 1939) was an Austrian neurologist and the founder of psychoanalysis, a clinical method for evaluating and treating psychopathology, pathologies seen as originating fro ...
and
Jacques Lacan Jacques Marie Émile Lacan (, ; ; 13 April 1901 – 9 September 1981) was a French psychoanalyst and psychiatrist. Described as "the most controversial psycho-analyst since Sigmund Freud, Freud", Lacan gave The Seminars of Jacques Lacan, year ...
. However, Kristeva rejects any understanding of the subject in a structuralist sense; instead, she favors a subject always " in process" or "on trial". In this way, she contributes to the poststructuralist critique of essentialized structures, whilst preserving the teachings of psychoanalysis. She travelled to China in the 1970s and later wrote ''About Chinese Women'' (1977).


The "semiotic" and the "symbolic"

One of Kristeva's most important contributions is that signification is composed of two elements, the symbolic and the ''semiotic'', the latter being distinct from the discipline of
semiotics Semiotics ( ) is the systematic study of sign processes and the communication of meaning. In semiotics, a sign is defined as anything that communicates intentional and unintentional meaning or feelings to the sign's interpreter. Semiosis is a ...
founded by
Ferdinand de Saussure Ferdinand Mongin de Saussure (; ; 26 November 185722 February 1913) was a Swiss linguist, semiotician and philosopher. His ideas laid a foundation for many significant developments in both linguistics and semiotics in the 20th century. He is wi ...
. As explained by Augustine Perumalil, Kristeva's "semiotic is closely related to the infantile pre-Oedipal referred to in the works of Freud,
Otto Rank Otto Rank (; ; né Rosenfeld; 22 April 1884 – 31 October 1939) was an Austrian psychoanalyst, writer, and philosopher. Born in Vienna, he was one of Sigmund Freud's closest colleagues for 20 years, a prolific writer on psychoanalytic themes, ...
,
Melanie Klein Melanie Klein (; ; Reizes; 30 March 1882 – 22 September 1960) was an Austrian-British author and psychoanalysis, psychoanalyst known for her work in child analysis. She was the primary figure in the development of object relations theory. Kl ...
, British Object Relation psychoanalysis, and Lacan's pre- mirror stage. It is an emotional field, tied to the instincts, which dwells in the fissures and prosody of language rather than in the denotative meanings of words." Furthermore, according to Birgit Schippers, the semiotic is a realm associated with the musical, the poetic, the rhythmic, and that which lacks structure and meaning. It is closely tied to the "feminine", and represents the undifferentiated state of the pre-Mirror Stage infant. Upon entering the Mirror Stage, the child learns to distinguish between self and other, and enters the realm of shared cultural meaning, known as
the symbolic In Lacanian psychoanalysis, the Symbolic (or Symbolic Order of the Borromean knot) is the order in the unconscious that gives rise to subjectivity and bridges intersubjectivity between two subjects; an example is Jacques Lacan's idea of desire as ...
. In ''Desire in Language'' (1980), Kristeva describes the symbolic as the space in which the development of language allows the child to become a "speaking subject," and to develop a sense of identity separate from the mother. This process of separation is known as abjection, whereby the child must reject and move away from the mother in order to enter into the world of language, culture, meaning, and the social. This realm of language is called the symbolic and is contrasted with the semiotic in that it is associated with the masculine, the law, and structure. Kristeva departs from Lacan in the idea that even after entering the symbolic, the subject continues to oscillate between the semiotic and the symbolic. Therefore, rather than arriving at a fixed identity, the subject is permanently "in process". Because female children continue to identify to some degree with the mother figure, they are especially likely to retain a close connection to the semiotic. This continued identification with the mother may result in what Kristeva refers to in '' Black Sun'' (1989) as
melancholia Melancholia or melancholy (from ',Burton, Bk. I, p. 147 meaning black bile) is a concept found throughout ancient, medieval, and premodern medicine in Europe that describes a condition characterized by markedly depressed mood, bodily complain ...
( depression), given that female children simultaneously reject and identify with the mother figure. It has also been suggested (e.g., Creed, 1993) that the degradation of women and women's bodies in popular culture (and particularly, for example, in
slasher film A slasher film is a subgenre of horror films involving a killer or a group of killers stalking and murdering a group of people, usually by use of bladed or sharp tools. Although the term "slasher" may occasionally be used informally as a generic ...
s) emerges because of the threat to identity that the mother's body poses: it is a reminder of time spent in the undifferentiated state of the semiotic, where one has no concept of self or identity. After abjecting the mother, subjects retain an unconscious fascination with the semiotic, desiring to reunite with the mother, while at the same time fearing the loss of identity that accompanies it. Slasher films thus provide a way for audience members to safely reenact the process of abjection by vicariously expelling and destroying the mother figure. Kristeva is also known for her adoption of
Plato Plato ( ; Greek language, Greek: , ; born  BC, died 348/347 BC) was an ancient Greek philosopher of the Classical Greece, Classical period who is considered a foundational thinker in Western philosophy and an innovator of the writte ...
’s idea of the ''
chora Chora may refer to: Places Greece * Chora, old capital of the island of Alonnisos * Chora, village on the island of Folegandros * Chora, Ios, capital of the island of Ios * Chora, Messenia, a small town in Messenia in the Peloponnese * Chora, p ...
'', meaning "a nourishing maternal space" (Schippers, 2011). Kristeva's idea of the ''chora'' has been interpreted in several ways: as a reference to the uterus, as a metaphor for the relationship between the mother and child, and as the temporal period preceding the Mirror Stage. In her essay ''Motherhood According to
Giovanni Bellini Giovanni Bellini (; c. 1430 – 29 November 1516) was an Italian Renaissance painter, probably the best known of the Bellini family of Venetian painters. He was raised in the household of Jacopo Bellini, formerly thought to have been his father, ...
'' from ''Desire in Language'' (1980), Kristeva refers to the ''chora'' as a "non-expressive totality formed by drives and their stases in a motility that is as full of movement as it is regulated." She goes on to suggest that it is the mother's body that mediates between the ''chora'' and the symbolic realm: the mother has access to culture and meaning, yet also forms a totalizing bond with the child. Kristeva is also noted for her work on the concept of
intertextuality Intertextuality is the shaping of a text's meaning by another text, either through deliberate compositional strategies such as quotation, allusion, calque, plagiarism, translation, pastiche or parody, Gerard Genette (1997) ''Paratexts'p.18/ref ...
.


