Julia Kristeva

"Abjection and the Melancholic Imagination: Towards a Poststructuralist Psychoanalytic Reading of Blake's The Book of Urizen"

by Julianne Buchsbaum

Published in Romanticism and Victorianism on the Net, Number 56, November 2009

Julia Kristeva’s work on the semiotic and the symbolic seems particularly relevant to Blake’s poem "The Book of... more Julia Kristeva’s work on the semiotic and the symbolic seems particularly relevant to Blake’s poem "The Book of Urizen" insofar as she is concerned with how we develop as speaking beings and how language both disguises and reveals evidence of a previous state of union with what she calls the maternal chora. These ideas allow for an interesting reading of Blake’s concern with the splitting off of Urizen from the Eternals and how this splitting off enables him to emerge as a signifying subject who bears traces of traumatic loss and upheaval, or of what Kristeva would term “the abject.” Abjection is a key concept for Kristeva and plays an essential role in what she describes as the “melancholic imagination.” Abjection in Urizen manifests as a sort of paranoid repression and repudiation of the drives, of mutability, multiplicity, the body, and the Other. Urizen, throughout the poem, becomes overtly identified with the Symbolic Father and becomes himself the bearer of symbolic codes, legislator of rational discourse and semantic meaning.

Inarritu's Babel: Communication as Currency in an Economy of Sacrifice

by Julianne Peeling

Schrijven als vrouw Nieuw concept van moederschap in hedendaagse Nederlandse literatuur geschreven door vrouwen

by Martina Vitackova

published in Comparatieve Neerlandistiek.Tijdschrift van de Vereniging Comenius [04-2012, nr. 2.]. ISSN: 2211-3959.

The paper presents an analysis of three contemporary novels by woman authors in Dutch, in order to give an account of... more The paper presents an analysis of three contemporary novels by woman authors in Dutch, in order to give an account of the way how female subjectivity, especially motherhood, is depicted in nowadays´ literary works by women. The central argument of this paper is that there is a new concept of motherhood appearing in literature written by women since the beginning of the century. This newly appearing phenomenon of subversive motherhood is in compliance with the theories of Julia Kristeva whose writing on motherhood is used as theoretical background of this paper. The paper shows that contemporary woman writers have written themselves out of the Oedipal ‘father-son’ narrative and offer new alternative plots, one of which the subversive empowering narrative of motherhood.

On the Border between Abjection and the Third: The (Re) Birth of Narcissus in the Works of Julia Kristeva

by Pleshette DeArmitt

The Art of Revolt: Rebellion in the Works of Bertran de Born and Julia Kristeva

by Luke Sunderland

"Globalized Philomels: State Patriarchy, Transnational Capital, and the Femicides on the US-Mexican Border in Roberto Bolaño’s 2666" South Atlantic Review: The Journal of the Modern Language Association 75.4 (Fall 2010): 51-72.

by Laura Barberan Reinares

South Atlantic Review: The Journal of the South Atlantic Modern Language Association 75.4 (Fall 2010): 51-72.

Anatomy of a Cargo Cult: Virginity, Relic Envy, and Hallowed Boxes

by Ryan Byrne

Resurrecting the Brother of Jesus, eds. Ryan Byrne and Bernadette McNary-Zak (University of North Carolina Press, 2009) pp. 137-186

Abjection, Impurity, Self-identity

by Robbie Duschinsky

Draft only; under review

Kristeva describes abjection as ‘the repugnance, the retching that thrusts me to the side and turns me away from... more Kristeva describes abjection as ‘the repugnance, the retching that thrusts me to the side and turns me away from defilement, sewage, and muck.’ Her account of the ‘abject’ has received a great deal of attention since the 1980s, due to high demand for an account of the topic of purity and impurity, which remain important themes in contemporary society. Yet Kristeva herself has noted that ‘my investigation into abjection, violence and horror... picks up on a certain vacuum’, and other scholars have agreed that there is need for further work on this ‘under theorized’ topic. This article will begin by exploring the central line of criticism that has been made of Kristeva’s concept of abjection, before then considering an exciting new attempt by Goodnow to address these concerns through a re-reading of Kristeva. Goodnow’s re-reading of Kristeva will point the way towards a rethinking of ‘abject’ phenomena. I shall contend that Kristeva’s work hits upon a regularity, which greater conceptual precision will be able to revise into an explanation of when and why themes of purity and impurity are invoked.

