Ann Jefferson
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- October 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780691160658
- eISBN:
- 9781400852598
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Princeton University Press
- DOI:
- 10.23943/princeton/9780691160658.003.0019
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
This chapter turns to Julia Kristeva's discussion of female genius. It presents Kristeva's three biographical studies of Hannah Arendt (1999), Melanie Klein (2000), and Colette (2002), published ...
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This chapter turns to Julia Kristeva's discussion of female genius. It presents Kristeva's three biographical studies of Hannah Arendt (1999), Melanie Klein (2000), and Colette (2002), published under the collective title Le Génie feminine. Her perspective is predominantly psychoanalytic as she approaches her subject with a certain boldness as she treats female genius as a given rather than defensively pleading the cause. Hence, collectively, the trilogy offers a psychoanalytically grounded account of gender and femininity as part of its reflection on genius. Genius takes a new, explicitly gendered form here and it does so thanks to the mix of literary criticism, feminist theory, and psychoanalysis that is characteristic of the later years of “French theory.”Less
This chapter turns to Julia Kristeva's discussion of female genius. It presents Kristeva's three biographical studies of Hannah Arendt (1999), Melanie Klein (2000), and Colette (2002), published under the collective title Le Génie feminine. Her perspective is predominantly psychoanalytic as she approaches her subject with a certain boldness as she treats female genius as a given rather than defensively pleading the cause. Hence, collectively, the trilogy offers a psychoanalytically grounded account of gender and femininity as part of its reflection on genius. Genius takes a new, explicitly gendered form here and it does so thanks to the mix of literary criticism, feminist theory, and psychoanalysis that is characteristic of the later years of “French theory.”
Antony Augoustakis
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- September 2010
- ISBN:
- 9780199584413
- eISBN:
- 9780191723117
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199584413.003.0001
- Subject:
- Classical Studies, Literary Studies: Classical, Early, and Medieval
This chapter examines ancient views on cosmopolitanism and the intersection of gender and ethnicity in the literature of the Neronian and Flavian periods and interprets them through the lens of Julia ...
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This chapter examines ancient views on cosmopolitanism and the intersection of gender and ethnicity in the literature of the Neronian and Flavian periods and interprets them through the lens of Julia Kristeva's psychoanalytic theories of motherhood and foreign otherness. Kristeva's discussion of the paradoxical status of women as both central but at the same time marginalized applies to the women's presence in the epic poems under discussion, inasmuch as the heroines emerge as both autonomous and idealized but also asymbolic, bacchic/monstrous and therefore abject.Less
This chapter examines ancient views on cosmopolitanism and the intersection of gender and ethnicity in the literature of the Neronian and Flavian periods and interprets them through the lens of Julia Kristeva's psychoanalytic theories of motherhood and foreign otherness. Kristeva's discussion of the paradoxical status of women as both central but at the same time marginalized applies to the women's presence in the epic poems under discussion, inasmuch as the heroines emerge as both autonomous and idealized but also asymbolic, bacchic/monstrous and therefore abject.
Helena Michie
- Published in print:
- 1992
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780195073874
- eISBN:
- 9780199855223
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195073874.003.0006
- Subject:
- Literature, Women's Literature
The chapter discusses the labeling and treatment of the “other women” in feminist ideology, in contrast to the strategies and ideas posited in the two previous chapters. Feminist theorists have ...
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The chapter discusses the labeling and treatment of the “other women” in feminist ideology, in contrast to the strategies and ideas posited in the two previous chapters. Feminist theorists have typically cast the concept of otherness in women as a fluid movement among or transformation into various expedient molds and constructs such as colleague, maid, or Third-World woman. The chapter presents several literary texts which represent important moments in the development of Western feminism. In the first set of books, the unifying theme is the attempt to control this otherness through such techniques as displacement from the speaking subject or incorporation into sameness through the employment of mirroring tools. The remainder of the chapter is devoted to the analysis of five important texts of feminist criticism from such notable theorists as Catherine Stimpson, Jane Gallop, Julia Kristeva, and Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak.Less
The chapter discusses the labeling and treatment of the “other women” in feminist ideology, in contrast to the strategies and ideas posited in the two previous chapters. Feminist theorists have typically cast the concept of otherness in women as a fluid movement among or transformation into various expedient molds and constructs such as colleague, maid, or Third-World woman. The chapter presents several literary texts which represent important moments in the development of Western feminism. In the first set of books, the unifying theme is the attempt to control this otherness through such techniques as displacement from the speaking subject or incorporation into sameness through the employment of mirroring tools. The remainder of the chapter is devoted to the analysis of five important texts of feminist criticism from such notable theorists as Catherine Stimpson, Jane Gallop, Julia Kristeva, and Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak.
