296 Lecture 14 - Kristeva

Julia Kristeva: Revolution in Poetic Language

Agenda

• Psychoanalytic Framework

  • Lacan: the signifier and subjectivity

  • Background on relevant concepts

  • Overview of Kristeva's text

  • Group Work

Lacan and Subjectivity

• Subjectivity relates not to clear articulation of self but to alignment between identity and self-description.

• Signifier and signified are crucial in understanding individual subjectivity.

• Importance of having a listener who pays attention to the signifier's nuances.

The Speaking Subject

• Enters language, and identity is mediated through it.

• Has an unconscious shaped by language.

• Navigates inner life against external systems.

• Transition from viewing subjective self as a coherent individual to understanding it as mediated construct.

The Drives

• Derived from the German word "trieb" meaning "to push."

• Represents energy that organizes the subject within the body.

• Drives push against states of being but do not create identity, presenting a paradox.

• Four critical dimensions of drives:

  • Object

  • Source

  • Impetus

  • Aim

• Relevant texts:

  • Freud’s Instincts and their Vicissitudes

  • Beyond the Pleasure Principle

  • Jean Laplanche’s Life & Death in Psychoanalysis

Julia Kristeva

• Born in 1941, notable contributions include:

  • Concept of abjection

  • Idea of the chora

• Kristeva's Revolution in Poetic Language is an important dissertation.

The Chora

• Challenges definition and is considered pre-linguistic.

• Described as a space, receptacle, or womb.

• Reflects articulation through drives.

• Functions as a non-expressive totality shaped by drives.

Attributes of the Chora

• Mobile and amorphous, characterized by rhythms.

• Associated with feminine and maternal elements.

• Remains unintelligible and unsignifiable, indicating the complex nature of subject identity

• Plays role in both generation and negation of the subject.

Ordering

• Represents significance where linguistic signs are yet to be articulated.

• Involves primary object ordering, distinct from symbolic law.

• Necessary for establishing communication between the body and mother.

• Foundation for language acquisition, aligning biological and physiological memory.

Symbolic Order

• Concerns realm of linguistic signification.

• Involves social organization and law.

• Abstract and independent of particular referents.

Thetic Phase

• Boundaries separating semiotic and symbolic dimensions.

• Enunciation is thetic, requiring identity identification (related to the mirror stage).

• Serves as a structural basis for possibility of enunciation and proposition.

Signification Processes

• Genotext:

  • Drives underlying the need to signify.

  • Involves the transfer of energetic drives but is not linguistic.

• Phenotext:

  • Involves communicated linguistic structures that conform to communication rules.

Revolution

• Semiotic rupture within the symbolic yields creative power.

• Disruption affects art forms and subjectivity, with revolutionary authors accessing the semiotic chora.