Anthropology and psychology

Kristeva argues that
anthropology Anthropology is the scientific study of humanity, concerned with human behavior, human biology, cultures, society, societies, and linguistics, in both the present and past, including archaic humans. Social anthropology studies patterns of behav ...
and
psychology Psychology is the scientific study of mind and behavior. Its subject matter includes the behavior of humans and nonhumans, both consciousness, conscious and Unconscious mind, unconscious phenomena, and mental processes such as thoughts, feel ...
, or the connection between the social and the subject, do not represent each other, but rather follow the same logic: the survival of the group and the subject. Furthermore, in her analysis of
Oedipus Oedipus (, ; "swollen foot") was a mythical Greek king of Thebes. A tragic hero in Greek mythology, Oedipus fulfilled a prophecy that he would end up killing his father and marrying his mother, thereby bringing disaster to his city and family. ...
, she claims that the speaking subject cannot exist on his/her own, but that he/she "stands on the fragile threshold as if stranded on account of an impossible demarcation" ('' Powers of Horror'', p. 85). In her comparison between the two disciplines, Kristeva claims that the way in which an individual excludes the abject mother as a means of forming an identity, is the same way in which societies are constructed. On a broader scale, cultures exclude the maternal and the feminine, and by this come into being.


Feminism

Kristeva has been regarded as a key proponent of
French feminism Feminism in France is the history of Feminism, feminist thought and movements in France. Feminism in France can be roughly divided into three waves: First-wave feminism from the French Revolution through the French Third Republic, Third Republic ...
together with
Simone de Beauvoir Simone Lucie Ernestine Marie Bertrand de Beauvoir (, ; ; 9 January 1908 – 14 April 1986) was a French existentialist philosopher, writer, social theorist, and feminist activist. Though she did not consider herself a philosopher, nor was she ...
,
Hélène Cixous Hélène Cixous (; ; born 5 June 1937) is a French writer, playwright and Literary criticism, literary critic. During her academic career, she was primarily associated with the Centre universitaire de Vincennes (today's University of Paris VIII) ...
, and
Luce Irigaray Luce Irigaray (; born 3 May 1930) is a Belgian-born French feminist, philosopher, linguist, psycholinguist, psychoanalyst, and cultural theorist who examines the uses and misuses of language in relation to women. Irigaray's first and most ...
. Kristeva has had a remarkable influence on feminism and feminist literary studies in the US and the UK, as well as on readings into contemporary art although her relation to feminist circles and movements in France has been quite controversial. Kristeva made a famous disambiguation of three types of feminism in "Women's Time" in ''New Maladies of the Soul'' (1993); while rejecting the first two types, including that of Beauvoir, her stands are sometimes considered as rejecting feminism altogether. Kristeva proposed the idea of multiple sexual identities against the joined code of "unified feminine language".