DUNCAN LARGE
- Published in print:
- 2001
- Published Online:
- January 2010
- ISBN:
- 9780199242276
- eISBN:
- 9780191714368
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199242276.003.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, European Literature
In her book, Marcel Proust: Théories pour une esthétique, Anne Henry places Proust in the context of the whole tradition of 19th-century German idealist aesthetics and its French adherents. This ...
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In her book, Marcel Proust: Théories pour une esthétique, Anne Henry places Proust in the context of the whole tradition of 19th-century German idealist aesthetics and its French adherents. This chapter argues that the novel itself goes beyond the explicit philosophical statements contained within it, although this movement away from received philosophical ideas is also at the same time a movement in Friedrich Nietzsche's direction. Henry herself later surreptitiously fills in what she had earlier analysed as a theoretical ‘confusion’ or aporia in Arthur Schopenhauer with the Nietzschean concept of the ‘eternal return’. This chapter shows that the complicated temporality of involuntary memory does indeed map the eternal return. Aside from Henry, the works of Julia Kristeva, Jacques Derrida, and Gilles Deleuze comparing Nietzsche and Proust are examined.Less
In her book, Marcel Proust: Théories pour une esthétique, Anne Henry places Proust in the context of the whole tradition of 19th-century German idealist aesthetics and its French adherents. This chapter argues that the novel itself goes beyond the explicit philosophical statements contained within it, although this movement away from received philosophical ideas is also at the same time a movement in Friedrich Nietzsche's direction. Henry herself later surreptitiously fills in what she had earlier analysed as a theoretical ‘confusion’ or aporia in Arthur Schopenhauer with the Nietzschean concept of the ‘eternal return’. This chapter shows that the complicated temporality of involuntary memory does indeed map the eternal return. Aside from Henry, the works of Julia Kristeva, Jacques Derrida, and Gilles Deleuze comparing Nietzsche and Proust are examined.
Robert Boncardo
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- September 2018
- ISBN:
- 9781474429528
- eISBN:
- 9781474445092
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9781474429528.003.0003
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Political Philosophy
This second chapter engages with Julia Kristeva’s reading of Mallarmé in her 1974 work Revolution in Poetic Language. This chapter offers the first extended analysis of this work’s long and detailed ...
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This second chapter engages with Julia Kristeva’s reading of Mallarmé in her 1974 work Revolution in Poetic Language. This chapter offers the first extended analysis of this work’s long and detailed study of Mallarmé, and introduces Kristeva’s unique interpretation of such key works as Prose (Pour des Esseintes) and Un Coup de dés. It also presents the first English-language engagement of any length with the third — and longest — chapter of Revolution in Poetic Language, ‘The State and Mystery’. The chapter argues that Kristeva’s reading culminates in a critique of Mallarmé’s poetry’s content, which covers over the radicality of its form, thus leading to the suppression of the revolutionary political power contained in his work. Less
This second chapter engages with Julia Kristeva’s reading of Mallarmé in her 1974 work Revolution in Poetic Language. This chapter offers the first extended analysis of this work’s long and detailed study of Mallarmé, and introduces Kristeva’s unique interpretation of such key works as Prose (Pour des Esseintes) and Un Coup de dés. It also presents the first English-language engagement of any length with the third — and longest — chapter of Revolution in Poetic Language, ‘The State and Mystery’. The chapter argues that Kristeva’s reading culminates in a critique of Mallarmé’s poetry’s content, which covers over the radicality of its form, thus leading to the suppression of the revolutionary political power contained in his work.
Elaine P. Miller
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- November 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780231166829
- eISBN:
- 9780231537117
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Columbia University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7312/columbia/9780231166829.003.0001
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Aesthetics
This chapter considers Julia Kristeva's writings on melancholia, bringing together her earlier engagement with individual melancholia in Black Sun as well as her more recent discussions of national ...
