Title: Julia Kristeva
1Julia Kristeva
- Major Concepts and Examples
2Questions
- How is Kristeva related to the theories weve
discussed so far? (e.g. de Saussure, Derrida,
Freud and Lacan) - What does she add to Lacan?
- Why is the unconscious structured like language
for Lacan? How is the semiotic related to the
unconscious?
3Major Concepts
- 1. Her attempt to bring the body back into
discourses in the human sciences - 2. Her focus on the significance of the maternal
and preoedipal in the constitution of
subjectivity - 3. Her revision of contemporary linguistics
which focused on the communicative function of
language (e.g. generative grammar, speech acts).
? genotext - (Her notion of abjection as an explanation for
oppression and discrimination. source)
4Body and the semiotic
- The semiotic -- the bodily drive as it is
discharged in signification. The semiotic is
associated with the rhythms, tones, and movement
of signifying practices. As the discharge of
drives, it is also associated with the maternal
body, the first source of rhythms, tones, and
movements for every human being since we all have
resided in that body.
5The semiotic disposition
- The emergence of the semiotic in the symbolic, or
the genotext in the phenotext. - E.g. rhythm, ambiguity and over-symbolicity, the
switches and multiplicity of locutionary
position.
6The Symbolic the Semiotic
- element of signification is associated with the
grammar and structure of signification. The
symbolic element is what makes reference
possible. - Without the symbolic, all signification would be
babble or delirium. But, without the semiotic,
all signification would be empty and have no
importance for our lives. Ultimately,
signification requires both the semiotic and
symbolic there is no signification without some
combination of both.
source
7The maternal chora
8 - Georgia O'Keeffe
- Black Iris
9Pollock, Jackson Blue Poles Number 11, 1952
10Pollock, Jackson Blue Poles Number 11, 1952
Context existentialism ("existence precedes
essence") alone in the void (alienation) the
Cold War post-Hiroshima the Soviet Union gets
the bomb in 1949 the 50's beat generation
(pushing to the edge of one's consciousness.)
Jungian analysis (the collective unconscious
the archetype mythic structures embedded in
everyone's unconscious). Inspired by jazz
improvisation listened to records by Charlie
Parker while he painted. Also influenced by
Native American sand painting and the idea that
painting could be ritualistic, a rites of
passage. (source http//www.csulb.edu/karenk/20
thcwebsite/439mid/ah439mid-Info.00011.html )