Denunciation of identity politics

Kristeva argues that her writings have been misunderstood by American feminist academics in the
identity politics Identity politics is politics based on a particular identity, such as ethnicity, Race (human categorization), race, nationality, religion, Religious denomination, denomination, gender, sexual orientation, Socioeconomic status, social background ...
tradition. In Kristeva's view, it was not enough simply to dissect the structure of language in order to find its hidden meaning. Language should also be viewed through the prisms of history and of individual psychic and sexual experiences. This
post-structuralist Post-structuralism is a philosophical movement that questions the objectivity or stability of the various interpretive structures that are posited by structuralism and considers them to be constituted by broader systems of Power (social and poli ...
approach enabled specific social groups to trace the source of their oppression to the very language they used. However, Kristeva believes that it is harmful to posit collective identity above individual identity, and that this political assertion of sexual, ethnic, and religious identities is ultimately
totalitarian Totalitarianism is a political system and a form of government that prohibits opposition from political parties, disregards and outlaws the political claims of individual and group opposition to the state, and completely controls the public sph ...
.


Novelist

Kristeva has written a number of novels that resemble detective stories. While the books maintain narrative suspense and develop a stylized surface, her readers also encounter ideas intrinsic to her theoretical projects. Her characters reveal themselves mainly through psychological devices, making her type of fiction mostly resemble the later work of Dostoevsky. Her fictional oeuvre, which includes ''The Old Man and the Wolves'', ''Murder in Byzantium'', and ''Possessions'', while often allegorical, also approaches the autobiographical in some passages, especially with one of the protagonists of ''Possessions'', Stephanie Delacour—a French journalist—who can be seen as Kristeva's alter ego. ''Murder in Byzantium'' deals with themes from orthodox Christianity and politics; she referred to it as "a kind of anti- Da Vinci Code".


Honors

For her "innovative explorations of questions on the intersection of language, culture and literature", Kristeva was awarded the Holberg International Memorial Prize in 2004. She won the 2006 Hannah Arendt Prize for Political Thought. She has also been awarded Commander of the Legion of Honor, Commander of the Order of Merit, and the Vaclav Havel Prize. On October 10, 2019, she received an ''honoris causa'' doctorate from Universidade Católica Portuguesa.


Scholarly reception

Roman Jakobson Roman Osipovich Jakobson (, ; 18 July 1982) was a Russian linguist and literary theorist. A pioneer of structural linguistics, Jakobson was one of the most celebrated and influential linguists of the twentieth century. With Nikolai Trubetzk ...
said that "Both readers and listeners, whether agreeing or in stubborn disagreement with Julia Kristeva, feel indeed attracted to her contagious voice and to her genuine gift of questioning generally adopted 'axioms,' and her contrary gift of releasing various 'damned questions' from their traditional question marks."
Roland Barthes Roland Gérard Barthes (; ; 12 November 1915 – 25 March 1980) was a French literary theorist, essayist, philosopher, critic, and semiotician. His work engaged in the analysis of a variety of sign systems, mainly derived from Western popu ...
comments that "Julia Kristeva changes the place of things: she always destroys the last prejudice, the one you thought you could be reassured by, could be take [sic] pride in; what she displaces is the already-said, the déja-dit, i.e., the instance of the signified, i.e., stupidity; what she subverts is authority -the authority of monologic science, of filiation." Ian Almond criticizes Kristeva's ethnocentrism. He cites Gayatri Spivak's conclusion that Kristeva's book ''About Chinese Women'' "belongs to that very eighteenth century
hat A hat is a Headgear, head covering which is worn for various reasons, including protection against weather conditions, ceremonial reasons such as university graduation, religious reasons, safety, or as a fashion accessory. Hats which incorpor ...
Kristeva scorns" after pinpointing "the brief, expansive, often completely ungrounded way in which she writes about two thousand years of a culture she is unfamiliar with". Almond notes the absence of sophistication in Kristeva's remarks concerning the Muslim world and the dismissive terminology she uses to describe its culture and believers. He criticizes Kristeva's opposition which juxtaposes "Islamic societies" against "democracies where life is still fairly pleasant" by pointing out that Kristeva displays no awareness of the complex and nuanced debate ongoing among women theorists in the Muslim world, and that she does not refer to anything other than the Rushdie fatwa in dismissing the entire Muslim faith as "reactionary and persecutory". In '' Impostures intellectuelles'' (1997), physics professors
Alan Sokal Alan David Sokal ( ; born January 24, 1955) is an American professor of mathematics at University College London and professor emeritus of physics at New York University. He works with statistical mechanics and combinatorics. Sokal is a critic o ...
and Jean Bricmont devote a chapter to Kristeva's use of mathematics in her early writings. They argue that Kristeva fails to show the relevance of the mathematical concepts she discusses to linguistics and the other fields she studies, and that no such relevance exists.