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This chapter considers Julia Kristeva's writings on melancholia, bringing together her earlier engagement with individual melancholia in Black Sun as well as her more recent discussions of national depression and the “new maladies of the soul.” Kristeva examines the high incidence of depression and argues in the Black Sun that many intellectuals, writers, and artists have successfully emerged from or at least achieved an ability to live with melancholia—an ailment that otherwise often results in being incapacitated to express symbolically. Furthermore, these artists succeeded in combating melancholia through the very act of melancholic writing or creating. This act of treating a potentially debilitating psychic ailment with a smaller, less lethal dose of the same affliction is called “spiritual inoculation.”Less
This chapter considers Julia Kristeva's writings on melancholia, bringing together her earlier engagement with individual melancholia in Black Sun as well as her more recent discussions of national depression and the “new maladies of the soul.” Kristeva examines the high incidence of depression and argues in the Black Sun that many intellectuals, writers, and artists have successfully emerged from or at least achieved an ability to live with melancholia—an ailment that otherwise often results in being incapacitated to express symbolically. Furthermore, these artists succeeded in combating melancholia through the very act of melancholic writing or creating. This act of treating a potentially debilitating psychic ailment with a smaller, less lethal dose of the same affliction is called “spiritual inoculation.”
Elaine P. Miller
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- November 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780231166829
- eISBN:
- 9780231537117
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Columbia University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7312/columbia/9780231166829.003.0007
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Aesthetics
This introductory chapter presents Julia Kristeva's interpretation of decapitation in the story of a living woman with a severed head who always wore a red ribbon around her neck to conceal her ...
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This introductory chapter presents Julia Kristeva's interpretation of decapitation in the story of a living woman with a severed head who always wore a red ribbon around her neck to conceal her decapitation from her husband. Kristeva links the figure of decapitation to the separation of the infant from the mother in weaning. Since this separation is enjoined by the Oedipal or paternal law, decapitation also mirrors the Lacanian understanding of castration as an entrance into the universal, where the adoption of the signifier entails a renunciation of jouissance, or the complete commensurability of individual desire to desideratum. In addition, Kristeva argues that a productive use of the imagination, through the aesthetic image or aesthetic activity, can also help the child create a singular “head” or self.Less
This introductory chapter presents Julia Kristeva's interpretation of decapitation in the story of a living woman with a severed head who always wore a red ribbon around her neck to conceal her decapitation from her husband. Kristeva links the figure of decapitation to the separation of the infant from the mother in weaning. Since this separation is enjoined by the Oedipal or paternal law, decapitation also mirrors the Lacanian understanding of castration as an entrance into the universal, where the adoption of the signifier entails a renunciation of jouissance, or the complete commensurability of individual desire to desideratum. In addition, Kristeva argues that a productive use of the imagination, through the aesthetic image or aesthetic activity, can also help the child create a singular “head” or self.
Elaine P. Miller
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- November 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780231166829
- eISBN:
- 9780231537117
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Columbia University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7312/columbia/9780231166829.003.0002
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Aesthetics
This chapter discusses Julia Kristeva's concept of negativity—the recuperation through the transformation of a traumatic remnant of the past—in relation to Theodor Adornos claim that a ban on ...
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This chapter discusses Julia Kristeva's concept of negativity—the recuperation through the transformation of a traumatic remnant of the past—in relation to Theodor Adornos claim that a ban on positive representations of utopia leads to an artistic practice of exposing the injustices of modern life. Both Adorno and Kristeva believe that contemporary art has a capacity to critique modernity and envision a better world, and both insist that this art must not represent what it indicates. Kristeva pursues this line of thought in her writings on icons in the European Eastern Orthodox theological tradition as well as in The Severed Head, her catalogue for the Louvre exhibit. To illustrate this claim, the chapter examines Walter Benjamin's writings on photography, arguing that a radical sense of mimesis, namely, one that respects the ban on graven images, moves people beyond the systematic optimism of the Hegelian dialectic.Less
This chapter discusses Julia Kristeva's concept of negativity—the recuperation through the transformation of a traumatic remnant of the past—in relation to Theodor Adornos claim that a ban on positive representations of utopia leads to an artistic practice of exposing the injustices of modern life. Both Adorno and Kristeva believe that contemporary art has a capacity to critique modernity and envision a better world, and both insist that this art must not represent what it indicates. Kristeva pursues this line of thought in her writings on icons in the European Eastern Orthodox theological tradition as well as in The Severed Head, her catalogue for the Louvre exhibit. To illustrate this claim, the chapter examines Walter Benjamin's writings on photography, arguing that a radical sense of mimesis, namely, one that respects the ban on graven images, moves people beyond the systematic optimism of the Hegelian dialectic.