(Im)Purity, Danger and the Body in Doris Lessing's The Grass is Singing

by Bridget Grogan

A Passing Glance: Encounters with Deadness and Dying

by Sylwia Chrostowska

published in Beauty and the Abject (Peter Lang)

Kristeva's Time?

by Birgit Schippers

Feminist Theory, 2010, vol. 11, no. 1, pp. 87-96

Depth of the Feminine Character: An Analysis of Julia and Offred

by Lisa Frerking

Collapsing Time and Exploding Gender: Kristeva, Kant and Laruelle

by Benjamin Norris

I have removed the link for this paper because it has since been dramatically re-worked and will be featured in the upcoming edition of Speculations. I will post the full version of the new paper (now titled "Re-asking the Question of the Gendered Subject after Non-philosophy") once Speculations III has been released.

Is a science of (non-)gender identity constitution possible? What would be the object of this science? And, most... more Is a science of (non-)gender identity constitution possible? What would be the object of this science? And, most importantly, what new spaces of (non-)philosophical investigation can be opened in light of such an analysis?
Using Julia Kristeva's "Women's Time" as a point of entry, I develop a picture of a non-decisional science of gender constitution based on a reinterpretation of Francois Laruelle's The Concept of Non-photography in order to answer the above questions. I argue that all theories of identity constitution from David Hume to Judith Butler exemplify the production of an antinomic impasse between the transcendent and the immanent created by the principle of sufficient philosophy. In order to move past the empirico-transcendental deadlock created by philosophical discourse we must move toward a non-decisional investigation of the fractal nature of temporal experience that renders the idea of irreconcilable and antagonistic binaries inoperative.
The shift in focus from either empirical or transcendent gender constitution to the fractal experience of irreducible temporality can lead us outside of the traditional binary philosophical deadlock and point toward a "third way" (in the sense Kristeva gives this idea in "Women's Time") of temporal experience that is always- already upon us. By collapsing the temporality of gender onto a flat, yet infinitely complex surface we can explode the possibilities of gender expression and solidify a unitary core from which gendered resistance can proceed.

Delivering the Maternal Body from the Abominable: A Psychological Evaluation of the Episiotomy

by Carrie Jones

The blurring of boundaries: images of abjection as the terrorist and the reel Arab intersect

by Hania A.M. Nashef

In her treatise on abjection, Julia Kristeva argues that the abject is located outside the self, remaining in a state... more In her treatise on abjection, Julia Kristeva argues that the abject is located outside the self, remaining in a state of repulsion that threatens to destroy the self. Abject representations are prevalent in the way terrorists have been portrayed in the Western news media post-September 11, 2001. These images of abjection are problematic, as they consolidate the images we have seen in Hollywood films representing Arabs. Furthermore, these depictions have eroded the fine line between the real and the unreal. This article examines the point at which these issues intersect, by analysing individual images vis-à-vis film portrayals of the Arab and, ultimately, how the framed images of terrorists aired on TV screens have conformed to previously accepted notions of the Arab.

Benet's Reader's Encyclopedia Entries

by Tim Morton

“Bakhtin,” “Bataille,” “Benjamin,” “Deconstruction,” “Saussure,” “Foucault,” “Jakobson,” “Kristeva,” “Postmodernism,” in Benet's Readers' Encyclopedia, 4th edn. (Harper Collins, 1996), 73, 83, 95, 259, 915, 360, 518, 566–7, 823.

Short entries on nine topics. Short entries on nine topics.

Maternal Spaces in the Diaries of Aino Kallas, Virginia Woolf and Anaïs Nin

by Leena Kurvet-Käosaar

‘Radical Interiors: Kathy Acker’s My Mother: Demonology and Cindy Sherman’s ‘Sex Series’’

by Georgina Colby

Forthcoming in Women: A Cultural Review, 2012

(2011) Interfaces in narrative research: letters as technologies of the self and as traces of social forces. Qualitative Research, 11 (5), 625-641.

by Maria Tamboukou

In this article I explore the use of letters in narrative research in the social sciences. Taking Gwen John’s love... more In this article I explore the use of letters in narrative research in the social sciences. Taking Gwen John’s love letters to Auguste Rodin as an exemplar of epistolary analysis, I raise questions around the ontological and epistemological nature of epistolary narratives, particularly focusing on openness as a force generating meaning, challenging conventions in classical narratology and destabilizing discourses around the constitution of the social and the subject. Further drawing on Kristeva’s notion of intertextuality, I propose an analysis of epistolary narratives along the axes of subject-addressee and text-context. In this light I trace connections between ‘real life letters’ and the genre of the amorous epistolary novel, highlighting the need for interdisciplinary approaches in the analysis of letters in narrative research.

Time and Memory in Jennifer Johnston's Novels: 'A Past That Does Not Pass by'

by Yulia Pushkarevskaya Naughton

Nordic Irish Studies Vol. 6, (2007), pp. 73-87