Alleged collaboration with the Communist Regime in Bulgaria

In 2018, Bulgaria's state Dossier Commission announced that Kristeva had been an agent for the Committee for State Security under the code name "Sabina". She was supposedly recruited in June 1971. Five years earlier she left Bulgaria to study in France. Under the
People's Republic of Bulgaria The People's Republic of Bulgaria (PRB; , NRB; ) was the official name of Bulgaria when it was a socialist republic from 1946 to 1990, ruled by the Bulgarian Communist Party (BCP; ) together with its coalition partner, the Bulgarian Agraria ...
, any Bulgarian who wanted to travel abroad had to apply for an exit visa and get an approval from the Ministry of Interior. The process was long and difficult because anyone who made it to the west could declare political asylum. Kristeva has called the allegations "grotesque and false". On 30 March, the state Dossier Commission began publishing online the entire set of documents reflecting Kristeva's activity as an informant of the former Committee for State Security. She vigorously denies the charges.
Neal Ascherson Charles Neal Ascherson (born 5 October 1932) is a Scottish journalist and writer. In his youth he fought for the British in the Malayan Emergency. He has been described by Radio Prague as "one of Britain's leading experts on central and easte ...
wrote: "...the recent fuss about Julia Kristeva boils down to nothing much, although it has suited some to inflate it into a fearful scandal... But the reality shown in her files is trivial. After settling in Paris in 1965, she was cornered by Bulgarian spooks who pointed out to her that she still had a vulnerable family in the home country. So she agreed to regular meetings over many years, in the course of which she seems to have told her handlers nothing more than gossip about
Aragon Aragon ( , ; Spanish and ; ) is an autonomous communities of Spain, autonomous community in Spain, coextensive with the medieval Kingdom of Aragon. In northeastern Spain, the Aragonese autonomous community comprises three provinces of Spain, ...
, Bataille & Co. from the
Left Bank In geography, a bank is the land alongside a body of water. Different structures are referred to as ''banks'' in different fields of geography. In limnology (the study of inland waters), a stream bank or river bank is the terrain alongsid ...
cafés – stuff they could have read in '' Le Canard enchaîné''... the combined intelligence value of its product and her reports was almost zero. The Bulgarian security men seem to have known they were being played. But never mind: they could impress their boss by showing him a real international celeb on their books..."Neal Ascherson
"Don’t imagine you’re smarter"
, London Review of Books, 19 July 2018.