Elaine P. Miller
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- November 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780231166829
- eISBN:
- 9780231537117
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Columbia University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7312/columbia/9780231166829.003.0003
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Aesthetics
This chapter contrasts Julia Kristeva's opinion about the role of art with that of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel to examine Kristeva's discussion of foreignness on both an individual and a societal ...
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This chapter contrasts Julia Kristeva's opinion about the role of art with that of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel to examine Kristeva's discussion of foreignness on both an individual and a societal level. In his lectures on aesthetics, Hegel called art's role: the attempt by human beings to do away with foreignness, both in themselves and in the natural world that inflexibly surrounds themselves, in order to “enjoy in the shape of things only an external realization of himself.” However, Kristeva viewed art in a contrary manner: as the attempt to safeguard the foreignness at the heart of our existence and our context. In implicitly taking the Kantian sublime, rather than the beautiful, as a starting point for a consideration of the political, Kristeva provided a way of thinking alterity as not simply an inevitable feature of human psychic identity and global citizenship but a quality to be cultivated and preserved, a sense of always being strange to ourselves.Less
This chapter contrasts Julia Kristeva's opinion about the role of art with that of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel to examine Kristeva's discussion of foreignness on both an individual and a societal level. In his lectures on aesthetics, Hegel called art's role: the attempt by human beings to do away with foreignness, both in themselves and in the natural world that inflexibly surrounds themselves, in order to “enjoy in the shape of things only an external realization of himself.” However, Kristeva viewed art in a contrary manner: as the attempt to safeguard the foreignness at the heart of our existence and our context. In implicitly taking the Kantian sublime, rather than the beautiful, as a starting point for a consideration of the political, Kristeva provided a way of thinking alterity as not simply an inevitable feature of human psychic identity and global citizenship but a quality to be cultivated and preserved, a sense of always being strange to ourselves.
RICHARD KEARNEY and KASCHA SEMONOVITCH
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- September 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780823234615
- eISBN:
- 9780823240722
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Fordham University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5422/fordham/9780823234615.003.0012
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Philosophy of Religion
Who is this Stranger within, this interior haunting that makes us Strangers to ourselves in the way Antigone experienced? Sigmund Freud alerts us to the hidden place in our psyches where the strange ...
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Who is this Stranger within, this interior haunting that makes us Strangers to ourselves in the way Antigone experienced? Sigmund Freud alerts us to the hidden place in our psyches where the strange and Stranger hide, while it is Julia Kristeva who points to the ethical and political ramifications of this split and estranged self. This chapter explores Kristeva's joining of self-knowledge and moral goodness and considers the implications of the related political project of cosmopolitanism. At the heart of Kristeva's politics lies the uncanny. To understand why this is so, the chapter argues that we must see the implications of Freud's turn to the death drive that destructures the boundaries within the self and between the self and others. Freud and Kristeva are hopeful that we might make “progress in Spirit,” albeit for different reasons and with refined definitions of the term “Spirit.” This chapter suggests that psychoanalysis does not condemn us to a repetition of the past, but allows us to open, hospitably, to the future as to the stranger.Less
Who is this Stranger within, this interior haunting that makes us Strangers to ourselves in the way Antigone experienced? Sigmund Freud alerts us to the hidden place in our psyches where the strange and Stranger hide, while it is Julia Kristeva who points to the ethical and political ramifications of this split and estranged self. This chapter explores Kristeva's joining of self-knowledge and moral goodness and considers the implications of the related political project of cosmopolitanism. At the heart of Kristeva's politics lies the uncanny. To understand why this is so, the chapter argues that we must see the implications of Freud's turn to the death drive that destructures the boundaries within the self and between the self and others. Freud and Kristeva are hopeful that we might make “progress in Spirit,” albeit for different reasons and with refined definitions of the term “Spirit.” This chapter suggests that psychoanalysis does not condemn us to a repetition of the past, but allows us to open, hospitably, to the future as to the stranger.
