Kristeva, Julia 1941–

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Kristeva, Julia 1941–

(Julia Joyaux)

PERSONAL:

Born June 24, 1941, in Sliven, Bulgaria; immigrated to France, 1965; married Phillippe Sollers (an editor and novelist); children: one son. Education: Attended French schools in Bulgaria; Université de So- fia, Bulgaria, diplomée, 1963; studied at Academie des Sciences en Litterature Comparée, Sofia, and l'Ecole Pratique des Hautes-Etudes, France; University of Paris VII, Ph.D., 1973.

ADDRESSES:

Office—Université de Paris VII—Denis Diderot, UFR de Sciences des Textes et Documents, 34-44, 2e etage, 2, place Jussieu, Paris 75251, France. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER:

Writer, educator, linguist, psychoanalyst, and literary theorist. Worked as a journalist in Bulgaria; Laboratoire d'Anthropologie Sociale, research assistant to Claude Levi-Strauss, 1967-73; University of Paris VII—Denis Diderot, instructor, 1972, professor of linguistics, 1973-99, professeur classe exceptionelle, 1999—, director of doctoral program. Established private psychoanalytic practice, Paris, 1978. Visiting professor, Columbia University, 1974—, and University of Toronto, 1992.

MEMBER:

Société Psychanalytique de Paris, American Academy of Arts and Sciences, British Academy, l'Académie Universelle des Cultures.

AWARDS, HONORS:

Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres, 1987; Chevalier de l'Ordre National du Merite, 1991; Chevalier de la Legion d'Honneur, 1997; honorary degrees from Western Ontario University, 1995, Victoria University, 1997, Harvard University, 1999, University of Belgium, 2000, University of Bayreuth, 2000, University of Toronto, 2000, University of Sofia, 2002, New School University, 2003.

WRITINGS:

NONFICTION

Semeiotike, recherce pour une semanalyse, Le Seuil (Paris, France), 1969, abridged translation published in Desire in Language: A Semiotic Approach to Literature and Art, Columbia University Press (New York, NY), 1980.

(Editor, with Thomas Sebeok) Approaches to Semiotics, Volume One, Mouton (The Hague, Netherlands), 1969.

(As Julia Joyaux) Le langage, cet inconnu, une initiation à la linguistique, Le Seuil (Paris, France), 1969, as Julia Kristeva, 1981, translated as Language: The Unknown: An Initiation into Linguistics, Columbia University Press (New York, NY), 1989.

Le texte du roman: approache sémiologique d'une stucture discursive transformationnelle, Mouton (The Hague, Netherlands), 1970.

(Editor, with Josette Rey Debove and Donna Jean Umiker) Essays in Semiotics: Essais de sémiotique, Mouton (The Hague, Netherlands), 1971.

(Editor) Épistémologie de la linguistique: Hommage à Emile Benveniste, Didier (Paris, France), 1971.

La révolution du langage poétique, l'avant-garde à la fin du XIXe siècle, Lautréamont et Mallarmé, Le Seuil (Paris, France), 1974, abridged translation by Margaret Waller published as Revolution in Poetic Language, Columbia University Press (New York, NY), 1984.

Des chinoises, Editions des Femmes (Paris, France), 1974, translation by Anita Barrow published as About Chinese Women, Urizen (New York, NY), 1977.

(Editor, with Jean-Claude Milner and Nicolas Ruwet) Langue, discours, société: Pour Emile Benveniste, Le Seuil (Paris, France), 1975.

(With others) La traversée des signes, Le Seuil (Paris, France), 1975.

Polylogue, Le Seuil (Paris, France), 1977, translation by Thomas Gora, Alice Jardine, and Leon Roudiez published in Desire in Language: A Semiotic Approach to Literature and Art, Columbia University Press (New York, NY), 1980.

(With Jean Michel Ribettes) Folle vérité: Vérité et vraisemblance du texte psychotique, Le Seuil (Paris, France), 1980.

Pouvoirs de l'horreur: Essai sur l'abjection, Le Seuil (Paris, France), 1980, translation by Leon Roudiez published as Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection, Columbia University Press (New York, NY), 1982.

Histoires d'amour, Denoel (Paris, France), 1983, translation by Leon Roudiez published as Tales of Love, Columbia University Press (New York, NY), 1987.

Au commencement était l'amour: Psychanalyse et foi, Hachette (Paris, France), 1985, translation by Arthur Goldhammer published as In the Beginning Was Love: Psychoanalysis and Faith, Columbia University Press (New York, NY), 1987.