Selected writings


Linguistic and literature

*''Séméiôtiké: recherches pour une sémanalyse,'' Paris, Seuil, 1969 (trans. in ''Desire in Language: A Semiotic Approach to Literature and Art,'' New York, Columbia University Press, Blackwell, London, 1980) *''Le langage, cet inconnu: Une initiation à la linguistique,'' S.G.P.P., 1969; new ed., coll. Points, Seuil, 1981 (trans. in 1981 as ''Language. The Unknown: an Initiation into Linguistics'', Columbia University Press, Harvester Wheatsheaf, London, 1989) *''La révolution du langage poétique: L'avant-garde à la fin du 19e siècle: Lautréamont et Mallarmé,'' Seuil, Paris, 1974 (abridged trans. containing only the first third of the original French edition, ''Revolution in Poetic Language,'' Columbia University Press, New York, 1984) *''Polylogue'', Seuil, Paris, 1977 (trans. in ''Desire in Language: A Semiotic Approach to Literature and Art,'' New York, Columbia University Press, Blackwell, London, 1980) *''Histoires d’amour'', Denoël, Paris, 1983 (trans. ''Tales of Love,'' Columbia University Press, New York, 1987) *''Le temps sensible. Proust et l’expérience littéraire,'' Gallimard, Paris, 1994 (trans. ''Time and Sense: Proust and the experience of literature'', Columbia University Press, New York, 1996) *''Dostoïevski'', Buchet-Chastel, Paris, 2020


Psychoanalysis and philosophy

*''Pouvoirs de l’horreur. Essai sur l’abjection'' (trans. '' Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection'', Columbia University Press, New York, 1982) *''Au commencement était l’amour. Psychanalyse et foi'', Hachette, Paris, 1985 (trans. ''In the Beginning Was Love. Psychoanalysis and Faith'', Columbia University Press, New York, 1987) *''Soleil Noir. Dépression et mélancolie'', Gallimard, Paris, 1987 (trans. ''The Black Sun: Depression and Melancholia,'' Columbia University Press, New York, 1989) *''Etrangers à nous-mêmes'', Fayard, Paris, 1988 (''Strangers to Ourselves'', Columbia University Press, New York, 1991) *''Lettre ouverte à Harlem Désir'', Rivages, Paris, 1990, (trans. ''Nations without Nationalism''. Columbia University Press, New York, 1993 *''Les Nouvelles maladies de l’âme'', Fayard, Paris, 1993 (trans. ''New Maladies of the Soul.'' Columbia University Press, New York, 1995) *''Sens et non sens de la révolte'', Fayard, Paris, 1996 (trans. ''The Sense of Revolt'', Columbia University Press, 2000) * ''La Révolte intime'', Fayard, 1997 (trans. ''Intimate Revolt'', Columbia University Press, 2002) *''Le Génie féminin: la vie, la folie, les mots'', Fayard, Paris, 1999–2002 (trans. ''Female Genius'': ''Life, Madness, Words'', Columbia University Press, New York, 2001–2004): **1. ''Hannah Arendt ou l’action comme naissance et comme étrangeté'', vol. 1, Fayard, Paris, 1999 **''2. Melanie Klein ou le matricide comme douleur et comme créativité: la folie'', vol. 2, Fayard, Paris, 2000 **''3. Colette ou la chair du monde'', vol. 3, Fayard, Paris, 2002 *''Vision capitales'', Réunion des musées nationaux, 1998 (trans. ''The Severed Head: capital visions,'' Columbia University Press, New York, 2012)


Autobiographical essays

*''Des Chinoises'', édition des Femmes, Paris, 1974 (''About Chinese Women,'' Marion Boyars, London, 1977 *''Du mariage considéré comme un des Beaux-Arts'', Fayard, Paris, 2015 (''Marriage as a Fine Art'' (with Philippe Sollers) Columbia University Press, New York 2016 *''Je me voyage. Mémoires. Entretien avec Samuel Dock'', Fayard, Paris, 2016 (''A Journey Across Borders and Through Identities. Conversations with Samuel Dock'', in ''The Philosophy of Julia Kristeva'', ed. Sara Beardsworth, The Library of Living Philosophers, vo. 36, Open Cort, Chicago, 2020)


Collection of essays

*''The Kristeva Reader'', ed. Toril Moi, Columbia University Press, New York, 1986 *''The Portable Kristeva'', ed. Kelly Oliver, Columbia University Press, New York, 1997 *''Crisis of the European Subject'', Other Press, New York, 2000 *''La Haine et le pardon'', ed. with a foreword by Pierre-Louis Fort, Fayard, Paris, 2005 (trans. ''Hatred and forgiveness'', Columbia University Press, New York, 2010) *''Pulsions du temps'', foreword, edition and notes by David Uhrig, Fayard, Paris, 2013 (trans. ''Passions of Our Time'', ed. with a foreword by Lawrence D. Kritzman, Columbia University Press, New York, 2019)