Roshanak Kheshti
- Published in print:
- 2000
- Published Online:
- May 2016
- ISBN:
- 9781479867011
- eISBN:
- 9781479861125
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- NYU Press
- DOI:
- 10.18574/nyu/9781479867011.003.0004
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Cultural Studies
Chapter 3 deploys Julia Kristeva and Roland Barthes’s term signifiance to further theorize the desire that drives the listener to world music. This is a desire that works counter to signification or ...
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Chapter 3 deploys Julia Kristeva and Roland Barthes’s term signifiance to further theorize the desire that drives the listener to world music. This is a desire that works counter to signification or processes of identification. It explores the theme of subjective transcendence testified to by many listeners of world music through signifiance in order to theorize the loss of the self (which Barthes opposes to identification). Through several case studies from fieldwork as well as through the close reading of a song from the Kinship Records release Arabian Journeys, this chapter examines the production processes that choreograph the “loss of the self” in sound.Less
Chapter 3 deploys Julia Kristeva and Roland Barthes’s term signifiance to further theorize the desire that drives the listener to world music. This is a desire that works counter to signification or processes of identification. It explores the theme of subjective transcendence testified to by many listeners of world music through signifiance in order to theorize the loss of the self (which Barthes opposes to identification). Through several case studies from fieldwork as well as through the close reading of a song from the Kinship Records release Arabian Journeys, this chapter examines the production processes that choreograph the “loss of the self” in sound.
RICHARD KEARNEY and KASCHA SEMONOVITCH
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- September 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780823234615
- eISBN:
- 9780823240722
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Fordham University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5422/fordham/9780823234615.003.0013
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Philosophy of Religion
What is both more familiar and strange than the birth of a child? What is more uncanny? This chapter points to psychoanalysis and to Emmanuel Levinas as resources for describing children in birth as ...
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What is both more familiar and strange than the birth of a child? What is more uncanny? This chapter points to psychoanalysis and to Emmanuel Levinas as resources for describing children in birth as strangers and the symptomatic human reaction. Using Levinas's notion of paternal election and Julia Kristeva's notion of maternal passion, this chapter discusses the uncanny retroactive choice to have this particular child. Both Levinas and Kristeva suggest alternatives to the Freudian Oedipal model of child-parent relations. Yet, their discussions complement each other not only because Levinas focuses on paternity and Kristeva on maternity but also and moreover because for Levinas paternity points to an “absolute future” or “infinite time,” while for Kristeva maternity points to the “lost time” of a “time before time.” This chapter demonstrates how the Stranger transcends our desire to possess and control existence.Less
What is both more familiar and strange than the birth of a child? What is more uncanny? This chapter points to psychoanalysis and to Emmanuel Levinas as resources for describing children in birth as strangers and the symptomatic human reaction. Using Levinas's notion of paternal election and Julia Kristeva's notion of maternal passion, this chapter discusses the uncanny retroactive choice to have this particular child. Both Levinas and Kristeva suggest alternatives to the Freudian Oedipal model of child-parent relations. Yet, their discussions complement each other not only because Levinas focuses on paternity and Kristeva on maternity but also and moreover because for Levinas paternity points to an “absolute future” or “infinite time,” while for Kristeva maternity points to the “lost time” of a “time before time.” This chapter demonstrates how the Stranger transcends our desire to possess and control existence.
B. Diane Lipsett
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- January 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780199754519
- eISBN:
- 9780199827213
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199754519.003.0003
- Subject:
- Religion, Early Christian Studies
The chapter offers a close analysis of The Acts of Paul and Thecla, tracing how desire, restraint, and narrative transformation intersect with depictions of virginity, maternity, and masculinity. ...