A Kristeva Reader, edited by Toril Moi, Columbia University Press (New York, NY), 1986.

Soleil noir: Dépression et mélancolie, Gallimard (Paris, France), 1987, translation by Leon Roudiez published as Black Sun: Depression and Melancholia, Columbia University Press (New York, NY), 1989.

Etrangers à nous-mêmes, Fayard (Paris, France), 1988, translation by Leon Roudiez published as Strangersto Ourselves, Columbia University Press (New York, NY), 1991.

Lettre ouverte à Harlem Désir, Rivages (Paris, France), 1990, translation published as Nations without Nationalism, Columbia University Press (New York, NY), 1993.

Proust and the Sense of Time, translation by Stephen Bann, Columbia University Press (New York, NY), 1993.

Les nouvelles maladies de l'ame, Fayard (Paris, France), 1993, translation by Ross Guberman published as New Maladies of the Soul, Columbia University Press (New York, NY), 1995.

Le temps sensible: Proust et l'expérience littéraire, Gallimard (Paris, France), 1994, translation by Ross Guberman published as Time and Sense: Proust and the Experience of Literature, Columbia University Press (New York, NY), 1996.

Julia Kristeva, Interviews, edited by Ross Guberman, Columbia University Press (New York, NY), 1996.

Sens et non-sens de la révolte: Discours direct, Fayard (Paris, France), 1996, translation by Jeanine Herman published as The Sense and Non-Sense of Revolt, Columbia University Press (New York, NY), 2000.

The Portable Kristeva, edited by Kelly Oliver, Columbia University Press (New York, NY), 1997, updated edition, 2002.

La révolte intime: Discours direct, Fayard (Paris, France), 1997, translation published as Intimate Revolt: The Powers and Limits of Psychoanalysis, Columbia University Press (New York, NY), 2002.

L'avenir d'une révolte, Calmann-Levy (Paris, France), 1998.

Le féminin et le sacré, Stock (Paris, France), 1998, translation by Catherine Clément published as The Feminine and the Sacred, Columbia University Press (New York, NY), 2001.

Visions capitales, Reunion des musees nationaux (Paris, France), 1998.

Contre la dépression nationale: Entretien avec Phillippe Petit, Textuel (Paris, France), 1998, translation by Brian O'Keeffe and edited by Sylvere Lotringer published as Revolt, She Said, Semiotext(e) (Los Angeles, CA), 2002.

Proust: Questions d'identité, Legenda (Oxford, England), 1998.

Le génie féminin: La vie, la folie, les mots; Hannah Arendt, Melanie Klein, Colette (also see below), three volumes, Fayard (Paris, France), 1999-2002, published as Female Genius: Life, Madness, Words; Hannah Arendt, Melanie Klein, Colette—A Trilogy, Columbia University Press (New York, NY), 2002.

Crisis of the European Subject, translation by Susan Fairfield, Other Press (New York, NY), 2000.

Jardin des Tuileries: Sculptures modernes et contemporaines; Installation conçue par Alain Kirili, 1997-2000, Patrimoine (Paris, France), 2001.

Au risque de la pensée, L'Aube (La Tour d'Aigues, France), 2001.

Hannah Arendt—or, Life Is a Narrative (associated with Le génie féminin), Columbia University Press (New York, NY), 2001.

Melanie Klein (associated with Le génie féminin), Columbia University Press (New York, NY), 2001.

Micropolitique: Première édition, mercredi 8h25, 2000-2001, Aube (La Tour d'Aigues, France), 2001.

Le plaisir des formes, Le Seuil (Paris, France), 2003.

Chroniques du temps sensible: Première édition, mercredi 7 heures 55 (2001-2002), Aube (La Tour d'Aigues, France), 2003.

Lettre au prèsident de la rèpublique sur les citoyens en situation de handicap: À l'usage de ceux qui le sont et de ceux qui ne le sont pas, Fayard (Paris, France), 2003.

Colette: Un génie féminin, Éditions de l'Aube (La Tour-d'Aigues, France), 2004, translation by Jane Marie Todd published as Colette, Columbia University Press (New York, NY), 2004.

La cruauté au féminin, Presses Universitaires de France (Paris, France), 2004.

L'amour de soi et ses avatars: Demesure et limites de la sublimation, Pleins Feux (Nantes, France), 2005.

La haine et le pardon, Fayard (Paris, France), 2005.

Handicap, le temps des engagements: Premiers états generaux, Presses Universitaires de France (Paris, France), 2006.

Contributor to periodicals, including Critique, Langages, Langues françaises, L'Infiniti, Partisan Review, Revue français de psychanalyse, and Signs. Member of editorial board, Tel quel, 1971—.