Novels

*''Les Samouraïs'', Fayard, Paris, 1990 (trans. ''The Samurai: A Novel'', Columbia University Press, New York, 1992) *''Le Vieil homme et les loups'', Fayard, Paris, 1991(trans. ''The Old Man and the Wolves'', Columbia University Press, New York, 1994) *''Possessions'', Fayard, Paris, 1996 (trans. ''Possessions: A Novel'', Columbia University Press, New York, 1998) *''Meurtre à Byzance'', Fayard, Paris, 2004 (trans. ''Murder in Byzantium'', Columbia University Press, New York, 2006) *''Thérèse mon amour : récit. Sainte Thérèse d’Avila'', Fayard, 2008 (trans. ''Teresa, my love. An Imagined Life of the Saint of Avila'', Columbia University Press, New York, 2015) *''L’Horloge enchantée'', Fayard, Paris, 2015 (trans. ''The Enchanted Clock,'' Columbia University Press, 2017)


See also


References


Further reading

* Beardsworth, Sara, ''The Philosophy of Julia Kristeva'', The Library of Living Philosophers, vol. 36, Southern Illinois University Carbondale, Open Court, Chicago, 2020 *Jardine, Alice, ''At the Risk of Thinking. An Intellectual Biography of Julia Kristeva'', Bloomsbury, New York, 2020 *Ivantcheva-Merjanska, Irene, ''Ecrire dans la langue de l'autre. Assia Djebar et Julia Kristeva,'' L'Harmattan, Paris, 2015. * Kelly Ives, ''Julia Kristeva: art, love, melancholy, philosophy, semiotics and psychoanalysis'', Crescent Moon, Maidstone, 2013 *Becker-Leckrone, Megan, ''Julia Kristeva And Literary Theory'', Palgrave Macmillan, 2005 * Beardsworth, Sara, ''Psychoanalysis and Modernity'', Suny Press, Albany, 2004 *Radden, Jennifer, ''The Nature of Melancholy: From Aristotle to Kristeva'', Oxford University Press, 2000 * Lechte, John, and Margaroni, Maria, ''Julia Kristeva: Live Theory'', Continuum, 2004 * McAfee, Noëlle, ''Julia Kristeva'', Routledge, London, 2004 * Smith, Anna, ''Julia Kristeva: Readings of Exile and Estrangement'', St. Martin's Press, New york, 1996. * Oliver, Kelly, ''Ethics, Politics, and Difference in Julia Kristeva's Writing'', Routledge Édition, New York, 1993 *Crownfield, David, ''Body/Text in Julia Kristeva: Religion, Women, and Psychoanalysis'', State University of New York Press, 1992 *Oliver, Kelly, ''Reading Kristeva. Unraveling the Double-bind'', Indiana University Press, Bloomington, 1983


External links

*
Holberg Prize




by Hélène Volat * Goodnow, Katherine J.(2015).
Kristeva in Focus: From Theory to Film Analysis
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Berghahn Books Berghahn Books is a New York and Oxford–based publisher of scholarly books and academic journals in the humanities and social sciences, with a special focus on social and cultural anthropology, European history, politics, and film and media ...
. {{DEFAULTSORT:Kristeva, Julia 1941 births Living people 20th-century French philosophers 21st-century French philosophers 21st-century French writers 20th-century Bulgarian women writers 20th-century Bulgarian writers 20th-century French women writers 20th-century French writers 21st-century French women writers Writers from Sliven Academic staff of the University of Paris Bulgarian emigrants to France Bulgarian writers in French Bulgarian literary critics Bulgarian women literary critics Bulgarian literary theorists Bulgarian communists Bulgarian women novelists 20th-century Bulgarian philosophers French literary critics French women literary critics French literary theorists French psychoanalysts French women novelists French feminists Bulgarian feminists Post-structuralists French semioticians Bulgarian semioticians Feminist theorists Feminist writers Philosophers of sexuality Postmodern feminists Women and psychology Bulgarian women philosophers French women philosophers French women sociologists Bulgarian women sociologists Officers of the Legion of Honour Commanders of the Ordre national du Mérite Holberg Prize laureates Columbia University faculty Bulgarian atheists Communist women writers 20th-century Bulgarian novelists French people of Bulgarian descent Corresponding fellows of the British Academy