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The chapter offers a close analysis of The Acts of Paul and Thecla, tracing how desire, restraint, and narrative transformation intersect with depictions of virginity, maternity, and masculinity. Select comparisons are made to the Greek romances Daphnis and Chloe and Leucippe and Clitophon as well as to The Acts of Peter and The Acts of Andrew. In Thecla’s fast-paced tale with minimal interiority, desire destabilizes the protagonist and propels conversion: social reidentification, ritual act, changes in language, changes in the self. Self-restraint and resurrection (companion values in this narrative) are not the antidotes to Thecla’s desire, but its objects. The reading is also informed by selections from several literary interpreters, including Judith Butler and Julia Kristeva, as they draw from psychoanalytic views of desire’s displacements, movements and returns.Less
The chapter offers a close analysis of The Acts of Paul and Thecla, tracing how desire, restraint, and narrative transformation intersect with depictions of virginity, maternity, and masculinity. Select comparisons are made to the Greek romances Daphnis and Chloe and Leucippe and Clitophon as well as to The Acts of Peter and The Acts of Andrew. In Thecla’s fast-paced tale with minimal interiority, desire destabilizes the protagonist and propels conversion: social reidentification, ritual act, changes in language, changes in the self. Self-restraint and resurrection (companion values in this narrative) are not the antidotes to Thecla’s desire, but its objects. The reading is also informed by selections from several literary interpreters, including Judith Butler and Julia Kristeva, as they draw from psychoanalytic views of desire’s displacements, movements and returns.
Elaine P. Miller
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- November 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780231166829
- eISBN:
- 9780231537117
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Columbia University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7312/columbia/9780231166829.003.0004
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Aesthetics
This chapter considers Julia Kristeva's reading of Marcel Proust's In Search of Lost Time in connection to the themes of melancholia and sublimation. Kristeva argues against the claim that in ...
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This chapter considers Julia Kristeva's reading of Marcel Proust's In Search of Lost Time in connection to the themes of melancholia and sublimation. Kristeva argues against the claim that in Proust's texts “recall without remainder is presumed,” saying that the modernity of Proust's temporality is that of “irreconcilable fragments of time that are pulling us in all directions more fervently and dramatically than before.” However, she credits Proust with the inauguration of a new, melancholic sense of modernity—the same impulse that gave rise to abstract expressionism in visual art. It is in this sense that the work of art is a sublimation; like the theory of the sublime in eighteenth and nineteenth century aesthetic theory, sublimation makes present what in principle is unpresentable.Less
This chapter considers Julia Kristeva's reading of Marcel Proust's In Search of Lost Time in connection to the themes of melancholia and sublimation. Kristeva argues against the claim that in Proust's texts “recall without remainder is presumed,” saying that the modernity of Proust's temporality is that of “irreconcilable fragments of time that are pulling us in all directions more fervently and dramatically than before.” However, she credits Proust with the inauguration of a new, melancholic sense of modernity—the same impulse that gave rise to abstract expressionism in visual art. It is in this sense that the work of art is a sublimation; like the theory of the sublime in eighteenth and nineteenth century aesthetic theory, sublimation makes present what in principle is unpresentable.
Paul S. Fiddes
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- January 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780823251551
- eISBN:
- 9780823252985
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Fordham University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5422/fordham/9780823251551.003.0011
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Philosophy of Religion
This chapter seeks to insert the work of Iris Murdoch and Julia Kristeva into a discussion of the sublime. The author proposes a combination of Murdoch's and Kristeva's employment of the sublime in ...
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This chapter seeks to insert the work of Iris Murdoch and Julia Kristeva into a discussion of the sublime. The author proposes a combination of Murdoch's and Kristeva's employment of the sublime in order to encourage an attention to the other and, hence, to the good and an empathetic identification and forgiveness with and of the other. Such a view, he suggests, points toward a theopoetics of the divine who creates the multifariousness of the world with an excess of generosity and with an inherent relation to the divine itself. From this, the chapter develops a philosophical and theological insistence upon humanity's attention to the other.Less
This chapter seeks to insert the work of Iris Murdoch and Julia Kristeva into a discussion of the sublime. The author proposes a combination of Murdoch's and Kristeva's employment of the sublime in order to encourage an attention to the other and, hence, to the good and an empathetic identification and forgiveness with and of the other. Such a view, he suggests, points toward a theopoetics of the divine who creates the multifariousness of the world with an excess of generosity and with an inherent relation to the divine itself. From this, the chapter develops a philosophical and theological insistence upon humanity's attention to the other.
Elaine P. Miller
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- November 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780231166829
- eISBN:
- 9780231537117
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Columbia University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7312/columbia/9780231166829.003.0005
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Aesthetics
This chapter considers the notion of pardon, which permeates Julia Kristeva's latest publications, Hatred and Forgiveness and This Incredible Need to Believe. Although usually translated as ...