NOVELS

Les samourais, Fayard (Paris, France), 1990, translation published as The Samurai, Columbia University Press (New York, NY), 1992.

Le vieil homme et les loups, Fayard (Paris, France), 1991, translation published as The Old Man and the Wolves, Columbia University Press (New York, NY), 1994.

Possessions, translation by Barbara Bray, Columbia University Press (New York, NY), 1998.

Meurtre à Byzance: Roman, Fayard (Paris, France), 2004, translation published as Murder in Byzantium, Columbia University Press (New York, NY), 2006.

SIDELIGHTS:

Julia Kristeva is one of the most influential and prolific thinkers of modern France. Trained in linguistics, psychoanalysis, and literary criticism, her cross-disciplinary writings have been praised by colleagues from a wide variety of academic departments. While her commitment to social change has caused her to be embraced by many as a feminist writer, Kristeva's relationship to feminism has been one of ambivalence. She is most widely known for her contribution to literary theory, such as 1980's Desire in Language: A Semiotic Approach to Literature and Art and her 1974 examination of modernist poetry and prose entitled La révolution du langage poétique, l'avant-garde à la fin du XIXe siècle, Lautréamont et Mallarmé, published in translation in 1984 as Revolution in Poetic Language. In addition to her theoretical works, Kristeva has also published several novels; 1990's Les samourais (translation published as The Samurai) is a semi-autobiographical work that incorporates characters representative of several Parisian intellectuals of the mid-1960s.

Born in communist Bulgaria in 1941, Kristeva attended French-language Catholic schools before embarking on a career as a journalist in her early twenties. In the mid-1960s, after the death of Nikita Kruschev heralded a new wave of Soviet repression in her native country, twenty-five-year-old Kristeva moved to Paris to continue her academic career. While pursuing an advanced degree in linguistics at the University of Paris, she published several essays in linguistic philosophy and contributed to Tel quel, a journal edited by Phillippe Sollers, who would later become her husband. Meanwhile, her renown grew both as a writer and scholar and she became accepted as a part of the heady intellectual circle of the period; she would soon be attending lectures by Jacques Lacan while working as a laboratory assistant for anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss. While politically they would shift to the right over the next three decades, Kristeva's later writings continued to be imbued with much of the revolutionary fervor Paris exhibited during this era, as well as by the Freudian and Lacanian psychoanalytic theory that captured her interest. Indeed, New Maladies of the Soul, an essay collection published in translation in 1995, includes a defense of psychoanalysis written in answer to the rising tide of anti-Freudian scholarship since undertaken in the field.

Kristeva bases her theoretical work on two components of all linguistic operation: the semiotic—that which expresses objective meaning—and the symbolic—the rhythmic, illogical element. What she terms "poetic language" is the intertwining of the semiotic and symbolic, transforming and reshaping one another while providing multiple meanings to their spoken form. Both writers and readers participate in this dialogue between the semiotic and symbolic, making poetic language subjective, versatile, open to myriad interpretations. Though most feminist theorists have considered Kristeva's ideas regarding the semiotic component of language to be valuable in their own women-centered critique, some have also criticized what they perceive as her tendency to stress the written works of men in her studies while ignoring those of women.

Kristeva's area of involvement has shifted more recently from linguistics to psychoanalysis. Her psychoanalytic works include Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection, Tales of Love and Black Sun: Depression and Melancholia, the last being an examination of female depression. All have been marked by her attempt to expand and amplify the Freudian and Lacanian views of early childhood development. Many of Kristeva's critics have deemed her derivation of a maternally based ethics a move away from feminism, a stance that would seem justified after the mid-1980s when Kristeva took a marked stance in opposition to the aims of the women's movement.

Despite the demands of her nonfiction, her teaching, and her frequent trips abroad as a visiting professor at Columbia University, Kristeva has continued to find time to write fiction. Two of her novels, The Old Man and the Wolves and Possessions, are set in the fictional Santa Varvara, an Eastern European resort city where corruption and violence are rife. In the case of Possessions, a successful translator is found decapitated after a dinner party and one of her friends, Stephanie Delacour, conducts her own investigation into the grisly murder. New York Times Book Review correspondent Mark Edmundson styled Possessions "an intellectual detective story" that reflects Kristeva's favorite nonfictional themes: "depression, language, the struggles between the sexes, horror, psychoanalysis, and motherhood." In a Booklist review, Brad Hooper deemed Possessions a "compelling psychological thriller," adding that the "cerebral" work "is as much about the ways of living as it is about the ways of dying."