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This chapter considers the notion of pardon, which permeates Julia Kristeva's latest publications, Hatred and Forgiveness and This Incredible Need to Believe. Although usually translated as “forgiveness,” Kristeva makes explicit its etymology in French, pardoner, by hyphenating the verb: “par-don.” As such, pardoning means “completely giving” or “a thorough giving.” Following St. Augustine and Hannah Arendt's opinion of the topic, Kristeva considers “pardon” to be a second birth that gives rise to a new temporality and a new self. In particular her concept of forgiveness called “aesthetic pardon,” emerges from her dual commitment to Sigmund Freud and to Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel but is given its specific character through her reading of Melanie Klein.Less
This chapter considers the notion of pardon, which permeates Julia Kristeva's latest publications, Hatred and Forgiveness and This Incredible Need to Believe. Although usually translated as “forgiveness,” Kristeva makes explicit its etymology in French, pardoner, by hyphenating the verb: “par-don.” As such, pardoning means “completely giving” or “a thorough giving.” Following St. Augustine and Hannah Arendt's opinion of the topic, Kristeva considers “pardon” to be a second birth that gives rise to a new temporality and a new self. In particular her concept of forgiveness called “aesthetic pardon,” emerges from her dual commitment to Sigmund Freud and to Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel but is given its specific character through her reading of Melanie Klein.
Kathryn Sutherland
- Published in print:
- 1997
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780198236634
- eISBN:
- 9780191679315
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198236634.003.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
Why the debate about the electronic representation of text is so vital has less to do with what electronic technology really does and more to do with the fact that it furthers the impossibility of ...
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Why the debate about the electronic representation of text is so vital has less to do with what electronic technology really does and more to do with the fact that it furthers the impossibility of textual, literary, and cultural critics assuming and defending the separateness of their activities: electronic representation enacts the inclusiveness of text. The fact of electronic text is necessarily part of that renewed interest in what text is which has characterised cultural and literary debate. For Roland Barthes, ‘text’ signifies a redistribution of control from the object to the activity. For Julia Kristeva, ‘intertext’ extends the properties of text codes which are social and not necessarily written or printed. What is woven as text can be material and ideological across a wide range.Less
Why the debate about the electronic representation of text is so vital has less to do with what electronic technology really does and more to do with the fact that it furthers the impossibility of textual, literary, and cultural critics assuming and defending the separateness of their activities: electronic representation enacts the inclusiveness of text. The fact of electronic text is necessarily part of that renewed interest in what text is which has characterised cultural and literary debate. For Roland Barthes, ‘text’ signifies a redistribution of control from the object to the activity. For Julia Kristeva, ‘intertext’ extends the properties of text codes which are social and not necessarily written or printed. What is woven as text can be material and ideological across a wide range.
Elaine Miller
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- November 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780231166829
- eISBN:
- 9780231537117
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Columbia University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7312/columbia/9780231166829.001.0001
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Aesthetics
While philosophy and psychoanalysis privilege language and conceptual distinctions and mistrust the image, the philosopher and psychoanalyst Julia Kristeva recognizes the power of art and the ...
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While philosophy and psychoanalysis privilege language and conceptual distinctions and mistrust the image, the philosopher and psychoanalyst Julia Kristeva recognizes the power of art and the imagination to unblock important sources of meaning. She also appreciates the process through which creative acts counteract and transform feelings of violence and depression. Reviewing Kristeva's corpus, this book considers the intellectual's “aesthetic idea” and “thought specular” in their capacity to reshape depressive thought on both the individual and cultural level. It revisits Kristeva's reading of Walter Benjamin with reference to melancholic art and the imagination's allegorical structure; her analysis of Byzantine iconoclasm in relation to Freud's psychoanalytic theory of negation and Hegel's dialectical negativity; her understanding of Proust as an exemplary practitioner of sublimation; her rereading of Kant and Arendt in terms of art as an intentional lingering with foreignness; and her argument that forgiveness is both a philosophical and psychoanalytic method of transcending a “stuck” existence. Focusing on specific artworks that illustrate Kristeva's ideas, from ancient Greek tragedy to early photography, contemporary installation art, and film, this book positions creative acts as a form of “spiritual inoculation” against the violence of our society and its discouragement of thought and reflection.Less
While philosophy and psychoanalysis privilege language and conceptual distinctions and mistrust the image, the philosopher and psychoanalyst Julia Kristeva recognizes the power of art and the imagination to unblock important sources of meaning. She also appreciates the process through which creative acts counteract and transform feelings of violence and depression. Reviewing Kristeva's corpus, this book considers the intellectual's “aesthetic idea” and “thought specular” in their capacity to reshape depressive thought on both the individual and cultural level. It revisits Kristeva's reading of Walter Benjamin with reference to melancholic art and the imagination's allegorical structure; her analysis of Byzantine iconoclasm in relation to Freud's psychoanalytic theory of negation and Hegel's dialectical negativity; her understanding of Proust as an exemplary practitioner of sublimation; her rereading of Kant and Arendt in terms of art as an intentional lingering with foreignness; and her argument that forgiveness is both a philosophical and psychoanalytic method of transcending a “stuck” existence. Focusing on specific artworks that illustrate Kristeva's ideas, from ancient Greek tragedy to early photography, contemporary installation art, and film, this book positions creative acts as a form of “spiritual inoculation” against the violence of our society and its discouragement of thought and reflection.
Grace M. Jantzen
- Published in print:
- 2002
- Published Online:
- March 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780823222063
- eISBN:
- 9780823235605
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Fordham University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5422/fso/9780823222063.003.0007
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Philosophy of Religion
This chapter examines the thoughts of philosopher Julia Kristeva on gender, religion, and death. In her work, Kristeva suggested that human subjects are constituted by a ...
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This chapter examines the thoughts of philosopher Julia Kristeva on gender, religion, and death. In her work, Kristeva suggested that human subjects are constituted by a series of splittings and such splittings are simultaneously essential for the development of mature autonomy. Her sensitivity to this power led her time and again to reconsider religious themes and figures. This chapter suggests that Kristeva's religious views has much in common with those of contemporary continental philosophers who find resources for destabilizing the hegemonic power of modernity in pre-modern texts and themes.Less
This chapter examines the thoughts of philosopher Julia Kristeva on gender, religion, and death. In her work, Kristeva suggested that human subjects are constituted by a series of splittings and such splittings are simultaneously essential for the development of mature autonomy. Her sensitivity to this power led her time and again to reconsider religious themes and figures. This chapter suggests that Kristeva's religious views has much in common with those of contemporary continental philosophers who find resources for destabilizing the hegemonic power of modernity in pre-modern texts and themes.
Zeynep Direk
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- January 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780823265190
- eISBN:
- 9780823266890
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Fordham University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5422/fordham/9780823265190.003.0013
- Subject:
- Religion, Philosophy of Religion
This essay inquires into the intellectual relation between Bataille and Kristeva by focusing on their conceptions of the religious experience as an experience of desire, law, and death. It lays out ...
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This essay inquires into the intellectual relation between Bataille and Kristeva by focusing on their conceptions of the religious experience as an experience of desire, law, and death. It lays out how their reflections on religious signification have evolved throughout the different phases of their thinking. Even though both have interpreted religion in terms of abjection, Kristeva’s psychoanalytic approach to religion differs from Bataille’s anthropological reflections. The essay shows that Kristeva’s reading of Bataille changed from an appreciation of him as a thinker of poetic revolution in 1970s to a figure of revolt in 1980s, a period in which Bataille still continues to be a source of inspiration for Kristeva’s theorization of the sacred, religion, erotic, abjection, language, and revolt, though now she disavows his legacy and seeks to distance herself from his thought. In the 1990s, Kristeva comes to the point of dismissing him as a historical, even nostalgic figure of transgression.Less
This essay inquires into the intellectual relation between Bataille and Kristeva by focusing on their conceptions of the religious experience as an experience of desire, law, and death. It lays out how their reflections on religious signification have evolved throughout the different phases of their thinking. Even though both have interpreted religion in terms of abjection, Kristeva’s psychoanalytic approach to religion differs from Bataille’s anthropological reflections. The essay shows that Kristeva’s reading of Bataille changed from an appreciation of him as a thinker of poetic revolution in 1970s to a figure of revolt in 1980s, a period in which Bataille still continues to be a source of inspiration for Kristeva’s theorization of the sacred, religion, erotic, abjection, language, and revolt, though now she disavows his legacy and seeks to distance herself from his thought. In the 1990s, Kristeva comes to the point of dismissing him as a historical, even nostalgic figure of transgression.