A continuing concern for Kristeva is also the phenomenon of revolt. In The Sense and Non-Sense of Revolt: The Powers and Limits of Psychoanalysis, she "presents a new academic treatise on revolt," as David Valencia noted in Library Journal. Kristeva focuses on the psychology of the concept of revolt and in turn features three influential thinkers: Jean-Paul Sartre, Roland Barthes, and Louis Aragon. Valencia felt the work could be "maddening" for those not familiar with structuralist and postmodern theory and language, but that cognoscenti would "eagerly devour" the work. Kristeva produced a companion volume with Intimate Revolt: The Powers and Limits of Psychoanalysis, an "important, interdisciplinary tour de force," according to Library Journal contributor E. James Lieberman. Here Kristeva defines revolt as a continual state of personal re-invention and re-creation. Again, much of the book focuses on Aragon, Barthes, and Sartre, but it also takes the reader on an intellectual journey commencing with Aristotle and traveling all the way to Freud and psychoanalysis. Kristeva returns to the same subject in a book of interviews, Revolt, She Said, where, as Clayton Crockett noted in Theoria, the author "relates the notion of revolt to a number of current issues, including the ongoing legacy of the French revolt of May 1968, as well as psychoanalysis, feminism, politics and culture." Crockett found this short book "accessible and straightforward," as well as a "good way to introduce readers to the main themes of Kristeva's thought and work during the 1990s." Similar praise came from Canadian Review of Sociology and Anthropology reviewer B. Gerry Coulter, who observed, "This volume, concerned with the possibility of revolt, defines its subject broadly and reaches some penetrating conclusions." Coulter further commented that Revolt, She Said "offers insights on a number of subjects from an important contemporary thinker, novelist, pedagogue, and psychoanalytic practitioner."

Kristeva has also continued to explore feminist issues, particularly through the lives of three twentieth-century European women, the German political theorist and writer Hannah Arendt, the Austrian-British children's psychoanalyst Melanie Klein, and the French writer Colette. Rather than producing standard biographies of each of these remarkable women, Kristeva attempts intellectual biographies, tracing the growth and development of their thought to discover what made each of these women special. For Arendt, according to Kristeva, it was a journey in discovery of her individual happiness through the very process of thinking and theorizing, while for Klein it involved healing, and with Colette it was the obvious thing, her writing. In Melanie Klein, the second of a trilogy of biographies, Kristeva examines one variety of female genius. An early Freudian, Klein soon broke with Freud over the primacy of the Oedipal complex, preferring instead more emphasis on the feminine. Klein left her native Austria in the 1920s to move to London where she practiced psychoanalysis for the rest of her life, developing new therapies for treating children. A Kirkus Reviews critic noted that Kristeva attempts to show in this work that Klein "should be regarded as an innovator and pioneer in psychoanalytic theory." The same critic concluded that the book was "of much substance, though of interest to a very small readership." Lieberman, writing in Library Journal, found that "Kristeva, a formidable cultural historian and critic, brings a rich mix of data and ideas for psychoanalytic theorists." However, Lieberman also thought other titles by Klein might be more appropriate for nonspecialist readers.

With Colette, Kristeva brings her trilogy on female geniuses to a close. Bob Ivey, writing in Library Journal, commented that Kristeva "uses psycholinguistics to explore the author's work and life." Ivey felt that Colette "offers writing too dense for lay readers and will appeal only to scholars, who will benefit from Kristeva's insights into Colette's work." Higher praise for the volume came from Women's Review of Books contributor Julia Balen, who wrote, "Exploring in depth her reasons to love Colette, Kristeva interweaves the details of Colette's life with pieces of her many texts, often mirroring Colette in style, thus producing analysis turned reverie, history turned meditation." Balen further noted that lay readers might find the work "challenging," but went on to observe that even "readers unfamiliar with either Kristeva's psychoanalytic framework or Colette's life and oeuvre might nevertheless enjoy the book as the precious reverie of a clearly inspirational writer." Beth Gale, writing in Symposium, also had a high assessment of Colette, commenting that Kristeva "elegantly conveys her convictions regarding the relationship of language and experience to the expression of genius" in this final volume of the trilogy.

Kristeva deals with many of the same concerns in her fiction as she does in her nonfiction. Speaking with Birgitte Huitfeldt Midttun in Hypatia, Kristeva reported: "I think I explore the same area of problems even in my novels. That is, the difficulty of being a woman, in Possessions, and the difficulty of being a stranger, in my last book, Meurtre à Byzance." The latter title, translated into English as Murder in Byzantium, features the same protagonist as Possessions. Stephanie Delacour, journalist cum detective, who is here paired with police inspector Northrop Rilsky. Set again in the fictional, almost mythical Santa Varvara, this mystery novel finds Delacour on the trail of a serial killer who is targeting members of a cult named the New Pantheon. Mean- while, she also begins a romance with Rilsky. Kristeva takes plenty of time out from the mystery for historical discursions from Sebastian Chrest-Jones, a roving scholar and one of the book's characters. A Kirkus Reviews critic had high praise for Murder in Byzantium, noting that the author "has a good time bumping off the deserving, and even a few innocents, while keeping a taut tale moving along nicely." A Publishers Weekly reviewer, however, was less impressed, stating: "With its somewhat slapdash ending, this ambitious, discursive book will appeal more to intellectuals than crime fans." Similarly, Molly Hite, writing in the Women's Review of Books, felt that "What is interesting, even compelling, about Murder in Byzantium is neither the mystery itself, nor the duo responsible for solving it, but rather Kristeva's parodic and sinister fictional universe and her twelfth-century Byzantine/Bulgarian theme, developed in a subplot that takes over much of the novel." However, Hite also observed, "The bad news … is that the dramatization is not up to the thinking." The Kirkus Reviews critic differed from this judgment though, concluding, "Readers will enjoy this concoction, which falls squarely in the [Umberto] Eco/[Arturo] Perez-Reverte tradition of mystery with a moral."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

BOOKS

Fletcher, John, and Andrew Benjamin, editors, Abjection, Melancholia, and Love: The Work of Julia Kristeva, Routledge (New York, NY), 1990.

Lechte, John, Julia Kristeva, Routledge (New York, NY), 1990.

PERIODICALS

Antioch Review, spring, 1994, review of Proust and the Sense of Time.

Booklist, February 15, 1998, Brad Hooper, review of Possessions, p. 982.

Canadian Review of Sociology and Anthropology, February, 2004, B. Gerry Coulter, review of Revolt, She Said, p. 101.

Choice, October, 1995, review of New Maladies of the Soul, p. 286.

Discourse: A Review of the Liberal Arts, fall-winter, 1990-91, Suzanne Clark and Kathleen Hulley, "An Interview with Julia Kristeva: Cultural Strangeness and the Subject in Crisis," pp. 149-180.

Hypatia, fall, 2006, Birgitte Huitfeldt Midttun, "Crossing the Borders: An Interview with Julia Kristeva," p. 164.

Kirkus Reviews, November 1, 2001, review of Melanie Klein, p. 1533; November 15, 2005, review of Murder in Byzantium, p. 1206.

Library Journal, May 1, 2000, David Valencia, review of The Sense and Non-Sense of Revolt: The Powers and Limits of Psychoanalysis, p. 138; December, 2001, E. James Lieberman, review of Melanie Klein, p. 152; June 15, 2002, E. James Lieberman, review of Intimate Revolt: The Powers and Limits of Psychoanalysis, p. 81; June 1, 2004, Bob Ivey, review of Colette, p. 133.

London Review of Books, May 24, 1990, review of Black Sun, pp. 6-8; January 26, 1995, review of The Old Man and the Wolves, p. 17.

Modern Language Review, July, 2000, Marion Schmid, review of Proust: Questions d'identité, p. 844.

New York Times, July 14, 2001, "Correcting Her Idea of Politically Correct; Feeling Misunderstood, a French Thinker Tries an Individualistic Path," p. A17.

New York Times Book Review, November 15, 1992, Wendy Steiner, "The Bulldozer of Desire," p. 9; April 5, 1998, Mark Edmundson, "Headless Body in Lawless Burg," p. 35; May 19, 1996, "Proust on the Couch."

Observer, December 6, 1992, review of The Samurai, p. 57.

Publishers Weekly, January 26, 1998, review of Possessions, p. 71; December 5, 2005, review of Murder in Byzantium, p. 35.

Spectator, November 19, 1994, review of Le temps sensible: Proust et l'expérience littéraire, p. 48.

Symposium, summer, 2007, Beth Gale, review of Colette.

Theoria, June 2003, Clayton Crockett, review of Revolt, She Said, p. 143.

Times Literary Supplement, December 4, 1992, review of The Samurai, p. 20.

Women's Review of Books, January, 1996, review of New Maladies of the Soul, p. 19; November, 2004, Julia Balen, review of Colette, p. 23; January 1, 2007, Molly Hite, "Yeah, Baby," p. 26.